Archive for 2006
This article on college education from I Will Teach You To Be Rich is a good read and had the following quotes scattered throughout: “Never hire a human being who had a 4.0 in college. If they had a perfect GPA, it means they bought the act and never screwed around. Now a 2.0 is [...]
Entrepreneur: Determining your salary is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as a business owner. Here’s how to do it. It’s an age-old conundrum that faces every entrepreneur planning their business: What do I pay myself? There are a lot of different theories when it comes to this issue, but the two most [...]
Affiliates Are Entrepreneurs, Too
Marketing Sherpa: Claud Dorton, a gruff white-haired gentleman who says “I’m so old I was in high school when they invented the Univac,” bought a used PC for $290 in 2000. His retirement income was too tight to stretch to a dial-up account (in fact he didn’t even have a working phone line). So he [...]
Joel Spolsky: Don’t start a business if you can’t explain what pain it solves, for whom, and why your product will eliminate this pain, and how the customer will pay to solve this pain. The other day I went to a presentation of six high tech startups and not one of them had a clear [...]
How To Investigate A Business Opportunity
Steve Stanley: Thinking of starting your own business this year, but don’t want to launch a business completely from scratch? Then consider a business opportunity often referred to as a turnkey business. With a business opportunity package you are purchasing a system of doing business that often comes with an instructional manual or a video. [...]
Business 2.0: Ask someone in your office to give a speech to colleagues, and he might get the jitters. But dare him to pick up the phone and pitch a business deal to a total stranger, and he’ll probably go into hiding. Nothing triggers deep-seated fears of rejection quite like the dreaded cold call. In [...]
Mary Schmidt: “Small Business� “Mom & Pop� “Home town businesses� These folks generate almost all the jobs in the U.S. and pay most of the taxes (Big companies in many cases pay no taxes, and the percentage of those that do continues to decline.) And, yet, the “little people� often don’t get much respect. Why? [...]
Should You Fund With Your 401(k)?
Entrepreneur: That money in your 401(k) retirement account can look very appealing when you’re trying to finance your new startup. There’s a balance in there, it’s already your money, and you feel like it’s the quickest way to get your business off the ground. The penalty fees for early withdrawal from a 401(k) account can [...]
New Venture Voice with Randy Komisar of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
The newest episode of Venture Voice features an interview with Randy Komisar from the VC company Kleiner Perkins: It’s not easy to stand out at Kleiner Perkins, one of the most prestigious venture capital shops in Silicon Valley that counts Google in its portfolio. Though Randy Komisar joined the firm just this year, it’s clear [...]
Simple Pillow A Million Dollar Baby
USA Today: If you’ve given birth or adopted in the past 10 years, chances are you know what a Boppy is. And more important, how to use it. If you haven’t, well, read on. Because this is the story of a woman who came up with one of those “Why didn’t I think of that?” [...]
Rich Whittle wrote in an email: Thought you might like to know that the Business 2.0 web site now is available FREE. All the content. They have merged with CNNMoney. Thought maybe your readers would like a good freebie. The new url is: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/.
Barry Moltz: I sometimes brag to people that I never spent more than $500 for any logo I ever had for companies I started. I never knew if the new company would be around so I didn’t want to make the investment. Now with the use of the web, looks like its even easier to [...]
It’s hard to throw in the towel, but sometimes, as Dave Pollard explains, there are some pretty good indicators that you should: A recent article by Jim Casparie in Entrepreneur says that, if you still love what you’re doing, and if it still makes sense to you, you still believe in it, you should consider [...]
This week’s Carnival of Marketing is up at NoahBrier.com.
Finding the Real Opportunities
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Entreweb: This Australian guide to doing business on line provides information and resources about e-business for small businesses. It comprises six building blocks for e-business: Understanding, Planning, Building, Protecting, Managing and Improving. Excellent site, very useful even if you are not from Australia.
This week’s Carnival of Investing is up at Free Money Finance.
This week’s Carnival Of The Capitalists is up at The Social Customer Manifesto.
The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs
Not content just to insult venture capitalists, Guy Kawasaki has published his The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs. Number 7 is a doozy: “No one can do what we’re doing.â€? If there’s anything worse than the lack of a market and cluelessness, it’s arrogance. No one else can do this until the first company does [...]
Reuters: Take a few leggy California blondes, throw in a passion for luxury cars, plenty of parties, and a distaste for parking your own car. What have you got? A multimillion-dollar, female valet parking business, where struggling models and actresses dressed in bikinis, miniskirts or lingerie and Santa hats park the cars of the rich [...]
A reader asked: I am in MLM and I give to my team for completing challenges in building their business. I will give them Tiffany jewelry, cash, etc. for achieving these challenges because it builds the business! My tax preparer is convinced that I can only deduct $25 of a gift to someone whether it [...]
Private Eyes Enjoy Flexibility and Drama
Startup Journal: When the subject of work comes up at social gatherings, Gretchen Schulz is used to taking a turn as the center of attention. “People say, ‘You’re a private investigator? I can’t believe that,’ ” says Ms. Schulz, owner of Schulz Investigative Service in Ponte Vedra, Fla. The perceived glamour is part of the [...]
The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists
Rob Hyndman: Guy Kawasaki finishes the week with a hilarious post that reads between the lies of what VCs tell you. If I had a nickel … The others are funny, but number one is most direct: “I liked your company, but my partners didn’t.â€? In other words, “no.â€? What the sponsor is trying to [...]
