Archive for 2011
Today in Entrepreneurial History: December 31
1600 – The British East India Company is chartered. 1695 – A window tax is imposed in England, causing many householders to brick up windows to avoid the tax. 1759 – Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness. 1879 – Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the [...]
5 Things Every Small Biz Owner Should Know About Online Marketing
The following is a guest post by Kari DePhillips. Believe it or not, there’s no secret to online marketing. At least, not any more than there’s a “secret” to algebra. Once the fundamentals are learned, the rest is a total cakewalk…only more fun and profitable. The trick is getting started, which can be intimidating if [...]
Niche: Healthy Vending Geared Toward Kids
SeacoastOnline.com: It is no secret that childhood obesity and its associated risk factors have become a great cause for concern across the United States in recent years, but self-described social entrepreneur and advocate for healthy living Andy Mackensen wants to change all that. “Obesity is getting out of control,” said Mackensen, who grew up in [...]
End Of Year Traditions: Uncluttering Your Desk
During the past 12 months your desk or home office has probably seen new piles of papers simply stacked everywhere. With the new year approaching, it is time to start a new tradition. Before you welcome 2012, USA Today recommends you take a moment to clear out the clutter and start afresh in the new [...]
Small Biz Resolutions: Time Off
Entrepreneurs are known for working long hours with few breaks. Well, UK entrepreneurs hope to change that next year by taking a little more time off. One in every five UK small business owners will be making a New Year’s resolution to take more time off, according to a survey by XLN Business Services. In [...]
What is it About Yogurt and Cupcakes?
The following is a guest post from the Blog Content Guild. If you live in the U.S., you’ve probably noticed that cupcake shops and frozen yogurt shops have been doing increasingly well in the past few years. Both types of shops have been popping up all over the country, and they always seem to be [...]
As 2011 comes to a close, here’s a look back at some of our most popular posts of the year: How I Accidentally Became a Professional Blogger in 2001 Book: Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath in Your Industry Amish Raw Milk Smugglers So You Want To Start A Business? Infographic: What Are [...]
Today in Entrepreneurial History: December 29
1851 – The first American YMCA opens in Boston, Massachusetts. 1949 – KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule. 1959 – Physicist Richard Feynman gives a speech entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, which is regarded as the birth of nanotechnology.
Basement Businesses: Tree Enterprises
Success is not easy, but with persistence it is not impossible. That is something Tish Terry has learned since launching her company in her father’s basement 32 years ago. Tree Enterprises has grown slowly, but success for her company is not far. She realized there was a market for children’s rest mats and sheets and [...]
Where there is a problem there is often an inventor nearby who is trying to find a solution. With snow falling in many different states, the latest inventor to receive the spotlight is Patrick Burke. He has redesigned the snow shovel based on his own need for comfort. He said his goal was to eliminate [...]
Universities Failing Female Inventors
Bloomburg BusinessWeek: Male academics are much more likely than their female counterparts to start companies to exploit their inventions, studies show. That’s a problem, because if female academics aren’t building businesses based on their research, they aren’t benefiting from the rewards that high-growth, high-tech companies emerging from universities provide. Why aren’t women starting university spinoffs [...]
Today in Entrepreneurial History: December 28
1612 – Galileo Galilei becomes the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star. 1895 – The Lumière brothers perform for their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines, marking the debut of the cinema. 1912 – The first municipally owned streetcars take [...]
Five Star Holiday Decor Offers Entrepreneurs A Five Star Opportunity
While you’re busy taking down all of your holiday decorations this year, just imagine how nice it would be to have someone who would do that job for you. If you enjoy the work, imagine receiving money for taking down decorations around your neighborhood. That is the basic idea behind Five Star Holiday Decor. As [...]
Infographic: Getting Your Business Noticed
The idea, “If you build it, they will come,” may have worked in theory for a 1990′s movie, but it does not sit well for small business marketing today. CreditDonkey has pulled together a unique infographic on social media, and how it is the key to small business. Infographic after the jump.
Women’s Progress In Business Slowing?
There has been a lot of talk about the successes women have seen in business, but are those trends really stalling? The Australian recently mentioned a comment by Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, about women in the boardroom. “Women made tremendous gains in the 70s, 80s and 90s,” said Ms Whitman. “But the [...]
My Fox 9: Tony Morley is one of only about 300 full-time toy inventors in the United States, so there’s a good chance that one of his projects — beginning as a crude sketch — is now sitting on a store shelf. “I try to come up with toy concepts that big toy companies would [...]
The Twirling Christmas Ornament
Christmas may be over, but many of the ornaments and their inventors will live year-to-year. John Garver is one of those people. Known to most as a twirler, his ornament lives on in Christmas history. In 1954, he struck a deal with the Mahoning Valley-based Plakie Toy Co. to produce the ornaments. The dazzling trinkets, [...]
