Archive for May 2011
Mirta de Perales was rich and famous in her home country of Cuba, but all that changed when she left in 1962. With only a few dollars and her two children, she decided to build her way back up in business. She started at the bottom, but she eventually found success again in the cosmetics [...]
We’re just coming off of Mother’s day, the perfect day to let our mother’s know just how much we love them. It also celebrates their ‘super’ abilities. Christina Grushkin is one of those moms. After spending nearly 10 years working in advertising, marketing, and sales, she left the business world as an employee and returned [...]
Self-Driving Cars Coming to Nevada
Google’s self driving cars will soon be a reality, if a Las Vegas-based lobbyist does his job right. Google is quietly lobbying for legislation that would make it legal for self-driving cars to drive legally on public roads. The vehicles have already been tested on more than 140,000 miles of California roads, extra-legally, you might [...]
Indonesian Entrepreneur Finding Worldwide Success
Fahima is the founder of Virus Communications and CEO of Virtual Consulting. She also happens to be one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Indonesia. The British Counsel recognized her as one of 10 International Young Creative Entrepreneurs in 2007, Business Week named her one of 25 Asia Best Young Entrepreneurs, and she even won [...]
Business Ideas from Twitter: Fashionable Orthopedic Shoes
@abhijithrao: Lady in next room at orthopaedic clinic cribbing 2 the Dr. abt the lack of designer prescription shoes. Business idea, anyone?
Virtual Mirror: Try On Glasses on Your Computer
Japanese eyeglass company Zoff has launched a new service on their website allowing users to try on glasses using a augmented reality virtual mirror . Using any computer with a web browser and webcam, users align their heads with an area marked in the screen and the glasses appear like magic on the face on [...]
Today in Entrepreneurial History: May 10
Today in 1893, the tomato legally became a vegetable in the United States. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit, under the Tariff Act of 1883. Some background after the jump.
Video: How Not to Move Furniture
Of course it’s a fake, but it’s funny.
Cheri Garcia started with an idea. How do you enjoy a beautiful day floating in the pool while getting the best tan possible? So, she created an inflatable device, called Luminous Envy, which enhances the tanning experience. According to NBC DFW, she is getting ready to team up with a hotel chain to get her [...]
Reaching An Alternative Market Through Natural, Organic, And Eco Sales
The trend toward and eco-friendly lifestyle is always growing. People are beginning to care a little more about what is in their food, the ingredients in their moisturizer, and just how earth-friendly the products they buy really are. Individual sellers are popping up everywhere to help fill those needs, and Ecobold is giving them a [...]
Mompreneur Dabbling In A Little Of Everything
Jan Tiffany is the mom of two boys and the owner of three businesses. With the help of her husband, Tiffany has successfully managed to grow three businesses while raising a family. According to The Charlotte Observer, her businesses started like many others: through a need. Q. How did Jumpin Jacks begin? We started Jumpin [...]
Finding Funding In Unusual Places
Lucy Valena was mentally ready to become a coffee entrepreneur, but her wallet was not. She lacked savings and collateral, but she had determination. So, she reached out to the SBA. Rather than give her a loan, they told her to try the Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream program. According to USA Today, she [...]
Can your small business have a web presence without a website of its own? As the WSJ reports, yes you can: When Leslie Richin launched a public-relations business after getting laid off in 2009, her first instinct was to invest in a company website. But hiring a professional to build one for her wasn’t in [...]
CSO Online: In a world where we share more information online than ever before, it might seem impossible to disappear completely. But Frank Ahearn can help. A professional skip tracer for many years, he tracked down ‘missing’ persons for clients who were searching for them for legal or financial reasons. His arsenal included use of [...]
No one has anything nice to say about stink bugs, unless you are Andy Strube. Sure they are still pests, but they are pests that inspired him to invent and start a business. According to The Daily Journal, lost his job and was faced with the need to sell his home. He began renting a [...]
According to The Columbus Dispatch, Chris Hawker has been blessed with publicity on a grand scale. His tear-free onion goggles help stop eyes from tearing up while cutting and onion. With a simple enough approach, Hawker has hit a successful stride as his invention finds its way all over television. It has been mentioned on [...]
PostNet’s Boost This Biz Contest
PostNet is on a mission to inspire entrepreneurs across the country and award one deserving business owner a game-changing $10,000 cash grant and $5,000 towards design, print, copy, and shipping at their nearest PostNet location. Business owners looking to take their business to the next level are encouraged to enter PostNet’s Boost This Biz contest [...]
The Woman Behind The Women’s Network
Vicki Donlan is in her element. As she talks to one female business owner, she reassures her that the challenges she is facing can be conquered. She reminds another woman that there are only 24 hours in a day, putting emphasis on the balance required to run a small business, reports boston.com. She is in [...]
