Hence the title:  Work: It's Personal.

Creating Work: It's Personal was a delightful team effort.  Dan Smith, editor of Valley Business FRONT wrote a humblingly beautiful foreword, Kelsey Sarles designed the book's cover and interior with her distinctive artistry and its accompanying cartoons with her inimitable creative view of the world.  I had my first studio photo shoot ever with Wayne Dunford and thank him for helping me be myself for the camera.  We used CreateSpace to publish the book in print and Kindle Direct Publishing for the Kindle version.

Dan Smith kindly circulated the manuscript prior to publication and I am awed and grateful for the reviews readers offered. 

Work: It's Personal is on Handshake 2.0 with those reviews and all the book's details. These are links to Work: It's Personal on Amazon.com and Work: It's Personal for the Kindle.

To all who have shared personal workplace challenges with me, I thank you.  If you haven't shared one yet, feel free to send me your question at anne@handshake20.com. I’ll do my best to answer it in Valley Business FRONT.

I will acknowledge, however, that it's the time of year when I ask myself the same question: "What's your business model?"

The 4th Annual VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Challenge will be held on April 11, 2012 in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.  The deadline for registering for both the Student Competition and the Open Competition is February 10.

I joined VT KnowledgeWorks in 2008 as an individual.  At the time, VT KnowledgeWorks was called an "incubator," a term too limiting to describe both starting and growing a company, so it's now more aptly named an "acceleration center."  However, my company, Handshake Media, Incorporated, was truly born at VT KnowledgeWorks and will celebrate its 4th year of membership in July, 2012.

Passionate by nature and eager to take full advantage of all that VT KnowledgeWorks offered - to reduce the risk of my small company failing and to increase its potential for growth - for the first three years, I participated in every single program and event at VT KnowledgeWorks. 

I have found one of the hardest parts of this entrepreneurial life to be that, having achieved mastery in another field in another life, I have entered a new field in which I am a novice. Trial-and-error learning is to be expected in any new endeavor, from dribbling a basketball to scaling an enterprise. I find the error part of this second go-round very painful. The greater the knowledge I had in my former field, the fewer errors I made. I will make fewer errors as I learn this field. But now? Ooh, they smart.

I, unapologetically, take work personally. My experience with the Entrepreneurship Challenge is, therefore, personal.  I applied to present at the first Entrepreneurship Challenge and wasn't accepted.  That smarted.  I applied and was accepted to present at the second Entrepreneurship Challenge.  At the end of my pitch, one of the angel investors on the panel had his head in his hands.  That smarted.  Still feeling terrible about that experience, I missed my first VTKW event and didn't apply to the third Entrepreneurship Challenge. 

In addition to submitting an intent to compete and a registration fee, entrants must submit a one-page summary of their business concepts. (Here's the .pdf of the guidelines for the Open Competition.)

Did I think about applying to the third Entrepreneurship Challenge?  Yes, I did.  As I had each year before, I wrote a one-page summary - this time for myself - in response to the application's prompts:

1. Please state the business concept title and all team member name(s)
2. Explain the product or service
3. Underlying technology
4. Uniqueness and/or innovation of the concept
5. Initial Customer Base for the product or service
6. Customer need met by the product or service
7. Estimate of the market size for the product or service

The subtext of the prompts?  The same question as in yesterday's email:  "What's your business model?"

The deadline to enter 4th Annual VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Challenge is two days from today.

I am thinking of applying.

Why would I apply again?  The prizes are VT KnowledgeWorks services, which I consider invaluable and of which, therefore, I have already partaken. So it's not the prizes.

It's the audience. Who's in the audience at the VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Challenge? According to the information page, it's "individuals interested in investing in early-stage companies."  Subtext?  The panelists and some members of the audience are angel investors - or know someone who is because "It's still who you know" - whose funds and guidance could turn ideas for companies - my idea among them - into real companies.

