Business Opportunities Weblog

November 4, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

For all the continual media frenzy over Facebook and Twitter, the most remarkable social networking story of all may well be LinkedIn, the global social network for business professionals founded by serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur Reid Hoffman in December 2002 reports The Telegraph.

While the LinkedIn 50 million may pale in comparison with the Facebook 300 million army, its achievement is quite remarkable when one considers that there are only around 360 million white collar professional people in the entire world (at least according to the latest International Department of Labor numbers).

So over 10% of the world’s professionals are already on LinkedIn. And with the social network now signing up a new member every second of every hour of every day, it shouldn’t be too long before the other 90% of the world’s business professionals eventually wind up in the LinkedIn universe.

According to Kevin Eyres, the London based Managing Director of LinkedIn’s European operation, it’s all about professionals now “taking more responsibility for their own careers.”

In the current recession, he explained to me when we spoke on the telephone yesterday, everyone is “thinking like an entrepreneur.” Getting onto LinkedIn allows us to be “proactive” in building our own networks, finding new staff, rebuilding one’s career, “showcasing” skills and, above all perhaps, organizing one’s “reputation”.

Photo by LinkedIn.

In Internet, Networking | 1 Comment

November 4, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

Weddings are expensive. So are engagement rings and honeymoons and everything else peripherally associated with your nuptials so Valentine’s Jewelry, is trying to help you keep costs down writes WalletPop.

The jeweler has teamed up with Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Lines to put together a really awesome offer. Customers who purchase engagement rings from Valentine’s will be given a certificate for a free, 8-day, 7-night Caribbean cruise for two with either of the two cruise lines, to be redeemed within one year.

The store is located in Virginia, but online purchases count toward the promotion as well.

Pretty sweet deal, huh? It’s not just for newlyweds — buy any diamond ring that meets the above specifications and you’ll get the cruise, too. Maybe you aren’t even in the market for a diamond ring, but you were about to buy a cruise. You could think of this as a free diamond ring with the purchase of a cruise!

Photo by andreyutzu.

In Creativity, Jewelry, Weddings | 0 Comments

November 4, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

For people who have either been forced out of their jobs or have always wished they could work for themselves, the idea of owning a small business, at first glance, may seem like a wish come true, an article in The Portland Business Journal explains.

This is the point, however, when a beginning entrepreneur needs to become familiar with the “E Myth,” which outlines what every business owner needs to know to be successful. There are a variety of E Myth books and seminars, but the one volume that explains “what every successful entrepreneur does” is Michael Gerber’s E Myth Mastery: The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World Class Company.

Gerber addresses the problems faced by people who are skilled in one particular area — say, baking, painting, web design — and then decide to make the leap from being an excellent technician to being an entrepreneur.

Gerber’s experience with thousands of fledgling entrepreneurs reflects his belief that anyone in any business can run a “world class company.” In order to do so, however, a neophyte businessperson needs to focus on running a company rather than letting the company run him or her.

In Gerber’s words “The truth is that knowing how to do the work of a business has nothing to do with building a business that works. The technician builds a business that depends upon him, around his skills, his talent, his interests, and his predispositions.

In the end, however, there is little equity to show for the investment of his time. The entrepreneur, on the other hand, builds an enterprise that liberates her, creates endless amounts of energy, and increases her financial, emotional, and mental capital exponentially.”

Photo by HarperCollins.

In Advice, Books, Entrepreneurs | 0 Comments

November 4, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

U.S. companies hurt by the global credit crisis are continuing to hold more cash, even as the economy begins to show signs of improvement, The Wall Street Journal said, citing its analysis of company filings.

In the second quarter, the 500 largest non-financial U.S. companies by total assets held about $994 billion in cash and short-term investments, or 9.8 percent of their assets, according to the paper’s analysis of corporate filings.

The trend seems to have continued in the third quarter, despite an improving economy, the paper said.

The 248 companies that have reported third-quarter results so far saw their cash holdings go up by a percentage point sequentially to 11.1 percent of assets, the paper said.

