Archive for September 2004
USPS Ignores the Marketplace; Personalized Stamps Canceled!
As of 11:59 PM tonight (Pacific Time, September 30th) the US Postal Service has directed Stamps.com to stop taking orders for personalized stamps. According to Stamps.com CEO Ken McBride the USPS is ignoring the marketplace: “By all reasonable measures, we think this program has been overwhelmingly successful. The customers have voted loud and clear with [...]
Entrepreneurs Who Pay Themselves Too Much or Too Little Will Find Tax Trouble
Law & Entrepreneurship News: “Related to my two earlier posts regarding the IRS’s case against John Menard for taxes and penalties owed because he payed himself a salary that the IRS considered so high that much of it was actually a dividend (thus making the corporation as well as the individual taxable), the Milwaukee Journal [...]
Land of Potatoes Aims to Be High-Tech Hotbed
One of the developing trends that I’ve been following closely on this weblog is the increasing influence of entrepreneurs from small town middle America. I think that technology is quickly removing any economic benefits from operating your business in a major metropolitan area. This article from Reuters is a perfect example of that thinking: What [...]
All of the steps necessary to startup a new business can be confusing to first-time entrepreneurs. This message posted to Google Answers puts everything in order: First decide what business format you will use – sole proprietor (just you), partnership, LLC, corporation, trust, etc. It wouldn’t hurt to hire a good tax professional at this [...]
Turning A Hobby Into A Business
BBC News: “Liz O’Hanlon always felt like a fish out of water at work. She had a successful career as a recruitment consultant, but felt more at home helping out during weekends in her husband John’s pub in London’s Clerkenwell. When the opportunity came up to turn their brewing sideline into a full-scale business, she [...]
Entrepreneur examines several late blooming entrepreneurs who purchased franchises after 50: “Don’t assume 50-year-olds are past their prime—many are finding that the years after 50 are a perfect time to start a business, and buying a franchise is a great way to do that. Whether motivated by personal desire or out of financial necessity, these [...]
→ redrobin.com It was 1969, the year of Woodstock, “Buzz” Aldrin’s walk on the moon, and Red Robin “America’s Gourmet Burgers and Spirits” was born in Seattle, Washington. Nearly 200 restaurants later, Red Robin is continually winning awards for the “Best Burger,” “Best Family Restaurant,” and many more in cities across North America. Red Robin [...]
Business Opportunities Abound In the Automotive Industry
Business Opportunities Handbook: “From rental and leasing agencies to products, services and repairs, the automotive industry has long been one of the most fruitful sources of business opportunities. Aspiring entrepreneurs in the market to launch a business of their own would do well to give the auto-related listings in this publication a close look.”
Business Owner’s Toolkit: Manufacturers’ reps–sometimes called sales reps, sales agents or even brokers–are long-term independent marketing professionals. Like yourself, they are entrepreneurs: small business owners who maintain an ongoing presence in a set territory for specific manufacturers. (A manufacturer is often referred to as the rep’s “principal.”) The rep-principal relationship is set forth in a [...]
Tips for Running a Successful Weekend Business
NFIB: “Weekend warriors almost always find greatest success when their second business is one they love or have special aptitude for. Working a full week at regular employment (which can run 40-50 hours or longer), is usually fairly tiring- so it takes special dedication to go back to work on Saturday if you’re not really [...]
Why Demonstration Compels Customers to Buy
PsychoTactics: So how do you use demos to send your sales into orbit? Hint: You use demonstration instead of explanation. A powerful demonstration snaps a customer out of her reverie, because of one simple reason. Explanation is nice but not va-va-voom. It’s monologuish (I made up that word). It’s pretty one way, if you know [...]
Finanicial IQ, Aspiration, Team, Personal Urgency
Jim Lejeal: I’m a huge fan of the entrepreneur. And I’ve used a mnemonic to measure them when I was angel investing. F – A – S – T PUQ. F stands for Finanicial IQ – how smart is entrepreneur financially? You have to understand your business financially. You can’t delagate this. You better have [...]
Business Opportunity in Healthcare
iProceed: “Entrepreneurs need to think a new business model for the uninsured – one that includes a large offshore component using tele-medicine. The doctors can be based in inexpensive locations like The Philippines, India, Ireland, and other English-speaking countries in Africa (essentially following the model already successful in IT).”
The Enthusiasm of Business Opportunity Magazines
NY Times: In small-business magazines, advertisements and articles about finding qualified leads on the Web and cooking up marketable software applications now take their place next to the ads for the carpet cleaning businesses and a franchise to sell pens that offer a little striptease when they are inverted. The genre of magazines aimed at [...]
