Archive for May 2009
photo credit: daveparker Moms represent a large and growing business, they have leveraged the internet and seem to be a brilliant bunch of entrepreneurs. Understanding Marketing recently wrote an article regarding working moms. Work at home moms (WAHMS) represent the most ideal entrepreneur as they take care of all the business aspects themselves. WAHMS do their [...]
Feeling Flustered At The Home Office?
photo credit: AndyArmstrong Working from home definitely has it’s benefits all around, however, working from home can also cause a little bit of cabin fever syndrome. All of us experience this at some point or another. When you start feeling a little bit of that fever sneaking up on you, it’s important for you to [...]
photo credit: lumaxart As managers and owners, we all try to find the best and easiest ways to manage our team, because lets face it, when we manage effectively it ultimately produces higher productivity and thus creating higher revenue volumes. A recent Gallup study showed there are four ways to manage effectively. ●Focus on your [...]
photo credit: net_efekt We spend a lot of time talking about cheaper new way’s to do your marketing and advertising. However, little to no time has been spent on the natural way’s of marketing that have just as beneficial outcomes as those that cost money. Below are a few examples found on OpenForum of natural marketing [...]
Green Baby Gifts Are As Easy As 1-2-3 With A Green Baby Gift Box
Examiner.com: Green Baby Gift Box is a small, mom-owned business based in Vermont that is dedicated to making eco-conscious gift giving effortless, fashionable and fun! All baby gift boxes include vibrant, creative, and useful objects that baby can use every day. The company searches the planet for sustainable and often handmade gifts that show little [...]
photo credit: bribriTO We often feel that we should all follow the golden rule and we get upset when we can’t understand why others don’t feel the same way. And I’m not talking about Aladdin’s golden rule of “he who has the gold makes the rules”, I mean the “treat others as you expect to [...]
Stylish Clothing That Does Not Require A Dry Cleaner
When was the last time you took your favorite dress or coat and put it in the washing machine? I’m willing to bet it is dry clean only, unless it is from Ogie Kanogie. Co-founders Jamie and Massiel launched their business in September of 2007. Since then their business has grown to include up to [...]
photo credit: lumaxart As entrepreneurs, many are proud to say that they are some what of a risk taker, however in a down economy and when your talking about your hard earned money, one tends to be a little protective and more conservative with good reason. Even high stake investors started pulling out of the [...]
I was watching the TV show Southland last night. The street cops come across this kid standing by the side of the street holding up a big sign that reads ” Radar Up Ahead, Slow Down”. The kid tells the cops it’s not illegal cause his father’s a lawyer. The cops ask why he is [...]
Jock Gear Headgear combined with binoculars, a headset, and a fan. Where’s the TiVo? Bulletproof Desk Invention relates generally to personal assault protection for those in vulnerable environments such as school rooms. Don’t taz me, bro! Leaf Chaps Invention consists of modified pants or trousers fitted with a net between the leg stalls so that [...]
7 Things Entrepreneurs Do When Nobody’s Looking
Entrepreneur: 1. Google themselves. 2. Pantomime handing their business card to Donald Trump (without staring at his hair). 3. Photoshop pictures of themselves into the cover of Riches magazine. 4. Take quiet satisfaction in finding spelling errors on competitors’ websites. 5. Practice the speech they’ll deliver before ringing the opening bell on Wall Street. 6. [...]
Biz Poll Results: $100 Million Brand
Monday, we gave readers a list of five big name companies and asked them which brand is worth $100 billion? 34 per cent of those responding chose Google. Good choice. Research agency Millward Brown has come out with its annual list and report that ranks the most valuable brands in the world. Unsurprisingly, Google tops [...]
photo credit: antwerpenR Are you a salesperson who is recently or even long time out of a job? If so, then i’m sure by now you have realized that jobs in general are scarce today especially those that revolve around sales position’s. So where do you go and what do you do to get a [...]
Is Social Media Right For Your Company?
photo credit: Burning Image It seems that everywhere you look today companies are embracing social media to help strenghten their business. So it’s only natural that others are begining to wonder if social media is the way to go for them. Even if your just entering into social media practices, it is important to asses [...]
photo credit: re_birf If you are getting ready to set up your online site for your business, or even if your getting into blogging for the first time in business, i’m sure your wondering how to write great stuff. Everyone wants to be able to write that perfect paragraph without going through 10 drafts and [...]
Free Publicity For Your Products
photo credit: Saquan Stimpson/monstershaq2000 Did you know that May is when you need to start trying to get media publicity for the fourth quarter holidays? That’s when many major magazines start accepting, and even have deadlines for, submissions for holiday gift guide publicity placements. And if yours is a product business, most likely the fourth [...]
photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ From the time you start your own business up to the day you retire and sell that business, you are constantly on the go of making your existing and new customers love you. But how do you continue to do this for so many year’s without running out of ideas? Inc.com has [...]
