Boom Goes My Summer Plans

by Joshua Aikens on May 4, 2012

 

I’m sitting at my daughter Katarina’s softball game when my phone buzzes.

It’s my friend Trent Staheli asking me if I’m interested in joining Referral.IM.

I’m no fool so I text sure in what capacity.

He responds with “CEO and Founder, be thinking about ownership and first year salary.”

Kat hit a triple that night and I hit a home run!

It just gets more exciting too.

Referral.IM was announced yesterday as one of the 9 companies chosen to be part of the BoomStartUP class of 2012.

 

 

Boom is a startup accelerator program that runs the entire summer in Salt Lake City.

My summer plans now included living in the basement of my cousins in Lehi during the weak while I build Referral.IM under the tutelage of a wonderful group of mentors and coaches.

This is an opportunity of a life time.

As I was explaining it to my 9 year old son Eric and asking him if he was ready to be the man around the house for the summer he asked me, “is this like a one in a million chance?”

I said I thought it was, and he said, “well then you have to go for it!”

I am very lucky to enjoy the full support of my wonderful family, who I will miss dearly during the week and party hard with on the weekends.

The announcement was last night in Provo at a LaunchUp event, and even got a little coverage on Tech Crunch.

If you are new to the StartUp scene this might seem kind of crazy, but this is exactly the type of opportunity I’ve been preparing myself for, for a long time.

My summer plans certainly just went Boom but in a wonderful way!

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Could Starting a Business be Safer than your Job?

by Joshua Aikens on November 1, 2011

I saw this great graphic today on the Lendio blog and wanted to share it.

It shows some numbers that can help you in making the decision weather or not to start your one business.

A careful look will reveal that the graphic is rather bias towards Self-Employment as even the language about jobs is slightly derogatory and the numbers on the Self-Employment side are a little bias.

For example they say that 35% of businesses fail in two years, but you have to read the * that qualifies that to businesses with at least one employee. That is an entirely different class of business than the one person start up which I don’t think has that great of a track record. Not that they can’t I think most people that start small businesses can and should be successful, but they have to know what to do in order to be successful before they become successful.

All in all I agree with the slant of this diagram, being your own boss and discovering how to create value in the world should be high on the priority list for everyone, especially in troubled times.

What is it going to take to get you to make a move toward the dream you have always harbored to go out on your own?

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Do you want to own your own business?

October 21, 2011

Do you want to own your own business? This is a question that has been bouncing around in my mind. For that past several years I have been an entrepreneur and I began to assume that everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, they just don’t know how. I can’t believe that I forgot my own [...]

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Customer Service NFL Style

October 11, 2011

I love it when I see a product I already like or use, improve and make itself even better. Here’s a funny example that I saw recently that I would like to share to illustrate a point. I don’t have much time on Sunday for watching the NFL, but I love to see the highlights, [...]

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The Power of Why

September 28, 2011

I stumbled on this video this morning and couldn’t help but want to share it with as many people as I possibly can. If you have even a passing interest in leadership and what it takes to be a successful leader then your next 18 minutes will be well spent watching this video.

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Jim Rohn vs Jim Rome

September 23, 2011

When I first heard someone talk about how wonderful a motivational speaker Jim Rohn was I was confused. I thought I heard the name Jim Rome, the smack talking sports radio personality, not Jim ROHN. I was a huge Jim Rome fan at the time. I even drove the half hour North to Salt Lake [...]

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Nail it Then Scale it

September 16, 2011

I attended a very good seminar yesterday based on the book Nail it Then Scale it. What I learned about was a set of tools that can be very helpful to entrepreneurs who are planning their next big business idea. In a nut shell, the steps take you through a series of interactions with the [...]

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The Wrong Child

August 30, 2011

Both of my readers will remember my post a while back on how I learned a lesson from my son Jackson about showing love to someone in a way that makes them feel loved. In his case it was a body slam into the couch instead of a kiss before leaving for work. Well I [...]

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My Run to Fight Child Hunger

August 24, 2011
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On Saturday morning I’m going to participate in a 5K race to raise money for the Children’s Hunger Fund. I’ve set a goal to raise $50 and donated the first $25 myself. I would ask if you are able to, please donate $1, $5 or $10 to help me reach my goal and to help [...]

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Entitlement the New Plague

August 22, 2011
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I’m sure you all have known someone who had a son or daughter, usually a son, who was twenty something and still living at home. No life, no plans, no ambitions, just content to live the good life provided by mom and dad. This phenomenon in the past was not uncommon, but not wide spread [...]

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