CommNexus Presents...
PANELISTS
Rick Valencia
Chairman, ProfitLine
Tyson McDowell
CEO, Benchmark Revenue Management
DATE
Monday, April 6, 2009
TIME
5:30PM Registration/ Networking
6:00PM Program Begins
7:30PM Program Ends
COST
$10.00 Pre-Registration
$20.00 At the Door
HOST
Morrison & Foerster
12531 High Bluff Drive, San Diego, CA 92130
Why NOW is the Best Time to be an Entrepreneur
How Difficult Economic Times Create Opportunity
Featuring Headliner: "Sam the Cooking Guy"
How Difficult Economic Times Create Opportunity
Featuring Headliner: "Sam the Cooking Guy"
We’re hearing a lot of gloom and doom these days, and rightly so: the economy is a mess and many great people are out of jobs and left wondering what is next. If you are feeling the pinch, and happen to have a groundbreaking idea for a new venture, well, NOW is one of the best times move on your idea and start your own business! During tough economic times, motivation, opportunities and creativity will never be cheaper or better, and it’s the perfect storm for both current and aspiring entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to fruition.
Join CommNexus on April 6 to hear from entrepreneurs who will share their real stories of beginning a new business – despite challenging times – and subsequently went on to create their own success story. Our speakers will tell you why now is the best time to be an entrepreneur. Our headliner and local celebrity “Sam the Cooking Guy” started out during adversarial times, and has since overcome challenges to become an Emmy award-winning chef. Additionally, Rick Valencia, founder of ProfitLine, will share his success with the company, which was started in 1992 at the height of the last economic meltdown. He began ProfitLine during times when failure to him wasn’t an option, and used this motivation to build a multi-million dollar business.
This event is about ordinary people who were able to achieve business success out of adversity and how you can do it too. At this event, you’ll learn several steps you can take to get your business ideas going, and turn it into a profitable success.
Join CommNexus on April 6 to hear from entrepreneurs who will share their real stories of beginning a new business – despite challenging times – and subsequently went on to create their own success story. Our speakers will tell you why now is the best time to be an entrepreneur. Our headliner and local celebrity “Sam the Cooking Guy” started out during adversarial times, and has since overcome challenges to become an Emmy award-winning chef. Additionally, Rick Valencia, founder of ProfitLine, will share his success with the company, which was started in 1992 at the height of the last economic meltdown. He began ProfitLine during times when failure to him wasn’t an option, and used this motivation to build a multi-million dollar business.
This event is about ordinary people who were able to achieve business success out of adversity and how you can do it too. At this event, you’ll learn several steps you can take to get your business ideas going, and turn it into a profitable success.
| HEADLINER |
Sam the Cooking Guy |
 |
Sam the Cooking Guy is about an everyday guy who has found a way to make cooking casually understandable. With no fancy equipment and by speaking English instead of ‘chef-speak,' he is sort of the everyman of television cooking. The show is shot right in his house – and he cooks with his kids, dogs and neighbors occasionally around – just like we all do. There's no fois gras... no white truffle oil, no ‘Peruvian mountain-raised squab in sesame-lime-soy marinade stuffed with braised forest turnips and wild inoki mushrooms in a hand pressed plum and raspberry glaze'. But in the beginning it was going to be about travel, not cooking. He quit a job at a drug development company to do ‘travel for the regular person' – sort of the opposite of The "Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous." He decided to quit his job to become a traveling TV guy. But a month before he was to leave for a demo shoot in Tokyo and Hong Kong - September 11th happened. And while it changed thousands of other people's lives much more significantly than Sam's – he needed to figure out what to do. So he decided to hang on to the TV idea, and just change the concept for the show - cooking. For too long now TV chefs have tried to ‘impress' with their food & style. But a ton of ingredients and a ton of steps just winds up with people saying they can't cook. And it's not that they can't cook – it's that they don't because they think it's too hard. So isn't it time someone made cooking easy? And so with no culinary training or television experience, he made a demo and sent it to a handful of industry ‘experts' and waited for their opinion. And I got it – but comments like "you don't have a @#$%+ chance", "you don't know what you're doing" and "get a better kitchen." So with nothing to lose, he sent the tape to two local television stations, and the reaction was different - "Sam the Cooking Guy" became a regular 2-minute cooking segment twice a week on a morning news show in San Diego. But since then, the show has won 11 Emmys, it's become a national series on Discovery's Health channel, his first book is due out in March of 2008 and... who knows what's next? It's a big country... someone's gotta cook for it. |
PANELISTS
Rick Valencia
Chairman, ProfitLine
Rick founded ProfitLine in 1992, and has been the chairman of ProfitLine since its first round of funding in 2001. With the goal of helping clients navigate the complicated world of telecom expense management, he has grown the company into a multi-million dollar enterprise with dozens of large enterprise and government clients. Prior to founding ProfitLine, Rick was a partner and owner of ACI Investments, a commercial real estate brokerage and investment firm. Before that, Rick founded InterLink, a database matching service for buyers and sellers of real estate. He was one of the early pioneers of the telecom expense management industry and is a nationally recognized speaker on the topic. Rick earned his B.S. in business administration/finance from California State University, Northridge.
Tyson McDowell
CEO, Benchmark Revenue Management
Tyson McDowell, CEO and co-founder of Benchmark Revenue Management, is a repeat entrepreneur focused on leveraging the Internet for true interoperability, scalability, and rapid application development. Tyson founded his first company, 4th Dimension Graphics, at 14 years old, developing commercial websites for the newly emerging world of e-commerce. He devised ground-breaking approaches to enabling some of the first internet "shopping carts" and his websites won acclaim for their level of innovation. On graduating high school, Mr. McDowell became CTO and partner of CamZone Networks, an internet streaming video company. CamZone delivered high performance real-time streaming images of beaches for surfers, airports for pilots, including the most popular video stream of that time period, the San Diego Zoo Panda Cam. Tyson's deep technical background and driven entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found Benchmark in 2001 to bring the latest in web technologies to bear in healthcare administration. He is the architect and initial developer of Benchmark's generic technology platform designed to overlay and rapidly integrate with any hospital IS infrastructure. His experience with creating and implementing solutions with Benchmark's partner since 2004, Navigant Consulting (NYSE:NCI), has given Tyson unique insight into the realities of today's healthcare administration environment and the opportunity to truly match the cutting-edge of technology to the needs of healthcare.
DATE
Monday, April 6, 2009
TIME
5:30PM Registration/ Networking
6:00PM Program Begins
7:30PM Program Ends
COST
$10.00 Pre-Registration
$20.00 At the Door
HOST
Morrison & Foerster
12531 High Bluff Drive, San Diego, CA 92130
Questions? Contact Andrea Parker at aparker@commnexus.org
Date:
Monday, April 06, 20095:30PM - 7:30PM
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Location:
12531 High Bluff DriveSan Diego, CA 92130
