Archive for August 2011
Top Ten Home Business Ideas for 2011
The following is a guest post by Scott Lindsay. Everyone dreams of working from home but it is hard to find a job that would allow you to work from home and make enough money to support you and your family. However, if you look hard enough you can find a number of work from [...]
WorldCrunch: China’s unmatched counterfeiting skills seemed to reach a new peak with the recent discovery of an entirely fake Apple Store in Kunming. But other shady salesmen are now taking the faking in another high-end direction: the counterfeiting of vintage French wines. Industry experts says more and more “French wine,” whose actual origins are yet [...]
InstyMeds: Pharmaceutical Vending Machines
InstyMeds is bringing vending machine convenience to the world of medicine. The Star Tribune has more: It looks like an oversized cash machine. But instead of spitting out greenbacks, it dispenses prescription medicine. For Michael Powell, who slipped his debit card into one of the machines at North Memorial Medical Center recently, the on-site convenience [...]
Idea Cafe: 16 Years and Counting
Congratulations to Idea Cafe on their 16 anniversary! Idea Cafe is one of the few independent sites for small business entrepreneurs that predates this one. Here’s to 16 more years!
Not sure what you should do? Maybe it is time you sat down in front of a mirror and asked yourself exactly where the business is going. Here are a few questions to ask yourself. The answers you give will help guide your business in the right direction. Question One: How much sales revenue do [...]
Replacing Gasoline With Thorium
You may find yourself spending a lot of money on gas for your car today, but the car of the future may only require 8 grams of thorium. Thorium is abundant and radioactive, but much safer to use than an element such as uranium. When thorium is heated it becomes extremely hot and causes heat [...]
Financing During A Tough Economy
Need to raise money for your business? Here are a few tips from entrepreneurs who have been there and funded that. Micro Loans If you are looking for a loan under $50,000, a microloan may be the way to go. The Small Business Administration’s Microloan Program provides small, short-term loans through specially designated intermediary lenders, [...]
Agro Co-op was facing a serious problem. Before having their molasses tank filled, there were no apparent leaks. After it was filled, it wouldn’t stop leaking. Worried about how they were going to get the mess under control, they called a local inventor — Glen Cox. Glen is the president of Zengo Inc., and he [...]
Business owners often learn from their mistakes, but it doesn’t hurt to learn from the failures of others, too. Forbes has pulled together a list of expensive mistakes you should avoid. Don’t make wildly optimistic sales forecasts. Test and adjust your projections, based on experienced advisor input and industry norms, rather than the Google high [...]
Hand Turn Signals For Cyclists
Whether it is to safe money on gas or a need for exercise, cyclists are popping up everywhere. It was when Jack O’Neal was stuck behind a cyclist signaling with his left hand that he was struck with inspiration. That inspiration became YouTurn. He has created unique gloves cyclists wear that help signal their intent [...]
Lessons Learned From Summer Jobs
Do you remember a particular summer job that helped inspire your interest in business? Richmond BizSense has 6 stories from entrepreneurs who were inspired by the jobs they worked during one summer long ago. One of those people is Jennifer Whitlock. She now owns a help desk company, but she still remembers the job she [...]
Hit Up Credit Unions for Low Interest Rates
With the words “double dip recession” on everyone’s lips, it’s no wonder that lenders are becoming even more parsimonious with small business loans. Small business loan approval rates by large, national banks fell from 9.4% in May to 8.9% in June, and industry analysts predict that lending will only tighten. Though large banks shy away [...]
Planning For Retirement As An Entrepreneur
The following is a guest post by James Wilson. You throw open your wallet all the time as a small business owner. The printer is out of paper – out comes the wallet. You’re a little short on payroll – out comes the wallet. It’s time to retire – out comes the… whoops. It’s easy [...]
Can You Just Build a Better Mousetrap?
A reader wrote: Who said “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door?” Is it true? The phrase is usually attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. The phrase is actually a misquotation of his statement that, “If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, [...]
Video Interview with Kleenslate Concepts: Dry-Erase Inventor
Last year on this date, Rich Whittle spoke with with Julia Rhodes, who took her dry-erase marker eraser invention and turned it into a big business. Video below.
iPad Covers Made from Bernie Madoff’s Clothes
CNN Money: If you’ve ever dreamed of turning the tables and taking Bernie Madoff to the cleaners, here’s your chance. John Vaccaro, a New York entrepreneur, is selling iPad covers made from the disgraced financier’s tailored clothes. Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison in June, 2009 for swindling billions of dollars from clients [...]
Buying and Selling Parking Spaces
Autotopia: A new iPhone app has created a marketplace for public parking, connecting those vacating a space with those searching for one — for a fee. Parking Auction launched earlier this week on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The matchmaking service is beta-testing, and the folks behind it hope to expand worldwide, creating communities of relaxed, [...]
