Welcome back, my friends.

In my June 27 Blog, we talked about “making constructive enterprises the linchpin of a sustainable environment.” Now let’s talk about funding YOUR brilliant enterprise.

If we keep it real, we must admit the odds may be stacked against us in realizing our entrepreneurial goals. But the bottom line, there will always be funding available for innovations that are transformational – yes, even in this tight economy. However, there are some key words we must keep close to us — passion and honesty.

Passion is important when you innovate because that’s your driver. You need it to get you through all of your challenges and obstacles. There’ll be days when you’re on top of the Mt. Everest and other times you may feel that the whole world is collapsing on you. Passion will help bring you from “doomsday” back on track with your goals.

Another key is that, while you are thinking of these wonderful solutions that you want to introduce to the world, keep yourself honest. Identify, accurately, that there is an undeniable need for your idea, because being driven blindly with passion, without taking into consideration whether there is a real need for your innovation, may lead you to… at best to a great learning experience. Actually, not a bad place to end up if the process was short, swift, and inexpensive, so try failing as quickly as you can!

You have to be honest with your passion. Keep yourself grounded. Continuously check in with not only the “yes” men in your life, (those who will validate what you do all the time, regardless of the value your actions produce — we all have and need those people, they help support our mental state and boost our confidence, so more power to them), but you also need to go to meet experts, consumers, and the constituency who will enjoy your product/service. If you are genuinely listening to them, you will learn quickly and unequivocally whether there is a real need for your idea.

People who provide various types of capital are generally progressive thinkers seeking ideas with true value, if yours is such, you will be funded. If your invention or innovation is genuine and transformational – it will be funded. If you keep yourself in check — keeping it real— your idea will be funded.

Money is always available. In the tough financial market, it’s even a better time to look for money. Why? Essentially the economy is correcting itself. When you have an over-heated or over-hyped economy, a lot of capital is allocated for ideas and projects that are not really addressing a need. Yet, money keeps being pumped into those ventures. Look at all those tech companies that sprung up a decade or so ago. Seemingly, almost any venture that had a “dotcom” in it got funded because everyone wanted to get on the trendy bandwagon without doing the necessary due diligence on the need. But when you are faced with today’s realities, trendy investments have very little chance of taking off.

Today, there has to be an actual and well-supported need for your product to attract serious capital. Supplying the right product will attract the available though limited funding. So, what you want to do is keep questioning the value of your offering and keep checking the objectives of your enterprise.

If you look around today, billions are still being invested in hundreds of thousands of new enterprises. But the money is generally geared toward enterprises that are of a great need to society as a whole. Getting your required investment will be proof positive that you have created a transformational idea that has value. And, funding will be there from family and friends, Venture Capitalists, Government grants, and Foundations.

I would encourage you to stay energized and use social networking sites and other networks to find people to look at your project and market your product. Truth is, the present structures aren’t well designed to support entrepreneurs, especially those in emerging markets, which is why Athgo has been diligently preparing tools to support entrepreneurs worldwide. Expect something from us by year’s end. Meanwhile, continue working on your projects, become a fan of Athgo’s Facebook site where we often post funding opportunities that we come across. Also, check out sites for potential funding such as kiva.org (“loans that change lives”) and prosper.com (“the loans marketplace”).

Remember, keep it real and keep at it!

Hello, my friends. Unfortunately, that disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues on. As I said in my June 18 Blog, there is absolutely nothing constructive about it and the messaging we should be sending out is that, “Let’s not make an enemy of Nature.”

President Barack Obama recently warned us all: “For decades, we’ve talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels (yet) we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. The consequences (the BP spill) of our inaction are now in plain sight.”

This is a powerful message and we should take advantage of it. You see firsthand how fossil fuels can really damage our basic environment: from negatively impacting the air that we breathe in, to the water that sustains our food supply, to the animals that are part of our ecosystem — all of these key elements are affected in the Gulf right now. It’s unfortunate, but this is incredible messaging and this is what it takes for us humans to take our centuries old misdeeds seriously, reverse our actions, and develop and promote new ones.

Look, we can’t run away or get away from accidents, as the saying goes “accidents happen!” Think of the automobile; because we drivers are imperfect creatures and some people’s judgments could be impaired at one time or another, accidents will happen. As a result, we now build cars with airbags and other safety measures. It’s still not a panacea, but it scales down the negative impact. For the traditional business, methodologies that deal with energy production and distribution, that’s what we need to think about in the short run because accidents on a grander scale affect masses of people and large chunks of Nature. Yet, even this is not a solution. Instead of building things that backfire — oil rigs, coal mines — we should build businesses that will be profitable for us but will also benefit the environment. This is the time for people who are just starting businesses, who want to realize their own dreams, to think about how we can start building more enterprises that don’t negatively impact Earth. Constructive entrepreneurship is the right approach.

A Constructive approach isn’t always a new innovation or a new enterprise that builds clean energy sources. It’s also about utilizing traditional energy sources in more efficient ways. Look at large corporations such as SAP with its Green Labs constructed entirely of environmentally friendly materials. Then there is IBM whose Project Big Green initiative has earned praise from government and environmental groups alike. For example by replacing its servers with more energy efficient systems in its datacenters, Big Blue says it’s saving enough electricity “to power a small town.” Although these examples have nothing to do with creating clean technology, what they are doing constructively is creating an efficient energy environment for their businesses. And these companies don’t do this as some corporate social responsibility stunt. They and we should do this because it’s a smart approach that helps our bottom line.

