Archive for March 2009
trAloola Brings The Art Fair To You With Their Collection Of Virtual Artist Booths
Any good business requires a level of passion before it can go anywhere. It’s that drive that helps so many entrepreneurs succeed at what they do. For Kellie Markey, passion was the driving force for her latest venture, trAloola. It is not always easy for an artist to find the right sales platform when they [...]
Mom Fights Childhood Obesity By Promoting Healthy Choices
WBIR.com: As a mother of three, Lori Liakonis knows how difficult it can be to get youngsters to eat, particularly to eat healthy. For her, it all started when her oldest turned three. “He was big on sweets,” says Liakonis. “He wanted to eat as many sweets as he could get his hands on.” Using [...]
The Boston Globe: Earl Cogswell noticed a curious phenomenon three years ago when he started working at his father-in-law’s business, Dick’s Power Equipment in Hanover. He would refill propane tanks for customers, then load the tanks in their vehicles – and it wasn’t easy. “People were using all different configurations to keep them from tipping [...]
Home-Based Working Mothers Can Help The Economy
Fort Worth Business Press: Women across the country are taking charge of their work and their families’ livelihoods. From starting their own businesses to telecommuting, millions of moms — many of whom are highly educated, experienced and motivated — are jumping back into the workforce while choosing to work at home. What we may not [...]
Album Extras Take ‘Freemium’ To Weirdville
Wired: Drummer Josh Freese’s musical skills have landed him gigs with major bands, but his marketing genius has generated a huge buzz about his coming solo release. Freese, who’s recorded on hundred of albums and played with top acts like Nine Inch Nails, Devo and A Perfect Circle, roped in famous friends to offer extravagant, [...]
Paul Sloane at Lifehack: Let’s say you are wrestling with a tough issue – maybe at work, at home, with your children or in your social life. You have been stuck for a while and you can’t seem to make a breakthrough. You want to come up with some really creative ideas. What can you [...]
Web Entrepreneur Adds Humor To Job Search
The Providence Journal: After endless trolling through career Web sites such as Monster.com and never connecting with a human, Charlene Helm snapped. “Every day was a constant battle,” said Helm, a 2008 graduate of Appalachian State University. “I was so frustrated I just typed in ‘I need a job.’ ” And there at the top [...]
U.S. Consumers’ Mood Improves Slightly
Reuters: U.S. consumers’ mood brightened a bit in March, nudged up by increased confidence in government economic policy, but overall sentiment remained near an all-time low, a survey showed. The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said its final index of sentiment rose to 57.3 in March from 56.3 in February. This was a touch [...]
Maid Brigade Is In The Business Of Cleaning Up After You
What was traditionally believed to be a service that was used most among the rich, maid services are seeing an increase in business with the average family as well. As more households look to create a 2 person income, that is leaving less time for tasks, like cleaning, that need to be done. When you [...]
How many times have you seen a trail of paint on the roadway from a spilt can of paint in the back of a painter’s truck? Were you ever tempted to follow the line to figure out where it ended up? I have! Could a non-permanent and non-toxic version of this be used to drive [...]
Shoemaking: Still A Profession
The following is a guest post by Sharon Raymond of Simple Shoemaking. photo credit: orangeacid I was delighted, as a shoemaking instructor working out of my home, to see the statement in an article on www.treehugger.comthat “shoemaker” should be added to a list of occupations that would be in demand in the “new green economy”! [...]
CNBC will premiere an all-new The Entrepreneurs, hosted by Donny Deutsch this Thursday (April 2, 2009) at 9P ET and 10P PT. Celebrity chef Rick Bayless discusses how a love for Mexican food and a brilliant business plan helped create Frontera Foods‘ multi-million dollar empire. Also see how Toms Shoes became profitable giving away a [...]
Idea: Filling Potholes with Ads
photo credit: indi.ca This is interesting. Could it work for your business? Don’t be surprised if you see Col. Sanders out filling potholes. In an unusual cause-marketing push, KFC is tackling the pothole problem in Louisville, Ky. in exchange for stamping the fresh pavement with “Re-freshed by KFC,” a chalky stencil likely to fade away [...]
Brainstorm Ideas With Idea Generator
Lifehack: Developed by creative consultancy The Director’s Bureau, The Idea Generator uses randomly-displayed words to help you generate ideas for your next creative project. The user interface of the Idea Generator is a marvel of elegance and simplicity, and it’s fun to use. Three concentric circles fill the screen, emblazoned with random words. Situated horizontally [...]
8 Year-Old Entrepreneur Makes Plea For Job
Chicago Tribune: Sometimes you have to start early to get ahead. Rockford’s Tanner Leuellen, 8, has started earlier than most. After passing out homemade business cards and looking for a position as an “Apprentice Creator” at the Rockford Chamber of Commerce Manufacturing Expo last week, the grade-schooler has spent spring break doing interviews. CNN featured [...]
Are you using Twitter in any form for your business? Yes No View Results If you are using Twitter, please leave in the comments how you are using it and if it’s effective for you. Friday, we’ll take a look at the results of the poll and how businesses are using Twitter. Photo by Twitter.
