Archive for October 2009
Entrepreneurs Profit From Cost-Cutting Ideas
The Dallas Morning News is reporting that cost-cutting has replaced sales as the path to profit at many recession-battered companies these days. It also has fueled business for some Dallas-area entrepreneurs, who are finding clients eager to try their inventions to save money and time and increase productivity. Dallas entrepreneur Kevin Winters developed patented technology [...]
Mom’s Customized Jewelry Designs Go From Day To Night
Baby & Toddler Gear Examiner: The virtual marketplace is packed with personalized jewelry options, which makes finding an inspired original about as easy as navigating a Turkish Bazaar. Customized classics are created by mompreneur, Lisa Leonard. The end result is a cache of simple, meaningful, handstamped pieces (think kids’ names or a special phrase) that [...]
Cards Inspire Random Acts Of Kindness
Springwise: Random acts of kindness are almost always met with a warm reception, whether they’re motivated by a game, a hotel’s philosophy or the premise behind a clothing brand says trendspotter Springwise. Now aiming to make such acts more frequent, New York-based KIND Snacks has launched an effort to use cards to remind people to [...]
Sickness Helps Discover Lucrative New Biz
Women Home Business: Carol Perkins was leading a glamorous life as a Ford model — appearing in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and modeling for clients such as Victoria’s Secret. Until she got sick. Women Home Business reports that Perkins was diagnosed with Cushing’s Syndrome, which was caused by a tumor in the pituitary gland. From a [...]
The Lunchbox That Lasts A Lifetime
Fast Company: There’s an interesting product review over at Fast Company. Designed by Whipsaw, the hot Silicon Valley industrial design firm, the Yubo lunchbox is a super-cool, super-functional box launched by a new company called Kinsco. A year ago, when the economy was tanking, Harden and his team were sitting around talking about designing products [...]
School Menu Each Day Via Twitter
Springwise: School lunches are increasingly a focal point in the ongoing battle against childhood obesity. Following survey results suggesting that one of parents’ top concerns is that they don’t typically know what’s on the menu on any given day, the UK’s School Fund Trust has partnered with Somerset County Services to publish its school menu [...]
Entrepreneur Corner: Steve Blank over at Entrepreneur’s Corner posts the four rules for running with the big dogs. Four great startups were trying to resegment an “Existing Market” – one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. [...]
Springwise: Foodie website food52 is one with an especially clear premise: 52 weeks, 52 recipe contests, and a crowdsourced cookbook to celebrate the result. Conceived in part by former New York Times food reporter Amanda Hesser—who has also written several cookbooks in her own right—the site is now on its 13th weekly contest, this time [...]
npr: A bra that can be turned into two gas masks. Research into whether it’s better to be hit over the head by an empty or full beer bottle. NPR reports on the Ig Nobel Prizes. They are not to be confused with the Nobel Prizes, the world’s most prestigious awards for intellectual achievement. As [...]
CNNMoney: Once you find a good idea, don’t move halfheartedly. Scott Anthony is the managing director of Innosight Ventures, an investment firm in Watertown, Mass. He often assigns one employee to examine all of the company’s new ideas. CNNMoney reports a case in point: When one of Anthony’s partners at Innosight wanted to create a [...]
AfterShark: Treasure Chest Pets
WalletPop: Having a good business idea isn’t enough to make money. You also need the means to execute it. Inventor Lisa Lloyd showed up on ABC’s Shark Tank a nervous wreck: sleepless, mortgaged to the brink of disaster, and unable to meet the demands of her business without some quick capital. Banks were of no [...]
Carell’s Daughter Profits From Paparazzi
San Francisco Chronicle: Steve Carell’s 8-year-old daughter is learning how to profit from her dad’s celebrity status by selling lemonade to paparazzi lurking around their Los Angeles home. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Carell admits he had low expectations for little Annie’s business venture, and he was shocked when his daughter came back with [...]
Gadget To Snip Open Frozen Treats
The Windsor Star: Jim Georgopoulos invented the Freeze’n Snip a gadget to snip open frozen treats. It snips the niggly edges off frozen treats like a Freezee. The end of the long frozen tube is inserted and with a single jab, the Freeze’n Snip snags and snips the edge, which falls into a storage area. [...]
Old New, Layaway Online At Kmart
WalletPop: Kmart made news last year when it revived its layaway program and sister store, Sears, quickly followed suit. Now, both Kmart and Sears are extending the program to online shoppers, bringing a decidedly old practice to the newer medium. WalletPop writes that the whole process is really pretty simple. Plug in your zip code [...]
Did you love history in school, but see no way to make it pay other than academia? Think again. Washington Post: Bruce Weindruch, 55, has done a cool thing. He has taken the subject of business history and found a way to build a successful business around it. The History Factory builds Web sites, makes [...]
Mom Invents Hammock-Style Seat For Babies
Richmond Baby & Toddler Gear Examiner: On a flight to New York with her infant daughter Kadie wanted to improve the experience she had with her baby while flying. “If only I had a place to lay her down to be able to interact with her, a place to change her diaper or a place [...]
