Archive for January 2006
Sometimes It Is Just Time To Pull The Trigger
Jeff Cornwall: There are many really good business opportunities that never make it past paper. Would-be entrepreneurs agonize over every detail of their plan to the point that it never gets off the ground, or they miss their window of opportunity. One of the virtues that Mike Naughton and I are writing about in our [...]
Working for Your Parents: Pros and Cons of Joining the Family Business
NFIB: Pros Familiarity Backup Willingness to teach you the ropes on your time Second (and third) chances Cons Professionalism Burnout Resistance to change Easier to go on autopilot Harder to be objective about the chances for success Photo by EXB-WDC.
Build Brainstorming Into Your Daily Routine
Fortune Small Business: Do you ever face a mental blank at the drawing board? If so, it might be time to explore new ways to come up with creative ideas. After all, today’s entrepreneur is under attack not only from domestic competitors but from foreign ones as well. And what’s the best competitive weapon in [...]
This week’s Carnival of Marketing is up at Emergence Marketing.
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at PHOSITA.
Seth Godin’s New Ebook: Flipping the Funnel
Seth Godin: This new ebook (3 versions, 18 pages each, PDF format) explains how I believe some of the new Web 2.0 tools (flickr, de.licio.us, squidoo and others) combine with ideaviruses and the Purple Cow. Here they are. Free to download from this site, free to post on your site… or to email to your [...]
Fortune Small Business: Eric Shogren storms the food counter at MyMy, a cafeteria in downtown Moscow. He’s a big train wreck of a man: wild hair, half-tucked red polo shirt, blue blazer straining to contain his burly chest. Shogren reaches over the loaded trays of two tiny Russian women in line and starts criticizing the [...]
Is the SBA Hurting Small Business?
Business Week: Long a champion of small business, Lloyd Chapman, the founder and president of the American Small Business League (ASBL), a federal small-business policy watchdog group based in Petaluma, Calif., is also an arch critic of the Small Business Administration. The ASBL was originally set up to stop fraud, abuse, and loopholes that allow [...]
Business Week: For many these days, a corporate career is increasingly becoming a prelude to an entrepreneurial second act. Every year untold thousands shed their corporate skins and begin life anew as entrepreneurs. These “second acts’ vary, as do the motivations for them. For some, it’s the right combination of time and money, while for [...]
Determining a Plan for Setting Prices
Entrepreneur: I know of at least three common methods for setting prices for a new business, or for a new product or service within an existing business: Cost-based pricing: Set your price as a multiple of cost, or cost plus a determined amount. An example would be a book store selling each book for 150 [...]
This week’s episode of Venture Voice is online: The listeners have spoken. Jason Fried of 37signals and Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software have won Venture Voice Entrepreneurial Achievement Awards. They came in second and third place out of a pack of over 20 world-class entrepreneurs we’ve interviewed on the show (we’ll announce the Venture [...]
Should You Use Credit Cards for Funding?
MSNBC: Most surveys of entrepreneurs show that credit cards are among the most popular sources of startup financing. The Pioneer Institute, for example, found that loans from relatives and borrowing against credit cards were the two most common financing techniques used by startups with less than five employees. Despite this high rate of usage, the [...]
Advice for the day, from Startup Journal: It doesn’t matter how great a product is, if it never makes it to the marketplace.
Microsoft Offers Web Help To Small Businesses
News.com: Microsoft on Monday announced a new “Small Business +” program that offers owners of small businesses free Web-based training and other resources. The training collection includes tutorials on both business issues and Microsoft software, initially Microsoft Office. Microsoft is also offering additional free, and for-fee, online technical support geared toward small businesses. The new [...]
Overcoming That Impersonal eBay Feeling
Phil Dunn: Another drawback for customers shopping online is that the Internet can feel a bit impersonal, isolating, and detached from reality. You can achieve the opposite effect by implementing a few simple strategies to personalize your customer interactions. Small efforts to reach out to customers in such a way can reap huge benefits in [...]
NFIB: Susan Bixler, author of Professional Presence, advises that you wait until everyone at the table has placed their order before bringing up business. She also recommends saving the most important issues until after the main course. Letitia Baldridge, author of Letitia Baldridge’s New Complete Guide to Executive Manners, says that if significant others are [...]