To an individual considering applying, I wrote a full disclosure of my experience with pitching at this and similar events: "I give my presentation all I have and feel elated at the end, the panelists ask me horrible questions about revenue and users that I can’t answer, I feel publicly humiliated, and I hate myself for days, sometimes weeks afterward. Then I sign up again, because how I feel about the ideas I pitch is stronger than how I feel about having the ideas - or myself - questioned, even ridiculed, even in public."

The deadline for registering for both the Student Competition and the Open Competition is February 10, two days from today...

I have found writing a yearly one-page summary answering the question - whether in response to an email, on paper, or for a business concept competition - "What is your business model?" deepens my understanding of my company and helps me see new ideas for its growth.

And I am crazy passionate about my ideas.

See you at the 4th Annual VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Challenge, one way - or another.

***

I gave a one-minute elevator pitch at Distilled Intelligence 1.0 on October 11, 2011.  In this recording of the first round of pitches, you can click here to see my pitch for She Chooses at 1:02:40.  Eli the Computer Guy mentions the pitch at 1:11:42.

Posts that may be of further interest:
Angel Investor Guide to Blacksburg, Virginia
Ten Bottom Line Stats About Angel Investing
An Entrepreneur Walks into a Bar...

VT KnowledgeWorks is a client of Handshake Media, Incorporated, the parent company of Handshake 2.0.  Handshake Media, Incorporated is a passionate and eager member of VT KnowledgeWorks.

From Jim Ellison:

I'd like to have had a ten spot each time I heard someone in an office say, "We need an app."

These people knew a mobile strategy was needed. But how could an app make them money?  Was it worth the time, trouble and expense? 

Consideration of these tactics could have helped them form a mobile strategy:

No question why web portals like Yahoo and MSN always run top 10 lists. People love lists. People understand lists and use them. List apps are relatively easy to develop and can point potential customers in the right direction.

A few apps sell directly or help turn a potential customer into a buyer.

Suppose nobody in the office is helping a daughter sell her Girl Scout Cookies this year? I can use Kellogg's Little Brownie Bakers app to search for sellers in my neighborhood, just in time for the annual mid-winter sale on the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouting.

If I wanted to make it convenient for prospects to reach me interactively, I’d  consider a directory app of my sales force with names, photos and contact information.  Coldwell Banker Townside in Blacksburg, Virginia is one of many Realtors who list houses and the agents to move them. Research firm Gartner reports location-based services like these will be “one of the most disruptive in the next few years...because of its perceived high user value and its influence on user loyalty.”

Apps can also work at the point of sale.  I’m able to trace the purity and potency of Gaia’s herbs with their  app, Meet Your Herbs. I type in the ID number on the back of a package to learn an herb’s source, harvest field, lab test details and date of manufacture – far more info than could ever fit on the package: plenty to try to convince me of the herb’s provenance.

Of course, the cost of developing an app varies widely.  Some can be built out of an existing web page. Others can run into the many thousands of dollars.  (Here's Handshake 2.0's post on the costs of mobile app development.)  It’s up to me to weigh that against how much product I think it will move. 

Next time I hear someone say "We need an app," I'll advise him to consider the valuable opportunities that could drift away - even if he's scared off by the price of mobile development. He might save $20,000 by not spending it. He might also forgo the chance to earn twenty grand over and above his investment.

Jim Ellison is a Roanoke, Virginia-based freelance writer and web developer.

Coldwell Banker Townside, REALTORS(R) is a client of Handshake Media, Incorporated, the parent company of Handshake 2.0.

Photo: Randolph Walker

Each week, Who's in FRONT on Handshake 2.0? showcases photographs of the people featured in business news magazine Valley Business FRONT.

Valley Business FRONT for iPad is available for free in the iTunes App Store. For an overview, please see Anne Giles Clelland's YouTube video on the VBF app.

Keep in front with Valley Business FRONT on Valley Business FRONT for iPad, Valley Business FRONT's blog, moreFRONT, Twitter and Facebook. Anne's Giles Clelland's Workplace Advice Column appears monthly in Valley Business FRONT.

Valley Business FRONT is a client of Handshake Media, Incorporated, the parent company of Handshake 2.0.