It’s a Good Day!

The sun is up. The sky is blue. Not a cloud to be seen. The lawns are green and so are the trees as they fill out to their full billowiness in preparation for summer. The birds sing. The early morning air is still a little crisp. Dew is present on low lying landscapes. And it is quiet.

A Monday morning but still early so it is quiet. Peaceful. Beautiful. It is a good day and it will remain so!

The SCORE conference is over. Thirteen small businesses in formative stages competed in the ‘pitch’ contest. Three were declared winners. Two of those were SCORE mentored firms. And the winner? A SCORE coached start-up to help cancer survivors obtain wigs to cover bald pates resulting from chemo treatments. She won the $5000 award money, too!

During the day 12 workshops catered to the needs of two tracks of interest: start-up firms and existing firms. Topics on marketing, organizational structure, legal issues, licensing, hiring and much more were covered. Four panels provided expertise on several topics including Intellectual Property protection and the like.

Networking was a great side bar to the entire event. People in academia and business mingled and discussed points of interest and mutual need. College students and business people merged with 150 colleagues. Men and women, young and old, and people of many cultural and ethnic backgrounds shared a day and a mindset that focused on building organizations of purpose and promise.

All in all a good day was lived by all who attended.

Partnering with SCORE this year was North Central College who used the event as the launch pad of their new Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Their facilities were opened to the event and played host exceptionally well. The partnership of business and academics is a good one wherever it is ventured. And that we do well in the Midwest!

If you want to be a part of this sort of thing – welcome! SCORE is available on-line: www.SCORE.org and www.SCOREFoxValley.org . If you Google colleges and entrepreneur together you will discover 28 institutions in Illinois, mostly in northeastern Illinois. Contact SCORE. And then there are the incubators for developing business ideas and technologies. Those you will have to find on your own. They go by many names but are essential to helping start-ups gain footing and success.

Saturday’s Ideas to Profits conference (May 21, 2016 at North Central College) was like a party event. A celebration. You can get in on it for the future. Just ask for directions!

May 24, 2016