Amazon: “The book examines the choice of businesses elected by self-employed women, ranking over 150 categories in terms of their profitability and probability of success. It also describes the women¨s background, highlighting the fact that most millionaire women were raised in nurturing family environments that were literally training grounds for success, instilling the values that [...]
Industry Information Resources
Looking for business ideas? The Industry Information Resources is a free resource which covers more than 250 individual industries. Individual pages for each of these industries list resources available from trade associations, publications, and research firms which address subjects such as industry overview, issues, trends, and outlook, financial ratios and benchmarking, compensation surveys, and valuation [...]
Barry Moltz: “I went to an interesting seminar last Friday where the speaker said there are 132,000 new books published every year and only 5% ever make money.”
How to Get the Most Out of a Tradeshow Booth
Business Week: “For executives at small and midsize companies, trade shows can be a highly effective marketing and sales tool to gather leads, build branding, interact with new and current customers, and launch products. Trade shows let you control your environment and the image of your company, and even the smallest company can make a [...]
The Word Spy: “noun. An entrepreneur who creates a series of new companies.”
Keeping It in the Family: Special Advantages and Disadvantages of Hiring Friends and Relatives
NFIB: “Many small-business owners believe that bringing family members and close friends into their company will create an especially harmonious group of employees. Doing so offers specific advantages, but also opens the possibility that the smooth operations of the company may be compromised. Reviewing the following points will help you determine if hiring your daughter, [...]
Insuring Your Home-Based Business
Business Owner’s Toolkit: Homeowner’s policies come in three flavors: HO1, HO2 and HO3. (Additionally there is an HO4 form for renters and an HO6 form for condo owners.) The HO1 form is very basic coverage, and the HO2 is only somewhat broader–meaning it covers a few more perils than an HO1. The HO3 is the [...]
Taking Advantage of the Slow Months
Entrepreneur: “According to Paul Rich, a principal with the international accounting and consulting firm Rothstein Kass, the key to capitalizing on downtime is to keep your focus on the large-scale issues that effect your growth. That means instead of solely preparing for your busy season, try directing your agenda toward your goals for the next [...]
Martha Stewart was designated federal inmated number 55170-054 today, and according to Dan Sherman, 55170-054.com has already been registered. A check of HappyWalletDomains reveals that while the .com, .org, .net and .info domains have all been reserved, 55170-054.biz is still available. Given all the attention the case has generated, I don’t expect it to remain [...]
Nolo: As of January 1, 2000, California joined the ranks of the many other states allowing people to form single-member LLCs. In fact, as of March 2003, every state in the nation allows single-member LLCs. Becoming an LLC grants you protection from personal liability for business debts and judgments. But you will still be taxed [...]
Business 2.0: “Oddpost’s story features many of the standard plot devices of tech startup triumph: the clever spotting of an overlooked opportunity, the crashing server — the server always crashes — the plucky victory in the end. But the company also represents an entirely new force, one that’s reshaping the global technology world and redirecting [...]
When to Write Your Business Plan
Jeff Cornwall: “Business plans should be the last thing you do, not the first.”
Those of you who haven’t taken the plunge and become full time entrepreneurs will appreciate David St Lawrence’s advice about escaping from a dead end job: In almost every job, there comes that moment of dreadful clarity when you finally realize that your employers have no intention of providing adequate compensation for your efforts on [...]
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Crossroads Dispatches.
Nolo Law Center: A sole proprietorship is a business that is owned by one person and that isn’t registered with the state as a corporation or a limited liability company (LLC). Sole proprietorships are so easy to set up and maintain that you may already own one without knowing it. For instance, if you are [...]
Four Ways to Pick a Winning Product
HBS Working Knowledge: A new product or service will be successful if it does a better job than existing products at satisfying the needs of a targeted customer group. But “doing a better job” actually has four dimensions. If a new product or service can exceed existing offerings across all four of these dimensions at [...]
Workers’ Compensation Costs Big for Small Businesses
Inc.: “According to a recent survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, workers’ compensation ranks as the third biggest problem facing small firms today, with about a third of the respondents describing it as a critical problem, though 12% said it was “not a problem.” It trailed only health insurance and the cost and [...]
Legal Guide for Starting & Running a Small Business
Amazon: “There are several books in the market on how to incorporate your company based on the state. Even though there is an advantage to these books as you get state specific information for filing paperwork to incorporate, usually there isn’t any other information in these books that you can use. This Nolo guide on [...]
Amazon: “For anyone considering venturing into the unknown waters of starting a business, having a voice of experience at hand can mean the difference between a safe journey and shipwreck. Bangs shares the secrets that business owners seeking financing need to know. Would-be business owners and entrepreneurs will learn step-by-step strategies to put their ventures [...]
