Biznik Blog

How many entrepreneurs does it take to change the economy?

Last night, Paul Renzi, a social entrepreneur from Hockessin, Delaware, became the 25,000th person to join Biznik. As it turns out, he’s building a community “to help the entrepreneurial community connect and find funding, while also participating in shared philanthropic objectives.” I share his goals, and I’m going to do everything I can to help him succeed. And I know many of you will, too.

Biznik is a community of entrepreneurs dedicated to helping each other succeed. At the moment Paul joined last night, on the other side of the country in Bellevue, Washington, Steve MacDonald was teaching nearly 100 Biznik members How to Start Using Social Media and Branding to Grow Your Business. We all went home with new ideas that we can begin acting on today.

What the economy needs right now is for YOU to succeed. As Barack Obama said earlier this week, small business is the heart of the economy. There are 27 million businesses in the United States. 21 million of them have fewer than 5 employees. When we succeed, America succeeds.

I believe that as small business owners today, we have an economic responsibility to help each other succeed. The financial industry certainly isn’t capable of doing it. Big businesses aren’t going to do it. Even government can’t do it without our help. The responsibility is our our shoulders. And we can’t do it alone.

Who do you know who needs to succeed? Maybe it’s someone who’s been laid off for so long that they’ve given up looking for work. Maybe that someone is thinking about starting a business, but doesn’t know where to start. Or maybe it’s someone like Robert Middleton, a marketing guru Suzi Elton invited to Biznik two weeks ago, who says:

“Unlike most social networking, that emphasizes building huge lists of friends and followers, Biznik is more concerned with building solid business relationships.”

It’s taken more than 3 years for this community of entrepreneurs to reach 25,000 members. In the current economy, we need to reach more people, faster. And we can. If every Biznik member invited 3 friends today, we’d have 100,000 members tomorrow. Today, I’m asking you to think of 3 people who need a community dedicated to helping them succeed in business, and invite them to Biznik.

I’ve created a page on Biznik where you can track our progress. Let’s not wait for big business, or a government bailout. Let’s do what we do best: let’s count on each other. Let’s change the economy, one small business at a time.

You + 3 = 100,000.

So. Who can you invite?

Here’s to your success,

Dan

PS. As of today, there are 276 days left in the year. Biznik is currently growing at a rate of 100 new members/day. That means, if nothing changes, we’ll add 27,600 new members by the end of the year. So that would put us at 52,600 by end of year. I think we can do better than that.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 6:08 am and is filed under News. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.