Archive for November 2007
New Options in Small Business Health Insurance
WSJ: Small-business owners who concluded a few years ago they couldn’t afford health insurance for their workers may want to take another look. Insurers are offering more varied plans that include less-expensive options. Nonprofit groups and legislators have paved the way for small companies to band together in purchasing cooperatives to get lower rates. A [...]
According to the Wall Street Journal, the US government is going to begin offering army recruits startup cash: The Army has been enlisting youths for decades by promising them money for college. Starting in January, it will try out a different sort of pitch in selected cities: offering up to $40,000 toward the purchase of [...]
NY Times: There is a rising reaction against management theory, according to The Economist. A new book by the management expert Gary Hamel, “The Future of Management,” notes that several well-known executives of hot companies — among them, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google and John P. Mackey of Whole Foods Market — did [...]
ABC7 Chicago: Jackie Simoni: Puplight PupLight, is an LED flashlight worn on a dog’s collar. Endorsed by the American Canine Association, American Kennel Club and Pet Weekly Magazine, PupLight makes your dog visible to traffic, lighting your way so you can see potential hazards ahead. PupLight features rugged, water-resistant construction, with three ultra-bright, white, wide-angle [...]
Magazine Publisher Goes Out On Her Own
Kansas.com: Changing careers wasn’t easy, but Susan Hund-Milne said it was the right thing for her to do. For 13 years, Hund-Milne co-owned Advanced Publishing, which produced Spotlight on Wichita and Wichita Hi-Lighter magazine. This summer she sold the publications to Mid-States Publications and began an independent venture — AP Creative. AP Creative provides graphic [...]
My Favorite Books of 2007: McIlhenny’s Gold
One of my favorite business book of 2007 was McIlHenny’s Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire. Few products are as immediately recognizable as the bottle of Tabasco sauce. In the book, author Jeffery Rothfeder tells a fascinating story about the remarkably long history of the distinctive bottle and the family business that [...]
Blogging Detrimental to Offline Income?
Scott Adams, the author of the comic Dilbert is going to start blogging less because of the negative impact his blog has had on his income: I hoped that people who loved the blog would spill over to people who read Dilbert, and make my flagship product stronger. Instead, I found that if I wrote [...]
Yesterday, PFBlog explained a nifty trick for making a risk-free investment with the US government and receiving a return of 8% from the Internal Revenue Service. How’s it work, you ask? In a nutshell: You make a large estimated tax payment for 2007 in March 2008. When you file your 2007 return in April, you [...]
Survey: Which 2008 Presidential Candidate Would be Best for Small Business Entrepreneurs?
Which 2008 presidential candidate would be the most friendly to small business entrepreneurs? Joe Biden Hilary Clinton Christopher Dodd John Edwards Mike Gravel Rudy Giuliani Mike Huckabee Dennis Kucinich John McCain Barack Obama Ron Paul Bill Richardson Mitt Romney Tom Tancredo Fred Thompson Duncan Hunter View Results
Car Magnet Business Opportunity
Although young drivers represent only 6.6% of the nation’s licensed drivers, they are involved in 14.8% of fatal crashes. The Rookie Driver Car Magnet, a brainchild of Corinne Fortenbacher and her teenage son Austin, is an easy way to alert other drivers that a novice driver is behind the wheel. The magnet comes in three [...]
Six years ago this month, this website was born. Today, it’s the number one business blog in the world. Thank you for all for reading.
An Online Magazine For Work At Home Moms
24-7 Press Release: In the day of the Boomer, women worked and dropped their kids off at the sitters. Today more women are choosing to stay home and “BE THEIR KID’S MOM.” When you have the financial means it is an easy decision to stay home to raise the children. However, when you don’t have [...]
Momprenuers Alive And Well In Today's Business World
EMediaWire: Saige Nicoles on-line boutique at www.saigenicoles.com, caters to today’s modern moms and their children and is listed as a “hot spot” to shop on sites like Greer’s OC. Since 2006 Saige Nicoles has built their design lines to include an impressive list of today’s hottest and most sought after boutique fashion designers for babies, [...]
Entrepreneur Gives Birth To Her Creative Side
DurhamRegion.com: Susanne Watson-Bongard offers art and wellness programs for all ages with her company, Art and Soul Express. The studio is home-based with a focus on new and expectant mothers they can also give birth to their own creative abilities. In addition to the art, the workshops offer a variety of honest perspectives and experiences [...]
This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at SEO ROI.
Yahoo News: All Linda Katz had to do was step outside of her house to make thousands on the Internet. Now the Midwestern entrepreneur is building a business selling a piece of the old west online: tumbleweeds. Linda started her online business, the Prairie Tumbleweed Farm, as a joke. It was 1994 and she wanted [...]
Wall Street Journal: By far, the most common element among successful videos is comedy. Rather than offering airless advertisements or canned commercial messages, these videos deliver laughs as well as pitching a product. Case in point: Blendtec, a division of K-TEC Inc., of Orem, Utah. In the past year, the high-end blender maker has drawn [...]
