GoHuman Blog

We’ve been honoring two important themes in April – Earth Month and Autism Awareness Month. Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and we want to help you find ways to create a more sustainable business. We’re also continuing support of our MicroCause for Sunshine supporting autism.

Green is a long-standing buzzword, but what does it mean for your business and community? It’s different for every business and can be difficult to know where to begin. While there is no silver bullet for going green, many great resources are available to help you achieve sustainability.

GoHuman has partnered with Green Globe, providing the premier global certification for sustainability since 1993. Green Globe pioneers what it means to be sustainable and has developed several programs to help businesses achieve sustainability across the planet. They provide independent verification that your business is operating sustainably and in line with Green Globe certified businesses around the world.

Respond today to receive a 10% discount off your Green Globe membership and enjoy these benefits:

• GoHuman Local Marketing Consultant support – we’ll register your business and provide 6 months free at our $5 monthly subscription level.
• Immediate access to the Green Globe Certification System
• The Green Globe benchmarking tool: Green Globe Index
• The Green Globe Environmental Trainings Program
• Listings as “Green Globe Member” on all Green Globe websites
• Access to accredited Green Globe Consultants and Auditors to pursue certification
• Marketing Services provided by Green Globe Marketing
• 10% membership discount applies each year you renew

GoHuman is a marketplace devoted to helping local communities achieve sustainability. Local energy and ideas serve as the foundation for the site’s growth and allow for mutual prosperity. Read more from CEO Wade Fransson about why green energy matters.

Launching a business requires knowing the cost and expenses associated with startup operations. Business owners planning to expand an existing business usually need additional financing. Being undercapitalized is one of the most common mistakes business owners make. Attempting to work on a financial shoe string is not only stressful but can impede the growth of the business for years.

The first step most companies take when seeking private capital is the creation of an executive summary and/or a business plan. Executive summaries and business plans typically provide general information about the company, its business model, goals, etc. While this information is important to investors, it does not provide a basis or structure for accepting capital investments, especially from multiple investors. Business plans are important, especially for start-up companies, but should not be relied upon as investment documents.

Here is the “Best Kept Secret in Funding.” The Regulation D series of funding allows you to efficiently raise the funds necessary for your business, in legal compliance with Security & Exchange Commissions laws. Whether it’s $50,000 or millions, there is a Reg D to answer your requirements.

Offering equity in a privately held company, such as a corporation or limited liability company, without proper exemption from the Securities & Exchange Commission, is in violation of offering securities. The Reg D series of private placement offerings are the exemptions. A Reg D 504 Private Placement Offering is ideal for raising $1 million or less. It’s cost effective, has few restrictions, and is easy to comply with.

Ken Hollowell, CEO/President of Profran Consultants, Inc., is sponsoring this issue by offering a free Reg D 504, a $10,000 value. To apply, provide a one or two paragraph description of your business with the amount you wish to raise, up to $1M. Ken will select the business he feels is the best candidate to generate investor interest, from among the first 20 responses. The other 19 candidates will receive a personal counseling session on how to improve their pitch. GoHuman.com will also upgrade your subscription to our $9 Enhanced Subscription Level for 6 months, free of charge.

You owe it to yourself to learn about methods of raising funds for literally any type of business. Respond today to increase your understanding of funding options to chart your path toward business growth and expansion.

What does green mean to you as a business owner or consumer? It’s certainly a buzzword that gets a lot of attention, especially this month as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.

In 40 years have we accomplished as much as we could to sustain a sustainable ecosystem for our planet? Probably not, but it’s human nature to move incrementally until disaster strikes.

GoHuman is a marketplace devoted to helping local communities achieve sustainability. Local energy and ideas serve as the foundation for the site’s growth, and allow for mutual prosperity. Local means:

• Fewer resources to transport goods and services is better for the environment
• Money spent by the community stays in the community
• Services tailored specifically to the needs and challenges of the community
• Reduced costs due to lower overhead of the individual provider
• Greater flexibility for better quality of life
• Bringing back the unique downtown communities this country has lost
• Helping the economy-at-large by feeding it at the smallest level
• Taking the current crisis into your own hands rather than waiting for someone else to fix it

If you are a green-certified service provider, you’re one of us. So why not join us? I welcome you to post your services to GoHuman and join a growing community of like-minded businesses and community members. Together we can help local communities and the environment.

Thank you for making a difference in your community and ours. Read on for ideas on marketing a green business.

GoHuman is all about empowering small businesses and independent professionals by connecting them with the right customers in their community to establish a more sustainable economy. We’re not the only ones with this idea, which is a great thing. We can’t do it alone, and we depend on people everywhere who believe there is a better way.

But how do we do it?

Word of mouth has proven time after time to be the single most powerful form of marketing. People trust people like themselves, who are typically people they know well like friends or family.

At this stage in GoHuman’s growth, we are connecting with as many small businesses as possible in Chicago; L.A.; Madison, WI; Knoxville, TN; and Vancouver, Canada. You might ask why we’ve chosen those particular areas and I would tell you that in a way they chose us.

We believe in involving people who share our vision for a better, more equitable world, no matter where they are. We’re looking for people to join our grassroots marketing teams, whether they are in one of our existing markets or if someone has the gumption to get a new market going. It’s happened before, and we welcome anyone who is up for the challenge and the rewards.

Businesses everywhere are hurting. People everywhere are being shut down by the powers that be. GoHuman.com represents a genuinely better way for business to work to support themselves and their community.

There is nothing more inspiring than meeting new people who want to join the cause. Some have established themselves in their community and others are just looking for a way to help make things better. Either way, it’s the fuel that moves us forward and gives us hope that our dream can work.

And guess what? People just like you are growing GoHuman.

