I’ve never really been a fan of business competitions, primarily because of their notorious emphasis on business plans. Your business idea will change so much it’s mind blowing — so much so that writing a business plan could be counter productive.
This year, however, I won first place in the Fall 2010 CSU Chico Business Competition for my current start up, Bizness Apps, which led to my first angel investors. Two teachers involved in the competition were so impressed with my start up that they set up a lunch meeting with my current investors. Take advantage of these opportunities – even if the first place cash prize is only $300 bucks!
You never know who will be in attendance at these events, and at the very least it gives you valuable experience in pitching a concept in a professional setting. By entering business competitions you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Don’t worry about people stealing your idea – if you don’t win the contest why would a contestant want to steal a losing idea? On the flip side, if you win people will look to you as the person who can pull the concept off.
4. Learn outside of the classroom
Build a library full of business books and read all of them. Learn to read a book in a day or two. Scan through the parts that you’re already familiar with in order to get through the book quickly. I usually aim to read 3-4 books a week. Teach yourself everything you need to know in order to make your start up successful.
Be very selective and know what you are looking to take away from every book. I wanted to focus on effective simplicity, which led me to the book Rework by the founders of 37Signals. When I wanted to learn about the early stages of startup life, I read Founders at Work by Y Combinator founding partner Jessica Livingston, a collection of interviews with largely successful entrepreneurs.
When you set out to acquire knowledge, be sure it’s relevant to your situation.
5. Use your surroundings for business idea inspiration
It only makes sense when setting out on your venture to immerse yourself in something you are knowledgeable and passionate about. In my case I looked towards my obsession with my iPhone, and I began paying attention to how smart phones were changing the way people interacted with businesses.
It wasn’t very long before I realized that there was an enormous opportunity to help the average business owner connect with their clientele on a mobile level. While I knew that a business would love to have a presence in the pocket of their customers at all times, I also wanted there to be a significant value for the person using the app as well. By looking towards my own habits, and that of my peers, I was able to develop a solution that was beneficial to both the business and consumer.
Talk often with your target markets to be sure you’re on the right path. It is so easy to get carried away with an idea that you think is great but offers little to no real value to your clients. It seems obvious, but always pay attention to feedback and structure your decisions around what your environment is telling you.
6. Just do it
This is probably my biggest piece of advice for college entrepreneurs: just do it! There is no better time in your life to start a company. You have little to no responsibilities, you’re surrounded my people who can help you, and now is the best time in your life to take on risk!
Got a business idea you’ve been bouncing around in your head? Just do it. Don’t wait until tomorrow, next week, or next month. Start building traction today.
In my experience, the biggest hurdle of starting a business is actually doing it. When you start a business, it’s fine not to know everything or even have a ‘solid’ business plan. In fact, most companies deviate significantly from their original plan! These things will fall into place and the things you learn along the way will last a lifetime. To get to this point though, you have to stop planning and start doing.
I’m a huge supporter of the “minimum viable product” business strategy, which advocates to move quickly, get your product out fast, and improve your product with feedback. You shove your product out into the market knowing it has bugs, knowing it could be improved — but you do this to simply start building your business.
By implementing this strategy you are building traction everyday. You stop thinking and you start acting. This is the single biggest step for an entrepreneur. Just do it!
Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Bizness Apps, a do-it-yourself iPhone app platform that allows small businesses to easily create, edit, and manage an iPhone app online without any programming knowledge needed. He is 22, attending CSU Chico full time pursuing a Business Marketing degree, and will graduate in the Spring of 2011.
Next Story: Deals & More: Wild Needle scores $2.5M for social, mobile games, trueAnthem grabs $2.9M for ad-supported music service Previous Story: Eye-Fi cards will be able to upload photos to your smartphones and tablets
Mike Huckabee featured a canned interview with Sean Hannity on his show this weekend as part of a year-end retrospective in which they discussed the Tea Party. The amusing part came when they discussed Teh Awesome Power of the Tea Parties, which Hannity identified with the American people themselves. Both of them argued vehemently against the notion that the Tea Parties were mere corporate Astroturf.
Completely absent from the discussion, naturally, was any mention whatsoever of the role played by Fox News. And while the role of astroturfers like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity in fact was indispensable, none of them came close wielding the sheer energizing and organizing power that having a national "news" network openly propagandize for a movement can bring.
As John and I explain in Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane (pp. 121-127):
It costs advertisers thousands of dollars to air a single thirty-second commercial on a few cable stations for a week, even in relatively cheap rural markets. To advertise nationally on Fox News – the ratings leader in cable news – costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions if the ads air often enough and in prime-time programs.
So what Fox News offered up the organizers of the tea parties -- and the conservative movement opposing Obama’s presidency -- was something you couldn’t measure in dollars and cents, because not only did Fox air a steady onslaught of “tea party” promotional ads, they embraced the outright promotion of the events in their news broadcasts and on their “opinion shows.” Their on-air personalities as well as their websites took an active role day after day and night after night promoting and urging the Fox audience to join in the tea party protests. Media Matters, a non-profit organization that tracks the conservative media documented 63 instances where Fox News anchors and guests openly promoted the tea parties and discussed them as a legitimate news event.
Initially, there was a lull; there was only passing mention of the tea parties on Fox again for the two weeks after Van Susteren’s show. Then, on March 16, three Fox anchors – Glenn Beck, Bret Baier, and Bill O’Reilly – featured segments discussing the tea parties, again in glowing terms. O'Reilly told his audience that "big government spending protests are taking place all over the country. The latest in Cincinnati, where about 5,000 folks showed up, showed their displeasure with the Obama's administration money strategy. These gatherings are being dubbed tea parties."