Niche Biz: Bicycle Powered Television
The next time your child asks to watch TV, make them pedal their way through it with the 123GoTV. This unique device, when hooked up to the television, makes it so kids must pedal their bicycle to keep it turned on. When a bicycle is hooked up to the 123GoTV and a television it becomes [...]
Fashion may come in seasons, but the need for quality clothing at reasonable prices will never go out of style. That is a combination one Compton clothing store has hit upon. Jai Hawkins, 24, is the owner of Zazz Boutique, a women’s clothing store on Compton Boulevard. Hawkins got her business license and officially opened [...]
Creating More Jobs: Male or Female Entrepreneurs?
Forbes: Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate that only 12 percent of self-employed women had employees in 2010, as compared to 19 percent of self-employed men (see figure below). Almost 16 percent of men in business for themselves had one-to-four employees and 2 percent had five-to-nine workers, while the numbers were 10 percent and 1 [...]
New Year Minimum Wage Increase
If your business is located in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont or Washington, make sure you’re prepared for an increase in minimum wage. Rates in these states will range from $7.64 per hour (in Colorado), to $9.04 (in Washington) in 2012. The small boosts for 2012 are estimated to tack an extra $582 [...]
Bangor Daily News: The endrepreneur undertakes exit behaviors throughout the life of the venture and assumes the financial risks of leaving the business. These behaviors affect the options for exit. Some exit behaviors are intentional, such as succession planning, and some are unintentional, such as a decision to compete on price that ends up devaluing [...]
USA Today: Final numbers won’t be out until Jan. 12, but estimates of both in-store and online retail sales suggest shoppers ignored many of the lingering economic warning signs. But all that spending doesn’t equal a blockbuster holiday season, when higher consumer prices are considered. The National Retail Federation on Dec. 15 raised its estimate [...]
If you want to be prepared for tax season next year, now is the time to absorb all the information you’ll need and make a few changes. Several of the enhanced deductions available to business owners and the self-employed have to do with the purchase and depreciation of assets. And currently, the IRS designates different [...]
Depending on which side of the industry you’re on, people believe fitness is either dying or alive and well. For young entrepreneur Adam Shaw, it is the latter, reports The Shields Gazette. Without grants or business training, Mr Shaw only opened his fitness venture in October – but it’s already proving a winner. Employing three [...]
Huggies MomInspired Grant Helps Mompreneur Launch Baby Sleep Program
West Linn Tidings: “My children were really poor sleepers, and I thought I was going to lose my mind (on) sleep-deprived days, and I had a lot of friends having the same experience,” she said. “As my children got older … I just really saw the need for the sleep coaching, because parents were really [...]
As 2011 comes to an end, we need to prepare for the new year. Business Insider has a couple ideas that will help you get a good start in 2012. Change Your Passwords Make a new end of year ritual. Change your passwords. As a small business or entrepreneur, you’ve no doubt shared your password [...]
How to Give Beer for Christmas: Rare Beer Club
Fast Company: Offering beer as a token of holiday goodwill can be tricky. It’s gauche to put a six-pack under the tree, and nothing says “I forgot” like a brown bag with a ribbon around its neck. The solution: the Rare Beer Club. Each month, members are mailed two, four, or six 750-milliliter bottles of [...]
Infographic: How Your Amazon Order Reaches You
If you’ve ever wondered how your Amazon package goes from your click to your door, the infographic below may help shed some light on the process.
Small Business Trends: Overall, small business owners tend to “hold the line.” No matter what the economic situation, over the past 10 years the percentage of entrepreneurs who are planning to add employees has consistently surpassed the percentage planning cutbacks. This doesn’t surprise me, as entrepreneurs who work closely with their teams are likely to [...]
Baskit Geni Proves Dragon’s Den Wrong
Jacqueline Williams always believed she had a winning product. When the Dragon’s Den investors rejected her idea, she didn’t let that hold her back. Now, she is proving them wrong. Now the businesswoman is having the last laugh after landing a deal with a supplier who wants 20,000 Baskit Geni’s for garden centres in the [...]
UK Entrepreneurs Don’t Stop For The Holidays
Fresh Business Thinking: The Sage Omnibus surveyed over 1,000 small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from its 800,000 strong UK customer base and found that five per cent of business owners are planning on working on Christmas Day, seven per cent on Boxing Day and ten per cent on New Year’s Day. Furthermore, it showed [...]
Self-Employment Assistance For Unemployed
Yamhill Valley News-Register: SEAP gives an option for individuals with unemployment insurance claims who are identified as being likely to exhaust their benefits before they return to work and may have what it takes to create their own business. It’s a chance to determine if self-employment could be the individual’s best option. “They self-select for [...]
Today in Entrepreneurial History: December 21
1620 – Plymouth Colony: William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts. 1844 – The Rochdale Pioneers commence business at their cooperative in Rochdale, England, starting the Cooperative movement. 1913 – Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross”, the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World [...]