Can’t believe I haven’t posted about this yet, but Ryan Carson has been publishing a series of very interestng articles on 37signal’s blog how to startup a small business called, appropriately enough, Small Biz 101. There have been four articles so far: How to Get Started Cash Flow Basics No One Starts with a Masterpiece [...]
Mises Institute: There are thousands of reasons why entrepreneurship should never take place but only one good one for why it does: these individuals have superior speculative judgment and are willing to take the leap of faith that is required to test their speculation against the facts of an uncertain future. And yet it is [...]
Financing With A Credit Card Risky
Smart Startup Newsleter: I read a thread over at StartupJunkies.org recently. A poster was asked if he should use his seven credit cards to bankroll his business. My answer is a firm “no”. Things have changed dramatically over the last few years making this financing approach simply too dangerous. First, there’s the new Bankruptcy law [...]
If Your Wife Won’t Let You Start A Business
Steve Pavlina: Your wife won’t let you start your own business? What’re you… six years old? Have you softened your will so much that you now live only by the voice of the collective: “You will not start your own business. Individuality is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.� Your wife won’t let you? Are you a [...]
There’s definitely a stigma against failure — so much so that many people are held back by fear of it — but even Bill Gates’s first company was a failure: Traf-O-Data, now a partnership between Gates, Allen, and Gilbert, needed a professional paper tape reader. Gates used $3,400 of his own money to purchase an [...]
There are No Rules in Entrepreneurship
The EQ Journal Blog: One of the hardest things for my students to learn is that there are no rules in the field of entrepreneurship. By that I don’t mean that you go outside the Law; I am not talking about those kinds of rules. You always obey the Law and protect your reputation; the [...]
Internet Business Mastery Podcast
I’m currently listening to an interesting new podcast called Internet Business Mastery: A podcast discussing how to prosper in your internet based business on the road to financial freedom. I’ll report back after I listen to a couple episodes. via Burke Jones of Bootstrapper Notes.
Chuck Green: Jay Conrad Levinson–author, teacher, former senior VP at J. Walter Thompson, and creative director at Leo Burnett–remains one of my favorite marketeers. “Guerrilla Marketing, Over 90 field-tested tactics to get your business into the frontlines” is loaded with practical ideas for marketing yourself, your products, and your services.
No More Exit Strategy Necessary
Huntsville Times: Exit strategies for small-business owners may be a thing of the past. That’s because many entrepreneurs no longer see the business as a means to an end. Rather, it’s becoming a means to the here and now. When starting my professional career, mentors and consultants preached the benefits of planning for the end. [...]
Ask the Business Opportunities Weblog: How do you get business credit without personally guaranteeing it?
Good Jobs Are Scarce. Solution: Become Your Own Boss.
NY Times: If there is one place where the idea of the ownership society is taking hold, it is America’s colleges and universities. More than 1,600 colleges offer courses in entrepreneurship, up from 1,050 in the early 1990′s and a mere 300 schools in the 80′s. Experts see the surge reflecting profound changes in the [...]
How do I dump a bad business partner? Is this home based business a scam? Has anybody had any success making good business out of an online business such as CafePress? How do I sell an acupuncture practice? Is a consult with Jay Abraham worth the money? (This roundup was inspired by Lifehacker.)
Stupid High-Level Goals Are Useless
Ramit Sethi: A lot of times we create huge overarching goals (“I want to create the best social network in the world!!!!”) with no clear next steps. If you are trying to do anything even moderately complex and you don’t have a plan for what should happen in the next 7-14 days, then you are [...]
The Small Business Economy 2005
The SBA has released their report The Small Business Economy 2005 (PDF): Entrepreneurship has long been implicit in the American Dream—the belief that, given constitutional freedom, it is possible through hard work, courage, and imagination to achieve fi nancial security. The federal government too has underscored the fundamental importance of entrepreneurship and small business to [...]
Pete: Dane Carlson and Tim Grahl turn their niche blog networks into full time self employment. Both become stay at home dads, blogging in underwear.
Leasing Equipment Versus Buying
Cash Flow Blog: When you buy a piece of equipment or vehicle, you usually have to pay for it in full either by using cash or by financing the balance. After you finish paying for it, you own it. Equipment leasing, on the other hand, is essentially a loan. The lender buys and owns the [...]
Death of a Salesman (And His Business)
InsureBlog: When Bob Gross, co-owner of a local jewelry store, dropped dead of a heart attack this past July, his business died with him. Sure, it took a while, several months, in fact, for the store to succumb, but succumb it did. A buy-sell agreement, and the means to fund it, would have saved the [...]
The 29th Carnival of Personal Finance is up at The Real Returns.
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Chocolate and Gold Coins.
Entrepreneurship Can Ruin Your Life
Be optimistic, but careful. Starting a new business is hard work and fraught with danger and unforeseen consequences. See this interesting article in Slate about what happened to two people who started a coffee shop and had it destroy their lives: The failure of a small cafe is not a question of competence. It is [...]
This week’s Carnival of Marketing is up a t Truverse Weblog.
Small Biz Reflections and Resolutions
Business Week: In the spirit of yearend introspection, BusinessWeek Online asked 10 entrepreneurs and CEOs of companies with annual revenues ranging from $500,000 to $1.6 billion to contemplate 2005. We also asked them what they might have done differently — and to share their New Year’s resolution for 2006. Here’s what they told us.
Last week’s Brain Brew Radio episode is online: This week on Only in Maine, Field Producer, Mark Twist introduces us to Jean who is looking for ideas on how she can grow he sales slowly, but steadily… John of Cincinnati, Ohio looks to Doug and Dave for advice on how to get his invention of [...]
I hope that you and your families have a happy and prosperous 2006!
