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eit incredibly difficult path to citizenship is paramount to forgiving someone for committing murder there is so much heat regarding the amnesty issue that the current bill being debated requires illegal immigrants to go back to their country of origin before they can become citizens here that is just an impractical stupid and very costly requirement that is totally out of place and accomplishes nothing let s talk about amnesty firstly what crime was committed illegal immigrants entered into the us without proper papers good point but is that it what about the businesses that hired illegal immigrants what about the businesses that didn t pay overtime what about the businesses that paid below minimum wage what about the country that stood by and allowed the exploitation of immigrants what about the social conscience of the nation that mistreated them on the one hand you have a dedicated hard working person who crosses the border because there are readily available jobs he pays taxes he lives in terrible conditions he works hard he is exploited on the other hand you have illegal activity happening every single day by the 10s of thousands of businesses that hired illegal immigrants shouldn t we allow someone who has been exploited by our country who has served us so well and who only came because we asked him to allowed the chance to become citizens this isn t amnesty its fairness may 30 2007 at 8 16 pm 1 comment my thoughts on illegal immigration the views expressed in this post are my own and do not represent the views or opinions of emerging demographics inc immigration reform has overtaken the country once again 12 000 000 people are here in the united states illegally as a hispanic american myself and a recognized expert on the issue of hispanic immigration i thought it would be interesting to do a couple of posts on the issue our borders are broken and our policies are screwed up the us mexico border is easy to penetrate a very very large percentage of all illegal immigration comes through this border some people find it harder than others but in general it might be one of the easiest borders in the world to cross at the same time the united states finds itself in a serious and possibly catastrophic labor crunch there was a film that came out about 3 years ago called a day without a mexican that asked what would happen to the economy if all mexicans disappeared you can imagine that the situation would not be pretty and that is exactly the point the us economy needs and depends on illegal immigrants because we are in the midst of serious labor shortage understanding the situation from the vantage point of these two issues one can understand how we arrived at the situation we find ourselves in there is a porous border and tons of available jobs well of course we would have a tremendous influx of immigrants for years we stood by in silence never glancing in the direction of the border we needed more workers they needed us let s keep quiet and let the market resolve the issue on its own however over the last few years a couple of things changed 1 terrorism emerged as a very serious threat and we realized that we simply could not allow such a gaping hole in our front line defense we have a right to protect and secure our border and failure to do so is wrong irresponsible and dangerous 2 we no longer need new immigrants 12 million workers later and we have satisfied our hunger for the labor they provide most of the jobs they fill are in the service industry and at a certain point we realized we had as many as we needed as soon as these two things happened we started to notice other problems undocumented workers were leading a very hard life they weren t being paid enough and were being mistreated payroll taxes weren t being paid some of the immigrants where competing for better jobs with legal citizens our borders are a security threat and before we knew it the country was divided on the issue of immigration in the next post i will discuss the current situation and some of the proposals being discussed as well as the question regarding amnesty may 29 2007 at 9 07 pm leave a comment google radio our google adwords account today had a little new message introducing us to google radio ads after playing around with the functionality i am excited to have this option in my marketing arsenal but i am weary of trying it out just yet the brilliance of using adwords is that it makes it dead simple to optimize campaigns and track the results i would have assumed that if google was venturing into the radio ad world they would have taken a page from their previous success and let you target ads based on all sorts of demographic data this is not the case though that it is probably more because of a lack of radio inventory than anything else right now the only way to slice and dice the delivery of your ads is based on day of the week time of day gender and age that is just not enough to develop working and successful radio advertising that being said google does have a very neat feature called call reporting which helps track the performance of radio ads by giving you temporary numbers to play on air and which are routed back to your number google then provides you with a detailed report of how many calls you received to each of these temporary numbers which makes it easy to segment the performance of your ads amazing that radio and tv with spot runner are now fully accessible marketing platforms for small businesses even though these mediums are available doesn t mean they make a lot of sense for all businesses my own experiences are that with radio and tv and even print repetition is the name of the game otherwise they just don t work my hunch is that most small businesses will only realize this after spending enormous sums and getting little in return unless google spot runner and anyone else entering this market do a good job of educating us on tv and radio advertising best practices they will probably end up with few repeat users may 9 2007 at 9 59 pm 1 comment perfecting the pitch a how to guide starting a business is like assembling giant mechanical watch in that there are hundreds of moving parts that must be timed to interact perfectly much like a watch has a face which is the external component that the world sees an early stage startup has the pitch the one facet of the business that must beautifully communicate everything that is going on in the background the difference between a good pitch and bad pitch not only can determine whether you get meetings with investors but also how well you are able to hire establish partnerships build buzz and generate excitement i am no expert on the pitch but these are my thoughts a pitch is like a minimalist business plan you need to get to the bottom of the issue very quickly 1 hook your audience propose a big problem think of a heavy hitting sentence that you can use to catch your listeners attention with the sheer magnitude of the problem you are trying to solve 2 solve the problem explain the elegant solution you are developing to solve this devastating problem 3 bring it home knock em dead with a real world example of how your solution will solve the problem do keep it short the goal is to generate interest so that you are asked further questions make it a conversation a lot of entrepreneurs memorize the pitch and spit it back out word for word try to keep it light and easy on the ears show excitement the