Two-Wheel Taxis Tap Upscale Market
Startup Journal: As a tourist in Thailand and the Dominican Republic, Cyril Masson hopped on unlicensed motorcycle taxis to get around. Back home, the 33-year-old Parisian and two friends hit on a business idea that some might consider just as crazy: running a two-wheel-taxi operation in one of the world’s most genteel cities. Motorcycle taxis [...]
Don’t Worry About the Big Guys
USA Today: My friend and I own a copy center. For the last 15 years we have served a fairly large clientele. Our business is located on a college campus and a number of other small businesses are here also. So, we have students and commercial companies that have made us successful. My problem is [...]
Should I post my e-Bay starting bids at $0.99? I’m an eBay newbie, and would like to post some items up for sale. Is it a good option to post my starting bid at $0.99 instead of my lowest selling price (about $10-15)? Are there any jobs I could work from home on? Are there [...]
Why Limited Liability Might Not Be As Limited As You Think
Pelle Braendgaard: One misunderstanding many people have is about limited liability. To understand Limited Liability you first must understand that it was originally introduced to protect the investors and not necessarily the managers of a company. This basically means that as a stock holder in Microsoft you wont receive a demand for payment of whatever [...]
Genuine VC: When meeting with entrepreneurs, VCs ask a lot of questions. And, of course, most of those are about the current startup business, the market, the vision of the future, the background and capabilities of the team, etc. But one of my favorite questions to ask is, “What is the founding story?�
Mary Sullivan: Some sound advice from Ben for any entrepreneur: Commit to what you ought to do and always carry out your commitments. Don’t waste your money. Let your only expenses be the doing of good to others or yourself. Don’t waste your time. Spend your time on useful matters and refrain from unnecessary activities. [...]
10 Pet Businesses to Start Today
Entrepreneur: The array of product and service businesses for pet owners is only limited by your imagination. Many people treat their pets like their children and, following that logic, most products that people want for themselves, they’ll want for their pets. Just look at recent trends in the industry–organic foods, homeopathic products, luxury accessories–and you’ll [...]
Neville Medhora: Purpose of Experiment: To prove my make money with no money business ideas can work. Hypothesis: It is possible to take less than $10 in startup capital and make money. Experiment: Buy a 24-pack of bottled water and sell it on the side of the road. Possibly utilize the labor of pan-handlers. via [...]
This week’s Carnival of Investing is up at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Patent Baristas.
Pay Per Call Advertising For Local Marketing
John Jantsch: Pay per call, like its better known cousin pay per click, is advertising that generates a billable event only when the reader of the ad does something – in this case, makes a phone call. For certain types of local small business advertisers this form of advertising is going be huge. Every major [...]
How To Use Your Weaknesses To Sell More
Jim Logan: First, pretend for a moment you’re your main competitor. What traps would you set if competing against your offering? List everything your competitor is likely to say or highlight in positioning your product, service, and company in a way that makes your offering weak and theirs the better option. Second, stand in the [...]
This week’s Carnival of Marketing is up at The Virtual Handshake.
Turning a Hobby or Passion into a Business
Ecommerce-Guide.com: Bob Walter, a co-owner at Sam Sloat Coins, Inc., a leading dealer in rare coins, sports memorabilia and political memorabilia, knows why so many people who try to turn a hobby or passion into a business so often fail: “Their heart wasn’t really in it.” That and they didn’t understand the business or their [...]
Congrats to our own Tim Grahl and his wife Candace on the birth of their son Connor David.
Inexpensive Television Advertising for Small Businesses
Spot Runner: Now your local business can compete against the national chains with an affordable, high quality television commercial that rivals theirs. We’ve created a library of world-class ads that your customers will enjoy and remember. via Loyd Schutte.
Guy Kawasaki: Have something interesting to say. Cut the sales pitch. Focus on entertaining. Understand the audience. Overdress. Don’t denigrate the competition. Tell stories. Pre-circulate with the audience. Speak at the start of an event. Ask for a small room. Practice and speak all the time.
