Archive for December 2005
Startup Fever: Pitching a VC soon? Make sure you aren’t about to make any of these seven easily avoidable mistakes from David Beisel.
Inc.: An old joke: A store owner purchases pencils for 10 cents a piece, then turns around and sells them for only a nickel. Noticing this bizarre behavior, his partner asks, “How do you expect us to stay in business that way?” The man replies, “Volume!” Surprisingly, many novice entrepreneurs choose a similar strategy. They [...]
Make it Great Before You Try to Sell It
Ramit Sethi: Here’s a pattern I see a lot: Somebody launches something He tries to make money Then he tries to make it valuable and useful What a funny way of doing things.
The Language of Venture Capital
3i: The international venture capital and private equity industry has a language all of its own. To help beginners we have created a guide to the jargon. via Ken Dyck.
Business Week: There’s a lot to be said for careful planning and cautious review when starting a small business. But there’s another side to the story, say some entrepreneurs, and that’s following up a good opportunity and seizing it. Howard Melamed calls it “the science of opportunity.” In 2002, he and his wife Barbara took [...]
Beware of the Devil’s Advocate
Fast Company: We’ve all been there: the pivotal meeting in which you push forward a new idea or proposal you’re passionate about. A fast-paced discussion leads to an upwelling of support that seems about to reach critical mass. And then in one disastrous moment, your hopes are dashed when someone weighs in with those fateful [...]
Interesting Posts from Around the Network
This blog is part of the Business Opportunities Weblog Network. Here are some interesting recent posts from around the network: Ask: How to Teach eBay Franchise: Franchisor-Assisted Financing MLM: The Ultimate MLM Product Work at Home: Save $10,000 Just By Reading This Blog!
How Working at Home Works for This Mom
Gina Seamans in Startup Journal: How I’ve made working at home ‘work’ for me: Teaching the kids to respect the office and work time. When I’m working, they must go to Dad for everything. Before entering the office, they must knock and be invited in. They are never allowed to touch the computer, copier or [...]
Dave Stone via MLM Business Opportunities Blog: Successful entrepreneurs seek opportunity in what many consider unlikely places. I believe they have developed a mindset that embraces change along with the understanding that change is a unending condition of life. The entrepreneur is a non-conformist. The entrepreneur is a “if it ain’t broke, then break it� [...]
Mobile media is coming…quicker than you think!
Did you know that: More people are connected to the Internet via mobile phones than computers Most people in the world will experience broadband Internet on their phones and not a computer Mobile phone users in South Korea send over 1500 SMS a month and many use their phone to do 100% of their email [...]
Bruce Maxwellin an interview in the SF Chronicle: Bootstrapping is founded on two simple techniques. The first is time-shifting your payables into the future. You don’t have the cash today, so you say to people, “If you give me this resource today, I will pay you in the future.” If you can do this on [...]
Sean on Life: Here’s a simple question: Venture Capitalists spend all their time examining new opportunities and new companies, and have the money to make these new ventures fly. Why then do they not start their own companies (which they can plan out in advance and own entirely) but instead invest in other people’s companies [...]
Five Tips to Improve your Creativity
Brad Isaac offers five tips to improve your creativity: Drive home a different way from work tomorrow. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed Eat dessert first Take a walk during your lunch hour Sit at a shopping mall and “people watch”
→ happytailsdogspa.com The pet industry’s figures are soaring and there is no end in sight. Last year, total pet expenditure reached $34.3 billion and more and more dog owners are providing dogs with the kind of care they would give their own children, only adding to the growing need for dog day care and grooming [...]
Entrepreneurial Whiz… or Just Another Crazy Old Man
Wayne Hauschild, the owner GameDaySigns wrote: I represent a small but growing segment of American small business, the Senior Entrepreneur. Later this year I will be 61 years old and am very excited about my new career. My company, GameDaySigns, produces licensed College spirit merchandise. Over the past several years I’ve encountered many does and [...]
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
Sarah Bosch concludes her reviews this week, with a look at Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. I’ve been a businessman for almost fifty years. It’s as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer. I’ve never respected [...]
This week’s Carnival of Marketing is up at Brand Autopsy.
I’m back from my first blog vacation in a year. Thank you to all of the guest posters who helped out while I was away, and thank you to everyone for continuing to read, comment and email. I have a ton of messages to follow up with, so if you’re awaiting a response, please give [...]
This week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction is up at Free Money Finance.
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Techronization.
How To Write Off Your Startup Costs
Microsoft Small Business: Once you open your business and start generating revenues, you can write off many of those initial startup costs at tax time. But there is bad news too. The rules for taking advantage of these deductions are not as straightforward as they are for your business’s ongoing expenses. Here are six steps [...]
No Selling in Network Marketing?
You’ve seen the web sites and you’ve probably heard the streaming audio sales pitch… No Selling! Not MLM! $3,000 a week from home! The next time you see one of these sites, you can pretty much bank on the fact that they are MLM and the average guy makes $3 a week. We will discuss [...]
Whether a small business of 1-5 employees or a Fortune 500 executive with thousands of employees, enagaging them is critical. How do you move an employee or a supplier to thinking critically about your business? And how do you engage the hearts and minds of employees instead of just their “hands and backs”? Those little [...]
I’ve seen quite a few startups make these same mistakes time after time: 1. Mistake: “Ramp up the sales before you have a product/service” It’s going to take a sales team 2 – 3 months to understand the customer, the selling process and how to replicate that. Adding more people to the sales team is [...]
A Professor Moonlights In Computer Forensics
Startup Journal: The entrepreneur: Gary Kessler, 52, is an associate professor of computer science at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt. The business: Mr. Kessler has worked as a computer-forensics consultant on the side for the past five years. Computer forensics is the process of gathering evidence from a computer. “Frequently, you are looking at files [...]
Noah Kagan reflects on his time in a cubicle that ended recently. He lists out a few things that suck about corporate america. The one that rings true with me: Meetings: Spending nearly 50% of your time in meetings seemed like a waste. I’ve worked for wide range of companies during my short time in [...]
Limiting Risk When You Tie The Business Knot
The Morning Call: Up-to-date statistics on married-couple-owned businesses are hard to come by, but both the International Franchise Association and the National Federation of Independent Business agree that they’re seeing a resurgence. ”Over the last five years, we have seen our married couples in business together go from about 20 percent to just slightly under [...]
Hugh speaks the truth at gapingvoid: Business Porn is just like Ordinary Porn or Real Estate Porn, except instead of it being about the women we wished we could sleep with, or the houses we wish we owned, it’s about all those cool, lucrative, exciting jobs and businesses that we wish we had, instead of [...]
