Archive for January 2008
BusinessMom.net Announces Additional Networking Opportunities For Members
PR Web: BusinessMom.net has long been a place where business moms can advertise, socialize and meet other mom business owners. It allows moms to create their own space, gain new insights and express their own individuality within its pages. Recently, however, members have been asking for more. Owner, Janice Clark, believes that the site truly [...]
Taking "Baby Steps" To A Successful Daycare
HometownAnnapolis.com: Joelma and Nelson Columbano of Millersville talked about starting a business after getting married three years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that they combined their talents to launch a day care center out of their home. It was a lengthy process that included multiple home inspections, health and safety certifications and other licensing [...]
Is It Possible To Be A WAHM Without Going Insane?
We always hear about how great it is to be a work-at-home mom, and how you won’t need daycare because you’re working from home, but is that truly the reality of it all? Working from home can be one of the most difficult things to do for a parent. If you’re there, your child will [...]
Niche travel websites take on many shapes and forms. From nudist resort directories to singing vacations, most cater to tourists and individual travelers. MeetingUniverse.com is a niche travel site that caters to a specific kind of business traveler: the meeting planner. Their website rates hotels and services providers according to a meeting planners’ criteria. Currently, [...]
I’m in Opportunity World Magazine
Hello readers from Opportunity World. My very popular, but controversial, post 20 Things Not to Do Before Starting a Business is in the February 2008 issue of Opportunity World. I’m also now a regular contributor to that magazine, so I’ll have a column in there monthly.
Do you have a burning desire to slide down a thirty foot brass pole and jump into an exciting and fiery life? The San Francisco Fire Engine Tours & Adventures is for sale! The San Francisco Chronicle has more: Wearing a 19th century firefighter’s shirt and hat, Marilyn Katzman climbed into the shotgun seat of [...]
Not Up in Smoke: Smoking Business Opportunities
In the United States, only about 20% of the population are smokers. Though sometimes here in smokeless California it might not seem that there’s not much of a market for products related to smoking, but that 20% corresponds to almost fifty million people in the US alone! Globally, some estimates place the percentage of smokers [...]
If Elvis Were A Digital Entrepreneur Today
CNETNews.com: Elvis Presley had fans around the world long before the Internet, but he never toured outside of North America. His popularity overseas soared after his music got played on local radio and his movies screened around the world. Elvis’ record label, RCA, had a network through which it manufactured and distributed his music. The [...]
Learn From Complaining Customers
Rhonda Abrams At Gannett News Service: Just get rid of them!” Face it, when confronted by a customer with a complaint, all you really want to do is make them go away, isn’t it? After all, who wants someone in your face, telling you that you’ve messed up? But guess what? You actually may be [...]
Radley Balko on Hit & Run has an excellent idea: a nap store. He explains: I’ve envisioned my nap shop franchises strategically placed in shopping malls, tourist areas, and next to all-you-can-eat buffets and Cheesecake Factories. A customer walks in, and for $20 or so, gets a cozy room for 60-90 minutes of interruption-free snoozing. [...]
Toliet Paper Business Opportunities
The market for products that make it easier for people with limited mobility and muscle control to perform everyday tasks will continue to grow as the population age. Here’s a video demonstration of an invention called TeePer:
Queen City Green Rescues Trees
Springfield Business Journal: While most Ozarkers were still mourning the countless trees downed and disfigured by the January 2007 ice storm, two soon-to-be business partners began mobilizing to save high-quality wood from chippers and burn piles. Springfield native Kasey White and Dave Buehler, who lives on about 400 acres south of Mount Vernon, didn’t know [...]
Stimulus Plan To Offer Business Incentives
Inc.: House and administration negotiators reached a tentative agreement on a $140 billion economy stimulus package that includes temporary tax incentives for small businesses. The plan would offer most U.S. employees an immediate tax rebate of $300 to $1,200, along with one-time tax incentives for small businesses investing in new equipment. Small-business advocates have urged [...]
smSmallBiz.com | Small Business Advice and Small Business Resources for Entrepreneurs from SmartMoney Smart Money’s Small Business Site (tags: management smallbusiness startup business bizopblog) Skip the Tuition: 100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World | OEDb (tags: college directory ebook education finance free howto ideas internet law lifehacks online podcasts reference research [...]
Small Biz Turns To Small Banks
The Street: Small-business loans bring more than $100 billion in profits for banks, according to a recent report by the financial services group of McKinsey & Co. In addition, small-business owners are two-and-a-half times more profitable than the average retail consumer. But so far, big banks haven’t capitalized on the potential of small businesses. As [...]
