Archive for November 2004
Alpaca Business Unsustainable?
HBS Working Knowledge: “Employers worry a lot about absenteeism, but new research suggests a bigger threat to productivity is “presenteeism”: sick workers who show up at work but are not fully functioning. U.S. companies may lose $150 billion (yes, that’s billion) annually because of presenteeism, according to some estima”tes.
Curves Founder Named Entrepreneur of the Year
Michele Miller: Gary Heavin is sitting pretty these days, smack-dab in the middle of the business spotlight. Heavin, founder of the extraordinarily popular Curves fitness chain, has just been named Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” in the service industry category. Starting with a $10,000 investment and a single gym in 1995, Heavin now [...]
Paul Emond: I’ve spent the past 12 years trying to build a business with no cash. The fact that I’ve made it this far surprises me to no end, and if someone were to have taken me aside and let me know how hard this journey was going to be, I would have run screaming [...]
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Lachlan Gemmell’s Software Startup.
Dan Sherman: I love this newest idea of mine. I was driving at night recently and saw this BEAUTIFUL Christmas light display at someone’s house. The house happened to be on the corner of a very busy intersection, so it’s going to be seen by lots of people. Being the person I am, I started [...]
The Lack of Entrepreneurial Education
Evelyn Rodriguez: “In this age, most public education (to be differentiated from self-education) is geared toward the job mindset which doesn’t adequately prepare one for the present or future, including within a job.”
→ jumpbunch.com JumpBunch is a structured sports and fitness program for children 15 months to 6 years old. The classes are typically 30-minutes long, once a week, year-round. They are offered as part of a child’s day at school or day care. Founder Tom Bunchman decided the only way to offer this great program to [...]
There’s Profit in Procrastination
Brad Beiermann: “How much should you charge [for gift wrap]? Well, that’s up to you and the numbers…but let me give you a real life example of a situation that happened with a business associate of mine. She offered gift wrapping as an extra service on her website. Last holiday season she received a call [...]
David Garfinkel: Direct Marketing Math is very simple… and yet it is basis for fortunes. Countless millionaires; maybe even some billionaires. It works like this: You put a dollar in, and you get more than a dollar back. You’ve made a profit. Systematize that. Scale it up. Keep control of your costs and watch the [...]
Steven Rogers: “In my view, business is about being a generalist, with a wide range of experience, confidence, and competence, rather than pursuing a specific idea. I agree with most business specialists who argue that entrepreneurship is about being able to execute on a plan.”
WiMax, due out in 2005, is the baby brother of WiFi, and promises to deliver wireless 70 megabit-per-second data service over a distance up to 30 miles. For the uninitiated, home DSL and cable modems generally top out at about 1.5 Mbps. Robert Cringely thinks that Wal-Mart might be just the company to implement WiMax [...]
Public Speaking to Advertise Your Company
USA Today: There are dozens of organizations and professional groups that would enjoy an enlightening two- to three-hour workshop on the subject and even more who could benefit from a 30-minute talk on the dos and don’ts of an effective web site. Public speaking will help to establish you as an expert and broaden your [...]
Parmasters Golf Training Center
→ parmastersfranchise.com Parmasters Golf Training Center is the world’s first year-round indoor golf training center franchise. Thay plan to revolutionize golf training by offering affordable, one-on-one golf lessons in a non-intimidating environment. Each of their 12,000 to 15,000 square foot facilities features all the tradition and sex appeal of a high-end clubhouse while offering the [...]
If a weblog about razors and shaving can draw readers (and advertising dollars) so can your hobby or obscure knowledge. Send me an email and let’s talk about putting together a weblog for you.
Get Paid: Turning Those Sales into Real Money
Atlanta Biz Journal: Sales are sales. But sales morph into real money only when that elusive check arrives in the mail, as businesses inevitably learn in the School of Hard Knocks. A thriving company usually has many valuable employees, and the accounts receivable (AR) manager certainly ranks in that category. Or ought to. “Some businesses [...]
→ expresspersonnel.com The Express companies include Express Personnel Services and Express Professional Staffing. Through these companies, Express offers a full range of staffing services, including temporary placement, evaluation hire, flexible staffing, and professional search. Express Personnel Services’ mission is to help as many people as possible find good jobs by helping as many clients as [...]
U.S. Economic Freedom Index: 2004
IRS Increase Per-Mile Driving Rate
Entrepreneur: “The IRS announced last week that it would be raising the standard per-mile business driving rate from 37.5 cents per mile to 40.5 cents per mile. The new standard is the amount taxpayers can deduct for vehicle expenses on their 2005 tax return for business miles driven. Just why the increase? Higher prices for [...]