Photo by adamci.

In Economy, Money, Small Biz | 0 Comments

November 4, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

Eve Tahmincioglu at MSN Business has an interesting article about start-up business scammers.

Just ask V.M. from the Austin, Texas, area. A longtime entrepreneur in the home-building industry, he had visions of launching his own online travel and health-care insurance business but ended up out nearly $5,000. He didn’t want his name used because he’s still fighting for a refund from the company that scammed him, but his experience is a cautionary tale for anyone desperate to start a business and tempted by Web-riches hyperbole.

V.M. was initially contacted via telephone by a representative of an Internet-based company that claimed it could set up Web sites for him and that he’d be able to make more than $3,000 a month from people going to the sites. He immediately checked out the company online, coming to the conclusion that “the site looked pretty decent.”

Even though he had been a successful entrepreneur and retired several years earlier, the stock market decimated his savings and he decided to start yet another business. An Internet company seemed ideal because he wanted to work from home — and the concept seemed simple enough.

V.M. has never seen a penny, even though he said customers did use the site. He contacted the Better Business Bureau and found out the firm had a long list of complaints against it. And when he complained to the company and threatened to sue if he didn’t get a refund, he said a company representative told him, “You can sue us but no one has ever gotten money back.”

Photo by dreamjay.

In Advice, Crime, Internet | 0 Comments

November 4, 2009 by Angela Shupe | 0 Comments

MetroNews.ca:

Shirley Broback, 34, was awarded the SavvyMom Mom Entrepreneur of the Year Award for her work as producer of the Vancouver Island Baby Fair and says her win proves that self-described regular women like her can make a big difference with big dreams and big effort.

“It shows you don’t have to be a big shot, just a regular person with some big plans and the confidence to put your plans into action,” Broback said.

Broback beat out 316 other nominees across the country to win the distinction of being named Canada’s top mom-entrepreneur along with $15,500 in cash and business services. She’s overjoyed to win but credits her clients and friends for helping to make her nomination possible.

“It’s such an honour to win the award. I had so many friends and family and exhibitors rallying for me. The prizes are incredible and the exposure is just phenomenal. I think it can be inspiring to other mom entrepreneurs,” Broback said.

Screenshot from the Vancouver Island Baby Fair

In Award, Mompreneur | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Dane Carlson | 0 Comments

The following is a guest post by David Gash.

When starting a new business, entrepreneurs invariably face the brutal moment when they realize something needs to be done and they just don’t know how to do it. We let dentists fix our teeth and mechanics fix our cars; so why do we expect that when running a small business we can do everything ourselves?

The key to a successful business, especially in start-up mode, is the ability of the owner to look at the wall and say, “Mirror Mirror, on the wall…what should I hire someone else to do?” Ok, it doesn’t rhyme but it also isn’t a fairy tale. By carefully selecting professionals to support core functions of your business, you will ensure things get done right the first time and allow you the freedom to do what you do best.

When we discuss things like taxes, business leases and legal documents, it seems a no-brainer to hire someone educated and even licensed to handle these things for us. When you start thinking about things like marketing and advertising, the lines begin to blur and you begin to wonder if you should try to save some money and wing it. As a new business, you will get calls from everyone from the yellow page sales rep to the local newspaper.

Continue reading Mirror, Mirror…

In Advertising, Guest Post, Marketing | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Dane Carlson | 2 Comments

photo credit: midiman

37Signals:

Making money takes practice, just like playing the piano takes practice. No one expects anyone to be any good at the piano unless they’ve put in lots practice. Same with making money. The more you practice the better you get. Eventually making money is as easy for you as piano is for someone who’s been playing for 10 years.

This is one of the reasons I encourage entrepreneurs to bootstrap instead of taking outside money. On day one, a bootstrapped company sets out to make money. They have no choice, really. On day one a funded company sets out to spend money. They hire, they buy, they invest, they spend. Making money isn’t important yet. They practice spending, not making.