Moms Find Money-Making Ideas Don’t Have To Be All Business
The East Valley Tribune: For Scottsdale’s Brandi Slaybaugh, business was a matter of getting out. “It’s amazing to be a mom, but I wasn’t really good at staying home,” the former escrow officer says. “A lot of new moms aren’t prepared for that. I would go on errands with my boys, and my 2-year-old would [...]
Who’s Watching User-Generated Video?
eMarketer.com: User-generated videos (UGVs) tallied 22 billion views in 2007, up 70% over 2006, according to Accustream iMedia Research’s “UGV 2005 – 2008: Mania Meets Mainstream” report. Paul A. Palumbo, research director at Accustream, told eMarketer that the 22 billion views was a worldwide figure. In other words, user-generated videos on US-based Web sites drew [...]
eBay’s New Leader Moves Swiftly On Revamp
The New York Times: John Donahoe wasted little time as the new chief executive of Internet giant eBay before announcing big changes. Less than an hour after being named to the top spot at eBay by the departing chief executive Meg Whitman, Mr. Donahoe said in a conference call with analysts that the company must [...]
BusinessWeek: For entrepreneur Steve Sodell, the Super Bowl started in late October. That’s when he and his staff of 12 began renting retail space in shopping malls and hotels across the Phoenix metro area—stuffing shelves with NFL-licensed T-shirts, hats, and other collectibles emblazoned with this year’s Super Bowl XLII logo. By the day of the [...]
Poll Results: 100 Best Companies To Work For Trends
On Monday, we ran a poll asking of the 100 companies listed on Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 2008, how many allow employees to telecommute or work at home? Participation was down a little for this poll (not sure why, maybe I should run a poll to find out) with 49 readers [...]
Seven Businesses You Can Start Tomorrow
Forbes: When her husband lost his job in 2002, Christine DeLuca rented out two of the beds in their Woodstock, Vt., home. She ran the makeshift bed and breakfast (and ate into their savings) for a few years before upgrading to a larger house on a farm in nearby Quechee. Open on weekends since August, [...]
Mom Mixes Cookies With Patience
The Herald News: Linda Hardin started with a handful of wheat- and dairy-free recipes, but learned that growing her business depends on perseverance and patience as much as a good oatmeal-cranberry cookie. “I was warned this was a real tough business, and it is, but I’m hoping to sneak in through the back door with [...]
Mobile Dog Groomer Works With Mom
Savannah Morning News: Tuesday Cook-Hannah runs Bev’s Mobile Grooming with her mother, Beverly Strange. It is “a complete groom shop on wheels,” Cook-Hannah said. About 90 percent of her clients live at The Landings. Inside the van, which her mother designed for this business, there are typically five or more dogs. There is a section [...]
This new TCM ad reads: This is a message from TMC to all the Hollywood screenwriters on strike: Keep it up guys. After all, the greatest movies have already been written.
From Yahoo.com LONDON (Reuters) – From the outside it’s an ordinary, red-brick house in a terraced row, not unlike tens of thousands of others scattered across Britain. But on the inside, Jean Preston’s spartan Oxford home contained works of art of international significance, carefully acquired over a lifetime and haphazardly displayed. Preston, a thrifty 77-year-old [...]
Workout At Work With This Chair
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Tired of Striking At Work? The Colbert Show Writers Are
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An Advance In The Flight Business
From MSNBC.com FRANKFURT – German nudists will be able to start their holidays early by stripping off on the plane if they take up a new offer from an eastern German travel firm. Travel agency OssiUrlaub.de said it would start taking bookings from Friday for a trial nudist day trip from the eastern German town [...]
This new product, Cheeseburger In A Can, comes from a Swiss-based company. To prepare, throw the can into boiling water for a few minutes, open, and enjoy. The burger-in-a-can also has a shelf life of a year. Delicious.
io9.com: Yoshihiro NakaMats, 79, is Japan’s most prolific – and bizarre – inventor. He claims to have 3,350 patents (Thomas Edison only had 1,093), and that several of them are for the floppy disk. “Everyone knows about the floppy disk,” he says. “But I also invented the fax machine, automatic pachinko, and the taxi meter.” [...]
Entrepreneur: According to ArmyTimes, Congress is getting closer to passing legislation that would help veterans and reservists who own small businesses. The bill would create a $50,000 no-collateral, small-business loan for reservists and vets. In addition, it would add four new veteran-business outreach centers and create an interagency federal task force on small-business issues. The [...]
