Archive for May 2004
Martha’s Entrpreneurial Help from Behind Bar
Newsweek: “As her sentencing date approaches, Martha Stewart is searching for a way to stay out of jail — or at least get out of jail early. Newsweek has learned that Stewart will seek to serve all or part of her sentence helping underprivileged women start their own businesses. She recently approached the Women’s Venture [...]
Wizard of Ads: “Just as yesterday’s speedsters were told that we shouldn’t run because ‘you can’t outrun them radios,’ a new generation is saying to today’s advertisers, ‘A phony promise may fool one of us, but that one will tell the rest of us. You can’t outrun cell phones and email.’”
Dan Sherman’s new weblog Biz Ideas already has some great business ideas, like renting XM radios and candid videography.
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Small Business Trends.
Lessons of a Serial Entrepreneur
Dan Brinklin: “Don’t wait to get started. Or at least understand that if you wait, you may have less flexibility in making tradeoffs between the business and your standard of living. MBA students often ask me whether they should start a business right after graduation or wait until they have more experience. The answer depends [...]
Serial Entrepreneur: “People starting on the entrepreneurial path should, I believe, make a conscious decision that they are not just starting a business, but instead, consider that they are starting a career as a professional entrepreneur. Even if it goes big-time first time, the first business will not be the last and the less personal [...]
Decker Marketing: First: Stand up. (Then jump around.) Go for a walk, go for a run. It’s been proven that upping endorphins opens up the blood vessels, which leads to clearer thinking. Overcome a fear, and stagnation goes out the window. What scares you? Simply do it. It’s a rush. Talk to a child, think [...]
BusinessEurope.com: “The vast majority of UK entrepreneurs have gone into business without any practical training, new research reveals.” via Angie McKaig.
Opportunities in Computer Forensics
BostonWorks: “With the increasing occurence of new viruses, worms, and Trojan horses, computer security is important not only for consumers or companies but also for the people who hunt the creators of these computer attacks. As these code attacks become more and more sophisticated, the demand to hire qualified ‘cybercops” is soaring.”
Small Business Trends: “The Dayton Business Journal has an article about a small business that is so ‘virtual’ it can just pick up and relocate the company because the owner desires to make a lifestyle change… What makes the relocation so feasible is the ‘virtual’ nature of the business. This business does not necessarily need [...]
Seattle Times: The backpacking trip has become such a rite of passage that former student backpacker Mark Pearson has edited and published a 384-page book on those firsthand experiences. “Europe From a Backpack,” already in its second printing, is enough of a success that all the Borders stores now carry it nationwide, and Pearson put [...]
Jim Lane: “I kid my wife that I want to be the first man on Mars because it has a 25-hour day. She doesn’t laugh any more. My entrepreneur’s work hours are starting to be a problem.”
Robert Cringely explains how to start a wireless internet service provider without much capital: With newspaper ads and direct mail, they could recruit what would be essentially micro-franchisees, each of which would get at cost a pre-configured router (or my preference — a pair of routers) and a DSL or cable broadband account. Since each [...]
For some small businesses, radio can be the most powerful, cost-effective way to reach broad numbers of potential customers. Dave Young’s post today in the Branding Blog about avoiding hype in your radio ads offers some good tips to keep in mind when making one: “We all have a built-in hype detector. I’m not making [...]
Money Magazine: “My best friend and I have a friendly disagreement about what it means to be rich. He says that a million bucks would make someone rich, but I think it would take much more than that. How much money do you think someone needs to really be rich?” What does being rich mean [...]
Should You Turn Your Hobby Into a Business?
Do you want to make a business out of one of your hobbies? Entrepreneur has some questions you need to ask yourself first: How committed are you? Is your glass half full or half empty? Do you like to make decisions? Do you have the money to make it happen? Do you like to sell? [...]
Fast Capital without Venture Capitalists
Wikipedia: “TextDrive is a managed webhosting company created by Dean Allen (creator of Textpattern, a weblog/content management system) and Jason Hoffman, designed primarily (but not exclusively) as a hosting service for Textpattern-managed sites, similar to Six Apart’s Movable Type-based TypePad service. Allen was able to raise just under $40,000 in startup funding in just over [...]
