Archive for January 2009
ShowMomTheMoney.com is the Answer for Post-Holiday Debt Solutions
PR Web: Even though retailers are reporting the worst sales for the holiday shopping season in 30 years, many consumers still will have spent more than they should have during these tough economic times. This “recipe for stress” is one of the reasons women’s small business coach and advocate, Nicole Dean created the resource ShowMomTheMoney.com [...]
The Mom Entrepreneur Selects 2008's Most Helpful Products/Services For Mompreneurs
PitchEngine.com: For many people, 2008 was a challenging year with a worldwide economic crisis, soaring unemployment rate, government corruption and ongoing war. Yet, as difficult as the past year was, we also experienced some good news, including a historic Presidential election, expanded civil rights for the disabled, the world’s richest nations agreeing to reduce emissions [...]
Launching A Biz While Unemployed
The Wall Street Journal: Being unemployed gives me a large chunk of discretionary time, but only a finite amount of which I can dedicate to a job search. The law of diminishing returns kicks in and it’s better to focus efforts elsewhere for the sake of productivity, not to mention sanity. I’ve always wanted to [...]
Turn Your Home Office Green, To $ave Green
CBS: In this economy, businesses are trying to cut costs any way they can. Turns out, one big way to save is by going green. Not only can the more than 27 million small business owners in the United States play a huge role in conserving our natural resources, but their green actions can help [...]
If A 13 Year-Old Can Launch A Startup You Have No Excuse
TechCrunch: My name’s Scott. I’m 13 and have launched a web startup.” So began an email exchange over last weekend which culminated with me chatting to Scott’s mum today to verify, that, indeed, he was actually 13 and really had launched a blogging site for people in Scotland. ScotBlog.net is essentially a social network for [...]
Amish Flock From Farms To Small Bizs
The New York Times: The Amish, the religious sect that has determinedly kept the modern world at bay, have been leaving a quiet life of farming for jobs in small businesses — all the while trying to balance their own values with the culture of the marketplace. “Their whole intent is to not be caught [...]
Music Marketers Target Female Shoppers
Billboard: With CD sales dropping fast, the music business is exploring nontraditional ways to expose consumers to recording artists. Among the new sales and marketing vehicles are Tara Leigh Music Party and musicShop. Both launched in November to target female music buyers. Tara Leigh is part of House Party, an Irvington, New York, company that [...]
Ignorant and Inexperienced: Good!
photo credit: debaird™ The founder of Crate and Barrel said that it was ignorance and inexperience that got his first store started. “We didn’t know anything about retail,” Segal recalled. “I had grown up in the restaurant business, so I knew about service but not about retail. We didn’t know a market from a markdown. [...]
Even Business Owner’s Need A Toolkit Once In A While
When something is broken and it needs fixed, what do you do? You have 2 choices, call someone in to fix it or do the work on your own. Ironically, it’s not that much different in business. You could either call someone in to help answer your questions and do the work, or learn the [...]
Trift Stores And Children: Business Closing Everywhere
YourHub.com: As a local manufacturer specializing in baby-children products, I am writing to express my concerns regarding the enforcement of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), effective Feb. 10th, 2009. I support this new law and feel that children’s safety should be of up-most importance in our world today. However, this particular legislation will [...]
Ideas To Inspire Your Launch Into The Work-At-Home World
examiner.com: Moms these days prefer the idea where they would want to stay at home and make money while being able to care for their own kids. Moms that prefer this due to wanting to make something for themselves and at least help with the money part. I, for one, am one of them so [...]
Obamabilia Craze Is Boon To Retailers
San Francisco Chronicle: Can President-elect Barack Obama save the economy? Well, it’s true that he has assembled a crackerjack team of economic advisers, but that’s only one way Obama can help America get back on track. American entrepreneurs and salespeople of all stripes have recognized the opportunity in Obama’s win – namely, that anything associated [...]
Fitness Gadget Tracks Every Calorie
Fortune Small Business: After falling in love with the Nintendo Wii’s physically demanding sports games, serial entrepreneur James Park, 32, started to ponder other ways to combine video games and fitness. The result: a $99 lipstick-size gadget that clips on to your clothes and uses a motion sensor to track everything from steps taken to [...]