Jan 31 an Important Tax Date for Entrepreneurs
USA Today: When you talk about taxes, most Americans recognize the date April 15. That’s when individual tax returns are due. (This year it’s actually April 17 because April 15 falls on Saturday.) But if you’re self-employed or run a small business, there’s another critical date for you to remember — Jan. 31. Jan. 31 [...]
How To Start Your Own Tutoring Business
Work at Home Business Opportunities: How To Start Your Own Tutoring Business
StartupNation: Our lead article indicates that over 80% of the businesses that will open for business next month will be launched by people who are stuck in corporate jobs this month.
Chuck Green: A smart business card is a “tool” — a device that aids in accomplishing a task. It gives your contact a reason to keep your card within reach — it adds function to form. Yet, in an effort to save a few pennies in printing, millions of business cards are printed with a [...]
Reveries: It used to be that a tree wasn’t fit for logging unless it was at least 50 inches in diameter, but now trees as small as seven-inches around are in demand, reports Jim Robbins in The New York Times (1/10/06). Small-diameter trees were just collected and burned — considered too small to command decent [...]
→ billboardconnection.com Since 1997, Billboard Connection has used their outdoor advertising expertise to help companies of every size find and negotiate premium outdoor locations, serving as the advertising agency they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford. Thanks to their connections, they know where the best billboards and outdoor advertising opportunities are. Just as important, they [...]
→ dentdoctor.com Dent Doctor was rated as one of the top 15 automotive franchises in Successful Franchising magazine and is one of the top 500 U.S. franchises in the January 2004 issue of Entrepreneur magazine. Chosen by Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and national fleet leasing companies for producing superior quality results, Dent Doctor offers you an opportunity [...]
Google Answers: What are the most acceptable tax write offs when self-employed?
Building To Flip Is Building To Flop
Jason Fried: If you’re about to build anything, don’t build it to flip or you’re almost guaranteed to flop. Sure, you could win the Yahoo lottery, but the odds aren’t in your favor. If 9 out of every 10 new companies fail, I can’t imagine the minute percentage of successful acquisitions. 1 in 100? 1 [...]
Red Herring: More investment in green startups Voice becomes free within data networks Electronic technology changes from a growth engine to a commodity China to become low-cost world innovator Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle will lose dominance in software U.S. on path to following the third-world Biological sciences become popular in colleges Most compelling technologies will [...]
TEC Online: Few things have more impact on the long-term success of your business than your ability to cut successful deals with customers, vendors, bankers and other key constituencies. Yet, according to TEC speakers and negotiations experts Ron Fleisher, Doug Gilliss and Jack Kaine, most CEOs leave too much money on the table during their [...]
Chuck Huckaby: Want a cheap but unique product to resell? Go to places like Rent A Coder and see what’s been developed recently. If it’s at a fair price and a utility you’d like to sell, you can often purchase the rights for the same or less price.
This week’s Brain Brew Radio episode is online: Once again, Futurist, Watts Wacker stops by to talk about two possible future trends during Possibly Profitable Prognostications… John look for ways to reach out to the local community and let them know about his company, Know Your Rules… im with The Sales Coach asks the Brain [...]
Paul Graham: To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We’ve got it down to four words: “Do what you love.” But it’s not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated. The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as [...]
Seven Tips For Work-At-Home Motivation
TopWahms.com: Considering a work-from-home business? Clients often say their biggest fear is loss of momentum. Here are ten tips to keep yourself motivated and productive: Build structure into your day. Define goals by numbers instead of time. Train friends and neighbors to respect your working hours. Get the family on board. Build breaks into your [...]
Fast Company has listed out five tips on how to take smart and effective risks: Check your rearview mirror. Make your bets serve your goals. Spread your bets. Relieve your “I” strain. Know when to place a new bet. Read more about them…
Reality TV: Business People With Stories To Tell
From Craigslist: Work. We all do it. And no matter what kind of work you do – retail, office, service, construction, manufacturing or whatever – funny things happen. We want to hear those funny stories. This new cable television pilot will show the funny side of work and business as told by the people who [...]