The New York Times: For more than 500 years the book has been a remarkably stable entity: a coherent string of connected words, printed on paper and bound between covers. But in the age of the iPhone, Kindle and YouTube, the notion of the book is becoming increasingly elastic as publishers mash together text, video [...]
Must Have Cool Gadgets For Your Business Trip
photo credit: roland FastCompany: Canon Pixma iP100. Roughly the size of a piece of paper itself, Canon’s 4.4-pound mobile printer fits in your travel bag and is faster than most desktop printers (black-and-white clocks in at three seconds per page). Add Bluetooth ($50) and skip fussing with USB cords. Most of us don’t really care [...]
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Santa is getting savvy this season. Parents who wish to have their children’s photos taken with him will have to pay a $15 service fee reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Santa’s PR person explained that the new fees are because of a high number of no-show appointments the previous year. Of the advance fee, [...]
Evaluating Your Companies Culture
photo credit: Korean Resource Center 민족학교 BusinessWeek: Choreographing, or at least dancing in step with your organization’s culture, is critical to leadership. Move well with it, and it enables you to get great things done. Buck it or be victimized by it, and it can be your downfall. Within every company there is a culture [...]
On The Internet, Everyone’s A Critic
The Wall Street Journal: The Wall Street Journal poses an interesting question: If the Internet is so full of snarkiness then why do product reviews usually tend to be positive? The Journal says 4.3 (out of five) stars is the standard grade a reviewer assigns on the web. But this “grade Inflation” may not be [...]
Fantasy Buys Get Recession Check
The Wall Street Journal: The recession has brought even fantasies down to Earth. The Wall Street Journal says it’s a sign of the times that the most expensive item featured in the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog is a mere $250,000. In years past, the catalogue has boasted a $20 million submarine and a $10 million [...]
OCRegister.com: Ladera parent Lisa Ross saw a business opportunity in the budget cuts to local schools. Just a few weeks ago, she opened Apple Tree Tutoring on Bannister Street for remedial and enrichment tutoring for Ladera Ranch elementary school students. Ross, who has worked in interior design and sales, said two factors influenced her decision [...]
Realizing Profits And Missions
photo credit: ( Torsten ) When you first set out with your new business you have dreams to do great things, make people happy, healthy and the environment to overall be a better place. But sometimes along the way of increasing our business and growing to extremes we can loose sight of what we originally [...]
USA TODAY: They call it “smart” but I think it’s genius: Concern about the environmental impact of excessive breaking and accelerating has led Mexico to develop a “smart” speed bump writes USA Today. When a driver is going the speed limit, the bump retracts into the ground. Says the company manufacturing the device: “With this [...]
Minneapolis Star Tribune: In the recession, is buying American worth it? John Ewoldt has a good column in the Star Tribune about the “tightwad’s dilemma.” Ewoldt says despite higher prices, more and more Americans are looking for the “Made in USA” label. Photo by vintagegent.com.
More Benefits Could Mean Fewer Taxes
photo credit: Robert Scarth Entrepreneur.com: You’ve no doubt been at pains to cut costs during this recession. Now is the perfect time to review your hiring strategies and pay scales. More important, it’s time to look at the fringe benefits you could and should be offering. Your company might save a bundle by replacing dollars [...]
Cards That Will Do All Of The ‘Butting In’ For You
While you don’t necessarily need to be a ‘Butinski’ to tell someone you care, it doesn’t hurt either. Like many great businesses before now, Butinski Designs was born out of experience. Before becoming business partners Lisa and Michele became cancer survivors. Inspired by their personal experience, they’ve created a line of inspirational cards and gifts [...]
How To Get Yourself To Brainstorm
photo credit: brain_blogger Everyone experiences patches in life where they just cannot think straight, they can’t come up with any new ideas and they are facing a deadline. What to do? You need to do your work, you have to turn in something! Below are some tips I recently found on Toilet Paper Entrepreneur that [...]
35 Minute Video: How To Make Facebook Make You Money
Facebook Fan Pages are changing marketing for the better. Watch this video and find out how.
Say Goodbye to Training Wheels
Gyrobike: Training wheels are a thing of the past thanks to the revolutionary Gyrowheel. Gyrowheel not only keeps the bike from falling over, it also teaches correct riding technique. Gyrowheel senses unbalanced biking and re-centers the bike under the rider’s weight when the bike starts to wobble. Training wheels can’t do that! The magic is [...]
Skype Rolls Out Click-To-Call Ads
TechCrunch: Over the past few months, Skype has been testing click-to-call ads on the Web, partnering with local-business directories who pay for the calls. Skype is set to announce the official roll-out of its click-to-call advertising service with European Directories, one of the largest local business directory services in Europe. Turning phone numbers found on [...]
Kauffman Foundation Aids Entrepreneurs
The Daily Tell: Looking to help and inspire philanthropists across the country, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has created the “Build a Stronger America,” which will give entreprenuers a virtual space to discuss their various ventures while also helping them voice their opinions regarding the current economic climate. The campaign will help entrepreneurs and business [...]