Making Money Cleaning Up Bad Language
Reveries: “A small, but growing, entrepreneurial niche is finding profits in cleaning up the hot language and other objectionable stuff in videogames and movies, reports Peter Loftus in The Wall Street Journal. One company, called eGames, egames.com, is simply offering wholesome alternatives to ‘edgy’ fare like ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ with trivia games such as ‘Do [...]
How Do I Sell A Reality Show Idea?
A reader wrote: I have an idea for a great reality show. It will soon be thought of by someone else. Therefore I have to sell the idea asap. How do I make money off it? The short answer is, unfortunately, you can’t. Most companies won’t even listen to pitches for unsolicited ideas because there’s [...]
Until You Get A Sale, Nothing Else Matters
Michael Cage: “This is a hard learned lesson for many entrepreneurs who believe the important part of their business is the idea. The idea is important, to be certain. But there IS NO BUSINESS until you have a customer. In most cases, priority number one should be to get the first sale as quickly as [...]
Health Care Gets Cheaper When The Consumer Pays For It Directly
Marginal Revolution: Laser eye surgery has the highest patient satisfaction ratings of any surgery, it has been performed more than 3 million times in the past decade, it is new, it is high-tech, it has gotten better over time and… laser eye surgery has fallen in price. In 1998 the average price of laser eye [...]
→ kidzart.com KidzArt® is a fun, safe, unique and confidence building drawing program for Preschoolers through Seniors. Their mission at KidzArt® is to provide kids of all ages with the opportunity to have art in their lives, increase their skills and knowledge of various art mediums, learn to draw using a proven method, and most [...]
Chuck Huckaby: “If you have highly specialized skills, knowledge, etc. like a consultant and have low overhead, you can work at home, make good money and WORK LESS than the entrepreneurs who are slaving away. You might even have FUN!”
Startup Journal: In August 2002, Lynn Dralle closed the doors to Cheryl Leaf Antiques & Gifts, but that wasn’t the end of her retail business. Today the store’s collection of old furniture, glassware and knickknacks reach thousands more customers from their high-tech home — on eBay. Ms. Dralle’s grandmother, an avid collector, opened the Bellingham, [...]
Wired: So with MarketWatch sold and Slate likely getting sold soon, could MSNBC, CNET, Salon.com and all the other dot-com survivors be next? Nah, unlikely. But there could be a spate of other media properties for sale. Namely blogs. You heard me. According to Sam Whitmore, editor of Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey, over the next [...]
Backyard Wineries and Garagistes
Anita Campbell in Small Business Trends: You’ve heard of garage bands. You’ve also heard of the high tech companies started by “two guys in a garage.” Well now there are garage wineries. These are small businesses making wine from their homes, without the expensive vineyards. I can see it now — all the business opportunities [...]
→ storknews.com For hundreds of years, to people around the World, the stork has symbolized the arrival of a newborn baby. The tradition of love The tradition of love The tradition of love is evident in its very name. The English word is derived from the Greek “storage”, meaning strong natural affection. The belief that [...]
Entrepreneur magazine is predicting these four strategies smart entrepreneurs will be using in 2005: Tap the countertrend. For every trend, there’s a potentially lucrative countertrend waiting to be noticed. Eat off the big guys’ plate. Trend agency Trendwatching.com coined the term “feeder business” for companies that feed off giants like Amazon or eBay. Switch the [...]
David Bayless: “The history of entrepreneurship research and journalism is replete with celebrations of entrepreneurial genius; analysis of the distinctive characteristics of successful entrepreneurs; and assertions that entrepreneurs are born, not made. Those messages are, in a perverse way, comforting to those of us who are less accomplished, because they relieve us of responsibility. But, [...]
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Gregory Narain’s SocialTwister.
Business 2.0: More than ever, launching a business today is all about connections — starting with broadband connections. In the past 24 months, there’s been a quiet surge in the geographic spread of high-speed Internet networks, and that has dramatic implications for economic development, jobs, and entrepreneurial opportunities. About 51 percent of U.S. Internet users [...]
Blogospher Doubles Every Five Months
Clickz: “The size of the blogosphere has doubled every five months over the last year and a half, according to blog analysis firm Technorati. Over that time, blogs have gone from being a word that sounded insulting to an online trend embraced even by a sexagenarian Massachusetts senator running for president. Given the frenetic pace [...]