Fewer Entrepreneurs Worry About Running the Business While on Vacation
PRNewswire: “Most small business owners are planning to take time off this summer, and more will find themselves escaping the worries of doing business while they are away, according to the OPEN Small Business Network 2004 Semi-Annual Monitor from American Express. In all, 66% of business owners say they are planning to take a break [...]
→ papajohns.com Papa John’s was founded in 1985, on the principle that better ingredients make better pizza. They emphasize premium ingredients including fresh dough (never frozen), and fresh-packed tomato sauce (never concentrated). Papa John’s prides themselves on the simplicity and efficiency of their operating system. They employ the same technology, distribution system and training programs [...]
Entrepreneur.com: “There are ‘Cs’ involved in any decision to loan money to someone: Cash, Credit, Collateral and Character.”
CNN: “As Google prepares for its initial public offering, it’s worth reflecting on a special advantage the law gives to it, and to other, similar search sites: Such sites are, in effect, immune from much of the liability risk a traditional publisher of news and other factual information faces.”
Marginal Revolution: people tend to buy stuff that’s placed away from the door, stuff near the door sells poorly people tend to walk through the mall with the shops on their right hand side, so place your products facing in that direction; displays facing the wrong direction rarely get people to buy stuff chairs in [...]
Game Matters:”But, never in my experience of working with advertising people have they ever shown me a clear understanding of marketing knowledge. Marketing people generally like to make creative advertising that strikes the funny bone, or is perceived as cool. It’s up to the brand’s owner to insure that the correct marketing message is not [...]
Michael Cage explains why competition is a good thing: New marketers often get flustered by competition when there is no reason to be. In most cases, competition will actually help your business when you learn how to think about it and use it the right way! The article is talking specifically about competition amongst computer [...]
Newmark’s Door: “Another indication that the U.S. economy is growing strongly: applications to MBA programs are down about 15 to 25%.”
Forbes: “One-third of the American jobs created between 2001 and 2004 went to 16 million people. That’s a tiny number in a country of nearly 300 million… So who are these lucky ones, this 5% of the total population behind 33% of the new jobs: the residents of 397 rural U.S. counties averaging 40,000 in [...]
The Entrepreneurial Mind: “The NFIB has released a very bullish report [PDF] on small business trends for May 2004. The employment outlook, capital expenditures, and general optimism about the near future are all continuing to increase with small business owners. This is more support for the robustness of this entrepreneurially driven economic expansion.”
More Small Business Advertising on the Web
Media Mix: “Emarketer reports small businesses in the US are embracing the Web as a marketing tool, using it to a greater degree than more traditional advertising methods. Interland found that almost all the small businesses it surveyed felt having a Web site was “very” or “somewhat important” to their business and 69% felt they [...]
→ barniescoffee.com Barnie’s Coffee & Tea Company was founded over 2 decades ago and has grown into America’s largest privately owned gourmet coffee and tea purveyor. The company’s passion for quality and service has established Barnie’s Coffee as the premium brand of coffee throughout the world. Barnie’s Coffee offers the world’s finest hand selected beans [...]
When I started this website in November of 2001, I never imagined I’ll still be at two and a half years later. Thank you Angie and John Henry. I couldn’t have done it without your help and encouragement. Here’s to two thousand more posts in the next couple years!
Network Marketing Opportunities
Entrepeneur.com BizOpp Zone: “Looking for an inexpensive way to start a part-time business? Network marketing, also known as multilevel marketing (MLM), is one business opportunity that just may fit the bill. Many recognizable brand names — Tuperware, Mary Kay Cosmetics and Amway, for example — fall under the network marketing umbrella. These type of programs [...]
WorldChanging: There are 1.3 million long-haul trucks, diesel-powered rigs with sleeper cabs, on the American roads right now. By law, long-haul truckers are only allowed to drive for 10 hours before needing an 8 hour rest period. During the down time, few truckers stay in motels — they’re too expensive, and leaves the cargo at [...]
Brain Brew Blog: “This Week Doug and David have ideas for expanding your fundraiser, how to demo your services, for avoiding one time purchase, for attracting loyal and qualified employees, for attracting new patrons to the arts, for choosing between sole proprietorship and LLC, and ideas for marketing to women.” Listen online to this week’s [...]
Duct Tape Marketing: For the small business owner brand creation really just comes down to defining and communicating a couple of simple things. A narrow target market A unique benefit or point of difference A core message that provides a solution Marketing materials to match I could use a bunch of marketing and branding mumbo [...]