A Business Opportunities Weblog reader has $1,000 to invest, and wants to invest in another reader’s holiday business: I would like to partner with a seller and invest 1k in their venture for a hot holiday item. Please let me know if you have any leads. Thank you. Do you have a hot holiday business [...]
A reader named Mark wrote: I don’t know how “green” minded you are, but every time I see the incandescent bulb used in a logo to to represent “new ideas”, I think, ‘I wish they would use the new Fluorescent screw in bulbs instead.’ Mark, interesting observation. The lightbulb has long been the classic symbol [...]
Parade To Honor Earmuff Inventor
Morning Sentinel: Chester Greenwood Day, Farmington Maine’s distinctive claim to fame, is not just for local earmuff aficionados. The local display of ear coverings — from big and fluffy to comic to fashionable — can be inventive and quirky, and organizers say this year they hope to expand the Dec. 1 event. “This is an [...]
Navy Mom Turns Beads Into Business
The Times West Virginian: Tammy Nathan took up jewelry making as a hobby and now has her own business, Belle A’Mour Bead Designs. Nathan, originally from Philippi, has been in the Navy for 19 years. She’s a health care administrator and does a lot of work with medical education and training. She graduated from Fairmont [...]
A New Wine From Four Generations Of Women
Napa Valley Register: New wine brands are released just about every week, it seems, but one brand that made its debut last weekend is quite different from others. It’s made by a company that has four generations involved. And they’re all women. Leo Joseph Estate Cellars in St. Helena produced the wine from the Lawrence [...]
Gatorade Inventor Dr. Robert Cade
Houston Chronicle: Pick a flavor — Rain, Frost, Lemon-Lime, Fierce, AM, Xtremo — and drink a toast today to Dr. Robert Cade, inventor of the concoction once nicknamed “Cade’s Cola” and now known as Gatorade. Cade died Tuesday in Gainesville, Fla., from kidney failure. He was 80. Cade and three colleagues developed Gatorade in 1965 [...]
It Doesn’t Have to Be All Business
The New York Times: As work is increasingly making inroads into leisure time, many business travelers are finding ways to turn that equation around — combining their travel for work with time for cultural and historical sightseeing. “Cultural tourism can be an extension of business, it’s not just fluff,” said Patricia Martin, a marketing consultant [...]
Entrepreneur Creates Doggy Java
Marketing Daily: An entrepreneur in Phoenix is looking to combine the growing craze for coffee and coffee products with increased discretionary pet spending, through a new product introduction: Doggy Java. “Everybody drinks coffee and tea,” Mari Justin, creator of the drink, tells Marketing Daily. “I thought that it would be a good time to share [...]
5 Ways to Profit from Good Ideas
Lifehack.org: Turning a good idea into a successful innovation requires the glass to be full. A half full glass simply isn’t enough. There are many things involved in bringing a product to market successfully or turning an idea into reality and each one of them needs to be right, or at least close enough. Here [...]
Starting Your Own Homebased Business?
Entrepreneur: They roll out of bed in the morning and head off for work–still in their pajamas. They work from their dining room tables, stock inventory in their cupboards and arrange meetings in the lobbies of their local hotels. They set their own schedules, jog on the beach during their lunch breaks and give out [...]
Business Week: Does your toddler wear perfume? Should your newborn eat organic? And has your four-year-old been to the gym lately? Moms and dads a generation ago might have laughed at these questions, but today there is a booming market for products and services targeting affluent parents willing to spend freely on their kids. Armed [...]
Woodside Moms Selling Eco-Friendly Bags
Palo Alto Daily News: In the summer of 2006, two Woodside mothers shared a realization as their sons played in the park: They wanted to do something positive for the planet. Stephanie Ashworth and Kerri Stenson have since co-founded Olive Smart LLC, which has created an environmentally-friendly alternative to plastic bags that can take hundreds [...]
The Windsor Star: Inventing a scarf that fastens with Velcro instead of a traditional knot may not seem like a breakthrough — but for one Winchester, Ont., woman, the simple creation has become a booming business. Diane lefebvre is the originator of the no knot scarf, which is designed to fit snugly around a child’s [...]
The Discovery Channel is casting a show for artists, scientists, inventors, engineers, architects and designers to build extremely elaborate Rube Goldberg machines: Super Rubes is a weekly one-hour show that follows a band of talented creators as they design, build, and set off a massive Chain Reaction Machine in front of a cheering crowd. The [...]
Business Week: It’s the stuff that many people find addictively fun to pop after opening a fragile package. But for a group of young inventors, Bubble Wrap is more than something to stomp on, it’s a source of inspiration. To 11-year-old Kayla Weston, it’s a building material for shock-absorbing flooring for dancers; 11-year-old Max Wallack [...]
Invention Puts Squash On Germs
Springfield Business Journal: Mike Sewell isn’t alone in his bathroom habits. He and many other people use paper towels to grab bathroom door handles to avoid germs. “They don’t want to touch the handle, so it leads to trash on the floor, it leads to excessive consumption of paper products, and it seems like there’s [...]