The Commercial Possibilities of Sleeping Less
NPR: “If you think you’re working too hard, getting less sleep than you need and generally under too much stress — you’re not alone. Nancy Koehn, a professor at the Harvard Business School, talks about Americans who try to do too much — and the industries that try to help them. Hear NPR’s Steve Inskeep [...]
Entrepreneur: “The fact is, brilliant ideas are just that—ideas—until they get turned into salable products. And the difference between an idea and a salable product is extreme—just ask an inventor who tried and failed to get his product to market, then ask an inventor who determined the proper recipe for turning a brilliant idea into [...]
MSNBC has an interesting article on software programs designed to play poker online for money. Supposedly, the major online casinos are all working to block the software programs, or bots, from playing. I think this might just be marketing-speak on the part of the casinos, because why would they care who’s playing their games? According [...]
What You Need to Know About Closing Your Business
Shutting down a unsuccessful business is a fact of life for serial entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, it tends to be one of those things that people don’t like to talk about, or plan for. Here are a couple of links to keep in the back of your mind just in case: Closing Your Business: What You Need [...]
Forbes on the debt elimination industry: “You can eliminate your debts without paying them off. If you don’t mind the possibility of going to jail, that is.” via ScamSafe.
Reveries Magazine: In small offices and shopping malls across America, uncertified technicians, using loosely regulated equipment, are parlaying 3-D ultrasound technologies into bustling, neonatal photo studios, reports Sam Lubell in The New York Times. “Women love it,” says Matt Evans, the proud owner of Baby Insight. “They get to see their baby and have an [...]
Smart Man Online Interview with Dane Carlson
Yvonne DiVita, author Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online, interviewed me Monday. I had a good time and I think we covered some great subjects. Read it, and let’s talk about some of the points I’d made.
→ expresstaxservice.com In the early 90s, the founder of EXPRESSTAX® began offering income tax preparation and electronic filing services through established business locations in Jacksonville , Florida . So successful was this venture that Express Tax Service was formed in 1997. Now, more than 675 outlets have been established nationwide — as an addition to [...]
The Tax Man Cometh for Small Business
The Entrepreneurial Mind: Not only do growing companies have to worry about a tax increase, but now the IRS has decided to target small businesses for an increase in audits. And many entrepreneurs don’t have a clue. “The survey…revealed that more than 60% of the CEOs weren’t aware that the IRS is beefing up staff [...]
Startup Journal: While most franchisees open up new units, a few, like Ms. Amin, for personal or economic reasons, find buying an existing franchise the better choice. FRANdata, an Arlington, Va.-based research firm, reports that 3.6%, or 11,800 of the 330,000 franchised units operating in 2002 in the U.S., were transferred to new owners. Jeff [...]
Are You an Entrepreneur That is Starved for Time?
Vishal Rao: Being an entrepreneur and running a successful home-based business is stressful at times, and can be hectic. Success within a home-based business though, absolutely demands time management skills, or the chores that need to get done will be left undone, and procrastination, as well as a serious “personal time deficiency” will occur. Several [...]
How to Sell a Product Nationally
Business Week: Early on, of course, like most companies, we turned to those that we could solicit personally, as well as early adopters who would be naturally inclined to use our offering, a software tool that assesses the fit between a candidate and potential employer. Then the real work began: getting the product out to [...]
Straight to TiVo Business Idea
Biz Stone: “What if TiVo had it’s own original programming? Like a new sci fi or comedy series that doesn’t get picked up by one of the networks or some kind of morning news show. That would be revolutionary and cool. Sign me up!”
How Much Advertising Revenue Does Instapundit Generate?
In response to Instapundit Glen Reynolds comments about how little money he makes from his weblog, Robert Sama ran the numbers and discovered that According to Blogads, Instadude had three rates for ads, $3k for the top ad, $2k for the second ad, and $1k for each subsequent ad. At 7 ads in his sidebar, [...]
In response to the this previous post, Dr. Cornwall presents some of the downsides to franchising: It is important to keep in mind that the IFA is an advocate of franchising. These figures reflect the very broadest definition of franchising, which includes distribution companies such as car dealers, bottlers, and gas stations. It is not [...]
Franchises Are Big Part of Small Biz Market
David Patterson: Franchising is big business among small businesses in the US according to a study (1/2 meg PDF) by the International Franchise Association Educational Foundation and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The study reports that franchised businesses account for 9.5% of the US private-sector economy. According to the study, franchises directly employ 9.8 million people, about the same [...]
Anthony Cerminaro: “Everything you always wanted to know about definitions related to private equity investing from ‘A Round’ to ‘Zombie’ may be found in this glossary from the Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University.”
