Contests for Entrepreneurs

My friend asked me to vote for her as a contestant at Startup Nation’s Leading Moms In Business 2009 Competition. I checked out the website and there’s quite a bit of info for the entrepreneur. There are plenty of articles, blogs, tools, audio/video, including a radio show where you can pitch your business ideas on air. In fact they are also running their 2009 Elevator Pitch Competition.

They say it’s a good time to start a business during a economic downturn. If you’ve been laid off, you have plenty of time to start planning and executing, the startup costs may be lower than in better times, and your niche can fill a void left by larger companies that are cutting back riskier ventures or spending their capital trying to enter new markets.

Since I’ve started four businesses and am in the process of starting 2 more, you can call me a serial entrepreneur. I have always found Entrepreneur magazine very informative and useful. You can find really cheap subscriptions on eBay or Google ”cheap magazine”. I see them ranging from $3.49 for 3 years or $11 for 1 year. Either way, I use it as a business expense and write it off my when I do my taxes. I also recently found the Young Entrepreneur blog has some great tips and offer a free monthly contest to review your website for SEO quality. There’s also SCORE, which is a nonprofit organization that offer volunteer mentors, whom are currently working or retired business owners, executives, and corporate leaders. They have local chapters in the US and are partnered with the U.S. Small Business Administration.