7 Little Tricks To Speak In Public With No Fear
Lifehack.org: Hopefully these tricks will be able to help you as they had helped me in overcoming fear of public speaking. 1) Admit nervousness All you have to do is admit that you are a bit nervous speaking to your audience. When you do this, the audience will be more forgiving if your nervousness shows [...]
Fortune: When the economic downturn took hold last autumn, the management team at non-profit Kiva.org made a calculated bet to curb investment, anticipating that donors would slow the volume of small loans they make to entrepreneurs in the developing world. That slowdown never came. Now, the non-profit site is racing to keep up with user [...]
Snip-its Haircuts for Kids Announces Expansion
Free Press Release Center: Snip-its, the fastest growing franchise of children’s hair salons in the U.S., has opened its newest location in Pearland, Texas. The new 1500 sq. ft. salon at 2810 Business Center Drive marks the eighth Snip-its location in Texas. The salon offers a creative destination for children’s haircuts in a fun and [...]
Mom Finds Fertile Ground In Bartering
TheBostonChannel.com: Down on the farm is the last place graphic designer Valerie Gates saw herself and her family, but the Wellesley mother has started seeking out fertile soil for a living. Gates has become a regular at South Dartmouth’s Round the Bend farm. The farm, which produces meat and cheese, is harnessing Gates’ creative skills [...]
Handling your Under Performers
photo credit: Rhymes… Often as managers and executives, we have to handle the under performers from time to time. This can be a daunting and difficult task depending on how many there are and how severe the situation. You simply can’t tolerate under performance. Budgets are too tight, margins are too close, and the need [...]
Giving Feedback to Top Performers
photo credit: Jacob Bøtter We all have seen articles written on how to handle your under-performers or less than par performers, but what about your star employees, the top performers, have we forgotten about them? Truth is, most of us take the easy way out and either have them write their own review that we [...]
photo credit: bossco In a recent article, a man from a university questioned on how to go from a non-profit mentality to a profit-mentality. The question was re-phrased to “how to focus on results” by Marshall Goldsmith with good reason. Most people would not be too eager to hear about how someone is only wanting [...]
Increasing employee commitment
photo credit: ArtemFinland Managers often ask the number one question that is sometime’s hard to answer depending on the company, how do we get our employees to become more committed and involved in the company? Judith Bardwick wrote a book regarding this matter and she had some suggestions that may help you. People are more [...]
Counterproductive communication
photo credit: barto While business spend a lot of time figuring out new way’s of communication that will increase work activity and eventually revenue, we are forgetting about the form’s of communication that actually work against our company, such as gossiping about yourself or other’s around you. What percent of all interpersonal communication time in [...]
photo credit: U.S. Department of State When some managers reach the point in their careers where they no longer have the option to rely on their skill’s to continue up the corporate ladder, they find themselves in a great dismay. Now what? Now they rely on someone else taking control. The number one saying that [...]
Concierge Home Services Franchise Article to Appear in Mompreneur Magazine
BeTheBoss.ca: Rebecca Page, President of Ottawa-based Concierge Home Services, has been selected to be included in the current issue of Mompreneur Magazine. The March/April 2009 Franchising issue is available nationwide at Chapters locations, and is available online at www.themompreneur.com/mag_current.htm. Her article “Is Franchising Right for You?” appears as the Business Management column for the issue. [...]
The Mother/Daughter Pharmacy Team
5 KFYR-TV: Finding children and parents employed in the same profession isn`t all that unusual, but you`d have to travel pretty far to find four such workplace pairings on the same block. Main Street in Velva could be called the unofficial capital of female family businesses. National “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” is observed [...]
How to Start a Business in a Recession
Too often, many would-be entrepreneurs spend all of their time planning before they actually figure out whether or not they actually have a product or service that someone will pay for.
Manage Your Temper in Work and Out
photo credit: Señor Codo Today more people are getting enraged with anger, frustration and sometimes even rage. But in today’s economy and world…it’s easy to get this way fast and mostly understandable. But, we must remember that releasing our anger and rage in a destructive manner will only worsen the situation. The problem isn’t our [...]
10 Ways to Promote Your Business Book
photo credit: pnoeric It seems that when people can not do well in business today due to the economy and all, that they are reverting to writing book’s on their business knowledge for those who may be opening a business or are currently struggling to keep their business open. The problem is that at amazon.com [...]
photo credit: rachaelvoorhees A lot of highly qualified and talented people have been laid off or fired with it being no fault of their own. While a lot of companies may find it to be a risky move right now to hire new people, now is actually the time to hire employees provided your company [...]
photo credit: PinkMoose Business around the world are searching for new and improved ways of selling their products and services. With the changing times and technology out there, there are many different ways to market your company and produce more sales. More effective ads and customers as sales people are a couple sales tips. Word [...]
Run Your Own Business when Being Laid Off
photo credit: The Wandering Angel In a recent article written by Rich Sloan, ideas were presented on what you can do to start your own business if you have been laid off or fired from a job and you’ve had enough! Make sure your business idea is something your passionate about, it’s bound to go [...]
