Archive for February 2009
Movies All Entrepreneurs Should Watch
Toiletpaper Entrepreneur: 1. Miracle On 34th Street What You’ll Learn: The greatest lesson in salesmanship that no one follows. 2. Click What You’ll Learn: What it’s like to fast-forward life. 3. Glengarry Glen Ross What You’ll Learn: Lying, cheating, stealing never works long term. 4. Office Space What You’ll Learn: If you don’t like what [...]
Post-Bulletin: Starting up your own business is a bold venture, one that takes all the time and precious resources that are available to you. If you can utilize space in your home in the early stages, this will save on both counts. There is nothing new about a home office, but I do see a [...]
New Business Aims To 'Mother' New Moms
Kare11: At a hospital maternity unit all the babying goes to the babies. Rachel Swardson-Wenham thinks it’s time to start mothering the mothers. “It definitely was something that should exist, and I couldn’t believe nobody did it.” In June Rachel launched her new company Go Home Gorgeous offering in-hospital massages and spa services to new [...]
Castle Ink Offers A Recycled, Cost Effective Ink Cartridge Solution
When the economy has people tightening their purse strings, Castle Ink is allowing them to buy their printer ink for less than marked value. How? By recycling. While the idea of reusing an old cartridge is not exactly new, the process generally included a kit which left you trying to figure out how much ink [...]
PR Web: MaryPat Kavanagh of Strategic Results Marketing announced that she has come together with 22 other Mompreneurs to share their vast knowledge of cutting-edge techniques in a twenty-two part telesummit program specially designed for savvy business moms. The free preview teleseminar entitled “7 Secrets to Being a Savvy 6 to 7 Figure Mompreneur” takes [...]
Trendhunter: Now here’s a way to make the most of bad weather: snow graffiti! After London was hit by the worst snow storm in 20 years, a creative media solutions agency was quick to take advantage of the freshly lain canvas. Agency Curb came up with this environmentally harmless idea to promote TV channel, Extreme. [...]
Is Your Phone Number Worth $400,000?
CraziestGadgets.com: How does a one-hit-wonder band from the 80’s make money when the royalties slow to zero? You sell a phone number made famous by the #1 hit: 867-5309. A New Jersey based DJ company is selling off their famous 867-5309 phone number on eBay. Made famous by the 80’s hit by Tommy Tutone, virtually [...]
Chicago Tribune: For 25 years, Bruce Lund and his small band of workers have been dreaming up toys that have thrilled kids around the globe — hydrogen-powered rockets, talking microscopes, and one of the company’s most successful toys, the T.M.X. Elmo Extra Special Edition — the fuzzy, red toy that collapses into fits of giggles [...]
Bring in the Business With Prayer and Work
photo credit: Digital Plus Art & Photo While it would be nice if customers came wandering into our businesses solely on the power of prayer, it’s not going to happen. We have to get out there and put in the time and work to attract them to our business. While I urge you to read [...]
Do Entrepreneurs Need A Second Job To Get By?
The Wall Street Journal: A recent article in The New York Times offers what the author admits is “an unscientific survey of five business owners” to find out how they’re faring in these tough times. What struck me in the Times article was that two of the five business owners relied on extra income streams [...]
Turning Around A Struggling Biz
BusinessWeek: Consumer confidence is at an historic low and the financial news seems to get worse by the day. But even if your business is struggling, you can take steps to turn it around and be poised to grow this year. 1. Keep Selling. 2. Evaluate Marketing Effectiveness. 3. Anticipate Opportunities. 4. Create a Rapid [...]
Granby Mom Brings Memories Together
masslive.com: Stay-at-home mom Sharon A. Bail is helping local people who keep scrapbooks go a step further in preserving their memories by assisting them in putting together hard-cover books. The books have the glossy covers and pages typically used for children’s books and may be designed on a computer using special software from Creative Memories, [...]
photo credit: jnicholls357 In the former Soviet Union, there was a market for burnt out lightbulbs: For most of us, it is hard to fathom the rationale for a market in burnt-out light bulbs. But in the scarcity-driven Soviet economy, the market was entirely reasonable. Light bulbs were rarely available to individual consumers, but were [...]
Mom & Daughter Build Cookie Bouquet Business
Fox23.com: She’s known as the creator of the cookie bouquet, and she’s from right here in Tulsa. Her cookie bouquets have been around for 25 years now. FOX23’s Janna Clark goes on the road to meet a mother and daughter team, who may have rescued their own product. Putting a cookie on a stick is [...]
