Starting a Company
Resource to Start a Business
Written by Anne Hauser for Gaebler Ventures
The Minority Professional Network is a great resource to help start a business.
For minority, multicultural and women entrepreneurs, it's always a great thing to find a website that caters to the needs of minority business enterprises and multicultural business professionals.
The Minority Professional Network is a global forum for all businesses to post information about their job listings, events, services, and to help them focus on diversity in the workplace.
As a resource for businesses with "channels" based on geographic location, the information is based both on geography and where the entrepreneur's interests lie, including resources for student minority entrepreneurs.
The Network releases e-publications to convey the business news and needs of all minorities and women, and to assist them with their business practices and networking.
President and CEO C.J. Bland said he realized a need for an organization where ethnicity, gender and profession could come together under one national resource network for business owners.
He has experience in the entrepreneurship world, previously starting his own I.T. consulting firm before founding the Minority Professional Network. Bland said his day-to-day work primarily focuses on the Network's largest companies; such as the U.S. State Department, which has actively been trying to increase diversity among their employees.
Before establishing the Network, he had no idea how large the company would become.
Prior to its foundation, he said he conducted focus testing and met with an advisory committee of successful business people. "We studied things in terms of understanding our primary target audience, how we could add value and not look at our company as a small business," said Bland. "Don't think that you're 'just a small business' and let yourself be limited by that designation."
He also offered other advice for would-be entrepreneurs. "You really want to be more strategic in your focus and look at things from a holistic picture," he added. "It really depends on what your objectives are; remember you don't know everything, so it's important to pull together a group of pretty trusted advisors."
Anne Hauser is a freelance writer who is currently a double major in Magazine Journalism and English at the University of Missouri.
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