Contestant's Case to Win

Four out of five people say that at some point, they have considered starting their own business, based on Alibaba.com survey posted on auctionbytes.com June 2, 2009, and be confident running it but have limited understanding of the real demands of running a business and skill set to survive the hardship of business development and operations. This may be the reason why 12% of SBA backed loans ended in default, as reported in money.cnn.com on February 2009, and why it is said that 80-92% of small businesses fail in the first 5 years of operation.

Business planning is a difficult process as it requires various components of the business to be explored and put in place within the business plan to secure funding and eventually start operations. More important than this and more complex is the actual run of business. More so, if you run the business by yourself.

With this understanding, Entrepreneurs Sounding Board (ESB) was designed and established.

We are in the business of building business confidence and significance levels by offering consistent performance monitoring, review, and improvement aside from general business and marketing consulting with added benefits of training, networking, promotion, and business writing services.

Our business runs as a membership service program offering 3 business solution levels from $99 to $495 flat fee per month (approximately 5 to 18 total consulting hours per month from highly trained and experienced consultants working from their home office) with no long-term contracts. Monetary value of our services range from $1,500 to $5,600 per month, excluding the value of business confidence and significance gained by the company and its owners. Furthermore, a good portion of profits will be utilized to establish consulting, coaching and training programs for minority or the disadvantaged, e.g., single parents, homeless and physically challenged, and, hopefully, start a micro-lending fund in cooperation with interested companies, groups or government office. Borrowing from the movie, we want to "pay it forward."

Currently, we offer our services as volunteer counselors and advisors at SBA sponsored entrepreneurial and small business workshops and at entrepreneurial programs elsewhere and we hope that with the establishment of ESB in July 2009, we can turn our passion into a full circle service program.

Bottom line is this... we designed ESB to be a business success shop, a for-profit company with a non-profit soul. We advocate consistent evaluation and improvement as an ongoing effort to strengthen positive business processes or create new ones to ultimately create better opportunities. And with progress, there is a responsibility to perform, to serve and to give value.