But it was Beck in particular who most avidly embraced the tea parties, making them his own pet cause. Some of this had to do with the ease with which the tea-party themes – an embrace of small-government philosophy, with an anti-tax and pro-gun fervor thrown in for emphasis – melded with the populist themes Beck was already exploring in depth on his show. On March 13, he had hosted a special one-hour program themed “You Are Not Alone” that was most notable for some of Beck’s most maudlin crying jags, including his oft-lampooned sob, “I just love my country – and I fear for it!” The show – like Beck’s later Tea Party promotions – featured broadcasts from specially gathered audiences in locations around the country who wanted to join Beck’s cause of “standing up to big government”. Its purpose was to launch Beck’s “912 Project” – named dually after Beck’s wish to bring the country back to “where we all were on the day after 9/11,” as well as the “9 Principles and 12 Values” Beck espoused, drawn from a 1972 book titled The 5,000-Year Leap, by far-right conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen, which Beck promoted on his show and website.
After March 16 – when Beck noted the tea parties mostly in passing – the tea-party themes began to meld seamlessly with Beck’s “912 Project”. On March 18, Beck remarked: "People are starting to get angry. These tea parties are starting to really take off." On March 20, Beck began making the connection explicit. Once again denouncing the Missouri law-enforcement report on right-wing extremism, he connected the “extremists” described therein to the tea partiers:
But if you're concerned about the government, you're considered dangerous now in America. More than 160,000 Americans have already signed up to be part of our 9/12 Project, "912project.com," since we launched it a week ago -- 163,000 people have signed up. Who are these people? They're people just like you that are just concerned about our government and they're concerned about our country.
You know, are they militia members? Yes. Yes, sure they are, along with all the other people that are now on the tea parties nationwide. There is one here in Orlando, Florida. Tomorrow is supposed to be huge.
He mentioned the Orlando tea party warmly on March 23 as well, and then on March 24, Beck hosted two of the event’s tea-party organizers, Lisa Feroli and Shelley Ferguson, saying: "I have been telling you for weeks that you've got to stand up. And a lot of people around the country are doing these tea party things. But please, make them about principles, not about the parties. Make them about the principles."
Beck continued promoting the show each night through the rest of March. On his April 2 program, he announced that he would be hosting a special tea-party broadcast on April 15: "Tax Day, two weeks away. All right. More Americans are fed up with the nonsense in Washington both left and right. They are holding tea parties on April 15th. In this show, I can now announce that we're going to have our program live from the only place in America where I think it really, really makes sense - the Alamo. Plant your flag, America. It's in San Antonio, Texas. We will see you there on Tax Day!"
Beck was only leading the way for the other Fox anchors. A few days later, on April 6, he announced that not only would he be hosting his San Antonio “Tax Day tea party” on the 15th, but so would Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren, who planned to do similar broadcasts from respective tea parties in Sacramento, Atlanta, and Washington the same day. Fox was planning to flood the airwaves with tea-party protests.
Beck was prolific in promoting the tea parties. Between March 16 and April 14, Beck urgently implored his audiences to take part in the Tax Day protests a total of 17 times (out of a total of 21 shows). One of the more piquant episodes came when he hired a motivational speaker and sometime actor named Bob Basso to dress up in colonial costume and pretend to be Thomas Paine, embarking on a tea-party-loving rant:
The time for talk is over. Enough is enough. Your democracy has deteriorated to government of the government, by the government, and for the government. On April 15, that despicable arrogance will be soundly challenged for the whole world to see. Our friends will applaud it. Our enemies will fear it.
In an unprecedented moment of citizen response not seen since December 7, 1941, millions of your fellow Americans will bring their anger and determination into the streets.
… Your complacency will only aid and abet our national suicide. Remember, they wouldn't dare bomb Pearl Harbor, but they did. They wouldn't dare drive two planes into the World Trade Center, but they did. They wouldn't dare pilot a plane through the most sophisticated air defenses in the world and crash into the Pentagon, but they did. They wouldn't dare pass the largest spending bill in history, in open defiance of the will of the people, but they did!
Beck’s fellow Fox hosts did their best to keep pace. Sean Hannity featured segments on the tea parties a total of 13 times between March 12 and April 14, while Neil Cavuto’s afternoon business-oriented show featured a total of ten segments devoted to the protests during that same time. Nor were the “opinion shows” the only ones to do so: Another 15 or so tea-party promotional segments ran those weeks on such “news” shows as Fox and Friends, America’s Newsroom , and Special Report with Bret Baier.
Fairly typical was a March 23 broadcast in which America’s Newsroom anchor Bill Hemmer directed people to a list of tea party events on FoxNews.com and promised to "add to [the list] when we get more information from the New American Tea Party." Likewise, on the March 25 edition of Special Report, host Bret Baier said that the tea parties are "protests of wasteful government spending in general and of President Obama's stimulus package and his budget in particular." Another America's Newsroom broadcast on April 6, Fox contributor Andrea Tantaros described the protests: "People are fighting against Barack Obama's radical shift to turn us into Europe." Fox News also aired on-screen text stating that the "Tea Parties Are Anti-Stimulus Demonstrations."
Despite the obvious anti-Obama bent of all these protests, Beck and other Fox hosts worked hard to present the tea parties as “non-partisan,” bringing on guests who were either disappointed Democrats or conservatives still angry with the Republican Party too. Yet the nonstop drumbeat around the protests made clear that they were primarily in response to Obama administration policies.
The March 24 segment of America’s Newsroom promoting the tea parties was a classic instance of this. In it, Hemmer interviewed a man named Lloyd Marcus who was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color, who told Hemmer that he previously "was on a 40-city 'Stop Obama' tour". Marcus' wrote a song, posted on FoxNews.com, which made clear that this was about Obama:
Mr. President!
Your stimulus is sure to bust.
It's just a socialistic scheme,
The only thing it will do
Is kill the American Dream.You wanna take from achievers
Somehow you think that's fair.
And redistribute to those folks
Who won't get out of their easy chair.We're havin' a tea party across this land.
If you love this country,
Come on and join our band.