Shipwrecked Treasure Allegedly Found Via Google Maps
Slashgear: Treasure hunter Nathan Smith testifies that he used Google maps to find buried treasure in South Texas. Smith also monitored the treasures location with updated satellite images to ensure that no one was poking around long enough to gain legal rights to his findings. The 39-year-old musician from Los Angeles located a 19h century [...]
Bad News For Workers Is Good News For Linkedin
USA TODAY: Where everyone else sees economic gloom and doom, Reid Hoffman sees opportunity. As the freshly minted CEO of LinkedIn (and its founder), he is shepherding a moneymaking tech company in battered Silicon Valley. And he anticipates more growth next year. That is no small achievement. The social-networking site, which lets business professionals create [...]
Five Things Every Small Biz Owner Should Do
Open Forum: Five things that every small business owner should do in 2009. Don’t consider it a New Year’s resolution because there’s a whole psychology behind such things. Just do it. 1. Act like a prospective customer and call your company to see how the phone system and receptionist treat you. 2. See if your [...]
T-Shirt Monster Allows You To Give Your Clothing Personality
Clothing displays personality. Personalized clothing makes it that much more fun. T-Shirt Monster has been offering a fun way for people to create custom t-shirts, without the need for graphic design. Although they are based in Canada, they welcome orders from other countries. For creative individuals interested in selling their designs, they can also upload [...]
The New York Times: Peter Zummo, a senior double-majoring in design and mechanical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is used to explaining the products he thinks up for his studio-class assignments. But last spring, he found himself answering questions of a different kind in a conference room at Rensselaer’s office of technology commercialization, which tracks [...]
Fortune Small Business: Building and maintaining fences for cattle is a time-consuming and costly endeavor. That’s why a GPS bovine headset may come in handy. This past year, Dean Anderson and Daniela Rus have designed and tested Ear-a-Round headsets on the USDA’s 193,000-acre ranch near Las Cruces, N.M. Each Ear-a-Round is equipped with a GPS [...]
Star Tribune: Managing sports fan festivals is proving to be an entrepreneurial slam dunk for Joe Gallagher and his St. Paul-based FILO Productions. In February, FILO Productions (FILO is an acronym for first in, last out) will help produce the National Basketball Association’s All-Star Jam Session for the seventh consecutive year. The interactive, 500,000-square-foot fan [...]
Think Like An Entrepreneur In All Areas Of Life
American-Statesman: Is becoming an entrepreneur on your list of New Year’s resolutions? “Life Entrepreneurs,” a new book by Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek, argues that the concept isn’t limited to your career — it’s about creating the complete life that you want. The book takes readers through a process of getting in touch with their [...]
Can Twitter Be Useful For Biz?
David Wallace At Search Engine Guide: If you have yet to hear about Twitter, I might ask you if you have been living in a cave and for how long. The micro-blogging platform that few knew about a year ago has now gone mainstream with over 6 million users – a number that is growing [...]
Outsourcing Entrepreneur Admits Giant Accounting Fraud
SmartCompany: India’s business sector is reeling after revelations that the boss of outsourcing giant Satyam Computer Services has falsified the company’s accounts and inflated its profit for several years. Satyam’s chairman Ramalinga Raju admitted the fraud in a four-page letter to the Bombay Stock Exchange. The company employs more than 50,000 people across 66 offices [...]
Small Business Managers Turn Into ‘Mouse Potatoes’
InformationWeek: Spending too much business time on the computer when you’re not at work? You’re not alone. Small-business owners and managers, already tethered to their computers for long periods, are turning into “mouse potatoes,” increasingly eating and working while on their computers and while online, according to a survey released Tuesday by office supply retailer [...]
Naperville Mom Wants To Reduce Obesity Trends
Naperville Sun: Obesity in American children is said to be growing at epidemic proportions. Naperville resident Eileen Murphy would like to do something about those numbers, and while she can’t help every kid overcome his or her problems, perhaps her fledgling business can inspire others. Murphy, 41, is a mother of three children who has [...]