Niche Biz: :10 Minute Manicure
Springwise: In this perpetually time-crunched era, it’s no secret that finding time for personal grooming services like haircuts and manicures can be a challenge. We’ve already covered a few examples of the quick haircut solutions that have emerged—HairPODs are the most recent one—and now there’s :10 Minute Manicure for those whose nails need some speedy [...]
Which States Love Small Business?
Fortune Small Business: Entrepreneurs, zip up your parkas and head for the plains! South Dakota once again leads the list of U.S. states with the best tax and regulatory climate for small business, according to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council’s latest ranking. Rounding out the top three were Nevada and Wyoming, unchanged from last [...]
Rhonda Abrams: Sleigh bells ring — are you listening? If you run a business, you should be. The holidays can be an important time of year for all small companies, and you want to make the most of this busy and stressful time. 1. Party on! Holiday parties present a great opportunity to network, meeting [...]
Neighbors Launch Errand Running Service
Beloit Daily News: With an increasing number of errands to run, and dwindling time, neighbors Holly Fiorini and Ellen Pidde decided to launch an errand running business. They started 2nd Hands Errand Services in March. “We knew there was a need in the area for our services. We know many are needing people to do [...]
Starting Your Own Baby Food Business
Copy And Paste Articles: When I decided to turn my baby food delivery business idea into a reality I imagined that someday I would open outlets all over the country. Or perhaps I would franchise the business. I thought that one day I would be the CEO of a baby food empire. Over time I [...]
Make Holiday Tree Watering Easy
Inquirer and Mirror: It’s one of those mundane chores that annoys even the most cheerful Christmas enthusiast but is quickly forgotten shortly after completion in the glow of the holiday spirit: watering the Christmas tree. Everyone knows the drill. Fill up whatever container that has been designated to do the job year after year with [...]
Niche Biz: Teaching Phone Tech
Springwise: Since the dawn of the personal computer age, millions of us have attended training classes to learn how to build better spreadsheets and killer PowerPoint presentations. Now, as cell phones and other mobile gadgets become increasingly complex and loaded with features, entrepreneurs are finding similar opportunities in the mobile field. New Zealand’s Mobile Mentor [...]
The Funny Thing About Niche Marketing
Scott Allen’s Entrepreneurs Blog: I learned a really interesting thing about niche marketing recently. Well, I suppose I had always sort of known it, but it struck me very powerfully when I experienced it first-hand. No, I’m not talking about the fact that narrowing your marketing to a particular niche often brings you more business. [...]
Looking For The Next Great Invention
Leada Gore At Hartselle Enquirer: I have lost my keys. Actually, lost is a strong word. I prefer to say I have temporarily misplaced them. This just sounds better. And then a brilliant idea hit me. Someone should invent a device that allows you to dial a number on your phone to prompt a beeper [...]
10 Minutes Of Talking Improves Memory
Science Daily: Spending just 10 minutes talking to another person can help improve your memory and your performance on tests, according to a University of Michigan study. “In our study, socializing was just as effective as more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance,” said Oscar Ybarra, a psychologist at the [...]
Lower Hudson Online: On a typical day during peak training season, triathlete Elizabeth Ann Dugan swims three miles, bikes 30 and goes for an evening spin on the elliptical trainer. She squeezes her workouts between shuttling her three sons to and from school, paying the bills, walking the dog and cooking dinner. The 44-year-old single [...]
The Star Online: Mention Malaysian-made footwear and most people are likely to think of either those ubiquitous “Japanese” slippers or a glamorous pair of Jimmy Choos. The home-grown shoemaking industry, however, is much more than those two extremes. There are, in fact, more than 30 Malaysian shoe manufacturers and exporters in operation today, and some [...]
I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the [...]
Mothers Are The Inventors Of Necessities
Miami Herald: Nearly eight years ago when her first son was born with Down syndrome, Michal Chesal scoured baby shops in South Florida and online stores for a carrier that would allow her to hold him close, but not damage his little legs and torso plagued by low muscle tone. In frustration, she finally stitched [...]
Want to Buy a Business? Your Timing is Right
Kiplinger: Expect a glut of firms to go up for sale as thousands of baby boomers retire. With about 8,000 Americans turning 60 every day, more and more business owners are thinking about retiring. By 2009, an estimated 750,000 companies owned by boomers — one in every six — will be looking for buyers, up [...]
Becoming A Legend In Your Spare Time
The Wall Street Journal: YouTube is bulging with videos from citizens, especially young ones, who want nothing more than the American Dream: celebrity status without appreciable talent. They work long hours chasing the dream, doing take after take of their mash-ups, their parodies, their response tapes. But at the end of the day, they’re no [...]
Successful Entrepreneurs Who Didn’t Need College
College-Startup.com: How many times were you told to make sure you worked hard in high school so you could go to college and get a good career job? It’s natural to wonder whether college is really necessary. A college degree, as many have found, is no guarantee of a good career. On the flipside, there [...]