Made in the U.S.A.? Who Cares?
Business Week: “When shopping for home-improvement or home-decorating products at big-box retailers, 7 out of 10 people say they don’t look at the country of origin, according to a new nationwide phone survey by pollster TeleNation. What’s more, 57% say the national source has little or no effect on what they toss into their carts. [...]
The Economist: “A different complaint is that business schools fail to teach their students the right things. The strongest advocate of this view is Henry Mintzberg, a professor at Canada’s McGill University. In ‘Managers Not MBAs’, a new book, he argues that conventional MBA courses offer ‘specialised training in the functions of business, not general [...]
Getting Things Done With Email
bignoseduglyguy uses things he learned reading Getting Things Done to help manage his email: “One of the quickest wins for me when I first implemented the GTD principles was gaining real control of my email account at work. The sense of relief and security I got from processing my mail inbox and folders was out [...]
A reader wrote: We are really trying to promote our book. Do you have any suggestions as to where we should place ads on the web? Personally, I’ve had success with Google’s Adwords. Adwords are the simple text advertisements you see down the right side of the the results page from a Google search. The [...]
Delivery Men Interior Decorators
It’s not the Fab 5, but how blown away would you be if instead of just barking “Where do you want it?” your furniture delivery man helped you to position the new furniture so that it looked just as stylish in your room as it did on the showroom floor? Brand Autopsy: The assistant truck [...]
→ wildnoodles.com Wild Noodles is fast-casual noodlery offering appetizers, noodles dishes, salads and desserts in a sophisticated and engaging environment that is smartly priced and consistently satisfying. They have developed a complete program for real estate, architecture, construction management, procurement, training, operations and marketing to ensure the success of each franchisee. Contact Information Wild Noodles [...]
Entrepreneur: “Lately, the modest dream of running a single franchise location seems almost passé. Multiunit development appears to be taking over as the primary goal of savvy business owners. For these ambitious entrepreneurs, franchising is less about making a living than it is about increased growth, power and money.”
Marginal Revolution: …the gap between the United States and the other advanced economies is large and has been growing over the past ten years…it is likely that the gap will continue to grow over the next ten years…at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the U.S, economy seems to be in a class by itself. [...]
The Blogads weblog reader survey results are out. Very interesting results. Some highlights: 29% are aged 31-40 79% are male 1.7% classify themselves as fulltime entrepreneurs 79% don’t have their own weblogs via Jarche Consulting.
New Carnival of the Capitalists
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at StartupSkills.
Mrs. Drucker Starts a Business
What’s it like to be 80-plus years old . . . married to the greatest management writer in history . . . and starting the first company of your life? Inc.: For years my role as the wife of a professional speaker was to sit in the last row of an auditorium and shout, “Louder!” [...]
→ mobilespa.com mobileSPA, a full service day spa that travels to you at your office, hotel or home announces aggresive expansion throughout the United States, Canada and Internationally due to increasing demand. They cater to clients who want the pampering received in an upscale Day Span in the comfort of their own home. They transport [...]
How to Start Your Own Retail Store
El Paso Saddleblanket, a blanket, rug, pottery and leather sandal wholesaler publishes How To Start and Operate Your Own Southwest Store and Trading Post. It’s an online manual that covers all aspects of starting your own retail business, from permits to store layout, sample ads and helpful hints
SBA’s Teen Entreprenuer Guide to Owning a Small Business: “Young Americans believe that independent business ownership is a vital key to their present and future economic growth. The Office of Business and Community Initiatives, within the Office of Entrepreneurial Development, has designed this website to introduce teenagers to the concept of small business ownership as [...]
The Entrepreneurial Mind: “A question I often ask entrepreneurs about ideas they present to me is, “But, does it have legs?” It is too much risk and pain to start up a business that will only last a short period of time. I also believe that there are some serious ethical issues with get rich [...]
→ atworkfranchise.com For over a decade, @WORK Medical Services has built upon its core foundation of meeting and exceeding the needs and expectations of people seeking employment opportunities as well as clients seeking a full-service partner to assist with their company’s staffing needs. By providing temporary, temp-to-hire, payrolling, and full time placement services, @WORK Medical [...]