Save Money, Or Potentially Start A Business?
In a world that’s trying to save money and reduce their carbon footprint, many imaginative ideas have popped up to aid those information seekers. My recent find falls within that category. How do you feel about making your own cloth baby wipes? Parents that are looking to save money and don’t mind doing a little [...]
Marketing Department Helps Jump Start New Businesses
Starting a new business is hard but with the right information that business can get started off on the right foot. DM-Creative.com is dedicated to helping businesses get that help. Through pages of free information their website shares ideas on how other businesses may get started. For those that need a little more help, they [...]
photo credit: Gaetan Lee Business Opportunities Weblog readers are a smart and entrepreneurial bunch. Everyday I get emails telling me all about their new projects. Once a week, I’m going to feature some of them in a post and let other’s comment on their own new ventures. If you have something to brag about, email [...]
Inquirer.net: Sure, baby shoes are cute. But the truth is, babies aren’t supposed to wear shoes until they’ve learned how to walk. Rianna Roces-Trinidad and Sheryll Ang-Tiong, the mom-entrepreneurs behind Proud Mama, discovered this fact online. “We’re very proactive moms. We spend a lot of time on the Internet, reading articles. One of the things [...]
Customers Helping Her Drive Road To Success
The Daily Post-Athenian: Receiving a reward from your employer for excellence at your job is always welcome news. For Melissa Coffey, the prizes have been a little more significant than a gift certificate or a cash bonus, though. An independent sales director for Mary Kay, she was recently awarded a four-wheel drive SUV – and [...]
GripBoard Brings Surf Something New
San Clemente Times: It’s said that some of the best ideas are born of despair. For Thorpe “Sharky” Reeder, that expression is all too true, and the Capistrano Beach inventor-artist-fisherman hopes one day that the resulting idea will one day pay off in financial success. Reeder is the inventor of the GripBoard, a wave riding [...]
The Tampa Tribune: Faye Dowdell looks for any edge she can find in today’s gloomy economy. Dowdell spent the morning at the Tampa Port Authority office for the first installment of the NFL’s Super Bowl XLIII Playbook for Small Business Workshop Series. The free workshops are designed to help local small and minority businesses. The [...]
Magic Johnson Has Magic Touch In Biz
USA TODAY: Almost nobody would question Earvin Johnson’s skill on the basketball court. But in his second career as an entrepreneur, there were doubters from the start. Johnson, best known by his nickname “Magic,” remains one of the best players to ever don the gold and purple Los Angeles Lakers uniform. Executives he pitched on [...]
NBCPhiladelphia.com: Stacey Pace runs a small florist in New Castle, Delaware. So small that her office is her kitchen and she works from a laptop. “I got this e-mail directly to my business e-mail address from a John Larry inquiring about Eureka Tents,” Pace told NBC 10. She returned the e-mail explaining she is a [...]
Inventor Of Hawaiian Shirt Dies
Metro.co.uk: You’d be forgiven for never hearing of designer Alfred Shaheen. Yet he inspired one of the most colourful, amusing and unforgettable styles of fashion ever known – the Hawaiian shirt. Sadly the pioneering textile manufacturer has died at age 86, his family have confirmed. As tourists from the US to Hawaii after World War [...]
The Shower Professor Offers A Simple Solution To Help Shorten Your Shower Time
If you want to conserve water when you shower, then it only makes sense to cut back on how much time you spend in it. So a simple alarm would do, right? Not quite. If you want something to join you in the shower, you’ll need it to be either protected or waterproof. Randy Sonderhouse [...]
Soft-Hearted Bikers Keep 'Mom' In Business
The Sun: When her husband of 43 years died, Sue Paver needed someone to help fill the void in her life now that the love of her life was suddenly gone. And she didn’t have to look far. It was her customers – her dozens of sometimes rough around the edges, but softhearted bikers who [...]
ajc.com: Sisters are doing it for themselves these days. Lured by a more flexible workplace than the kinds of jobs their college degrees could secure them in the corporate world, single women and mothers from Atlanta and beyond are stepping into the world of food entrepreneurship. But the road to the kind of profit margins [...]