Springwise: Anyone who’s ever tried to lose weight or improve their fitness knows that it can sometimes be tough to get motivated. For those who need a little extra help getting going, a new service called WeightNags will nag customers mercilessly until they get off the couch and get some exercise. WeightNags, which was just [...]
The Wall Street Journal: Gail Rosen, who runs her own accounting firm in Martinsville, N.J., says entrepreneurs in New Jersey pay taxes of 27% to 59% of their net income, including federal, state and payroll taxes. Still, she says, “I am seeing more people than ever before start their own businesses.” As an employee, you [...]
Biggest Pre-Launch In Network Marketing
photo credit: jurvetson Let me give you some facts that are going to lead you to success in your search for a Pre-Launch Network Marketing company. Look for a health and wellness product since this is the industry that will have the most growth due to the aging baby boomer population. Look for a company [...]
Metering Tools Slash Energy Costs
Fortune Small Business: The minute a lightbulb burns out in your place of business, Don Howell can tell you about it. By e-mail, that is – the tall Virginian won’t show up at your office door. His company, ADMMicro, installs power metering equipment that can tell when an air conditioning filter needs to be changed [...]
Son Inspires Bottle Tag Invention
KeloLand.com: After almost losing her three-month-old baby boy to a respiratory infection, Evie Clercx was inspired to launch her own business. Her bling bottle tag invention was something she’d never thought she’d do. Aidan was diagnosed when he was three months old with RSV, a respiratory illness. Once Aidan was ready to come home, the [...]
SBA Misses Deadlines On Stimulus Programs
MSNBC: The Small Business Administration has implemented only two of the eight provisions that were included in the economic stimulus bill to boost lending to small firms. On March 16, the SBA eliminated fees on the agency’s 7(a) and 504 loans, and increased the maximum government guarantee on 7(a) loans from 85 percent to90 percent. [...]
photo credit: mark sebastian Are you getting tired of your same old 9 to 5 job, tired of climbing and climbing up that ladder but never actually getting where you want to be after all your hard work? Many people other than yourself feel this same way, and some of them have decided to quit [...]
photo credit: *L*u*z*a* return to nature NASA has had a pee cycling concept for years now, however, it has yet to make it to the consumers shelves for general sale as the price tag on their model is $250,000. A newer model has recently been developed by Leonardo Manavella to turn your pee into drinkable water. [...]
photo credit: SvenDowideit Small Business Labs recently posted an article on obtaining venture capital. VC has been a long time funding option for businesses all over. However, with the recent economy, funding in all areas is becoming scarce for businesses including that of venture capital. A surprising 90% of businesses that have already been funded are [...]
Lack Of Discipline In Your Business?
photo credit: kaibara87 In a recent article by Ken Partain, he spoke about all of the business’ that seem to be closing their door’s left and right today. This was said to be a result of lack of discipline in those business’. There are four major categories of discipline according to Partain that a [...]
CarsForAGrand.com: Home Grown PR
One guy turned his eBay affiliate site CarsForAGrand.com into a monster hit by driving around the country in a beat-up 1974 Pontiac LeMans that he purchased for $899.89 and doing interviews along the way with local television stations. By the end he’d received over 110,000 unique visitors to his website. Heres’s an example of the [...]
More Moms Turn To Home-Based Businesses
Las Vegas Now: The recession appears to be spurring a growth in home-based businesses, including some in the Las Vegas valley. According to Money Magazine, stay-at-home moms now command the largest percentage of paid home-based workers. According to the Department of Labor, almost one out of every 10 stay-at-home moms with kids under the age [...]
NWAnews.com: Until November 2007 Janet Miller was an administrative assistant, a career she had begun 20 years earlier. That career ended when she was let go by her employer. “From that point, I decided that I didn’t want to go back into the corporate world,” says Miller, 37, of Conway. “I’ve always wanted to be [...]
Go Home Gorgeous Pampers New Moms Without Leaving The Hospital
When most women think of a postpartum hospital room, I’m willing to bet they don’t imagine a spa. The introduction of a new little one into their life is a special one and it will come with its fair share of stress. Rachel Swardson-Wenham understands how a new mom feels and she made it her [...]
Tap Into Your Inner Entrepreneur
WRAL.com: The threat of job loss has a lot of people considering their options. One alternative is to start your own business, but are you cut out to be can entrepreneur? Audra George has entrepreneur skills. She took her passion for cooking rum cakes and turned it into a business. “I decided to give it [...]
photo credit: Random Acts of Photography My first post is up on the Mid Market Innovators site. I thought it was going to go live on Earth Day, so it has a very “green” perspective. In it I discuss, amongst other things, the environmental impact of spam: Each spam message is responsible for, on average, [...]
