The fall season of The Rise To The Top on ABC (KDNL-ABC30) in St. Louis, Missouri starts September 5th at 9:30 AM CST.

This is the third TV season for The Rise To The Top and features an exciting new format...this is the fastest moving show on television. Each episode features over 10 expert guests offering entrepreneurial insights and advice for up-and-coming and established entrepreneurs. The #1 non-boring show airs four times a week for the next twelve weeks.

You can catch new episodes every Sunday (before "This Week") and replays Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights at 1 AM CST following "Jimmy Kimmel Live".

This past month we held a contest along with Feedblitz to give away free email marketing hosting FOR LIFE (Here is Phil Hollows the founder talking with me about email marketing tips/The Feedblitz Story).

Meaning a free lifetime account with Feedblitz for your newsletter, e-zine, whatever-you-send-via-email-as-opposed-to-pony-express regardless of how many people are on your list now and into the future (ummm and you aren’t going to SPAM people, right?)

Quick note: I use Feedblitz for RISE where our subscribers (hopefully like you…hint) can receive our shows when, where and how they want it. For example, you can sign up for daily emails and get them every day I put out a show. Or you can sign up for a weekly digest of all the shows delivered to your inbox. You are in the driver’s seat. Best part for me is that it is all automated because of Feedblitz. Sure, I can also use it to send out emails the traditional email marketing way (meaning typing it in and sending…which I do sometimes for our events), but everything else is automated. It is connected to my blog and simply pulls the information, places it into our custom template, and emails it for me. I don’t have to lift a finger and you won’t either.

As you can imagine, with this contest came a HUGE response. Amazing entries. Thank you everyone for participating.

And our winner is….

…drum roll please….

Adam Geller with TeachFor.us

(and what a clever name that is)

Here is Adam’s entry:

TeachFor.Us is the independent blog community about the Teach For America experience with more than 700 bloggers running on our platform. We have struggled in the past with leveraging a continued relationship with our tens of thousands of visitors. Being able to extend our reach into visitors’ inboxes with daily digests and post previews will enable us to further our mission of informing the public about the true challenges when closing the education achievement gap in the United States all the while driving those visitors back onto the site to finish reading the teachers’ stories.

Congrats, Adam! Phil will be in contact with you.

And of course YOU can try out Feedblitz as well (yes, you!)

Because Feedblitz is a partner of ours,  you can sign up for Feedblitz and enter the promo code “RISE” for 10% off or try it out for 60 days free on us.

Look for another contest coming soon….

One month ago, we kicked off a contest to give away an “App Dream Package” to a lucky entrepreneur looking to maximize online video courtesy of Widget Realm. Why? Practicing what we preach. Here on RISE I often talk about the benefits of online video and creating awesome video content. But for you to show your talent you need the right tools. So we teamed up with Widget Realm who is the leader in creating some amazing tools for content creators.

The winner receives:

-A Desktop App (a downloadable video player for your audience to put on their Desktop)

-A TV App (in partnership with Yahoo! Connected TV which takes your online content and streams to a variety of TV’s from Samsung, Sony, Vizio and more)

-Mobile Video Apps: (iPhone, Blackberry, Android)

-Content Configuration And Management

-Video Encoding

…bottom line a HECK of a deal.

We had an overflow of entries and pitches sorted by Brian Powell, founder of Widget Realm and the winner (after much deliberation is): SocializeYourCause.org submitted by David Wells. Brian selected Socialize Your Cause due to their amazing vision and bright future.

For those curious, here was the “pitch” sent in by David:

I was excited to hear about this contest. I recently started a collaborative blog (http://www.socializeyourcause.org) focused on educating non-profit organizations on how to better leverage social media to further their cause.

Since launching last month, We have seen an enormous amount of traffic and feedback from the non-profit sector!

We cover a variety of social media and online marketing strategies that, quite frankly, a lot of these NPOs overlook!