Entrepreneur Finds Biz That’s Her Cup Of Tea
Star Tribune: By her own admission, Lindsey Valentini’s headlong flight into the gourmet tea business did not initially promise a very smooth landing. She had no idea how to create a marketable tea blend, Valentini said, noting that the results of experiments with various blends in her kitchen “weren’t nearly good enough.” Once she’d cleared [...]
Working With A Patent Attorney
IPWatchdog: Over the years I have received quite a number of e-mail inquiries and telephone calls from inventors who are looking for information and advice, perhaps even representation. 1. If you want to do business with a professional you need to be and act professional. Set up an appointment, speak with an assistant and go [...]
Is The Term ‘Small Business’ Demeaning?
The New York Times: Do you consider yourself a small-business owner? Or does that phrase make you cringe? Often, the terms entrepreneur and small-business owner are used interchangeably — but that’s not quite right either. Clearly, not all entrepreneurs are small-business owners and not all small-business owners are entrepreneurs. Still, there has to be some [...]
Necessity Gives Birth To Invention
The Santa Ynez Valley News: Tyler Gildred was standing in his barn in 2004, looking at industrial machine and car parts stacked to the ceiling. The Santa Ynez resident had just bought the inventory at an auction, and he was thinking there had to be an easier way to re-sell it all. “I was taking [...]
Staying Professional While Working From Home
Richmond Motherhood Examiner: There are several benefits to telecommuting, but a lot of the time raising kids while working from home just simply requires discipline. Here are some tips, developed through trial and error, to help you survive the most important balancing act you may face. 1. Get up, get dressed. Fight the temptation to [...]
A Kit to Make Any Car Drive Autonomously
This strap-on kit that makes any car drive autonomously looks really neat. I’m sure that in five years, this is going to be as common on public streets as electric cars are now. Engineering TV: Vehicles retrofitted with the Pronto4 System can perform flexible roles in a tele-operational or semi-autonomous mode. The ProntoMimic Software Suite [...]
HULU.com: In five years, wine enthusiast Gary Vaynerchuk has transformed his family’s liquor store into a booming online business worth $60 million. In this video interview with U.S. News & World Report’s Rick Newman, Vaynerchuk provides the key to monetizing content, whether it’s video, audio or blogging.
Mom Finds Niche In Green Goods & Education
Crain’s Detroit Business: Heather Carmona has a pretty busy life. As director of the Woodward Avenue Action Association, she’s constantly working to bring new resources and tools to the Woodward Corridor. But she’s also a new mom, and if that weren’t enough, she’s a “green” entrepreneur. Carmona launched Pure Alternatives about two years ago. An [...]
2010 Branding And Marketing Trends To Look For
photo credit: doug88888 They’re talking to each other before talking to the brand. Social Networking and exchange of information outside of the brand space will increase. Look for more websites using Facebook Connect to share information with the friends from those sites. More companies will become members of Linkedin. Twitter users will spend more money [...]
The Holy Grail For Potato Farmers
Associated Press: From the fields of Idaho to tasting rooms in suburban Chicago, potato farmers, researchers and industry representatives are in the midst of an elusive hunt: finding a new spud for McDonald’s french fries. Seven years have passed since the fast-food giant last added a new U.S. potato variety to three previously approved for [...]
photo credit: Hamed Saber Weekends tend to slow down for most marketing systems on the Internet, so take full advantage of the lack of competitors and start marketing the most on the weekends. If your content is one of the very few on the weekends, there’s a good chance you will obtain most of that [...]
Free Business Education Online
photo credit: carbonnyc OnlineDegreePrograms has put together a pretty comprehensive list of more than 100 hundred places online to get a free business education. Some of their list includes: MIT OpenCourseWare. MIT offers a ton of free classes from their Sloan School of Management. Michigan State University. MSU has an International Business section of courses [...]
Boost Your Productivity And Profits By 40%
photo credit: jmmcdgll In business we would all like to profit as much as we can, and so we are always looking for new ways to boost not only our productivity but our profits as well. Below are some tips on how you can boost your productivity and your profits by up to 40% that [...]
NPR Gets $3 Million For Hyper-Local News Initiative
TechCrunch: NPR has received $3 million in funding to launch a new journalism project that will focus on providing in-depth, hyper-local coverage on community-specific issues on an online platform. NPR received $2 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and $1 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The new funding [...]
Social Media Best Practices: Getting Started
The following is a guest post by By Veronica Fielding of Digital Brand Expressions. Small businesses are jumping onto the social media bandwagon to promote their brands. To help them become more savvy about this medium and avoid the pitfalls, I have put together a list of best practices for communicating via social media channels: [...]
Companies Beware: Online Defamation Is Serious
Kiplinger: Defending your business online can be a matter of survival. Companies that ignore damaging and often malicious attacks are taking a big risk. And the danger is growing as negative comments are increasingly being posted online in blogs, chat rooms, online industry forum boards and consumer protection and public service sites. Even small and [...]
Powerful Rules For Negotiation
photo credit: ol slambert Tim Berrys Bplans: I’ve never taken a negotiation course; not the ones they advertise in magazines, and not one in business school either. These rules are things I learned the hard way. Find the win win in the negotiation. You will never find yourself in business as a winner while the [...]