USA Today: The Chinese New Year began Jan. 26, and this year it’s the year of the ox — an auspicious year for entrepreneurs and those of us who own small businesses. “Gung hay fat choy!” is the Cantonese version of the greeting for the Chinese New Year, but it literally means “May prosperity be [...]
Virtual Assistants Can Amplify Your Biz Marketing
GetEntrepreneurial.com: If you want to boost your business marketing, consider the services of a virtual assistant. Here are a few marketing and research tasks that a virtual assistant can perform for you: • promote your business in social networking sites, a very time-consuming task • produce a podcast which will expand your business’ web presence [...]
photo credit: pfala Being an entrepreneur is truly a rewarding and wonderful career. However, it also means taking on full responsibility for the finances, equipment, losses, bills and more. So in today’s economy entrepreneurs are looking for ways to save money left and right. Below are a few ideas: Once your business is growing fast [...]
It Took 5,127 Prototypes To Create Success
Digital Journal: To create a successful product, Sir James Dyson had to create 5,127 prototypes first. Add 14 years of debt and multiple lawsuits to evade and you get a best-seller in the U.S. and in Europe. It started in 1978, he got vexed with his vacuum cleaner breaking repeatedly, so he created the first [...]
Make The Recession Work For You
YoungEntrepreneur: Mark Levit, founder and managing partner of Partners & Levit, Inc., a New York advertising agency, discusses how you can make tough economic times work for you. “As the economic cycle spins, marketers look forward to the economic highs and dread inevitable recessions. When the economy goes sour, how do brands stay alive? During [...]
Tulsa World: Yvonne Jacobson’s makeshift office is her kitchen table. She had company last week at her Broken Arrow home, so the back bedroom she typically uses to make the baby-shower gifts for her home business was occupied. And writer-video producer Jeff Kauffman’s office is just down the hall from his kids. Or, occasionally, it’s [...]
Never Forget Another Holiday, SendOutCards Fills Out And Mails Cards For You
When those gift and card giving holidays start to sneak up on you, it only means one thing: time to buy or fish out some cards and get them mailed. Even just a few personalized holiday cards can take up to an hour to complete, address, stamp and seal for delivery. The process is time [...]
Salon Owner Strikes Balance By Moving Business Into Her Home
PatriotLedger.com: The salon is buzzing with lively chatter on a Saturday morning. The air smells of hair products. Foils are ruffling in the background. But this is no chi-chi salon. Run out of the basement of Gayle Cronin’s Abington home, Studio 23 is more “Steel Magnolias” than Newbury Street. Cronin, 27, is a new breed [...]
From Hanging Out With A-List Stars To Working From Home
Not many women can say their story goes from the world of fame to staying home and running a small at-home business but Susan Pascal can. She has spent time around the likes of Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp, yet nothing was quite as rewarding for her as being home with her children. In 2001, [...]
Where Entrepreneurs Share Knowledge
Killer Startups: A visit to Smarta.com is the order of the day for entrepreneurs who wish to share knowledge online and meet individuals that are in a similar position. In addition to standing as a platform where questions and answers can be posted, this new network makes for the creation of profiles and groups. Of [...]
Starting A Home-Based Consulting Biz
Susan Pascal At LA Working Moms Examiner: Thanks to the current economic downturn plus accrued expenses, it became necessary for me to get back into the work force. However, I wasn’t interested in leaving home or working 15-hour days. That could potentially undo all of the good I’ve accomplished as a stay-at-home mom, not to [...]
Ambler Gazette: Marie Kraft started thinking about the idea for a tofu press about five years ago when she began eating healthier and wanted to learn to cook tofu dishes. Kraft said she had trouble cooking tofu because it was watery. However, she said, there were no products on the market to assist in the [...]
Pet Industry Continues to Grow
photo credit: Per Ola Wiberg (Powi) Some people actually consider their pets to be their children and they buy them top quality toy’s, facility care while out of town, top quality food, and even clothes. While the country is in a recession that causes people to start under buying on necessities such as paper towel, [...]
Internet Population Tops 1 Billion
AppScout: Internet metrics company comScore reports that the number of worldwide Internet users in December topped 1 billion users, the first time that barrier has been breached. The key metric in the number of users is that most of them are from Asia, predominantly so: 41 percent, compared to 28 percent in North America and [...]
The Carbon Advice Group has launched what they say is the the world’s first multi-level affiliate carbon offset network today at CarbonAdviceGroup.com. It was only last week when I still didn’t really understand carbon trading so this is a very new opportunity. If you’re into green living and looking for a network marketing company this [...]
