Monthly Archives: December 2010
The Importance of Good Design for Startups
Though you may be a brand new startup without the towering credentials of your experienced competitors, you should never appear this way to your clients or potential investors. In the beginning stages of your company, it is important to give …
The 8 Vital Attributes of a Successful Young Entrepreneur
Since the age of 18 I have spent most of my adult life living the life of an entrepreneur, so it is for that reason that I'm excited to share with you what I believe it takes to be a …
Young Entrepreneurs find an Advantage — Thanks to Tech
This piece originally ran on FastCompany.com, December 22, 2010. Humorist P.J. O'Rourke titled his 1995 memoir Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut. He was writing about his journey from hippie to conservative, but the phrase applies …
Four Tips for Quality Power Networking
Every entrepreneur knows how important it is to network and build solid business relationships. Whether you engage with people online or in the real world, you are going to need others to bring your dreams to fruition. Understanding the importance …
How to Choose a Merchant Service Provider
A few years ago, my car broke down in Chicago, one late Saturday afternoon. I had it towed to the only shop that was still open.
Leading Edge Becomes Bleeding Edge with Feature Creep
This insidious disease kills more good startups than any other, especially high-tech ones, and yet most founders (who may be the cause) never even see it happening. "Feature creep" (or scope creep) refers to the penchant to add just one …
Who's Studying Online These Days?
There's no doubt about it: online education is growing. And, in a recession, where the costs of a four-year public university amounted to nearly thirty percent of a median income and private universities seventy-six percent in 2008, many people are …
Thoughts on a New Year's Business Resolution
As in our own lives, the start of a new year energizes us as business owners to sit down and plan out our goals for the coming year. We consider what sales figures we hope to achieve, the many directions …
Know Your Worth: Pricing Strategies that Work
Setting an appropriate price for your product or service is both one of the hardest and most important aspects of running a business. Most entrepreneurs don't have any idea what they should be charging. As strange as it may sound, …
The Groupon Phenomenon
What is Groupon and why in the world would they turn down a $5.3 billion offer from Google? Simply put, Groupon is the fastest growing site on the Internet and is getting bigger every day. How does it work? Groupon …
$2M Secured for Mass Relevance Social Marketing — What Does It Mean?
Just when you thought that social media couldn't add another player to the field, news comes today of Mass Relevance, a social marketing company, securing $2M from Austin Ventures and the Floodgate Fund. And that’s just the starting point. They're …
The Case for Not Having a Clear or Planned Vision
Many companies that are successful today are successful because they didn't have a plan. They just went with an idea, took it as far as they needed it to go, and then ended up on the front page of business …
Where's Sebastien? The World's Smallest Multi-National
If you have kids, you might be familiar with the Where's Waldo book series that involves finding the character, Waldo, in various settings. Well, these days, you'd have a lot better chance tracking down Waldo than finding Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin, the …
8 Best Places to Relocate for Business
The best places to relocate for building your business might not seem like the most obvious choices, but the usual contenders " Boston, New York, San Francisco " have bloated economies, high costs of living, and major crowding, so it …
Mint.com Partners with Scholastic to Help Children
Sometimes, it seems that if you had just learned about handling money when you were young, all of your current money woes would have been avoided altogether. You would have learned that a credit card is not a savings plan …
What's in a Logo?
This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Logo Mojo. All opinions are 100% mine. So you've had a brilliant idea for a new business, and you're making a list of all you need to do before …
Ten Tips for Business Traction to Attract Investors
Every investor expects to see some traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have been working 20 hours a day, and spent your last dollar, but have no results to show, investors will be sympathetic, but will …
The Basics of Brand & Keyword Monitoring
Actively monitoring a brand or set of keywords is one of the most efficient ways to conduct market research. In this article I'll explain what keyword monitoring is, what keywords you should track, how to monitor keywords, and how to …
Facebook: Company of the Year?
It's not enough that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has been named Time's "Person of the Year," but Facebook is doing better than ever — with a current valuation of $59.4 billion. The year of the Zuckerberg has finally arrived. What's in …
Reinvent The Wheel? No – Make Lots of Money by Following a Tried-and-True Business Model
There are two distinct ways to go about founding a business – running with your latest "big idea," or following a tried-and-true business model. While there is certainly nothing wrong with the person who has a vision and makes it …
Make Your Business Brand Recession-Resistant!
How many of you have tightened the purse strings because of rising prices, slow sales, the unknown financial forecast, and a potentially tough ride still ahead? Most business owners are searching for innovative ways to reduce the impact of the …
How To Start A Plumbing Business
If you're thinking of launching your own plumbing business, you should first decide on what kind of plumbing business you want to run: service-oriented or product-oriented. You can either go it alone or hire on others to work with you. …
Achieving Success with Good Employee Performance Management
When you’re in startup mode, it’s easy to put all your focus on the fundamentals of getting your product or service to market. You’re concentrating on so many things, including market research, financing, marketing, and of course sales. In the …
Apple Has Done It Again — Can Anyone Compete?
Just when you thought that the only thing Apple could do next was to reinvent and upgrade the iPhone and iPad, they did something that everyone predicted; yet many did not believe. Apple is introducing a Mac App store. That's …
4 Year-End Tax Tips for Small Business Owners
The Small Business Jobs Act and the pending tax hikes for 2011 may throw a wrench in your normal year-end routine as an entrepreneur or small business owner. But not to fear, here are four tips to weigh when delving …