In Entrepreneurial Lifestyle | 2 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Dane Carlson | 0 Comments

A Spanish firm says it’s on track to take paying guests at the first ever hotel in outer space in 2012. A three-night stay at the Galactic Suite Space Resort will cost you about $4.4 million, but that includes an eight-week training course on a tropical island.

At least 40 people have already made reservations.

More from Reuters.

In Space, Tourism | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Dane Carlson | 0 Comments

If you had 5 dollars and 2 hours, how would you make as much money as possible?

VentureBeat:

There’s a classroom exercise that’s a part of the Stanford technology venture program hits its students with each year: If you had five dollars and two hours, what would you do to make as much money as possible? STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig discusses the query and how budding entrepreneurs responded.

How would you answer?

In Video | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at last week’s Gartner Symposium/ITxpo about what the web will look like in 5 years. ReadWriteWeb has highlights from Schmidt’s speech:

• Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.

• Today’s teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years – they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.

• Five years is a factor of ten in Moore’s Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.

• Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance – and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.

• “We’re starting to make significant money off of Youtube”, content will move towards more video.

• “Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results.”

• There are many companies beyond Twitter and Facebook doing real time.

• “We can index real-time info now – but how do we rank it?”

• It’s because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that “is the great challenge of the age.” Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.

Photo by textually.org.

In Future, Google, Internet | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Dane Carlson | 0 Comments

I’ve been getting a lots of calls and emails about Homebizlist.com and Homebizlast.com today. Seems that someone is hacking Facebook accounts today and posting false status updates with links to these sites.

Homebizlist.com and Homebizlast.com are almost certainly scams.

If you have website, you can apply for Adsense for no cost at http://www.google.com/adsense

If you don’t have a website, you can’t use Adsense.

If you have a site, and are accepted, you won’t receive a check until you’ve earned more than $100, and that can a very long time if you don’t have many visitors.

In Scans | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Dane Carlson | 2 Comments

Mashable:

More and more companies are creating iPhone applications as a way to reinforce branding and to gain new customers. Some companies are even seeing increased sales thanks to iPhone apps.

One of those is the Pizza Hut app [iTunes link] for the iPhone and iPod touch, which has now generated more than $1 million in sales according to MobileMarketer. The US-only iPhone app was first introduced three months ago.

In Food, iphone | 2 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 2 Comments

cashURwheels is an Australian firm that serves as an online marketplace connecting drivers directly with companies interested in vehicle-based ads reports trendspotter Springwise.

Whereas carvertising agencies ask drivers to register their vehicles in the hopes of eventually being one of the few selected to be part of a large campaign, cashURwheels connects drivers directly with potential advertisers.

Drivers begin by creating an online account and then browsing the available opportunities. They can create a profile including photos along with information about their driving habits and commute patterns, and then bid on ad campaigns or request contact with advertisers directly.

Auctions for advertisers include a deadline, the number of vehicles required, and a reserve price, if any. Upon winning a bid, drivers and advertisers communicate to work out the details.

Ad campaigns are conducted via car wraps—large vinyl ads applied to cars on a temporary basis, similar in many ways to the sticky car art we’ve covered before—that transform them, temporarily, into four-wheeled promotions. Currently, participation for both drivers and advertisers on cashURwheels is free.

Now serving Australia, cashURwheels aims to expand globally soon.

Photo by cashURwheels.

In Advertising, Automobile, Niche | 2 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Dane Carlson | 0 Comments

Business Week:

Dan Reynolds didn’t set out to become an entrepreneur. Instead, the full-time firefighter and former commercial truck salesman from suburban Chicago wanted to hire on with a big crime-scene cleanup company. But when he was treated rudely during his interview in early 2007, he vowed to found his own company as payback. His Chicago Crime Scene Cleanup got its first job—a messy suicide in a home in Minooka, Ill.—three months later. He’s been busy ever since. Today, in fact, the startup is up to nine part-time employees, drawn mostly from haz-mat teams at nearby fire departments, who scrub down everything, including foreclosed homes that have been soiled by vagrants and/or wild animals and meth labs. Says Reynolds: “If another contractor comes in and says, ‘Ew,’ that’s where we go to work.”