We're standin' up for freedom and liberty,
'Cause patriots have shown us freedom ain't free.So when they call you a racist cause you disagree,
It's just another of their dirty tricks to silence you and me.Indeed, Fox News’ website was rich with tea-party promotion, as were its affiliated sites like the new FoxNation site, which tried to act as a sort of “information central” for the tea parties, with numerous links discussing and promoting the protests. One link, titled "Find a Tea Party!", directed readers to a Google Maps page for "2009 Tea Parties." Another link to you to a YouTube video headlined, "The Trillion Dollar Tea Party Video!", which featured Tampa Bay Area Tea Party organizers explaining why viewers should "join your local tea party." For those who couldn’t make it, Fox News announced that viewers could also attend “a virtual tax day tea party” at FoxNation instead.
Sean Hannity’s website at Fox featured a graphic with links to a message board discussion: "This thread is for the sole purpose of getting the word out about organized tea party events around the country. If you know of a planned event, please post the information here." Hannity’s producers wrote a blog post on his site proclaiming, "Get your Tea Party Tees at CAFE PRESS and wear them on April 15!" There were also "some helpful links" to AtlantaTeaParty.net and TaxDayTeaParty.com.
Then there were the promotional ads. In the 10 days leading up to the April 15 protests, Media Matters reported that Fox News aired 107 ads promoting them.
At times, Fox tried to deny that this deluge of glowingly sympathetic “reports” and barrage of commercials on the tea parties actually constituted promotion of the event. On the morning of the protests April 15, Fox and Friends broadcast, host Steve Doocy told his audience that “Fox is not sponsoring any of them, but we have been covering them.” This was a peculiar (not to mention disingenuous) remark, considering that Fox had repeatedly run onscreen graphics describing the events at which its anchors were to appear as “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.”
Of course, this history will never be aired on Fox -- especially now that Rupert Murdoch denies promoting the Tea Parties.
robert shumake
Foot-and-Mouth Outbreak Spreads Through South Korea - AOL <b>News</b>
South Korea is suffering its worst-ever outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, with the highly contagious virus spreading to farms across the country despite a nationwide quarantine effort.
John Roberts Leaves CNN for Fox <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Pink Floyd Re-Signs With EMI: Good <b>News</b> for the Band or the Label?
Progressive rock legends Pink Floyd have re-signed with their longtime record label EMI.
robert shumake detroit
Foot-and-Mouth Outbreak Spreads Through South Korea - AOL <b>News</b>
South Korea is suffering its worst-ever outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, with the highly contagious virus spreading to farms across the country despite a nationwide quarantine effort.
John Roberts Leaves CNN for Fox <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Pink Floyd Re-Signs With EMI: Good <b>News</b> for the Band or the Label?
Progressive rock legends Pink Floyd have re-signed with their longtime record label EMI.
robert shumake detroit
I’ve never really been a fan of business competitions, primarily because of their notorious emphasis on business plans. Your business idea will change so much it’s mind blowing — so much so that writing a business plan could be counter productive.
This year, however, I won first place in the Fall 2010 CSU Chico Business Competition for my current start up, Bizness Apps, which led to my first angel investors. Two teachers involved in the competition were so impressed with my start up that they set up a lunch meeting with my current investors. Take advantage of these opportunities – even if the first place cash prize is only $300 bucks!
You never know who will be in attendance at these events, and at the very least it gives you valuable experience in pitching a concept in a professional setting. By entering business competitions you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Don’t worry about people stealing your idea – if you don’t win the contest why would a contestant want to steal a losing idea? On the flip side, if you win people will look to you as the person who can pull the concept off.
4. Learn outside of the classroom
Build a library full of business books and read all of them. Learn to read a book in a day or two. Scan through the parts that you’re already familiar with in order to get through the book quickly. I usually aim to read 3-4 books a week. Teach yourself everything you need to know in order to make your start up successful.
Be very selective and know what you are looking to take away from every book. I wanted to focus on effective simplicity, which led me to the book Rework by the founders of 37Signals. When I wanted to learn about the early stages of startup life, I read Founders at Work by Y Combinator founding partner Jessica Livingston, a collection of interviews with largely successful entrepreneurs.
When you set out to acquire knowledge, be sure it’s relevant to your situation.
5. Use your surroundings for business idea inspiration
It only makes sense when setting out on your venture to immerse yourself in something you are knowledgeable and passionate about. In my case I looked towards my obsession with my iPhone, and I began paying attention to how smart phones were changing the way people interacted with businesses.
It wasn’t very long before I realized that there was an enormous opportunity to help the average business owner connect with their clientele on a mobile level. While I knew that a business would love to have a presence in the pocket of their customers at all times, I also wanted there to be a significant value for the person using the app as well. By looking towards my own habits, and that of my peers, I was able to develop a solution that was beneficial to both the business and consumer.
Talk often with your target markets to be sure you’re on the right path. It is so easy to get carried away with an idea that you think is great but offers little to no real value to your clients. It seems obvious, but always pay attention to feedback and structure your decisions around what your environment is telling you.
6. Just do it
This is probably my biggest piece of advice for college entrepreneurs: just do it! There is no better time in your life to start a company. You have little to no responsibilities, you’re surrounded my people who can help you, and now is the best time in your life to take on risk!
Got a business idea you’ve been bouncing around in your head? Just do it. Don’t wait until tomorrow, next week, or next month. Start building traction today.
In my experience, the biggest hurdle of starting a business is actually doing it. When you start a business, it’s fine not to know everything or even have a ‘solid’ business plan. In fact, most companies deviate significantly from their original plan! These things will fall into place and the things you learn along the way will last a lifetime. To get to this point though, you have to stop planning and start doing.
I’m a huge supporter of the “minimum viable product” business strategy, which advocates to move quickly, get your product out fast, and improve your product with feedback. You shove your product out into the market knowing it has bugs, knowing it could be improved — but you do this to simply start building your business.
By implementing this strategy you are building traction everyday. You stop thinking and you start acting. This is the single biggest step for an entrepreneur. Just do it!
Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Bizness Apps, a do-it-yourself iPhone app platform that allows small businesses to easily create, edit, and manage an iPhone app online without any programming knowledge needed. He is 22, attending CSU Chico full time pursuing a Business Marketing degree, and will graduate in the Spring of 2011.
Next Story: Deals & More: Wild Needle scores $2.5M for social, mobile games, trueAnthem grabs $2.9M for ad-supported music service Previous Story: Eye-Fi cards will be able to upload photos to your smartphones and tablets
Mike Huckabee featured a canned interview with Sean Hannity on his show this weekend as part of a year-end retrospective in which they discussed the Tea Party. The amusing part came when they discussed Teh Awesome Power of the Tea Parties, which Hannity identified with the American people themselves. Both of them argued vehemently against the notion that the Tea Parties were mere corporate Astroturf.
Completely absent from the discussion, naturally, was any mention whatsoever of the role played by Fox News. And while the role of astroturfers like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity in fact was indispensable, none of them came close wielding the sheer energizing and organizing power that having a national "news" network openly propagandize for a movement can bring.
As John and I explain in Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane (pp. 121-127):
It costs advertisers thousands of dollars to air a single thirty-second commercial on a few cable stations for a week, even in relatively cheap rural markets. To advertise nationally on Fox News – the ratings leader in cable news – costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions if the ads air often enough and in prime-time programs.
So what Fox News offered up the organizers of the tea parties -- and the conservative movement opposing Obama’s presidency -- was something you couldn’t measure in dollars and cents, because not only did Fox air a steady onslaught of “tea party” promotional ads, they embraced the outright promotion of the events in their news broadcasts and on their “opinion shows.” Their on-air personalities as well as their websites took an active role day after day and night after night promoting and urging the Fox audience to join in the tea party protests. Media Matters, a non-profit organization that tracks the conservative media documented 63 instances where Fox News anchors and guests openly promoted the tea parties and discussed them as a legitimate news event.
Initially, there was a lull; there was only passing mention of the tea parties on Fox again for the two weeks after Van Susteren’s show. Then, on March 16, three Fox anchors – Glenn Beck, Bret Baier, and Bill O’Reilly – featured segments discussing the tea parties, again in glowing terms. O'Reilly told his audience that "big government spending protests are taking place all over the country. The latest in Cincinnati, where about 5,000 folks showed up, showed their displeasure with the Obama's administration money strategy. These gatherings are being dubbed tea parties."
But it was Beck in particular who most avidly embraced the tea parties, making them his own pet cause. Some of this had to do with the ease with which the tea-party themes – an embrace of small-government philosophy, with an anti-tax and pro-gun fervor thrown in for emphasis – melded with the populist themes Beck was already exploring in depth on his show. On March 13, he had hosted a special one-hour program themed “You Are Not Alone” that was most notable for some of Beck’s most maudlin crying jags, including his oft-lampooned sob, “I just love my country – and I fear for it!” The show – like Beck’s later Tea Party promotions – featured broadcasts from specially gathered audiences in locations around the country who wanted to join Beck’s cause of “standing up to big government”. Its purpose was to launch Beck’s “912 Project” – named dually after Beck’s wish to bring the country back to “where we all were on the day after 9/11,” as well as the “9 Principles and 12 Values” Beck espoused, drawn from a 1972 book titled The 5,000-Year Leap, by far-right conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen, which Beck promoted on his show and website.
After March 16 – when Beck noted the tea parties mostly in passing – the tea-party themes began to meld seamlessly with Beck’s “912 Project”. On March 18, Beck remarked: "People are starting to get angry. These tea parties are starting to really take off." On March 20, Beck began making the connection explicit. Once again denouncing the Missouri law-enforcement report on right-wing extremism, he connected the “extremists” described therein to the tea partiers:
But if you're concerned about the government, you're considered dangerous now in America. More than 160,000 Americans have already signed up to be part of our 9/12 Project, "912project.com," since we launched it a week ago -- 163,000 people have signed up. Who are these people? They're people just like you that are just concerned about our government and they're concerned about our country.
You know, are they militia members? Yes. Yes, sure they are, along with all the other people that are now on the tea parties nationwide. There is one here in Orlando, Florida. Tomorrow is supposed to be huge.
He mentioned the Orlando tea party warmly on March 23 as well, and then on March 24, Beck hosted two of the event’s tea-party organizers, Lisa Feroli and Shelley Ferguson, saying: "I have been telling you for weeks that you've got to stand up. And a lot of people around the country are doing these tea party things. But please, make them about principles, not about the parties. Make them about the principles."
Beck continued promoting the show each night through the rest of March. On his April 2 program, he announced that he would be hosting a special tea-party broadcast on April 15: "Tax Day, two weeks away. All right. More Americans are fed up with the nonsense in Washington both left and right. They are holding tea parties on April 15th. In this show, I can now announce that we're going to have our program live from the only place in America where I think it really, really makes sense - the Alamo. Plant your flag, America. It's in San Antonio, Texas. We will see you there on Tax Day!"
Beck was only leading the way for the other Fox anchors. A few days later, on April 6, he announced that not only would he be hosting his San Antonio “Tax Day tea party” on the 15th, but so would Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren, who planned to do similar broadcasts from respective tea parties in Sacramento, Atlanta, and Washington the same day. Fox was planning to flood the airwaves with tea-party protests.
Beck was prolific in promoting the tea parties. Between March 16 and April 14, Beck urgently implored his audiences to take part in the Tax Day protests a total of 17 times (out of a total of 21 shows). One of the more piquant episodes came when he hired a motivational speaker and sometime actor named Bob Basso to dress up in colonial costume and pretend to be Thomas Paine, embarking on a tea-party-loving rant:
The time for talk is over. Enough is enough. Your democracy has deteriorated to government of the government, by the government, and for the government. On April 15, that despicable arrogance will be soundly challenged for the whole world to see. Our friends will applaud it. Our enemies will fear it.