10 Ways Twitter Can Make Money
Erik Qualman At Search Engine Watch: How can Twitter make money? That’s the billion-dollar question. This question is important for Twitter, as well as its users and global advertisers. 1. Answer a Person’s Product Need 2. Be a Recruiting Tool for Job Seekers/Recruiters 3. White Label Twitter Functionality for Fortune 500 Companies 4. Analytics Packages [...]
Organic Vending Takes On The Vending World With Healthy Food Choices
In a world that is going green and promoting healthy eating, it’s no surprise that organic is yet another trend that many people are starting to follow. With their launch in 2005, Organic Vending has been on top of it with their accessible, healthy snacks. In very little time, Organic Vending has moved from the [...]
It May Be Time… to Start a Business?
I didn’t catch all of the Super Bowl commercials, but this one from CareerBuilder.com accurately describes how I felt before I started my own business. How about you?
photo credit: Josiah Mackenzie I never thought I’d see something like this, especially from an Ivy League university like Harvard: The fact is, the old-fashioned model of post-secondary education in the U.S. is pretty much broken. Instead of preparing students for real-life, three-squares-and-a roof-over-your-head jobs, too many colleges charge massive tuition fees to impart the [...]
Eau Claire Mom Discovers The Benefits Of Cloth Diapers
Leader-Telegram Online: When Amber Richards was pregnant with her now-17-month-old daughter, Evelyn, she never gave a thought to the possibility of using cloth diapers. “I was thinking white cloth and pins, but there’s been such a change. I didn’t know there were modern cloth diapers. They are so easy,” Richards said. When Evelyn was 3 [...]
Mompreneur Started Business To Help Pay Expenses From Her Son's Surgery
The-Daily-Record.com: A mother’s love knows no bounds. That’s no less true for Jennifer Waddell, who’s sacrificed countless hours of sleep in caring for her firstborn, Samuel. Now 4 years old, her son underwent a 15-hour surgery to remove a dermoid cyst in August 2007; the cyst stretched from his sinuses into the lining of his [...]
Sell Boring Stuff that People Actually Need
Jim Flowers of VT KnowledgeWorks has a favorite old Doonesbury cartoon framed and conspicuously posted on a prominent wall of his business. The strip is so good that I’ve done the same, and you might want to, too! Mike asks Bernie, the business mogul, what he is working on. Bernie replies that he had previously [...]
Pilot Earns His Wings As An Inventor
Inventors Digest: When Rick Foreman earned his flying wings some 13 years ago, he didn’t realize his journey would lead him to take flight as an inventor. Pilots are required to carry fresh batteries to power hand-held devices such as GPS, flashlights, transceivers, headsets and intercoms. Typically, Foreman would keep batteries in a small baggie [...]
Bizs Turn To Independent Contractors
The Associated Press: As the recession forces small businesses across the country to cut expenses, some are making a dramatic shift — they’re laying off employees and using independent contractors instead. Back in 2006, Ron Gold had only full-time employees in his advertising agency, but business began to slip and he began using freelancers. Last [...]
photo credit: Libertinus No matter what your business, however, excess inventory is something to be avoided. It costs you money in extra overhead, debt service on loans to purchase the excess inventory, additional personal property tax on unsold inventory and increased insurance costs. Controlling your inventory is one of the easiest ways to increase profits. [...]
SeattlePI: Carol Lavinthal, who sews children’s clothes in her home, faced an unhappy choice. She could spend thousands of dollars to comply with a sweeping new federal law — or she could become an outlaw. She was braced for a Feb. 10 law that would have required her Just Kidd’n business to stringently test for [...]
Better Reading Material for your Customers
photo credit: Manchester Library One of the easiest ways to stay in front of your customers is to provide an email newsletter. Try telling a story of success about your business. Share your expertise, because you are an expert in your field, so show that you know what your talking about and doing. Feature and [...]
The New York Times: CafePress, a Web site that lets users create and sell custom goods, announced a partnership with Sellit to help online retailers peddle their wares in multiple places around the Web. The tool, called the Sellit ShopBot, allows CafePress’s 6.5 million Web merchants to build a bite-size version of their CafePress shop [...]
photo credit: kevindooley One very effective mode of advertising is in the business sign. These can be big, small or in between, and they pack a lot of power! But having the wrong business sign will also pack a lot of the wrong power. You don’t want the wrong message 10 feet tall on the [...]
