For the first time ever, judges of the New Venture Championship at the University of Oregon's business school named two co-winners.
A University of Oregon team, TakeShape, and Brigham Young University's Klymit team each won a $30,000 prize at the Portland event on Saturday. The judges decided to take the first prize of $50,000 and second-place prize of $10,000 and split the total evenly.
The university's 17th annual competition for student entrepreneurs drew 20 graduate teams from universities around the world, including Hong Kong and Australia.
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How to Be a Functional Workaholic
For Brian Kurth, a six- or even seven-day workweek is nothing unusual. In fact it's the norm for the 41-year-old business owner, who also admits he doesn't get much sleep. "I'm usually up until midnight, and back up at 5 a.m.," says Kurth, owner of Portland, Oregon-based VocationVacations -- a company that allows people to test-drive dream jobs. "But it's not work if you love it."
That's the mentality shared by many entrepreneurs eager to grow and build their small businesses. It makes sense when you consider that entrepreneurs, by nature, are hard workers. That's not a bad personality trait to have, but unchecked it can consume entrepreneurs. When that happens, a reliable, hard worker can slowly morph into a burnt-out workaholic.
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Opportunity Knocks for small-business owners
During the past seven years, the Chemeketa Community College Opportunity Knocks program has provided 133 local people with advice for running their businesses more efficiently and handling myriad challenges and decisions that small-business owners face on a daily basis.__________________________________________________________
"When I got into this group, I started to understand how to run a business better," said Paz Reingans, of PAZ Design Group on North Liberty, who has been in business for 22 years and admitted he either had someone taking care of a lot of logistics or he was "flying by the seat of my pants."
"What helps a lot is that you don't feel like you're doing it alone," he added. "When it seems rather hopeless or you want to throw your hands up and quit — and I've said that more than once — there are some reality checks, good ideas and encouragement. There is a lot of business maturity within the group."
Teams of as many as 12 non-competing business owners, plus two trained facilitators, gather for three hours monthly to share experiences and help each other succeed in and navigate the competitive and volatile world of small business.
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