If you’re one of the many who have decided to put off retirement or you’re simply not quite there yet, Garner News offers a couple tips on how to prepare for retirement at the last minute. If you have no employees other than your spouse or a partner, you can establish an “owner-only” 401(k), also [...]
$120k in Two Days Selling Dead Osama T-Shirts
Sometimes you just have to be the fastest to profit from a trend. One young entrepreneur grossed $120k in two days selling t-shirts celebrating the assassination of Osama Bin Laden: Maurice Harary, 23, set up his T-shirt website Osamadeadtees.com as soon as he heard that the former Al Qaeda leader had been shot by U.S. [...]
Contest: Big Break for Small Business
My startup story was commissioned by American Express OPEN as part of their Big Break for Small Business contest. You can learn more about the contest on FaceBook. Other bloggers that have written similar, but slightly shorter, pieces include: Small Biz Trends Chris Brogan Serious Eats Duct Tape Marketing
My Big Break: A Lucky Accident
If you haven’t yet read my (long) post about how I accidentally started a blog as a business (this one), you really should take a few minutes today and give it a read. You can imagine my surprise when I saw that the first full day that ads had run I made $28.83 on 24 [...]
Why Clothes Aren’t Clean Anymore And How To Profit From It
Have you noticed that your laundry room contains a whole bunch of products designed to pretreat your clothes before you wash them? Do you remember these from your childhood? Probably not, because they didn’t exsist. In 1993 TSP (Trisodium phosphate) was outlawed in the United States as an additive in laundry soap. TSP is a [...]
Barry Slayford, the inventor of the arson-proof mailbox in the UK, has spent the past 12 years working on a center that will help bring inventors together so they can innovate. It is destined to become a one-stop place for inventors to receive advice, support, and the space they need to innovate. Mr Slayford said: [...]
South African Business Women Doing For Themselves
Women in business are receiving empowerment everywhere in the world, including South Africa. Nicci Columbine is one of those women. She is drawing on the resources offered through the Businesswomen’s Association to help her succeed, reports FM. Columbine’s motivation for creating her own business was to become empowered. “I wanted to realise my full potential [...]
A Lot Of Opportunity For Little Thai Entrepreneur
What do you do when people love your food? Package it and sell it in stores, so more people can buy it. It sounds like a good next-step approach for any good restaurant entrepreneur. So far that approach is also working well for Rod Jiang, reports Times Colonist. Three varieties of pre-cooked chicken and rice [...]
Mining Social Media For Stock Trends
Need to know where the stock market is going? Do as the pros do and search through Tweets. USA Today reports there is a new trend rising among the people who work on Wall Street. They are using computer programs to analyze the messages posted on social media websites to determine how well a stock [...]
Today in Entrepreneurial History: May 6
1835 – James Gordon Bennett, Sr. publishes the first issue of the New York Herald. 1840 – The Penny Black postage stamp becomes valid for use in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 1844 – The Glaciarium, the world’s first mechanically frozen ice rink, opens. 1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened [...]
. How do you sell a luxury home in a down market? The same way you sell anything: you sell the benefits, and not the features. The 4,250-square-foot, 14-room home sits on a half-acre lot and features four bedrooms, 3.2 baths, a large screened-in porch with a chandelier, but it also has something that no [...]
Internet Improves Life But Hurts the Economy
The internet improves our lives, while at the same time “hurts” the conventionally measured economy: Today these magic wands exist. For example, a couple of years ago, Google waved a magic wand that transformed millions of Android phones into sophisticated navigation devices with turn-by-turn directions. This was functionality that people had previously paid hundreds of [...]
For the first time in 20 years, the number of homes in the United States with television sets has dropped. The Nielsen Company, which takes TV set ownership into account when it produces ratings, will tell television networks and advertisers on Tuesday that 96.7 percent of American households now own sets, down from 98.9 percent [...]
Forget Electric Cars, Electric Roads Are Coming
The biggest problem with electric cars is that their range is limited because they can only store so much electricity in their batteries, without the battery size growing prohibitively large. But, what if the energy storage burden was shifted from our overworked cars to the road? Researchers at the Energy Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State [...]
Say It With Flowers – Internationally
If you haven’t gotten your mother anything for Mother’s Day yet, maybe daFlores.com can help you out. They are a flower delivery service that is willing to ship to people around the world. It doesn’t matter if you or the recipient is somewhere within North, South, or Central America. You can even wish your “mum” [...]
Verizon Seeking Hardest Working Mom
According to AOL Small Business, Verizon has started a contest looking for the hardest working small biz mom. The contest, which is open until May 22nd, is searching for moms all across the United States. There are two main requirements: you must be a mom who runs a small business and you must use Verizon’s [...]