Mother’s Invention Eliminates Common Kids’ Problem
PRNewswire: Jennifer McManigal attended dozens of parties with her two children over the years, and the same thing happened each time — her kids didn’t remember which drink belonged to them. “At a typical child’s birthday party, I’d see kids get a soda can or juice box, take one sip, then abandon the drink only [...]
Entrepreneur Takes Reins Of NFIB
Indianapolis Business Journal: When Barbara Quandt was launching her career in the mid-1970s, she purposely avoided learning how to type. “Everywhere you went, all people would ask is: ‘Can you type? How fast can you type?’” recalled Quandt, 57. But Quandt wanted a sales job—a rarity then for women—so she begged off typing classes and [...]
10 Least Profitable Businesses To Start
Forbes: Entrepreneurs start companies for all sorts of reasons. Maybe they have a passion, like being in control, want more flexibility–or even hate their current jobs. But no matter the inspiration, one thing’s for sure: They’d better make money. A rising revenue line might make for good cocktail conversation, but if you don’t turn a [...]
Do you know a little girl that would like to be a ballerina, or at least pretend to be one? Even more so, do you know one that doesn’t? Chances are you know more little girls that like to prance around in fancy little outfits pretending to be ballerinas than you do little girls that [...]
WAHM Takes On Weight Loss Challenge
WTHR: The routine weekly shopping trip for Rebecca Morelock is taking a little bit longer these days. The mother of three is busy reading labels. “This brand had less fat and calories on the chicken noodle, and then this brand had less fat and calories on the vegetable,” Morelock said. Her careful consideration comes after [...]
Belly Buster Parties Make Dieting Fun And Being A Consultant Even More Fun
I recently got the opportunity to interview a woman who’s a consultant for a diet business that is something I’ve never seen before. Becca is a consultant for Belly Buster Diet which is a new business that offers their customers a chance to lose weight starting out with a Belly Buster party and going on [...]
photo credit: Lida Rose Do you enjoying wearing a lab coat and hanging out in the freezer? This entrepreneur has found a frozen niche that may be just right for you: “When I say I have a cryogenic repository, people say, ‘Excuse me.’ ” she says. “It’s definitely a niche business and we stay under [...]
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Entrepreneur Unveils New Tourist Spacecraft
The New York Times: Burt Rutan took the cloak off of his new spacecraft. Rutan, the creator of SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed craft to carry a human into space, traveled to New York to show detailed models of the bigger SpaceShipTwo and its carrier airplane, WhiteKnightTwo. “2008 will really be the year of the [...]
How Does the Economic Stimulus Plan Affect Small Biz?
Entrepreneur: In an effort to rouse the slowing economy, Congress announced a deal that includes nearly $50 billion in business tax cuts. It would allow small businesses to write off a portion of certain purchases and invest in new equipment. In addition, the plan is set to give refunds of $600 to $1,200 to about [...]
Poll: 100 Best Companies To Work For Trends
Fortune magazine has released its annual list of 100 Best Companies to Work For 2008. Of the 100 companies listed, how many allow employees to telecommute or work at home? 23 42 84 All of them View Results Source: Workplace Trends based on the ”100 Best” survey by Great Place to Work Institute for Fortune [...]
City To Cut Costs By Allowing Work At Home
Ottawa Citizen: The City of Ottawa will try to cut costs and boost efficiency this year by allowing some employees to stop making the daily trek to their desk in an office building. It’s part of an electronic government initiative being cheered on by Mayor Larry O’Brien that is aimed at helping the city cut [...]
Bplans Blog: The Sample Business Plans You Won’t See… From car wash to pharmacy and most everything in between, there are plans that entrepreneurs will find to help them start their particular type of businesses. But below are 5 actual “ventures” that, well….let’s just say we don’t have sample pl (tags: businessplans)
10 Things To Improve Your Home Office Cheaply
Freelance Switch: While most of your freelancing hours should go towards billable, client projects, it is also important to spend some time making your working life better. For me, nothing makes me feel happier at work than sitting in a nice office environment. Here are 10 things you can do to improve your home office [...]
iPhone Antennas | Antenna Guy USA iPhone cellphone booster from Wilson Electronics (tags: cellphone booster iphone wilson) Google AdSense Tips No nonsense adsense tips (tags: ads adsense advertising advice affiliate blog blogging blogs google howto internet investing marketing money online seo tips tutorial web businessstructures) A Complete List of 100 Attributes of People Who Start [...]
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