Badpreneuer: How One Guy Failed 10 Times
If you think you’ve had your fair share of failures and bad luck in life then think again as you meet Simon Jameson – an entrepreneur that has not only failed once in business, but 10 times. “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” – Thomas A.Edison Launched this [...]
The Science of Christmas Trees
WSJ: Christmas tree geneticist John Frampton rubs the sprigs of a two-inch seedling, planted two years ago from the seed of a fir cone from the Uludag Mountain region in western Turkey. This Uludag seedling tube is one of thousands in a greenhouse at North Carolina State University, where Mr. Frampton tests DNA and blends [...]
CNN Money: America’s love affair with the irreverent, tacky and politically incorrect is making millions for at least one business. Carson Home Accents, a 41-year-old, family-owned company based in Freeport, Pa., struck gold recently when it started manufacturing and selling RedNek Wine Glasses. The company, a wholesaler of gift and home decor items, started making [...]
Adjustable Swimming Pools: Hidden Water Pools
Hidden Water Pools look like traditional pools until the owner presses a button on the attached control panel. Within seconds, hydraulic lifts, powered by the pool’s own water, slowly raise the floor of the pool up. As the pool floor rises, the water flows to the edges where it then drains beneath the pool floor. [...]
Small Business in Tough Economic Times
The following is a guest post from Kelly Austin. It is possible to own and operate a profitable small business during the recession. Starting a small business does not mean you have to do the business indefinitely and running a small business can be temporary to help provide some income to help pay for bills [...]
Giving The Gift Of Information
Not sure what to give your young aspiring entrepreneur this year? Why not send a few entrepreneur memoirs their way? Entrepreneurial memoirs, whether they are displayed as printed books or on electronic tablets, are a treasure chest of information and entertainment. They fit the bill perfectly for all work-for-yourself wannabes on your holiday list, for [...]
Switch-A-Dish Inventor Not Yet ‘Homemade Millionaire’
She may have won on Kelly Ripa’s cable TV show, “Homemade Millionaire,” but Karen McCombs is not a millionaire… yet, reports lohud.com. What Ripa’s show — in which regular folks presented their inventions to a panel of experts and competed for a pitch spot on HSN — gave to McCombs was not a million dollars, [...]
Huffpost Tech: A Japanese inventor has revealed his latest creation – an LED inserted in your nose that lights up when you breathe. The strange device casts a ghostly blue light through your nostril every time it senses a draft. It is the brainchild of Noda Akira, who says he simply attached a temperature monitor [...]
WaveMaster Making Waves In Dock Industry
In October, we featured an article about the WaveMaster boat docking system. His docks are truly a green product, and they are made in the USA. He is an inspiration to many entrepreneurs who hope to follow the same path. We recently got in contact with the founder of WaveMaster, Larry Moody, and asked him [...]
Cinnamon: The Smell of Christmas (Retailers)
Martin Lindstrom: Carefully camouflaged tubes strategically placed amongst the tinsel and glitz were piping in the sumptuous smells of Christmas: a perfect mix of cinnamon and pine. Although it seemed I’d gotten to the nub of the issue, I was still perplexed. I mean, can a tube dispensing cinnamon and pine really compel me to [...]
Brain Swaggle: Where Scrabble Meets Chess
Vindy.com: Brain Swaggle is an interactive game that combines Scrabble and chess, making for an online game that’s strategic and stimulating, said Downing, the game’s creator, who is from Cortland. “I thought that it would be cool if somehow a game could be created combining the strategy of chess with the vocabulary skills needed for [...]
Parli-Cards Makes Parliament Fun
Trying to find a fun way to educate your kids about government-related topics? Mary Jo Joyce found a way to do that with her unique card decks. The three Parli-Cards games produced so far test a player’s knowledge of American history, U.S. presidents, the political process and even the federal government’s abundance of agency acronyms [...]
Small businesses do what they can to protect themselves from being robbed, but what about employee fraud? Fraud is occurring in companies of all sizes, and it is up to you to find ways to help prevent it from happening in your company. While small business owners may not have the man power to employ [...]
Niche Biz: Electronics Charging Kiosk
Chicago Sun Times: His winning idea is to put cellphone-charging kiosks at malls, airports, grocery stores and other sites where people are in a hurry. A 10-minute charge at the Charge N Go kiosk would cost $1, and would juice up smartphones, laptops and tablet computers. Users could lock their device inside the kiosk while [...]
The Globe and Mail: It sounds like the setup to a bad joke: Two men drive a truck crammed full of skivvies across the country. But Got Ginch, Brent King’s cheeky charity campaign, isn’t just for laughs – it’s fulfilling a desperate need at homeless shelters coast to coast. A successful biomedical entrepreneur who invented [...]
Quirky is the home to many unique inventions that were dreamed up by people like you and me. While looking for something unique this season, why not consider these products from everyday innovators. Digits Don’t let the cold keep you from your connections! Digits are mini conductive pins that attach to the gloves you already [...]