Inventor’s Revolutionary Walking Stick
Arthur Evans has completely renovated the cane as we know it. According to Portside Messenger, his device, called the Powercane, may become the latest must-have tool for the baby boomer generation. Mr Evans, 59, says his patented technology will have wider application for trade and emergency service tools. He says the extending and retracting Powercane, [...]
Today in Entrepreneurial History: May 5
1809 – Mary Kies becomes the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread. 1835 – In Belgium, the first railway in continental Europe opens between Brussels and Mechelen. 1891 – The Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening [...]
iPhones and Doctors Are Like Chocolate and Peanut Butter
If you’re in the business of making software for medical doctors, this factoid may be useful: According to a recent survey of U.S. physicians, 61 percent intend to own an iPhone by the end of 2011. This is up from 39 percent at the beginning of the year and compares with the iPhone’s 24.7 percent [...]
Concrete Mixing Kit Promises To Help ‘Mix-It-Quik’
If a contractor wants to move quickly while working on a house, it helps to have a list of tricks up your sleeve. Patrick Senn has one trick, but it is so effective that he has been able to make a business out of it, reports Wicked Local Dedham. Q: So you developed Mix It [...]
Mother Nature Network has an interesting interview with worm wrangler Bentley Christie of RedWormComposting. Bentley Christie is a blogger, entrepreneur and composting worm guru. The father of two lives with his wife, children, two cats and “a bazillion” red wiggler worms in Ontario, Canada, where he spends his time running his business Red Worm Composting, [...]
Breastfeeding Dilemma Leads To Business Inspiration
Judi Weinstein was ready to breastfeed her first son, but latching problems made that difficult. That experience left her with a plan B: to pump and store breast milk for bottle feeding. Unfortunately, she encountered another roadblock during that process. Determined that there had to be a better way to pump, store and feed the [...]
Dominic Wilcox has found a way to make it easier to do something most people will not admit to: playing on the phone while in the bathroom. Although you may not be willing to admit that you have used the phone while visiting the toilet or taking a bath, he openly admits it and he [...]
Business Insider: New York-based Goodsie just created a super simple way to set up branded online shops. Goodsie makes setting up stores very similar to setting up WordPress blogs. Users choose from multiple layout options, color pallets, background patterns, and typography without ever having to muck in code. “I have tried at different points in [...]
Becoming A Social Entrepreneur
Scott Harrison was one lucky 28 year old. He found himself sitting on a beach with the perfect girlfriend, a Rolex watch, and a beautiful car nearby. He was living the life he had always dreamed of, but it was not enough. He suddenly realized something about himself that he did not like, and he [...]
Many adults yearn for the warm summer days of their youth, when they whiled away the days lazing on a few rough planks, twenty feet up in an old oak in their backyard. Today, because they’re adults and have jobs that pay real money, they don’t have to settle for used lumber: The trend has [...]
Today in Entrepreneurial History: May 4
1871 – The National Association, the first professional baseball league, opens its first season in Fort Wayne, Indiana. 1904 – The United States begins construction of the Panama Canal. 1904 – Charles Stewart Rolls meets Frederick Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England.
Building A Better Carseat Cover
Jessica Kim’s daughter was born in the middle of a cold Chicago winter. It is that experience which ignited the inspiration that would become her business, Babbaco. That winter Kim did what every parent does, she covered the baby seat using a blanket. Unfortunately that blanket was a little too slippery, sliding off the carrier [...]
A Wholesale Source For Buyers And Sellers
For buyers and sellers, finding the right balance can be tricky. Sellers need to find a the right match for their product, while buyers need to find the right wholesalers to work with. That is where Wholesale Central comes in. Wholesale Central is a website dedicated to helping buyers and sellers make that connection. There [...]
How I Accidentally Became a Professional Blogger in 2001
Thanks to American Express OPEN for sponsoring this post as part of the Big Break for Small Business program. Visit FaceBook.com to learn more about the Big Break contest. Enter your small business for a chance to win a trip to Facebook headquarters for a one-on-one business makeover and $20,000 to grow your business with [...]
According to Coolum News, Geoff Flett spent 57 years on the golf course. During that time, he did not like how the cart held his clubs and wondered if there was a better way. Then he invented it three and a half years ago. For just $1500, Yamba’s Flett has produced the Flett Cart, a [...]
Recognizing A New Group Of Australian Women In Business
The Telstra Business Women’s Awards has launched once gain in Australia, and it is bringing women together for the chance to win $200,000 in cash and prizes. The 2011 awards were unveiled today, featuring three main categories: private and corporate, business owner, and community and government. They are also featuring two special categories; one is [...]
