Francine Hardaway | Blueprint for Survival

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Profiling Francine Hardaway

One of the greatest things about social networking is the opportunity to encounter really interesting and special people. Even better is when you get to meet them in person and develop a personal relationship with someone. The best of all is when that person is someone who shares their experience and knowledge in ways that - as Robert Scoble likes to say - makes you smarter.

Francine Hardaway certainly is all that. Francine is even a friend and neighbor of Robert Scoble. (It never hurts to drop Scoble's name, does it?)

Francine Hardaway, Ph.D., heads up Stealthmode Partners and is an experienced marketing strategist with special expertise in startup companies.

She has helped package and secure funding for many early-stage technology companies. She has created positioning and marketing strategies for dozens of companies growth companies (from startup to IPO to maturity).

Prior to co-founding Stealthmode Partners, Francine was the VP of Corporate Marketing at Innovative Environmental Products, and Manager of Worldwide Press Relations at Intel's Computing Enhancement Group, where she planned the entrance of the intelligent I/O server chip into the OEM market and created the public relations plans for digital imaging, in-car computing, USB, and home networking.

As an entrepreneur, Dr. Hardaway built the largest marketing/public relations firm in Phoenix, Arizona before leaving it to join Intel. Nine years ago she co-founded Stealthmode Partners with Ed Nusbaum.

Francine was an Entrepreneurial Fellow at the Berger Center of the Eller School of Business, University of Arizona and has taught entrepreneurship at several Arizona colleges. She makes her home in Phoenix, Arizona and Half Moon Bay, California.

In Phoenix, she founded the Arizona Entrepreneurship Conferences and Social Media Club Phoenix. Stealthmode Partners also runs the popular FastTrac progams in metropolitan Phoenix.

As you can see, Francine is many things.

She lives in Phoenix and Half Moon Bay. She is in her late 60's, but she talks like she is a silicon valley start-up kid. She is a widow. She is a social media and tech guru. She is a great writer and blogger.

She is a survivor.

She is one of my heroes.

She is my friend.

And she is hurting like everyone else in this economic downturn. And she is doing something about it, to help herself, and as is typical for Francine, to help others.

I want to help her, and so I offered to help publicize her new workshop which is called Blueprint for Survival.

If you are in the Phoenix area and laid off or unemployed, Francine is offering the opportunity to attend her workshop being held on March 20th. Information and registration details can be found here.

Blueprint for Survival

Here is a post by Francine on her program re-posted with her permission from her blog on Fast Company

I've written about this before, but here I go again.

Entrepreneurship will get us out of the recession. Why? Because jobs are a lagging indicator of the economy, and job losses will continue even after the economy improves. And, more important, because structural changes that have been occurring for over twenty years will be accelerated by this downturn.

For example: in most instances, people no longer have to "go to" work. Work can come to them. This changes the need to hire, and makes contracting by far the most interesting option for employers. As someone said recently, we're entering the "gig" economy, in which we will all go from project to project rather than from job to job, and the timelines will be telescoped. Even employees will need survival skills.

Many employees aren't ready for this. That's why I developed Blueprint For Survival, a workshop for laid off workers and reluctant entrepreneurs. These aren't people who are going to go after "it" full-tilt-boogie; they're people who will have to "consult" to make ends meet, and who don't even know how to send an invoice.

I've given two of them previously, and I charged for them. Now I'm about to make them more widely available through a sponsorship from the Opportunity Through Entrepreneurship Foundation. The next one will be offered at 9 AM-noon on March 20th, at Gangplank, co-working space in Chandler. Registration and details are at http://www.blueprintforsurvival.com .

Tell your friends, if you are lucky enough to have these skills already :-)

Program Details

A half day workshop for people who have been laid off or expect to be laid off, and people who prefer entrepreneurship to the chance of being laid off. We will teach you to bootstrap, and to use all the free web tools for running a business.

The content of the workshop will include:

Backing Into Entrepreneurship: Forming a Business

Health Insurance

Tax Implications of Owning a Business

Free Software to Run Your Business

Community Resources

Online marketing tips

Co-working Opportunities

"Opportunities" to Avoid

Financing Strategies

Almost every resource presented at this workshop will be FREE.

Francine Hardaway, co-founder of Stealthmode Partners, has been an entrepreneur for almost 30 years, is a survivor of several downturns, and doesn't sugar coat it. You will receive immediately useful information to put you in business.

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