In Crime, Profiles | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Jaclyn Wells | 0 Comments

photo credit: Roshan V

Just like in the fairy tale movies created by Disney, businesses also contain trolls that lurk under your bridges to other business adventures. These trolls can be seemingly harmless provided you don’t fall into their trap. However, if you slip and fall right into their hands, these trolls can prove to be quite detrimental to your business. So what types of trolls are we talking about here? Look below for the most common ones to avoid that I recently read about on Tim Berry’s Bplans.com.

• Patent Trolls. These are the ones that grab up every single meaningless patent they can get their dirty little hands on, and then they store it away in a dark cupboard somewhere just waiting for the chance to sick them on some poor unsuspecting business who doesn’t know any better.
• Trade show trolls. These are by far the worst. They go trolling through trade shows looking for the weaker workers behind the booths, just to go up and start springing their ideas and business pitches on the poor worker who is stuck behind that small booth with no where to go, they are stuck standing there listening to their every word.
• Social media trolls. These people make many of us sick. They are the ones who use social media sites to sell their unwanted items or services to people they don’t even know and people who didn’t even ask for such products or services to be sold to them. They think that just because you interact with them one time on Facebook or Twitter that that gives them the right to pursue you through such accounts and sell you on their items.

In Humor, Protection, Scam, Tip | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Jaclyn Wells | 0 Comments

photo credit: zappowbang

Some small businesses in rather small “mom and pop” type of towns have for a long time set hour’s of operation at the low end of the spectrum, having open times equalling a mere 10 or 12 hour’s per week. However, these businesses do state that if you call them they will come up and open the business, which is a nice gesture and thought, but think of how many customers they are loosing because people don’t want to waste their time waiting for someone to come open the door for them.

When your first setting your hour’s of operation take a few surveys, ask your target audience when they would most prefer that you be open, what would be the most convenient for them to come in and on what day’s of the week or weekend.

Once you have your schedule all worked out, make sure that it is set up in an extremely easy to understand manner and put out in the front of your business and in your ads in plain view site. Now we all know that emergencies happen from time to time, but do your very best to be open on time when you say you will and try your very best not to close early. If need be in case of emergencies, maybe have some sort of back up system worked out ahead of time where someone can come in for a few hour’s to open or close for you!

Based on a post form Small Biz Survival.

In Customers, Decisions, Operations, Time | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Jaclyn Wells | 0 Comments

photo credit: kevindooley

Entrepreneur.com:

Right now, the Internet accounts for one third of the typical media day for all U.S. adults. Consumers spend nearly four hours online daily according to a report from The Media Audit–that’s 32.5 percent of their media time compared to daily exposure to newspapers, radio, TV and outdoor advertising.

The holiday season is approaching us in a hurry, and it is more important this season than ever before to have a strong advertising campaign, especially online. So many people are shopping around, researching stores, products and prices that it is almost business suicide not to advertise online this season.

When you start looking for some advertising space on different websites, be sure to do your own research and ask many questions before you buy. Make sure that the site is somewhat related to your niche, and also make sure that they will place your ad appropriately throughout their site so that it gets the attention it deserves.

Be sure to target your local audience the most. Look into doing some advertising in the local newspaper on the editorial pages as well as getting into the local flyers that get sent out with the daily newspaper and the Sunday newspaper. People this holiday season will be grabbing up those flyers and sale notices like hot cakes.

In Advertising, Holiday, Ideas, Online | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

Using public domain content as the basis for mashups is a growing trend, and one that is yielding a lot of great, original content.

Brandon Mendelson over at Mashable.com takes a look at how public domain material is being re-purposed on the web and in print.

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies
Maybe you’re not feeling overly ambitious and don’t want to create an entire universe based on someone else’s mythology. That’s fine. You can always just throw in zombies, ninjas, and sea monsters. People like it when you do that. Quirk Books had to up their print run from 12,000 to 60,000 because of the buzz around this re-imagining of Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice. The book has been so successful, a major feature film is in the works as well as a graphic novel, and multiple sequels based on other classic books have already been made.