more into it you get the more people will feed of your energy and share your passion don t quote numbers these numbers are great in presentations and models not in pitches if you must then keep it to just the market size use words you can t qualify saying your product is the best will get you nowhere explain features if you have to resort to explaining features your pitch won t work the pitch is all about the big idea not the details save those for later april 26 2007 at 9 49 pm leave a comment how would an mba help you i posted last week asking whether you thought an mba was a worthwhile way to spend 2 years and 100 000 dollars most of the responses talked about the degree in subjective terms arguing that it depends on the person and his or her ambitions okay fair enough so allow me to pose a new question do you think an mba would help you achieve your career goals april 26 2007 at 6 48 pm leave a comment is an mba worth it here is a question for you every year thousands and thousands of emerging business leaders attend business school some do it for the network some do it for the degree and a few even attend school to learn a couple of new tricks at the end of the day is an mba worth it some say that business is more art than science requiring just as many soft skills social interaction leadership that are near impossible to teach as hard skills finance accounting these detractors say that any hard skills needed are learned on the job and that a network can be built the old fashion way and so an mba is just plain useless they go on to say that anyone who will make it in business will do so regardless of any three letter degree and that formalized business training might even inhibit the creative juices at the other end of the spectrum there are those who swear by the mba they point to the benefits of a strong network of contacts a deeper understanding of core business skills and the benefits of a prestigious degree they understand that an mba is not a pre requisite for business success but they argue that it is quiet helpful and increases ones odds significantly of making it i hear both sides of the equation and i wonder what you think does an mba increase the likelihood of success and is it a good investment april 22 2007 at 5 43 am 8 comments so what to do we actually do i tend to ramble and spew my thoughts on business entrepreneurship and technology but i never really discuss my own business now is as good a time as any to talk about what we do and how we do it the low wage or non professional job segment think restaurant construction retail hospitality workers in the united states represents about 25 of the total job market it is growing at a faster rate and suffers from extremely high turnover rate the jobseekers filling these positions tend to have lower levels of internet penetration and in many cases lack the english fluency required to use the mainstream job boards because of these reasons they tend to look for jobs the old fashioned way classifieds word of mouth and employment agencies which charge jobseekers up to a full weeks wage up front to find them a job this is a serious problem for employers because it means that they are also stuck using 20 th century tools to recruit for these positions and missing out on the efficiencies of internet recruitment at hireworkers com we have developed a multi lingual and multi platform approach to this issue jobseekers can access our system in either english or spanish more languages coming soon and interact with the service via the telephone or the internet i n the past few months we have registered well over 25 000 jobseekers most of them have never used the internet to find work before by making our system accessible to the job seeking demographic we are able to empower employers with a system that finally harnesses all of the efficiencies of the internet and provides a recruitment platform that is fast simple and inexpensive that is in a nutshell what we do it has been an incredible ride so far and i look forward to many more late nights and long weekends of doing what i love to do building companies and turning industries on their heads with technological innovations march 29 2007 at 9 04 pm leave a comment risk and diversification as an entrepreneur no one is infallible when it comes to business i learned this lesson pretty early on when i started my first business with the naivety of a college student i approached dva my first company thinking that business was like a mid term or a final exam and that success was clearly quantifiable and directly correlated to intelligence and hard work business is impossible to predict mistakes are expected and success is a combination of hundreds of variables some within our power and some not with that in mind it is easy to understand why the masters of business over at wall street place so much emphasis on diversification it is definitely not for a lack of confidence in their abilities they understand that mistakes are expected and success is impossible to predict the more they spread out their risk the better the chances of riding the winners if risk is difficult to quantify for wall street which is dealing with established companies with recurring revenues proven concepts large customer bases and experienced management teams then it is beyond impossible to project at the start up level because start up risk is so volatile and difficult to predict that venture capital firms have become masters of diversification they understand that a portfolio of one or two companies even if they are the next big thing is crazy every single day incredible ideas are born and die and professional investors mitigate the heavy risk inherent in the game by diversifying into multiple positions so what about the entrepreneurs us poor souls who invest our live savings multiple years of sweat equity 18 hour days and shattered social life s all for a single lottery ticket with such bad odds that even the very best of the best of investors aren t willing to commit even 20 of their resources to there is no conclusion to this post only an open ended question that i am sure my fellow start up founders can appreciate and relate to we are so caught up in our own confidence that we are blinded by the realities of the space we operate in my only advice is that when starting a business be careful not to commit yourself to a single aspect of your business you will need to iterate and evolve so don t even start unless you can afford to fail a few times within your business at the end of the day this might be our form of diversification march 27 2007 at 2 02 pm 4 comments older posts about exactly one year ago i set off on the most exciting journey of my life i started emerging demographics inc the parent company of hireworkers com along the way i was selected as one of the top 20 young entrepreneurs by businessweek com and the 21st coolest young entrepreneur by inc magazine i have also appeared in abc7 telemundo npr and been quoted in staffingindustry com workforcemanagment com entrepreneur magazine and various other publications over the next few months i will recount some of the stories and lessons learned from building developing and creating a business from scratch rss feeds subscribe to start up ceo linkedin profile top posts a quote in the wsj a never ending rat race of despair amnesty offensive unfair and immoral to immigrants my thoughts on illegal immigration google radio 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