What Athgo suggests is that new enterprises should implement competent models and be energy efficient from the get-go. And even though you may be just a regular business owner, you’re still considered a constructive enterprise, because you’re implementing the best possible model available that is also energy and cost efficient. It saves you money, hence you make more money, and you also don’t affect the environment negatively. So, everyone’s happy and healthy.

Athgo offers business newcomers access to information about these types of efficient models. We give you the knowledge and understanding about what it takes to start a business through a sustainability route, a constructive enterprise, which will help your bottom line. We believe that young entrepreneurs should be starting up with sustainability bred into them, through constructive entrepreneurship or through constructive business approaches. And we should also avoid falling into the traditional business methodology, maybe because it is the only one we’ve previously seen or know about.

Constructive entrepreneurship will drive sustainability and by making constructive enterprises the linchpin of a sustainable environment, we can avoid the Gulf types of environmental crises. Look, we’re not going to nor should we shut down BP and others. But if we’re going to continue our heavy reliance on the traditional energy sources, we will just add to the demand. We should consciously and methodically use clean technologies and work toward creating more demand for them. With time, even BP and others would become suppliers of clean technologies, only because it helps their bottom line. Once again, let’s be smart and make friends with this magnificent home we call Earth.

Oh, and “Vamos, Argentina!” (Let’s go, Argentina!)

How are you my friends, are you enjoying the World Cup? Before the tournament, I predicted that Argentina, coach Maradona, and superstar Messi would win it all.

Has your team’s performance brought a smile to your face? Seeing all the young people from around the world exuberantly blowing their vuvuzelas made me think about what is being left to us. What type of world will we live in 30-40 years in the future when our present decision-makers — people mostly in their 50s and 60s — now sitting in Government offices or in corporate boardrooms, are no longer in charge? I’d like to talk about why sustainability issues are more important for young people.

In May, I was standing on a glacier in the Swiss Alps, and I was enthralled by the power of Nature. But then I thought about how we complicate our living arrangement with Nature and ruin the environment — like the reality of the polar caps melting and yes, polar bears drowning because of the loss of ice to live on. There’s also the bigger reality that the Republic of Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, is grappling with — the very likely possibility that the islands will go under water if the current pace of climate change keeps raising sea levels.

What can we expect from most of our present decision-makers in face of such pending disasters? Well, let’s look at what is actually behind the human motivation. If self-interest is the key driver, then for the present decision-makers to make drastic, and in most cases costly (both economically and politically), changes that will affect other people 40 years down the line…well fuggedaboutit! It’s not going to happen. It’s not in their best interests.

Whereas when it comes to young folks, we’re the ones who are going to be around when the Maldives' struggle for survival is real. Tens of thousands will be displaced, probably creating social upheaval. The islanders will have to move. You lose your identity, your sense of self. If you’re a young person there, this is going to be one of the most crucial issues in your life. But even if you’re in Manhattan 40 years from now, such type of climactic disruption may also affect you.

It’s in young people’s best interests to get involved now before these catastrophic events occur. Proposing alternatives or coming up with inventions that will help reverse some of the current trends contributing to the climate change is not only in our best interest, but rather imperative. This is what Athgo is about — coming together, exploring ideas, and giving young entrepreneurs a platform to create the next BIG THING such as the best green technology or sustainable enterprise.

We don’t have the next energy source yet. When we talk about hydropower, geo-thermal, and wind energy, they’re good discussions but we need the next “black swan,” a transformational innovation that allows universal, cheap, and quick energy conversion. Those of us who will be affected by these changes need to think about these ideas right here, right now!

Let me emphasize, we are at a critical point. Take the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. To the environment and to the people living nearby, and even those who benefit from the region’s trade, there is nothing constructive about what is taking place. There are also disasters related to coal mines, another fossil fuel, happening all over the world. So avoiding these types of disasters by inventing solutions that are more constructive, hence sustainable, and also profitable should be a no-brainer!

If we look at sustainability issues as something we’re going to do for altruistic purposes, we will fall short. It has to be done coming from the sense of critical self-motivation, meaning that I’m doing this to help myself first, and through helping myself, any new sustainable environment is going to benefit others.

You just need to be a believer of doing things the smart way, which includes not making Nature our enemy. We don’t want this Planet to be looking at us and saying, “Humans are the worst virus that I’ve had to deal with and now I’m just fed up. Adios! Au revoir! Auf Wiedersehen!”

No matter what we humans build, Nature’s hurricanes, tsunamis, brush fires, and the like will bring it all down. We don’t want to be upsetting Nature anymore because more disaster is sure to follow. The messaging is let’s be smart, let’s not make an enemy of Nature, and of our planet Earth. After all, we are only guests here.

Ending on a positive note, congrats to the World Champion Los Angeles Lakers, Kobe Bryant, the Lakers' organization, and Dr. Buss and his family for another unbelievable season and a fantastic victory last night.