Kid-friendly business ideas are everywhere. With a little imagination and time, kids have been finding unique ways to make money for many years. Cole Amyx is one. At 13 years old, he currently runs a dog toy business that sells through an online website, dog parks, and street fairs. This line of dog toys by [...]
What do you do if you were once an aircraft mechanic with a passion for space shuttles? You create a unique baby walker, of course. Samuel Odwalu Mayson has had some trouble working his way off the streets. Jobs seem to be scarce, but he was determined to do something. So, he is working on [...]
‘EZ-Out’ Easy Way To Profit For Inventor
Hate trying to pull your credit card out of that small wallet slot? John Higgins has created a little slide in holder that makes credit card removal easier. Now he hopes to market it as a cheap gift credit card companies and banks can give to their customers. Inserted into a wallet compartment, the EZ-OUT [...]
Berks-Mont: As you research franchises, ask about the required experience, if any, as well as the expected hours and personal commitment necessary to run the business. You also should learn about the franchisor’s background. For example, what is the company’s track record and how are other franchisees in the system doing? The upfront cost of [...]
Mom Owned, Mom Approved Taxi Service For Kids
Sometimes parents can feel like a taxi service, but Sharron Gay really is one. She is the founder of Mom’s Taxi Service. Whether you don’t want your kids riding public transportation, the school bus, or you need someone to drive your kids from school to their sports practice, Mom’s Taxi Service does it all. Inspired [...]
WSJ: Anyone who has seen a Major League Baseball game the past few years has seen the absurdity: wooden bats constantly splintering, shattering and breaking, their shards fluttering across the field and occasionally into the stands. But where the rest of us saw an annoyance and potentially a danger, two fans saw a business opportunity. [...]
A Coffee Lid That Makes Coffee Taste Better
When a plastic lid is heated from a hot beverage it emits a scent of plastic. Even a hint of plastic odor will adversely affect the coffee. The problem is hot beverages create thermal waves that hit the coffee lid and cause it to release this undesirable smell. Since taste is 80% aroma and because [...]
Restaurants Growing Vegetables in Milk Crates
Urban restaurateurs with plenty of left over milk crates and not enough vegetables have discovered a novel solution: Savvy urban restaurateurs from New York to California have recently discovered that growing their own produce, whether on a rooftop farm or a neighboring site, is easier than trekking to local farmer’s markets or buying from suppliers—and [...]
The Bad Economy is Creating More Entrepreneurs
Duane Zobrist writing for Fast Company: The struggling economy has turned up the volume of the voice inside the heads of potential business owners that says, “What do I have to lose?” The excuse of job security given by employees as the reason they never started a business has been disproved by the current recession. [...]
Towing An Iceberg to Africa Will Really Work
In the 1970s, with the backing of a Saudi prince, Georges Mougin proposed dragging icebergs from the North Atlantic to the drought-stricken shores of Africa. Most experts laughed at him, and ever since, iceberg towing has been a mainstay of business opportunity scams and lore. Well, it turns out that the “experts” were wrong. It [...]
Caramels For Every Sweet Tooth
In Janet Shulman’s caramels, you’ll find local ingredients. Whether it is Schlafly beer or bacon from Missouri-based pigs, reports Ladue-Frontenac Patch. Shulman, the mother of two, is a self-described “mompreneur.” As her children went off to school, she worked at various jobs and became known as a never-say-no volunteer. But she always felt it was [...]
Minneapolis has launched a unique service that helps connect inventors with lawyers who will work on their case pro bono. Each participant needs to attend a training program on intellectual property and is required to do a patent search to see if their ideas are new. Inventors also will have to file a provisional application [...]
Some companies offer their employees paid sick leave as a part of their benefits. However, should small businesses be required to pay for sick leave when their employees need time off? That is a part of the debate happening in Seattle between the city and small biz owners. Under a Seattle City Council proposal, Proios [...]
Google created App Inventor so people could create their own apps. Now they are preparing to shut down the service. The service launched in private beta last summer and opened to the public in December. But it hasn’t progressed very much since last year. It’s still fairly difficult to create complex Android apps using the [...]
The Remote Controlled Flying Fish
Air Swimmers are inflatable, helium-filled remote controlled fish that “swim” through the air. The use four AAA batteries (three in the controller and one in the fish) to fly indoors for more than 4 hours. Although the promotional photo above looks cheesy, in the video below they look exactly like what you’d expect a sharks [...]
Loans and Grants for Small Businesses
A reader wrote: Do you know of some place online that I can see different business loans and grants that are available for small businesses? Great question! I do in fact know of one. Small Business Loans and Grants from Find the Best is a great tool that lists nearly 800 different loans and grants. [...]
Fast Company: oBaz is short for online bazaar, and like that famously fluid market environment, it’s all about haggling to get what you want. Think of it as a Groupon in reverse: Advertisers go to Groupon with a deal offering, and if enough punters sign up the deal’s a go. At oBaz, a community of [...]