We also have a Cause of the Week program set up to cover a new NPO each week and help spread their amazing stories to our audiences. Another perk of being selected as the Cause of the Week is free social media advice and the ability to tweet through our Non-profit Twitter Account @YouCanHelp to reach our audience(4800+ and growing!) for the week. You can see the NPOs we have covered thus far here http://www.socializeyourcause.org/category/blog/causeoftheweek/

The idea of using my knowledge of internet marketing & social media for good rather than profit had always appealed to me and I am hoping to make it a full time gig. Right now I am financing this endeavor myself and don’t have the funds to push for an awesome package like this from Widget Realm.

We have just finalized our content strategy for the upcoming quarter and have big plans to incorporate a ton of video content into the site. If we won this app package it would be simple incredible! The syndication that the package would enable would allow us to reach so many more people with our message!

Spreading stories through social media is an extremely powerful way to garner support for NPOs and causes around the world and we want to see more organizations doing so.

Thank you very much for your consideration and sorry we are right on the deadline! We have been swamped with a NPO Twitter Application we have been developing!

Sincerely,
David Wells
Socialize Your Cause

Thank you to everyone who entered (you guys and gals all rock!) and stay tuned for a new contest soon.

And we are completely sold out for St. Louis RISE Lunch on March 31st featuring forward-thinkers, entrepreneurs, business owners and more coming together for lunch, schmoozing and short, powerful presentations.

If you missed out (because this one sold out in a HURRY...one week), mark your calendar for Wednesday, May 5th for the next event with the speaking lineup and details announced soon.

Tickets for St. Louis RISE Lunch on March 31st are officially on sale. Featuring lunch, networking and the most unique speaker series in St. Louis with big ideas to help your business (fluff-free). Tickets are extremely limited and sold out WAY early last time. You can nab yours at the link below.

A big aspect of building your business in 2010 is apps. Apps are all the rage and we are here to help you cash in. The Rise To The Top and Widget Realm have teamed up for a month long giveaway where a lucky winner will receive a dream app package including custom made apps for mobile phones such as the iPhone and Blackberry as well as the newest technology: TV apps.

The contest is open to any individual or business who is or plans on creating video content. To pitch your idea and enter visit the contest page.

The St. Louis entrepreneurial community will be out in full force on February 24th. 

Perhaps there will be a scalped ticket on Ebay?

In case you missed out, don't fret as due to overwhelming popularity there will be more events. To make sure you are updated FIRST, sign up via email to receive event updates in the upper right hand corner.

Lunch & Learn is on February 24th and already only 25 tickets remain! Fair warning on this one since every year we do events, I get an email from someone saying "You didn't say tickets were running out" and then they sell out.

Would hate for you to be shut out so here is THAT message. For complete event details and to nab a ticket: http://www.therisetothetop.com/events.php

We are literally all ears (with big mouths) at The Rise To The Top.

If you have an idea for a show or a specific question you would like answered on a show, feel free to submit your idea/question on the Ask David page.

Oh and PS our first event of 2010 will be announced soon.

UPDATE: *Rise Prize Giveaway: Enter To Win A FREE Google Nexus One Phone Just By TWEETING*

How it works:
The drawing continues! As you have probably heard, we are giving away 1 (and possibly 2) unlocked Google Nexus One phones THIS FRIDAY ON THE SHOW absolutely FREE to a lucky RISE viewer.

All you to have to do is have a big mouth and a Twitter account.

1. Follow The Rise To The Top on Twitter (if you are already following me, cool you can still enter)

2. Tweet this out (it should be exactly 140 characters): Follow @therisetothetop The daily web show for entrepreneurs & marketers & tweet this to be entered to win a FREE Nexus One Phone #RISEPRIZE

3. It’s that simple! One lucky winner will be selected on Friday. And to sweeten the deal and run a little experiment: If I reach 20,000 followers by Friday I will give away 2 phones. For free. And I’ll write you a little handwritten note too even though my handwriting is awful.