ReadWriteWeb: Government data is actually quite boring on its own, but in these exciting times of democratized programming, government data can be turned into some pretty exciting mashups. That’s just what the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation is aiming to make more possible with its work to make government and related data more available with its new [...]
60% of Twitterers Quit After a Month How Google Could Have Stopped The Swine Flu and Saved the World Why Does Air Force One Need Publicity, Anyway? Want To Avoid Swine Flu? There’s An App For That Too. Are Postal Workers Being Sickened by Paper Pollution?
Kim Beasley at bizzia: Helping a fellow business owner can be very rewarding because it is a way for your to “pay it forward”. “Paying it forward” is the process of helping out three people without expecting anything in return. Then ask them to help out three people instead of paying you back. It’s a [...]
suite101.com: The happiest and most successful entrepreneurs are ones that turn a passion into profit. Here are 4 steps business owners can take to make money by doing what they love. Step 1: Discover Your Purpose Step 2: Uncover Your True Passion Step 3: Select a Product that Embodies Your True Passion Step 4: Just [...]
photo credit: simiant A reader wrote: I want to start a website and sell something online. What should I sell? Any advice? If you want to start an online business and sell something, you should sell a digital product, because physical products have two real problems: Unless you manufacture the product yourself, someone else will [...]
Niche Micro Biz: We Shoot Bottles
How’s this for a very niche microbusiness: a photographer that only takes pictures of bottles. They only photograph bottles — nothing else. You send them your bottle and they shoot it and then clean up the resulting image in Photoshop and then make it available on their servers for you to download. Simple as pie.
Google’s Tips For Entrepreneurs
photo credit: Yodel Anecdotal Google recently did an article giving tips to all of you entrepreneur’s and people thinking about becoming entrepreneurs. Given the fact that google has been called the mother load of all search engines, I think it wise to take a read of the goals they mentioned. ● Don’t settle. It’s better [...]
photo credit: aloshbennett When your getting ready to start your own business, you realize there are a million and one thing’s to do before it’s all said and done. So naturally you want to tackle as many of these tasks at once so that you get them accomplished faster.Web Business Freedom posted a very interesting [...]
photo credit: atomicjeep Is it time for your company to do away with the Monday morning meetings, checking up on employees, reports, statistics on employee performance, etc? In a recent new book regarding a new era of work, it is suggested on Open Forum that it’s time to do away with old business practices and begin [...]
As a followup to Rich’s earlier post about making money from the swine flu, here’s the story (in his own words) of how one fast acting entrepreneur went from an idea a few H1N1 related t-shirt designs to being profiled Forbes magazine in under a week: Last Monday, the 27th of April, I noticed the [...]
Inc.: TakeLessons.com, an online service that connects music students with its instructors in more than 400 U.S. cities, is having a very good year. The company enjoyed increased same-city sales ranging from 12 percent to 28 percent each quarter of 2008 versus 2007, and 2009 looks even stronger, says CEO and founder Steven Cox. Thanks [...]
photo credit: John Kratz Joel Spolsky has written a profile of an Willy Wonka-esque retail store called B&H in New York City. It is a 70,000 square foot super store devoted to cameras and video equipment, like a Cabelas for cameras. Could you do something equally imaginative in your business? B&H opened in 1973, and [...]
Small-Business Credit Sees Thaw
The Wall Street Journal: Many small-business lenders are seeing signs of a thaw in the secondary market for loans backed by the Small Business Administration. That is spurring more lenders to originate new loans — and more small companies to apply for them. In February, the latest month for which figures are available, 35% of [...]
Invention Allows For The Perfect Goatee
Any man who has ever spent the time trying to shape his goatee will know how much work can go into it. The slightest mistake can completely destroy the look. While all men with a goatee might understand this, it took one man to build a device to solve the problem. His name is Scott [...]
After Son’s Birth, Mom Trains As Midwife
Chicago Tribune: Kate Mazzara has a passion for birth. The resident of Livingston County’s Hartland Township and mother of three has helped bring dozens of babies into the world throughout her career as a midwife, a job she chose to pursue after having her first son in 1993. “I had a baby, and I fell [...]
Gemini Greetings® Voted One of Top Leading Moms in Business
Gemini Greetings® announced today that it has been recognized as one of the top 200 mom-owned businesses in StartupNation’s 2009 Leading Moms In Business Competition (http://www.startupnation.com/leading-moms-2009). The competition, sponsored by VerticalResponse, recognizes the achievements of mothers across the country who run outstanding businesses. Gemini Greetings® is a unique company providing greeting cards and gifts for [...]
Making Money With The Swine Flu Virus
H1N1 or more commonly known as Swine flu is sweeping the country. You can’t turn on a news channel without hearing of a new outbreak. Well, some entrepreneurs are jumping on the bandwagon with swine flu related merchandise. A check today at Cafepress.com shows over 47,000 products dealing with the influenza. CafePress.com is an online [...]