Naked & Famous Denim is a blue jean company in Montreal, Quebec that uses the most unique and rare denim fabrics from Japan. The prestigious mill in Japan, from which they import all our fabric, is committed to producing only the best (and most expensive) denim in the world. Their newest creation: glow in the [...]
YourDeerParkNews: If you’ve ever missed an event that you really wanted to attend but it was too far away or didn’t fit in your schedule, you’ll love this business idea by Deer Park resident Chris Watt. Watt founded Kuwa Kuna, a “virtual event cameras” service. “Kuwa kuna” is Swaheli for “be there” and that’s exactly [...]
Ideas Are The Easy Part: Thomas Edison
In 1926, Thomas Edison sent a brief letter to one of his employees congratulating him on his ideas but warning him about the road ahead. A transcript of the letter is below: My dear Mr. Emmet:- I want to thank you for your letter of the 23rd, with its enclosure, and at the same time [...]
On TV: Making Money from Other People’s Junk
A new flea market reality show debuted last tonight on the Discovery Channel. Called Dirty Money, it is the story of two brothers, John and Jimmy DiResta, who turn dumpster-dive trash into amazing works of art, and then sell them at flea markets and swap meets. John and Jimmy DiResta live and breathe flea markets. [...]
Last year on this day, Angela posted an interview with one of my favorite businesses in NYC: Liceenders. If you haven’t read it, do so and let it inspire you. I never would have have imagined how easy it was to turn something disgusting and shameful into something that is totally normal and profitable? I [...]
In the book Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death, by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen we meet characters like Lou Stellato, a futurist among funeral directors, who declares, “Funeral service as we know it is over.” Cullen’s book explains the issues of the shifting funeral industry and, incidentally, the process that [...]
Advertising on Volleyball Bikinis
DailyMail: Britain’s female beach volleyball champions are renting out their rears in an advertising deal that encourages spectators to photograph their behinds. Zara Dampney, 24, and Shauna Mullin, 26, have turned their bottoms into their bottom line by wearing bikini briefs with a Quick Response (QR) code printed on the back where it will catch [...]
When I hear the word sommelier, I think of a wine professional; someone who tastes wine for a living. It seems I was too narrow in my definition. In Germany, there’s a water sommelier who can help you choose which water to go with your meal. Water from Northern Germany tastes fizzy. Spanish water tastes [...]
A herd of dairy farmers were having dinner one evening when someone wondered aloud if there wasn’t something that they could do with all of the bovine excrement. In jest, someone else asked, “Can’t you guys make a flowerpot or something with the stuff?” Those were fateful words for brothers Ben and Matthew Freund, second-generation [...]
Health Insurance from Walgreens?
Are you ready to buy your health insurance over the counter? Coming this fall, when you visit a Walgreens drug store, you might be able to pick up some health insurance to go with that cough syrup. Citing sources “familar with the matter”, the Chicago Tribune has reported that the “company will sell health insurance [...]
Sleevecandy, an online store that aggregates thousands of one-of-a-kind, pre- owned, t-shirts from Salvation Army stores, officially launched last week at www.sleevecandy.com. Sleevecandy donates 30% of each sale to The Salvation Army’s adult rehabilitation programs and helps the environment by re-using t-shirts. The site provides customers with authentic collector, vintage, and “accidently ironic” t-shirts. Such [...]
Where to Find Business Plan Templates
A reader wrote: Hi Dane, can you recommend a website where I can find business plans that I can modified and use as models of my own? Sure! BusinessPlanTemplate.net is a website with more than 30 free business plan templates that you can edit, customize and print for free. There are more than 30 business [...]
Nevada Distillery is First Of Kind
To those of us who haven’t tried to open a business there, Nevada seems like a libertarian utopia. Casino gambling all manner of victimless crimes are legal there. But, as one husband and wife tea of entrepreneurs discovered, there’s one thing you can’t do: Launching a business is a feat unto itself, but starting the [...]
Skillshare: Anyone Can Be a Teacher
SF Gate: There aren’t many legal ways to make $1,000 in one night. But Skillshare, a startup that lets any person teach a class and charge students for tickets, says 15% of its instructors have made that much money. SkillShare is a New York startup with a lofty goal. It wants to turn every address [...]
Government War on Kid-Run Concession Stands
This map is from the Freedom Center of Missouri shows the Government War on Kid-Run Concession Stands. In it red and yellow cities are highlighted that impose restrictions on kids who want to set up a front-yard stand to sell lemonade, cookies, or fresh produce. Red flags indicate a town that has shut down a [...]
Google’s First Self-Driving Car Accident
According to Jalopnik, Google has had its first fender bender with its self-driving car. Exclusive photos on the website show the car after the small accident. Will this cause a hiccup in the future of driverless vehicles? The Prius — recognizable as a Google self-driving prototype from the roof equipment that’s smaller than a typical [...]