If you’re interested in joining our team and becoming a Founding Member of GoHuman.com, just email refer@GoHuman.com for more info. We guarantee that an actual human will respond.

I was on Ted.com the other day, listening to Seth Godin talk about tribes and more specifically about the dynamics of starting a movement. In this talk he spoke about how it is important to find a group that needs something and connect them with an idea that will address their needs. During this economic recession I have been bombarded with requests to forward resumes and requests for job leads from readers of my blog and listeners of my radio show. As much as I would love to help every single one of my supporters, I simply did not have the resources to make an impact.

All this speculation about Google buying Yelp for half a billion dollars starts to sound suspiciously like some of the other high finance deals that led to the current economic crisis. But at the end of the day, these are two corporations beholden to shareholders and investors with wealth aggregated at the top and controlled from the top. Worse still, that wealth is still leaving your community.

Where’s the little guy in all this? The independent local professional or small business who just needs to get more customers in the door, no matter who happens to own the search traffic or content at that particular moment.

Google was supposed to be in the business of objectively aggregating the world’s information, not owning it. Buying Yelp ensures a degree of control over the content that is created. And remember who’s creating all that content? You and me.

Yelp was a directory created to give consumers a democratic voice in recommending brick and mortar businesses. I believe their motives were pure, but they leaned so far in favor of the consumer as to alienate businesses who now tell extortion-like tales. The review system is limited and features such as business responses and custom business info are afterthoughts at best.

There is a better way.

What if the website that contained all the customer feedback alllowed businesses to express themselves and interact in a more natural, independent way?

Better yet, what if the people who contribute to the website community end up owning it?

GoHuman.com represents something completely different — 1000’s of sustainable localized business communities connected through the Web yet protected from the rampant evaporation of local wealth. We’re building a unique collaborative economic structure that directly rewards those who contribute to its growth. It’s a revolutionary concept that takes a bit of faith to absorb, but we truly believe it will transform local communities from the inside out, equalizing the gap between the big guys and the little guys.

Goldman Sachs operated behind the scenes, defrauding millions of little guys & gals.  Our government failed us then, and continues to fail us. Check out this link to see how the government we elected has let Citigroup have its way with us, even after we became owners.

It’s our fault.

Americans, and everyone else on the planet, must own up, grow up, and participate more fully in ownership and governance. This nation was founded on these principles, but mass markets want to play vs. pay. Paying is acting responsibly; shouldering the burden of change.

But my daughter’s expression of frustration with her bank’s behavior, in tossing it over the gate by the stairs, was the real inspiration for this blog.

There are better ways to solve an economic crisis. Geithner’s failure to protect our interest, and Zoe’s latest antic, both highlight that responsible adults must be owners. It takes maturity to build something lasting. Spread the word and help us build it.

Reason #4 Why GoHuman.com is: We must own the global problem and work to change our own community!

Zoe solves the credit crisis her way

Reason #1; Reason #2; Reason #3; Reason #4; 

Next #5: The high cost of free; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

In this inspirational article about getting respect for being your own boss, I’m reminded of why I set out on my own more than six years ago to start a business and why I’ve been working the past several months to launch GoHuman.com to empower even more people to do this.

It’s about freedom, respect, standing on your own two feet and knowing that you are responsible for your destiny–as much as that’s possible for anyone. For me, it was about knowing that I alone had a unique way of serving my clients that kept them coming back for more. This serves as daily reminder of the importance of independent professionals and local businesses.

I guess I was lucky to have far more supportive friends and family than this article describes. Tough love is made of people who play devil’s advocate, but at some point if people see the fire in your eyes they should know they’ll serve you best to support you.

As the world gets more professionally diverse, people have more careers and skills throughout life than ever. This is more than a trend. It’s a sign of things to come. GoHuman.com enables you to represent all your talents and passions in one place. But it’s about more than telling people what you’re up to. It’s about connecting with real people near you who need your services and want to promote your great work to others.

It’s hard to find time to take a breath, but here are 5 easy tips for equalizing your independent life.

Check out Shift Happens: Education 3.0, for an interesting barrage of stats demonstrating just how quickly the world is moving in education and business. One of the reasons we started GoHuman.com is to help independent businesses keep up with all the changes that otherwise might leave them behind. Individuals are being rewarded for their ability to work independently and fluidly now more than ever. GoHuman.com helps those people find good customers locally for all their various talents.

Yesterday’s blog covered WFB firing Cheronda Guyton, and my hope that those running the show would be next in line. Today I’m celebrating. Five Bank of America Board Members have been subpoenaed.

The CEO’s boss is the Board of Directors. Their “fiduciary responsibility” is to “increase shareholder value” – which in plain English means “be successfully greedy”. In good times they are, and in bad times they muddle through the fallout of a greed-driven system.

The questions posed to these five people will be related to their acquisition of “troubled investment bank Merrill Lynch & Co.” Many players were involved, including our government. Will we find out what really happened?

Consider! The invisible gray suits pull the strings from behind closed doors, and they write their own minutes.

This much we know. “Merrill, with the knowledge of Bank of America executives” paid “$3.6 billion in bonuses shortly before the deal closed at the beginning of this year.”

I hope the investigation digs deeper. On Independence Day I blogged about my days at Countrywide, and its CEO, Angelo Mozilo, labeled #1 person to blame for the financial system’s meltdown by Time Magazine. I compared Countrywide Culture to the Mafia in a paper for my MBA.

What happened to Countrywide?

Acquired by Bank of America, of course.

Is anyone out there paying attention? How long will we let this game go on?

These gray suits essentially make the rules and print the money. They are among those who convinced America a “Free Market” was good for the economy. Translation? “We’ll make the rules, you’ll believe they’re fair”.

We don’t need free markets, we need transparent markets. You can’t get there from here. We need to change the way our world works.