Start 2009 With An Empty Inbox!
Matt Cutts’ Blog: Matt Cutts (who works for the Search Quality group in Google) has a great idea for starting the New Year. Start with a fresh and empty inbox in your Gmail. There’s nothing like an empty inbox to motivate you and give you a fresh start for the year. But Matt,” you say, [...]
Startup Offering Unique Pet Service
Montana’s News Station: A Missoula-based Internet company recently launched “Pet Living Wills” as a way to protect your favorite dog, cat or goldfish when you are not there. If you could speak on behalf of your pets, what would you say is a question MaryEllen Campbell asked when a horse she was watching for a [...]
From Ad Exec To Baby Food Maker
Telegraph.co.uk: Since 2002 Tom Burrough, 43, has reinvented himself not once but twice: from well-paid advertising executive to stay-at-home father, and now, as the founder of a baby food company, launched from his kitchen table. In 2003 Burrough came up with the idea for Burrough’s Baby Food. He has always loved cooking, and remembers making [...]
One Woman’s Trash Is Another Woman’s…Lingerie?
The Wall Street Journal: Even though gift-giving was relatively stingy this Christmas season, enough stuff changed hands to generate plenty of leftover trash. And that means good tidings for the artists who transform cast-offs into commodities. Curbsides and trash bins are suddenly overflowing with bags, boxes and other booty that will become the raw material [...]
SCORE Offers Web Resource For Entrepreneurs
Suburban Life Publications: Start out right for your business in 2009 with SCORE: Counselors to America’s Small Business.” SCORE provides a resource page called “Small Business Smart Start Tools”. This content area offers valuable resources for assessing your business, organizing your workplace and planning for success. Browsers will find the following tips and tools: • [...]
VisitorCamp.com Offers Search Engine Marketing For The Modest Budget
If you run an online business, you need your traffic to convert into customers. If the traffic to customer ratio is too low, you won’t have a business for long. The struggle to bring in traffic and convert those visitors into the customers you need is one that many businesses have to face. It’s not [...]
The Seattle Times: More than any government bailout, it’s people like Wendy Powell who will lift us out of our economic doldrums. Except it looks like her own government is going to stop her. Last fall when Wall Street was in meltdown and the credit system was in a freeze, Powell, a Seattle mom and [...]
Maternity-Leave Alternative: Bring The Baby To Work
The New York Times: SEVERAL years ago, Joyce DeLucca became pregnant at the same time she was building her new company, Kingsland Capital Management, an investment boutique in Manhattan. Her employees wondered: Was she going to take a maternity leave during this crucial period? She did not. Instead, Ms. DeLucca decided to bring her newborn [...]
Sarah Palin 2009 Calendar Becomes Amazon Bestseller
Mashable: What’s the best selling office product on Amazon.com this New Year? Perhaps printer ink and paper for all those holiday pics? Cases for all the new laptops received this Christmas? Try: none of the above. Currently leading Amazon’s Office Products and Supplies bestseller list is the Sarah Palin 2009 Calendar. According to the ad [...]
The New Work Ethic: Controlling Your Attention
intellectual properties: Columnist David Brooks, commenting in the Dec. 16th New York Times about Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book called “Outliers,” made a statement as profound as it was accurate: “Control of attention is the ultimate individual power,” he wrote. “People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them.” But why is [...]
Website Magazine: 2008 has drawn to a close, and many Web professionals are wondering what next year will bring. It may seem arbitrary to make predictions, but the Web business is not a static industry and forecasting often shines the light on our practical hopes for the future. 1. A Major Social Media Shift 2. [...]
Create Online Video That Works
Mashable: With the recent explosion and expansion of online video, the biggest question is how to best drive viewer action and monetize this new medium. Even with these strong benefits, most agree that the video opportunity has yet to be fully realized. Companies struggle to best make use of this new medium, and have found [...]