In an unprecedented moment of citizen response not seen since December 7, 1941, millions of your fellow Americans will bring their anger and determination into the streets.
… Your complacency will only aid and abet our national suicide. Remember, they wouldn't dare bomb Pearl Harbor, but they did. They wouldn't dare drive two planes into the World Trade Center, but they did. They wouldn't dare pilot a plane through the most sophisticated air defenses in the world and crash into the Pentagon, but they did. They wouldn't dare pass the largest spending bill in history, in open defiance of the will of the people, but they did!
Beck’s fellow Fox hosts did their best to keep pace. Sean Hannity featured segments on the tea parties a total of 13 times between March 12 and April 14, while Neil Cavuto’s afternoon business-oriented show featured a total of ten segments devoted to the protests during that same time. Nor were the “opinion shows” the only ones to do so: Another 15 or so tea-party promotional segments ran those weeks on such “news” shows as Fox and Friends, America’s Newsroom , and Special Report with Bret Baier.
Fairly typical was a March 23 broadcast in which America’s Newsroom anchor Bill Hemmer directed people to a list of tea party events on FoxNews.com and promised to "add to [the list] when we get more information from the New American Tea Party." Likewise, on the March 25 edition of Special Report, host Bret Baier said that the tea parties are "protests of wasteful government spending in general and of President Obama's stimulus package and his budget in particular." Another America's Newsroom broadcast on April 6, Fox contributor Andrea Tantaros described the protests: "People are fighting against Barack Obama's radical shift to turn us into Europe." Fox News also aired on-screen text stating that the "Tea Parties Are Anti-Stimulus Demonstrations."
Despite the obvious anti-Obama bent of all these protests, Beck and other Fox hosts worked hard to present the tea parties as “non-partisan,” bringing on guests who were either disappointed Democrats or conservatives still angry with the Republican Party too. Yet the nonstop drumbeat around the protests made clear that they were primarily in response to Obama administration policies.
The March 24 segment of America’s Newsroom promoting the tea parties was a classic instance of this. In it, Hemmer interviewed a man named Lloyd Marcus who was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color, who told Hemmer that he previously "was on a 40-city 'Stop Obama' tour". Marcus' wrote a song, posted on FoxNews.com, which made clear that this was about Obama:
Mr. President!
Your stimulus is sure to bust.
It's just a socialistic scheme,
The only thing it will do
Is kill the American Dream.You wanna take from achievers
Somehow you think that's fair.
And redistribute to those folks
Who won't get out of their easy chair.We're havin' a tea party across this land.
If you love this country,
Come on and join our band.
We're standin' up for freedom and liberty,
'Cause patriots have shown us freedom ain't free.So when they call you a racist cause you disagree,
It's just another of their dirty tricks to silence you and me.Indeed, Fox News’ website was rich with tea-party promotion, as were its affiliated sites like the new FoxNation site, which tried to act as a sort of “information central” for the tea parties, with numerous links discussing and promoting the protests. One link, titled "Find a Tea Party!", directed readers to a Google Maps page for "2009 Tea Parties." Another link to you to a YouTube video headlined, "The Trillion Dollar Tea Party Video!", which featured Tampa Bay Area Tea Party organizers explaining why viewers should "join your local tea party." For those who couldn’t make it, Fox News announced that viewers could also attend “a virtual tax day tea party” at FoxNation instead.
Sean Hannity’s website at Fox featured a graphic with links to a message board discussion: "This thread is for the sole purpose of getting the word out about organized tea party events around the country. If you know of a planned event, please post the information here." Hannity’s producers wrote a blog post on his site proclaiming, "Get your Tea Party Tees at CAFE PRESS and wear them on April 15!" There were also "some helpful links" to AtlantaTeaParty.net and TaxDayTeaParty.com.
Then there were the promotional ads. In the 10 days leading up to the April 15 protests, Media Matters reported that Fox News aired 107 ads promoting them.
At times, Fox tried to deny that this deluge of glowingly sympathetic “reports” and barrage of commercials on the tea parties actually constituted promotion of the event. On the morning of the protests April 15, Fox and Friends broadcast, host Steve Doocy told his audience that “Fox is not sponsoring any of them, but we have been covering them.” This was a peculiar (not to mention disingenuous) remark, considering that Fox had repeatedly run onscreen graphics describing the events at which its anchors were to appear as “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.”
Of course, this history will never be aired on Fox -- especially now that Rupert Murdoch denies promoting the Tea Parties.
robert shumake
robert shumake
Foot-and-Mouth Outbreak Spreads Through South Korea - AOL <b>News</b>
South Korea is suffering its worst-ever outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, with the highly contagious virus spreading to farms across the country despite a nationwide quarantine effort.
John Roberts Leaves CNN for Fox <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Pink Floyd Re-Signs With EMI: Good <b>News</b> for the Band or the Label?
Progressive rock legends Pink Floyd have re-signed with their longtime record label EMI.
robert shumake
Foot-and-Mouth Outbreak Spreads Through South Korea - AOL <b>News</b>
South Korea is suffering its worst-ever outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, with the highly contagious virus spreading to farms across the country despite a nationwide quarantine effort.
John Roberts Leaves CNN for Fox <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Pink Floyd Re-Signs With EMI: Good <b>News</b> for the Band or the Label?
Progressive rock legends Pink Floyd have re-signed with their longtime record label EMI.
robert shumake
Beware of those outrageous money-making opportunities because you are guaranteed not to make many sales. The reason is because the search engines really hate those duplicate affiliate websites and will not index them.
Furthermore, if you take a product or service and over saturate the internet with it then everybody will know that you are promoting the same thing that the other guy is promoting and will avoid it altogether.