Niche Biz: Painting With Ribs And BBQ Sauce
Editor’s Note: Why did I include this post? What does it have to do with business opportunities? It’s a perfect example of creating a business out of an unusual skill. This “artist” could follow the BBQ rib festival circuit and put on shows at each festival. He could get sponsorship ($$$) and free “paint” from [...]
Spring Clean With Small-Biz Savings
USA TODAY: Each of us who runs a business has fixed expenses: rent, telecommunications, shipping, credit card fees. This monthly overhead takes a big bite out of our cash. Over time, these costs slowly creep up — and they certainly add up. At least once a year, sit down and go over all these costs. [...]
Freakonomics: It’s next to impossible to find an economist who will support a gas tax holiday, but cutting the gas tax altogether is an option in Budget Hero, a surprisingly entertaining online game that puts you in charge of balancing the federal budget. Based on budget models from the Congressional Budget Office, Budget Hero starts [...]
Seed Funding Options For Entrepreneurs
ReadWriteWeb: One of the most difficult parts of starting a startup for any entrepreneur is finding that small bit of seed capital to get things going. Luckily, there are a number of different roads you can take to get from concept to Series A. Below is a list of seed funding options for startup entrepreneurs. [...]
’30 Rock’ Episode Helps Inventor
WKYC.com: The plot line of a recent NBC’s “30 Rock” seemed to take a page from Cleveland inventor Phil Davis’ playbook. On “30 Rock,” Alec Baldwin’s character Jack Donaghy spent the episode searching for the right name for his new small, portable microwave. In real life, Davis named his invention the iWavecube and has been [...]
Tucson's First Lady Of Fashion Turns 100
TucsonCitizen.com: Her parents owned a clothing store in Bisbee so “I knew a little bit about fashion.” In 1931, with a pair of women from Tucson, she opened her first store downtown called The Coed Shop. That name stuck until she changed it to Cele Peterson’s a few years later. “‘Fools rush in where angels [...]
Mother Earth Reigns In Business, Too
While the products that weren’t very earth friendly came in bright, beautiful styles and colors, the organic products had one thing in common: they all seemed to be a little plain. That was the conclusion Robbie Mahlman had come to while at her sister-in-law’s baby shower. That observation would eventually give her the drive to [...]
Make Money Online? Go For iTunes Not Ads
VentureBeat: The top digital media companies increased their revenues by more than 20 percent in 2008. How? Well, it wasn’t online ads. Instead, it was largely thanks to a pay-for-media approach, according to new research from Strategy Analytics. Leading the way in this field was Apple, with the “Other Music Related Products and Services” area [...]
Startup Creates Self-Cleaning Keyboard
KING5: A Washington State startup is looking to keep people healthy by zapping germs off computer keyboards, starting with local hospitals. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimate up to 99,000 people die each year from hospital-acquired infections. The makers of the Vioguard keyboard hope to cut that number by a quarter with their product, [...]
Advertising That’s Cheap And Effective
BayNews9: A new trend in advertising can be seen on sidewalks across the Bay area. People stand for hours holding signs, trying to encourage drivers to stop for a minute and spend some of their cash. But does it really work? Yes, say several business owners. Lee Pattison manages flaggers who advertise for Quizno’s. He [...]
Create Think Tank For Your Biz
Entrepreneur: As a business professional, you need a constant supply of information to achieve success. You must stay aware of trends and issues and keep up with rapid economic and technological changes to become and stay competitive. You may have already discovered that it’s next to impossible to keep up with all this information on [...]
Active English Speaking Can Help You To Learn English, Virtually
Thanks to the internet and the webcam, a virtual education is not only possible but offers an opportunity for business. Active English Speaking is an educational website which offers a variety of lessons for a fee. Either through a group lesson, or one-on-one tutoring, they allow their students the chance to learn, ask questions, and [...]
Virtual Firm Offers K.I.S.S. Public Relations Services to Mompreneurs and Solopreneurs
PR Web: Professional virtual support firm, Innovate Services is now offering “Keep It Super Simple” (K.I.S.S.) public relations and editorial services to mompreneurs, solopreneurs and fitpreneurs. A professional virtual assistant, MBA, and mompreneur, Teresa H. Berger has a passion for writing and public relations and wants to help entrepreneurs that need to create buzz for [...]
5 Business Ideas To Inspire You
While there are some opportunities that are less than opportune, many work from home business opportunities offer a legit way to make some money, while being home with your children. Here are a few ideas to help you get started: 1. Event Planning Whether it’s a big wedding or a simple at-home birthday party, busy [...]
r photo credit: bravenewtraveler Businesses who spend just a little time with one action doing research can make all the difference in the world in their business. Spending this little bit of time on research can mean the difference of winning or losing, staying open for business or putting lock’s on your business doors. So [...]
photo credit: dan taylor In business, many people tend to rely on third party services and people to help them get the word out about their business or website. Sometimes this does prove to be a great benefit for the company, however, all too often the third party never follow’s through with helping you out. [...]