LOLCat Bible
The LOLCat meme, which originated on 4Chan for Caturday, has come a long way. The LOLCat Bible Translation Project is funny and is a great illustration of what you can do with public content. Both Bibles (Hebrew and New) are public domain, and with the help of the crowd, the LOLCat Bible Translation Project has successfully translated the two books into “LOLSpeak.” There’s even a book coming out in January.

Fly On Time
Everything you need to know about your flight. Alright. Not quite everything, but the weather? Will your flight be on time? Thanks to information made available through Data.gov, Flyontime.us provides airline customers with plenty of useful information to help make their flying decisions. By the way, pretty much anything the federal government (US) does is public domain (though there are some exceptions). If it’s not classified, it’s yours.

Continue Reading: “How To Use Public Domain Content”

Photo by Quirk Books.

In Advice, Government, Internet | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Angela Shupe | 0 Comments

If you are creative and have a keen eye for design and patterns, you might also feel that the idea of starting an interior design business is a favorable one. While the passion might be there, it takes knowledge and skill to really get a business going. While I can’t help you acquire skill, I can offer a little knowledge in the form of Susie McKenzie.

Susie is the founder of MAC Interior Design, which she launched in June of 2008. MAC is a full-service interior design company that does everything from “simple “face-lifts” of residential spaces to hospitality hot spots.” For several years prior to starting MAC, Susie was a partner in another interior design business, Infinite Interiors.

What inspired you to get into interior design?

Well, this might sound crazy, but I “feel” energy in a space and I have the ability to manipulate it. I remember walking into amazing hotels or homes or clubs or spas – you name it, and knew that I wanted to be able to create these experiences for others as they live or work or travel in their environments. It’s truly amazing how much our environments affect us on a sub-conscious level.

Continue reading A Look Into The Business Of Interior Design

In Advice, Entrepreneurs, Ideas, Interview | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

Fortune Small Business has an interesting story about a small sports glove maker that cracked the majors by building relationships with up-and-coming baseball players.

Wilson. Rawlings. Easton. Big brands like these dominate the $132 million baseball glove industry, paying star players big bucks to wear their gear.

Enter Vinci. For the past 12 years the Richmond-based family business has sold its baseball and softball gloves to recreational and minor league players. Its revenues are in the low six figures. It can’t afford any licensing deals.

Yet the tiny company recently hit a home run. Vinci has cracked the big leagues, becoming the only glove manufacturer with less than $10 million in annual revenues to attract major league players.

By befriending promising athletes and giving them free gloves, the company tries to get a toehold with players before the bigger brands come knocking.

The strategy seems to work. In the past two years, two Vinci-equipped players have joined major league clubs: Pitcher Vladimir Nez signed with the Atlanta Braves and hurler Carlos Torres went to the Chicago White Sox. Both players brought their gloves with them.

Photo by Vinci.

In Competition, Sports, Startup | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

If you run a small business and cannot afford CRM tools like Salesforce , MakeUseOf.com has a review of Timetonote.

While it doesn’t boast of the advanced tools which paid solutions like Salesforce and Zoho offer, for a 100% free service it isn’t bad at all.

You can track leads, communication and conversations with customers & employees, manage contacts and tasks, build a list of suppliers, collaborate with your sales team and do much more. And if you wish to move to better CRM solution in future, it also lets you export your data from the tool.

Features: Track communications with customers, suppliers, leads and others, manage and organize contacts, collaborate with team members on a project and build a list of suppliers and shareholders.

Photo by Timetonote.

In Customers, Internet, Tools | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Dane Carlson | 0 Comments

The New Yorker:

Carter Glatt, a sixteen-year-old junior at the Horace Mann School, is lanky, with black hair and long eyelashes. He loves to play sports, especially football and tennis. He speaks in a slightly stiff, respectful manner that suggests that he’s used to conversing with adults. He carries a BlackBerry with a crack down the front. Last summer, he started a business, but he wouldn’t be able to run it if his mother didn’t drive him around.