Making money on the internet requires a unique website design and not a 'cookie cutter' copy of the same website others are promoting. The guys selling those money-making websites do not tell you that saturating the internet with 1,000's of the same type of websites will not earn much money at all. They will show you a snapshot of somebody's high dollar paycheck to convince you that you can make the same amount of money. The true fact is that when you start a new website it may take 6 months to a year of promoting and marketing before you will even make the first dollar. The only exception is for those who spend $1,000's of dollars up front in pay- per-click ads, which most people cannot afford to do.
What happens is that after a few months making no money the person gets discouraged and abandons the website business. They walk away felling cheated because they were convinced that they would make a lot of money right away.
These guys just come in with a so-called hot business opportunity, collect your fee and go off to plan the next business scheme. You are then left to figure out how to make money with that opportunity you bought.
They show you pictures of their Clickbank earnings statement to show you that they have made a lot of money, and that you will do so as well. They just want you to get excited about all the money they may have earned and buy into their program on a quick impulse. Youtube has videos that show you exactly how those so-called internet marketers fake their clickbank earnings to entice you to their product.
Here is a wake-up call; whenever there are too many people using the same technique, or trick or shortcut this makes it less valuable and less lucrative in the market.
For example, when pop-ups were first discovered only the most popular websites used them and they were the best marketing tools ever at that time. When more and more people started using pop-ups to promote their websites the internet got flooded with intrusive pop-ups everywhere and started hating them. Now more people are using pop-up blockers to get rid of this once highly accepted marketing tool.
This is the same fate waiting for the next hot business opportunity or website traffic builder technique. When 1,000's of people start using this system at the same time it then becomes less effective.
True marketers and business-savvy people do not disclose their secret techniques because they don't want others to know how they are so successful and lose their edge. These business-savvy people know that a valuable trade secret should remain a secret. don't fall for the latest traffic building or money making secret because when too many people start using it then it will eventually become useless.
I read about a man that bought his wife a new Mercedes from the income he made on the internet, and the next month he could hardly afford to buy gas for this new car. This same thing could happen to you when you buy into a new and hot business opportunity. You may earn a lot of money in the beginning but soon that opportunity will lose it's value and then vanish away, taking with it everything you purchased while depending on that temporary high income.
Those super-hot business opportunities and traffic secrets may earn you a lot of money at first, but since there is no real foundation there the money will soon dry up leaving you with useless junk that won't even make good 'toilet reading'.
Another big problem is that you may get banned from the search engines because you are using some 'black hat' techniquues that the search engines hate. Anytime you use tricks and techniques to get an a traffic advantage over others you will wind up even worse because if you had a position in Google where you were getting a small 100 visitors a day, you could lose your search engine rank and all of your precious traffic by using those traffic secrets.
These scam artist call these traffic secrets because they are underhanded tricks that may get you a lot of traffic at the start, and then you may be dropped from the search engines altogether. There is not secret to real long term search engine rankings and increasing your traffic, but there is some real work involved. There are not such things as a super secret shortcut to increasing your website traffic, but this is the shortcut way to losing your website traffic.
A successful and long lasting business opportunity plan does not show off huge paychecks or promise big earnings, but teaches you to lay a solid foundation; start-up small and then grow your enterprise over time.
Most business opportunities are designed to make a few people a lot of money in the beginning, but are doomed to fail because there is no real legitimate product or service involved. If you are looking for a real long term business you can call your own then selling niche products is the way to go.
robert shumake detroit
Foot-and-Mouth Outbreak Spreads Through South Korea - AOL <b>News</b>
South Korea is suffering its worst-ever outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, with the highly contagious virus spreading to farms across the country despite a nationwide quarantine effort.
John Roberts Leaves CNN for Fox <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Pink Floyd Re-Signs With EMI: Good <b>News</b> for the Band or the Label?
Progressive rock legends Pink Floyd have re-signed with their longtime record label EMI.
robert shumake
robert shumake
I’ve never really been a fan of business competitions, primarily because of their notorious emphasis on business plans. Your business idea will change so much it’s mind blowing — so much so that writing a business plan could be counter productive.
This year, however, I won first place in the Fall 2010 CSU Chico Business Competition for my current start up, Bizness Apps, which led to my first angel investors. Two teachers involved in the competition were so impressed with my start up that they set up a lunch meeting with my current investors. Take advantage of these opportunities – even if the first place cash prize is only $300 bucks!
You never know who will be in attendance at these events, and at the very least it gives you valuable experience in pitching a concept in a professional setting. By entering business competitions you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Don’t worry about people stealing your idea – if you don’t win the contest why would a contestant want to steal a losing idea? On the flip side, if you win people will look to you as the person who can pull the concept off.
4. Learn outside of the classroom
Build a library full of business books and read all of them. Learn to read a book in a day or two. Scan through the parts that you’re already familiar with in order to get through the book quickly. I usually aim to read 3-4 books a week. Teach yourself everything you need to know in order to make your start up successful.
Be very selective and know what you are looking to take away from every book. I wanted to focus on effective simplicity, which led me to the book Rework by the founders of 37Signals. When I wanted to learn about the early stages of startup life, I read Founders at Work by Y Combinator founding partner Jessica Livingston, a collection of interviews with largely successful entrepreneurs.
When you set out to acquire knowledge, be sure it’s relevant to your situation.
5. Use your surroundings for business idea inspiration
It only makes sense when setting out on your venture to immerse yourself in something you are knowledgeable and passionate about. In my case I looked towards my obsession with my iPhone, and I began paying attention to how smart phones were changing the way people interacted with businesses.
It wasn’t very long before I realized that there was an enormous opportunity to help the average business owner connect with their clientele on a mobile level. While I knew that a business would love to have a presence in the pocket of their customers at all times, I also wanted there to be a significant value for the person using the app as well. By looking towards my own habits, and that of my peers, I was able to develop a solution that was beneficial to both the business and consumer.
Talk often with your target markets to be sure you’re on the right path. It is so easy to get carried away with an idea that you think is great but offers little to no real value to your clients. It seems obvious, but always pay attention to feedback and structure your decisions around what your environment is telling you.
