Imagine juggling five balls in the air while running through a plate of spaghetti - then meet people who have done it well - and you’ve got the entrepreneurial journey.
Tonight, with an expert panel and a room full of seasoned and new entrepreneurs,  we will be talking about navigating business chaos and making strategic choices [...]

Who wants to learn the hard way that the system is broken and our lives have changed? TV commercials are telling me how my values have changed and how much better they are now. I’m not buying it OR their products - because my values haven’t budged. It’s my lifestyle that’s changed.
Here is my newest [...]

Our companies are different but the Phases of our journeys are remarkably the same.  Our time and head-space fluctuates between grappling with challenges, actual work, success, insight and agony.
We are constantly inventing and reinventing ourselves (beyond Phase I and back to Phase I) - searching for best practices and fine tuning messages, methods and marketing [...]

A Big Ooga member who would like to remain nameless came up with an excellent idea this morning - give out monthly awards to outstanding Big Ooga businesses and call it The BOOB Award (Big Ooga Outstanding Business) “Or for short,” he said, call them BOOBIEs.”
Geez, I thought, what do you do with that kind [...]

Ok - so I’ll let the cat out of the bag. I’ve been out here behind the scenes improving things. Meeting with people, developing concepts and setting the framework for future development.  The search has centered on adding value to your entrepreneurial journey, improving your Big Ooga experience and joining forces with the Linked N [...]

I competed in Toastmaster’s Smack Down this week and came in last behind the mental patient.  To make it worse, it was the easiest topic in the easiest division AND I did my best.   In cream on cream wool with matching stilettos, my first 30 seconds were a breeze.  But for the next 60 seconds, [...]

If I blog, the comments come from Facebook or email. If I email, I might get Tweeted.  If I Tweet, I might get ReTweeted and if I call, I might get emailed.  I’m your typical entrepreneur on Social Media without advanced social media skills.  In my defense, the entrepreneurs with whom I communicate can’t be [...]

The real heavy lifting for Chicago entrepreneurs is the thinking - it’s the figuring out and adjusting  - what is my product or service? What needs to change and improve? What words should I use to describe it? The ongoing evolution process is agonizing!  Real entrepreneurship means hitting moving targets and constantly adjusting to the [...]

Until recently I was a hardcore how-to reader, spending time inhaling nonfiction.  Why waste time on made-up stories when how-to do everything is indexed neatly in the library?  How-to books make you smarter. They break things into steps even a monkey can do! They strip away narrative and serve up facts gathered from lifetimes of [...]

How much time do you estimate you spend thinking about your business?  It probably ranges from - every waking moment to only when I can shut it off.
The real heavy lifting of the entrepreneur’s journey is the thinking process.  Our work is problem solving on the fly.  To do this we are supposed to know [...]