Glatt’s family owns a weekend house in Southampton (his father is a hedge-fund manager), and one recent Saturday he was sprawled in the back seat of his mother’s Mercedes S.U.V., narrating a tour of the neighborhood for a visitor. “Is Bernie Madoff’s house on there?” he asked himself. “Yup, I think it’s 216 Montauk Highway.” A copy of the Hampton Star Map — Glatt’s creation, which he sells for seven dollars and ninety-five cents—was spread out in front of him.

Glatt got the idea for his map last year, when his family took a trip to Los Angeles and spent a few hours with a Hollywood star map, driving past the houses of some of his favorite celebrities (Tom Cruise, Will Smith). The Hamptons, he decided, could use a star map of their own. “There is such a dense population of celebrities—if you live anywhere out here, you’re living near one of them,” he said.

In Celebrities, Teens | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

SmallBusinessComputing.com says there are times in running a business when it’s useful to get feed back from people who give you an honest answer.

You know how it is with friends and family. You’ll say, ‘What do you think of this,’ and they’ll say ‘Oh great, fantastic, wonderful, you’re a genius,’ when what they really mean is, ‘Oh I can’t bear to break the news. It’s terrible; I’ll just stroke his ego.’

Anyway, now there’s a resource called Ask500People.com, where within 24 to 48 hours you can get feedback from 500 people on any question you’d like to put out there. So it’s a really useful research tool.

Just sign up on the site — it’s completely free — post your question, and within 24-48 hours you’ll get the results. Now if you want to narrow the results just to your existing customers, you can also embed the survey in your own Web site — very nifty.

Photo by Ask500People.

In Internet, Productivity, Resources | 0 Comments

November 3, 2009 by Angela Shupe | 1 Comment

Fort Worth Business Press:

The crowd was thick as honey around Earlene Moore’s booth during the recent inaugural Downtown Farmers Market in Arlington.

The owner-baker has a 12-year record of success with her baked goods business aptly named Breads & Moore. But on this day, the entrepreneur was surprised to find her products quickly sold out.

“There were so many people, they couldn’t get to my table,” Moore said. “Some people even bought several baked goods. People just get excited about something homemade.”

It’s those bankable made-from-scratch baked goods – sweet breads, cakes, cobblers, pies and yeast breads – that are the key ingredients to Moore’s rising success.

Moore said her Arlington-based woman-owned company, which also is a certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, is a result of a talent she didn’t even know she had.

Growing up in a small, two-stoplight town in North Carolina, Moore watched her mother as she baked for her family, which includes two sisters. She delighted in following in her mom’s flour-dusted footprints.

By the time Moore was 13, she was experimenting with and altering her mother’s recipes and those she found in cookbooks, turning out her own creative versions of Italian cream cakes, cheese cakes, carrot and pound cakes.

When Moore left home for college, she thought she’d never bake again. She graduated from North Carolina A&T State University with a degree in fashion merchandising and began a career in retail management. In 1981, Moore, now 53, became a buyer for the Army & Air Force Exchange Service headquartered in Dallas. Married since 1988 to husband, Kenneth, Moore quit her job at the exchange service after almost 12 years to be a stay-at-home mom for their oldest son. That’s when she found time to take up her passion for baking again.

“I had to teach myself how to bake again,” she said. “I was in Texas, married to a Texan, and a long way from home. So I got videos and cookbooks from the library and taught myself how to bake.”

A friend at a local hair salon, the Hair Doctors, let Moore bring some of her tasty treats to the shop for customers to sample.

“They fought over the bread down to the last piece,” Moore said. “That’s when I got my business started. They sponsored me. They bought business cards for me and the ingredients for my baked goods and let me sell my products in the salon. That was 10 years ago. I’m forever grateful to them for giving me my start.”

Image from Breads and Moore

In Food, Mompreneur | 1 Comment