6. Just do it
This is probably my biggest piece of advice for college entrepreneurs: just do it! There is no better time in your life to start a company. You have little to no responsibilities, you’re surrounded my people who can help you, and now is the best time in your life to take on risk!
Got a business idea you’ve been bouncing around in your head? Just do it. Don’t wait until tomorrow, next week, or next month. Start building traction today.
In my experience, the biggest hurdle of starting a business is actually doing it. When you start a business, it’s fine not to know everything or even have a ‘solid’ business plan. In fact, most companies deviate significantly from their original plan! These things will fall into place and the things you learn along the way will last a lifetime. To get to this point though, you have to stop planning and start doing.
I’m a huge supporter of the “minimum viable product” business strategy, which advocates to move quickly, get your product out fast, and improve your product with feedback. You shove your product out into the market knowing it has bugs, knowing it could be improved — but you do this to simply start building your business.
By implementing this strategy you are building traction everyday. You stop thinking and you start acting. This is the single biggest step for an entrepreneur. Just do it!
Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Bizness Apps, a do-it-yourself iPhone app platform that allows small businesses to easily create, edit, and manage an iPhone app online without any programming knowledge needed. He is 22, attending CSU Chico full time pursuing a Business Marketing degree, and will graduate in the Spring of 2011.
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Mike Huckabee featured a canned interview with Sean Hannity on his show this weekend as part of a year-end retrospective in which they discussed the Tea Party. The amusing part came when they discussed Teh Awesome Power of the Tea Parties, which Hannity identified with the American people themselves. Both of them argued vehemently against the notion that the Tea Parties were mere corporate Astroturf.
Completely absent from the discussion, naturally, was any mention whatsoever of the role played by Fox News. And while the role of astroturfers like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity in fact was indispensable, none of them came close wielding the sheer energizing and organizing power that having a national "news" network openly propagandize for a movement can bring.
As John and I explain in Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane (pp. 121-127):
It costs advertisers thousands of dollars to air a single thirty-second commercial on a few cable stations for a week, even in relatively cheap rural markets. To advertise nationally on Fox News – the ratings leader in cable news – costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions if the ads air often enough and in prime-time programs.
So what Fox News offered up the organizers of the tea parties -- and the conservative movement opposing Obama’s presidency -- was something you couldn’t measure in dollars and cents, because not only did Fox air a steady onslaught of “tea party” promotional ads, they embraced the outright promotion of the events in their news broadcasts and on their “opinion shows.” Their on-air personalities as well as their websites took an active role day after day and night after night promoting and urging the Fox audience to join in the tea party protests. Media Matters, a non-profit organization that tracks the conservative media documented 63 instances where Fox News anchors and guests openly promoted the tea parties and discussed them as a legitimate news event.
Initially, there was a lull; there was only passing mention of the tea parties on Fox again for the two weeks after Van Susteren’s show. Then, on March 16, three Fox anchors – Glenn Beck, Bret Baier, and Bill O’Reilly – featured segments discussing the tea parties, again in glowing terms. O'Reilly told his audience that "big government spending protests are taking place all over the country. The latest in Cincinnati, where about 5,000 folks showed up, showed their displeasure with the Obama's administration money strategy. These gatherings are being dubbed tea parties."
But it was Beck in particular who most avidly embraced the tea parties, making them his own pet cause. Some of this had to do with the ease with which the tea-party themes – an embrace of small-government philosophy, with an anti-tax and pro-gun fervor thrown in for emphasis – melded with the populist themes Beck was already exploring in depth on his show. On March 13, he had hosted a special one-hour program themed “You Are Not Alone” that was most notable for some of Beck’s most maudlin crying jags, including his oft-lampooned sob, “I just love my country – and I fear for it!” The show – like Beck’s later Tea Party promotions – featured broadcasts from specially gathered audiences in locations around the country who wanted to join Beck’s cause of “standing up to big government”. Its purpose was to launch Beck’s “912 Project” – named dually after Beck’s wish to bring the country back to “where we all were on the day after 9/11,” as well as the “9 Principles and 12 Values” Beck espoused, drawn from a 1972 book titled The 5,000-Year Leap, by far-right conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen, which Beck promoted on his show and website.
After March 16 – when Beck noted the tea parties mostly in passing – the tea-party themes began to meld seamlessly with Beck’s “912 Project”. On March 18, Beck remarked: "People are starting to get angry. These tea parties are starting to really take off." On March 20, Beck began making the connection explicit. Once again denouncing the Missouri law-enforcement report on right-wing extremism, he connected the “extremists” described therein to the tea partiers:
But if you're concerned about the government, you're considered dangerous now in America. More than 160,000 Americans have already signed up to be part of our 9/12 Project, "912project.com," since we launched it a week ago -- 163,000 people have signed up. Who are these people? They're people just like you that are just concerned about our government and they're concerned about our country.
You know, are they militia members? Yes. Yes, sure they are, along with all the other people that are now on the tea parties nationwide. There is one here in Orlando, Florida. Tomorrow is supposed to be huge.
He mentioned the Orlando tea party warmly on March 23 as well, and then on March 24, Beck hosted two of the event’s tea-party organizers, Lisa Feroli and Shelley Ferguson, saying: "I have been telling you for weeks that you've got to stand up. And a lot of people around the country are doing these tea party things. But please, make them about principles, not about the parties. Make them about the principles."
Beck continued promoting the show each night through the rest of March. On his April 2 program, he announced that he would be hosting a special tea-party broadcast on April 15: "Tax Day, two weeks away. All right. More Americans are fed up with the nonsense in Washington both left and right. They are holding tea parties on April 15th. In this show, I can now announce that we're going to have our program live from the only place in America where I think it really, really makes sense - the Alamo. Plant your flag, America. It's in San Antonio, Texas. We will see you there on Tax Day!"