Boredom is Bad: Evaluating Your Business Idea
Angie McKaig is running an interesting series of posts about starting an internet business. The most recent entry is about evaluating an idea: “Is it conceivable that if you live and breathe this topic for the next two+ years, you will still be interested in it? That sounds like an easy question, but believe me [...]
Mr. Handyman To Give Away A Franchise
PR Newswire: Do you think you’ve got what it takes to own and operate one of America’s premier franchises? If so, Mr. Handyman and FranNet (“The Franchise Connection”) are offering a unique opportunity to aspiring entrepreneurs. Mr. Handyman and parent company Ann Arbor MI-based Service Brands International, along with FranNet, the world’s largest network of [...]
Survey: Luxury of Home Working ‘A Myth’
BBC News: “Less than 50% of people who work from home are satisfied with their home office space, with a quarter of them forced to work in the kitchen, 37% in the spare room and 10% hotdesking it to anywhere they can find, according to a survey by Lexmark.” via Mahalanobis.
Research the Business Idea to See if it’s Viable
John Osher, a very successful entrepreneur, is making a list of the major mistakes he’s made. He thinkings that the biggest mistake entrepreneurs cane make is failing to spend enough time researching the business idea to see if it’s viable: “This is really the most important mistake of all. They say 9 [out] of 10 [...]
More Hispanic Women Starting Businesses
NY Times: “Hispanic women are opening businesses at a rate far higher than the national average, a new study shows. To Tina Cordova, a Hispanic entrepreneur, the reason is obvious: economic desperation. While white women in the work force make about 77 cents to every dollar earned by white men, according to data from the [...]
Small Businesses Face Fewer IRS Audits
Law & Entrepreneurship News: “The AP reports that audits of small businesses dropped by almost half in the past year because the IRS has diverted money and employees to investigating wealthier taxpayers and abusive tax-shelters (IRS audited 40% more high-income taxpayers compared to last year while hauling in a record $43 billion in unpaid taxes). [...]
Party Personnel Franchise Systems
→ partypersonnelkc.com Party Personnel is a temporary staffing firm that specializes in providing skilled, uniformed, and reliable banquet servers and bartenders to hotels, country clubs, upscale caterers, businesses and private homes. Party Personnel Franchise Systems provides franchisees two weeks of comprehensive training in Overland Park, Kansas and an additional one week of on-site training to [...]
→ unishippers.com The Unishippers concept is simple; major carriers handle the pickup, transportation and delivery of they shipments, while they focus on providing superior customer service and competitive pricing. They can create a complete, individualized shipping solution for their customers and know that one size definitely doesn’t fit all. Unishippers helps businesses save time, trouble [...]
→ midas.com This is an exciting time to become a Midas franchisee. Already established as one of the top brands in the franchise automotive aftermarket, they are rolling out their new image and new logo, and introducing an expanding line of popular products and services to provide franchise owners with the potential for even better [...]
Accutrak Inventory Specialists
→ accutrakinventory.com AccuTrak is the inventory service of choice for national, regional, and local retailers. Whether a simple dollar value count or a fully validated barcode / SKU count, AccuTrak can handle the job. AccuTrak has developed programs tailored to provide several levels of inventory consulting services to virtually any retail sales company. Depending on [...]
Why Low Prices Can Be a Bad Thing for New Businesses
Startup Skills: “I had an interesting email exchange with a expert in my field today. He couldn’t understand why we priced our products so high. After all, we’re selling a brand new service that has no competitors. Doesn’t it make sense to price it low and get penetration? The short answer is an unqualified NO!” [...]
Signal vs. Noise: “MarketingExperiments.com recently set out to see what impact the length of sales copy has on a website’s conversion rate. The results: long copy clearly outperformed short copy in all three of their tests.”
I’m back and decompressing from Las Vegas. Regular posting will resume shortly.
How do you staff a business? Unless you’re an entertainer or a sports figure, you’ll need to hire people in your business. In fact, you will want to hire people. If you properly manage a business, you should be making a profit on each employee you have. With that model, the more employees you have, [...]
If you have a website and are looking for other ways to make money off ads without giving your best space up to flashing and spinning banners, take a look at IntelliTXT. This service takes the normal copy on your pages and creates links based on the content. I am starting to see this more [...]
A couple days ago I talked about how ebay is one of the best businesses to start because so little upfront money is needed. The problem though can be finding what will sell and a good source for things to sell. Another angle that I have been seeing more and more is becoming a seller [...]
