Category Archive for "News"

On July 24th, we were one of more than a hundred exhibitors at L.A.’s LARGEST MIXER X at the historic Shrine Auditorium, next to USC.

It’s billed as Southern California’s Ultimate Networking Event, and there’s no doubt that it was.  Lots of mixer goers stopped by our booth, and we gave away a Free Growth Analysis.

cpSphere’s focus is working with small and medium size businesses so they will grow—successfully and sustainably.

In order to offer new and valuable services to smaller businesses, last month we launched a new website:

kickstartyourcompany.com

It has special programs and free resources so you can:

• INCREASE SALES
• IMPROVE PROFITS
• ACQUIRE FUNDING

Including a Do It Yourself plan to build your sales, and our RISK FREE 120 Day Sales Growth Program—you only pay if your sales increase!
Take a look: www.kickstartyourcompany.com

Our strategic partner, MBEC (Minority Business Enterprise Center), and USC have announced a special 10 week FastTrak Entrepreneurial Training course for small business people who want to grow their businesses and make them more competitive.  The course is taught by Dr Bill Crookston, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at USC’s Lloyd Greif School of Entrepreneurship.  A $4000 value, this special course is being offered for only $499., and begins September 9th at the USC Marshall School of Business.  For more information, contact MBEC:  213-368-1450; info@losangelesmbec.org.

Looking forward to a very successful Corona Manufacturing Technology Council Meeting

Jack Mobilia, VP of Operations at cpSphere heads the Manufacturing Technology Council (MTC) for Corona.  Corona MTC is part of Corona Chamber of Commerce.  Jack has done an unprecedented job in bringing together executives and owners of the key manufacturing companies in Corona.  The next meeting is scheduled for Aug 20.  Our own, Hamida Amiri will be presenting an overview of the Business Performance Management System and Balanced Scorecard process.  A total of 35 individuals have signed up.  We are proud of Jack’s role in the success of the Corona MTC.

Our office in Cerritos which supports Orange County and Inland Empire will move to Anaheim on Aug 22.  Besides putting us right in the hub of the city of Anaheim, it brings us in close proximity to Corona and Inland Empire .  This move will allow us to further strengthen our relationship with Anaheim and Corona Chambers of Commerce as we intensify our effort to serve small to mid size businesses in those cities.

The Anaheim office address is:

222 S. Harbor Blvd. Ste 515
Anaheim, CA 92805
Ph: 714-683-0292

Thursday, July 24, 2008
5:00 - 9:00 PM
Shrine Auditorium
Expo Center
700 W. 32nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90007
The first 100 visitors to our booth will have an opportunity to win a FREE one day Business Assessment of their company’s growth opportunities (a $2,000 value!).

L.A.’s Largest Mixer X is a great opportunity to reach small to large companies, make new contacts, and meet representatives from a variety of chambers of commerce and other business organizations.

WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU THERE!

cpSphere’s CEO, Kamran Qamar, and Senior Consultant, Joseph Burns, will lead a workshop on Growth Strategies for Small Business on June 17th, at Tamayo Restaurant, in the City of Commerce, sponsored by TELACU Community Capital.  The workshop will be presented for a selected audience of TELACU clients.

TELACU Community Capital is a division of TELACU (The East Los Angeles Community Union), a pioneering institution committed to service, empowerment, advancement, and the creation of self-sufficiency, which has been providing community and economic development support for the East Los Angeles Hispanic community since 1968.   Today, TELACU’s reach has expanded greatly, and it is a group of more than ten for-profit companies and non-profit organizations, including TELACU Development Corp., TELACU Construction Management, and TELACU Affordable Housing.  TELACU also founded and owns Tamayo, one of the most well known restaurants in the area, which is across the street from the TELACU headquarters building.

The Executive director of TELACU Community Capital is Richard Duarte, and TELACU’s representative for the Workshop is Josie Corona.

Click here to download this presentation.

WITH A FREE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT ASSESSMENT

How would you like to know the way to use your company’s financial information to make better decisions and unlock your growth potential?

We’d like to offer you a FREE financial management assessment, so that you can learn to do so.

You’ll get an accurate and informative analysis from an objective third party, that will reveal if you are correctly using your financial information to determine which markets, customers, and products are the most profitable for you.

We know how busy you are, so the FREE assessment will only take about half an hour.

You’ll get immediate benefits that will help you make better, more informed, fact based decisions to more effectively and efficiently manage your company.

To sign up, send an email to:
growth@cpsphere.com   

Or Call: 1.310.645.0707

The Corona Chamber of Commerce has announced the formation of its Manufacturing/Technology Council, to be chaired by cpSphere Senior Consultant Jack Mobilia.  Jack will also be the Council’s representative on the Chamber’s Legislative Action Committee.

Jack Mobilia holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and has 50 years of manufacturing experience, including positions as CEO of The Deutsch Corporation, Purosil, and Calspace.

Priorities are important in business as well as anything else in life, including urban development.

When you prioritize things, you select certain items over the others and thus take risks.

What if your list of priorities generate results not totally in line with your original intentions?

I found myself thinking about such issues as I was reading a very interesting blog post about the way Cerritos, California grew into a viable community ( http://www.planetizen.com/node/26490) .

What made this piece especially interesting for me is the fact that I know quite a bit about one of the cities, Baltimore, that the author has mentioned to compare and contrast different growth priorities (the other being Cleveland).

“The key to Cerritos’s success may be the timing of its investments,” the author says. “Cities such as Cleveland and Baltimore poured money into museums and other grand projects in the vain hope that they would lure businesses and young, creative folk. Cerritos began by building pipelines and roads, then moved on to business parks, policing and schools (including California’s best high school). Only when it was rolling in money did it break out the titanium.”

It’s true that Baltimore for years tried to attract business and tourism dollars by pouring a lot of resources into its famous “Inner Harbor” project. And to a certain extent the project worked. But even today, if you just drive a few miles into the interior of the city, old pockets of poverty and neglect are still there, intact.

The lesson for businesses big and small is the same – are you going to opt for short-term projects to build up a cash-flow in a hurry and win the short-term marketing battle (like the city of Baltimore) but then exhaust your resources for the long haul?

Or, are you going to grow slowly, by making sure that your fundamentals, the “infrastructure” of your growth is in place before you scale up and expand your operations?

Question – what if your competition catches up with you and eats your market share while you are taking your time (like the city of Cerritos) to nail down the fundamentals in place? That’s when the local “business environment” also becomes a crucial component of the overall growth equation.

Growing cities and businesses into healthy self-sustaining organisms is a complex chess game played against time, with limited chances for making a mistake, and against multiple opponents. Perhaps all entrepreneurs can learn a thing or two by comparing the way Cerritos and Baltimore became what they are today.