Beck was only leading the way for the other Fox anchors. A few days later, on April 6, he announced that not only would he be hosting his San Antonio “Tax Day tea party” on the 15th, but so would Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren, who planned to do similar broadcasts from respective tea parties in Sacramento, Atlanta, and Washington the same day. Fox was planning to flood the airwaves with tea-party protests.
Beck was prolific in promoting the tea parties. Between March 16 and April 14, Beck urgently implored his audiences to take part in the Tax Day protests a total of 17 times (out of a total of 21 shows). One of the more piquant episodes came when he hired a motivational speaker and sometime actor named Bob Basso to dress up in colonial costume and pretend to be Thomas Paine, embarking on a tea-party-loving rant:
The time for talk is over. Enough is enough. Your democracy has deteriorated to government of the government, by the government, and for the government. On April 15, that despicable arrogance will be soundly challenged for the whole world to see. Our friends will applaud it. Our enemies will fear it.
In an unprecedented moment of citizen response not seen since December 7, 1941, millions of your fellow Americans will bring their anger and determination into the streets.
… Your complacency will only aid and abet our national suicide. Remember, they wouldn't dare bomb Pearl Harbor, but they did. They wouldn't dare drive two planes into the World Trade Center, but they did. They wouldn't dare pilot a plane through the most sophisticated air defenses in the world and crash into the Pentagon, but they did. They wouldn't dare pass the largest spending bill in history, in open defiance of the will of the people, but they did!
Beck’s fellow Fox hosts did their best to keep pace. Sean Hannity featured segments on the tea parties a total of 13 times between March 12 and April 14, while Neil Cavuto’s afternoon business-oriented show featured a total of ten segments devoted to the protests during that same time. Nor were the “opinion shows” the only ones to do so: Another 15 or so tea-party promotional segments ran those weeks on such “news” shows as Fox and Friends, America’s Newsroom , and Special Report with Bret Baier.
Fairly typical was a March 23 broadcast in which America’s Newsroom anchor Bill Hemmer directed people to a list of tea party events on FoxNews.com and promised to "add to [the list] when we get more information from the New American Tea Party." Likewise, on the March 25 edition of Special Report, host Bret Baier said that the tea parties are "protests of wasteful government spending in general and of President Obama's stimulus package and his budget in particular." Another America's Newsroom broadcast on April 6, Fox contributor Andrea Tantaros described the protests: "People are fighting against Barack Obama's radical shift to turn us into Europe." Fox News also aired on-screen text stating that the "Tea Parties Are Anti-Stimulus Demonstrations."
Despite the obvious anti-Obama bent of all these protests, Beck and other Fox hosts worked hard to present the tea parties as “non-partisan,” bringing on guests who were either disappointed Democrats or conservatives still angry with the Republican Party too. Yet the nonstop drumbeat around the protests made clear that they were primarily in response to Obama administration policies.
The March 24 segment of America’s Newsroom promoting the tea parties was a classic instance of this. In it, Hemmer interviewed a man named Lloyd Marcus who was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color, who told Hemmer that he previously "was on a 40-city 'Stop Obama' tour". Marcus' wrote a song, posted on FoxNews.com, which made clear that this was about Obama:
Mr. President!
Your stimulus is sure to bust.
It's just a socialistic scheme,
The only thing it will do
Is kill the American Dream.You wanna take from achievers
Somehow you think that's fair.
And redistribute to those folks
Who won't get out of their easy chair.We're havin' a tea party across this land.
If you love this country,
Come on and join our band.
We're standin' up for freedom and liberty,
'Cause patriots have shown us freedom ain't free.So when they call you a racist cause you disagree,
It's just another of their dirty tricks to silence you and me.Indeed, Fox News’ website was rich with tea-party promotion, as were its affiliated sites like the new FoxNation site, which tried to act as a sort of “information central” for the tea parties, with numerous links discussing and promoting the protests. One link, titled "Find a Tea Party!", directed readers to a Google Maps page for "2009 Tea Parties." Another link to you to a YouTube video headlined, "The Trillion Dollar Tea Party Video!", which featured Tampa Bay Area Tea Party organizers explaining why viewers should "join your local tea party." For those who couldn’t make it, Fox News announced that viewers could also attend “a virtual tax day tea party” at FoxNation instead.
Sean Hannity’s website at Fox featured a graphic with links to a message board discussion: "This thread is for the sole purpose of getting the word out about organized tea party events around the country. If you know of a planned event, please post the information here." Hannity’s producers wrote a blog post on his site proclaiming, "Get your Tea Party Tees at CAFE PRESS and wear them on April 15!" There were also "some helpful links" to AtlantaTeaParty.net and TaxDayTeaParty.com.
Then there were the promotional ads. In the 10 days leading up to the April 15 protests, Media Matters reported that Fox News aired 107 ads promoting them.
At times, Fox tried to deny that this deluge of glowingly sympathetic “reports” and barrage of commercials on the tea parties actually constituted promotion of the event. On the morning of the protests April 15, Fox and Friends broadcast, host Steve Doocy told his audience that “Fox is not sponsoring any of them, but we have been covering them.” This was a peculiar (not to mention disingenuous) remark, considering that Fox had repeatedly run onscreen graphics describing the events at which its anchors were to appear as “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.”
Of course, this history will never be aired on Fox -- especially now that Rupert Murdoch denies promoting the Tea Parties.
robert shumake
Foot-and-Mouth Outbreak Spreads Through South Korea - AOL <b>News</b>
South Korea is suffering its worst-ever outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, with the highly contagious virus spreading to farms across the country despite a nationwide quarantine effort.
John Roberts Leaves CNN for Fox <b>News</b> - NYTimes.com
Executives at CNN confirmed Monday that John Roberts, who served as the morning anchor for the network since April 2007, would be joining Fox News as a national correspondent.
Pink Floyd Re-Signs With EMI: Good <b>News</b> for the Band or the Label?
Progressive rock legends Pink Floyd have re-signed with their longtime record label EMI.
robert shumake detroit
robert shumake detroit
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