The above video symbolizes how cavnessHR "crushed it" this past week. 

One big item I believe for someone to do if they are starting a business is to continually learn. This week I did this by reading the book Angel by Jason Calacanis. www.calacanis.com The book is written from the perspective of enticing more people to become angel investors. I read it from the perspective of someone who might try to gain angel investing in the future. Jason provides a template for founders to gain access to angel funding. This book is a great read. It is also a must read if you plan on raising angel funding in the future.  http://amzn.to/2sAFepv 

Right now starting a busines is the new hotness and it seems like everyone is starting a business. Many things about starting a business are not so "cool." For example, this week I had to file the quarterly Business & Occupation (B&I) taxes for cavnessHR. This is basically a gross receipts tax in the state of Washington. Since cavnessHR has no sales yet, we owed zero for this. But as a part of doing business we still had to file. 

Our last cavnessHR blog,  https://cavnessHR.silvrback/cavnesshr-weekly-update was selected by 42hire https://42hire.com as one of the articles highlighted on their site. Being selected was very exciting for us.

As a way to market cavnessHR. I signed up for a podcasting class with John Lee Dumas. John has a podcast called Entrepreneurs on Fire that is consistently ranked as one the top ranked business podcasts on iTunes. https://eofire.com The plan is to interview founders, small business owners and people in the tech and startup and HR space. Once I figure this all out, I will be reaching out to you for an interview request.

Speaking of marketing. I had a great meeting with someone I know who provided some great input on how to improve the marketing efforts of cavnessHR. He provided some great insights on items I had not even considered. To have the type of success and scale, I envision for cavnessHR. We have to have an aggressive marketing plan. 

We continue to prepare for the next round of the BusinessNW Impact pitch competition. This round we have to provide financials, our marketing research and why our business is feasible. We continue to refine these products with the assistance of our business coach. Our business coach was provided by BusinessNW Impact and she has been very helpful during this process.

As a method to stay on top of HR subjects. I attended the monthly South Sound Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) meeting. At these monthly meetings a different speaker talks about various subjects. This time the speaker was Eric C. de los Santos from TrueBlue. He presented on sexual stereotyping and sexual indenity in the workplace. This was very informative and Eric was a very engaging speaker.

As I no longer have a "real" job. I am able to step up my networking efforts. This past week I attended Ignite U. https://igniteu365.com The energy at this event was amazing. I like how the event is set up. I believe I will be able to use Ignite to help spread the word about cavnessHR. I also plan on attending the following events on a regular basis to spread the word about cavnessHR.

YPN Smart Talks - This is a weekly meeting in Olympia that helps small business owners with their current challenges.

Chamber of Commerce Events - I believe these events will be a great way to meet other business owners and convince them of the need for great HR for their business. These events include many new business openings.

Ignite U - These are on Tuesdays and Fridays. Each day averages 100 small business owners.

Uptown Referral Group - This is a small business networking group that meets weekly in Milton, Wa.

Face to Face - This is a weekly meetup in various cities in the area.

Surge Tacoma - I have been attending these for awhile and I always gain lots of value. www.surgetacoma.com 

New Tech Tacoma - Another networking event I have been going to for awhile, that also provides lots of value. I plan on starting to attend the other New Tech events soon. www.newtechnorthwest.com  

Founder's Live - This is a monthly pitch competition that always has great pitches and great people from all aspects of the startup world. The free beer and wine is also a plus. www.founderslive.com 

Numerous other events - There are quite a few more and I just have to figure out which ones will allow me add value.

We finalized partnerships with a couple of companies and I will talk more about this on the next blog.

We are still in the process of MVP validation. Our biggest challenge right now is that when people request our HR Laws. Some of them are not receiving them. This is something we need to figure out before we go to the next step. Plus the email is going to the spam folder for some reason. 

 Below is feedback from one of the participants.

Jason,

I followed your instructions and reviewed your website.

I really like the layout of your site. It is very clean and professional. It reads very well and is easy to navigate. The HR laws that were sent to me were very informative and put together well.The only problem was that it was sent to my spam folder. I went through the links in the email and I think it is put together in a nice package. I like that you added the number of employees and broke the laws down into groups with a short description. It made finding what I need very simple. Overall, I think you did a great job Jason. I know this has been your baby for about a year and the amount of thought you put into the details is amazing. Good Work!