December 31st Blog

Greetings!

This issue of the blog recaps in pictures all of the milestone moments at both the Entrepreneurial Academy and the Center for the Study and Development of Minority Business. There is also a piece by Dr. Bessie House that goes into more detail about the events that made 2006 such a special year for the Centers. Happy new year goes out to all reading from the staff at both centers.

Quote of the Week

"Success means different things to different people. But, it cannot always be measured in terms of the size of our bank accounts, the splendor of our homes, or the types of clothes we wear. Success can best be measured by looking at the number of lives that we impact and the number of people that we help along the way."

---Dr. Bessie House---
Kent State University


Recapping The Year 2006 in Pictures

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

As we prepare to close out this year, 2006, let me take this opportunity to thank so many of you for your many acts of kindness to us at the Center for Minority Businesses at Kent State University and the Entrepreneurial Academy in the Cleveland Empowerment Zone.

There are so many individuals who have helped us in numerous ways to ensure that our programs were a great success and we are grateful. I have personally enjoyed the many speaking invitations that I have received to travel to various parts of this country to engage individuals on some of the most pressing issues of our times, which include strategies to use to achieve self-empowerment for our communities. In particular, I want to thank many of your for your personal letters of support, some of which have appeared recently in our Dear Doctor House column, for our newsletter. They have meant a lot to me as they have helped us to stay focused on our mission and agenda, which is to continue to promote entrepreneurial efficacy and economic development for all of our great citizens for the long term. This is a challenging but reachable goal.

I can honestly say, that 2006 will go down in history as one of our best years ever for our entrepreneurial centers. Over the past few months, we have had 82 individuals to graduate from the Center for Minority Businesses at Kent State University and the Entrepreneurial Academy in the Cleveland Empowerment Zone. We are absolutely delighted to inform you that many new businesses have started on our watch and we have also helped existing entrepreneurs to take their work to another level. I have been personally touched to see many individuals who have previously been written off by society, move forward rather miraculously to complete our very intensive and rigorous business training programs and establish new business ventures. Indeed, they have defied the odds and come out victorious. This is obviously a personal source of joy to me.

I have also been personally overjoyed to see that the entrepreneurial model that I created and labored over in 1995 , which has been constantly fine tuned, adjusted, and adapted through the years, has finally been perfected with our entrepreneurs. This model has also become much more complex across time. But, I am happy to see that the thousands of hours we invested in fine tuning the model have finally paid off. The evidence seems overwhelming that our model works very effectively in the real world and I am delighted to report that Dr. Richard Njoku, the President and CEO of Benchmark Consulting Group who has performed an independent evaluation of our program effectiveness, will be releasing the results of his report to the public in upcoming days. This report goes into great detail about the various ways that our centers have continued to reify our mission in order to have a positive impact on economic growth in our region, our state, and our country.

The wonderful memories of significant milestones reached by the centers shall always be a wonderful source of joy to us and we wish each of you a Happy New Year. We close out our last edition of Entrepreneurial Alternatives for 2006 with photographs of some very special moments for us that took place earlier this year. We look forward to updating you on some of the latest trends and issues in the world of business in upcoming editions for 2007.

Dr. Bessie House
Director
The Entrepreneurial Academy
And Executive Director and Founder
The Center for the Study and Development of Minority Businesses
Kent State University
2006 In Pictures: A Retrospective




Dr. House in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Dr. House presenting former intern Benjamin Wattles with gifts.
Dr. House receives the key to the city for Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
The CSDMB's 2006 graduation.
Quick Links
# The CSDMB
# E-Academy
# B. House Communications, Inc.
# The Dr. House Minority Business Blog

In Closing
Finally, we at the Center For The Study and Development of Minority Businesses and Entrepreneurial Academy want to make a call out to any former student of our Center. If you move or have some other method of contact, please notify us! We love hearing about your new businesses, business plans, and any other successes that you might be experiencing. If you could send us a recent photograph and a small description of your success, we will include them in one of our upcoming editions of Entrepreneurial Alternatives.

There are individuals in our class that we have not heard from since they stopped attending; keep in touch! Contact information is at the bottom of this blog.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bessie House
Director, The Center for the Study and Development of Minority Businesses
Director, The Entrepreneurial Academy
email: minoritybusinesses@gmail.com
phone: 330-672-5307
web: http://www.eacademy.biz