On November 22, ideablob is sponsoring the “Pitch George” competition. It’s an opportunity for young entrepreneurs to present their business idea and get great feedback from an impressive panel. The event is open to high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni. The judges will include metropolitan entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and GW alumni. In the final round of judging participants will receive their final ranking along with cash prizes up to $1,500.

Ideablob is a site designed to help small business people share great ideas, and vote on the best ideas. The winners get $10,000 each month from Advanta, a company that issues credit cards to small businesses. Advanta as well has a really interesting history. It got its start loaning money to school teachers to tide them over during the summer months and during strikes, something that at the time was unheard of in banking circles.

I had the chance to interview Ami Kassar, Chief Innovation Officer of Advanta and ideablob.com about the “Pitch George” initiative.

Cristian: You are sponsoring an event at George Washington University called “Pitch George”. What is the Pitch George competition?

Ami: “Pitch George” is an opportunity for high school students, undergraduates, graduate students and alumni of GW to pitch their business ideas to a panel of professionals. It is a great way for young professionals to get feedback from a panel of successful metropolitan area entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and GW alumni. Not to mention, a great way to sharpen up their pitching skills.

Cristian: What are the main judging criteria for the contest?

Ami: The panel will evaluate the participants based on their business idea & context, the idea content & quality, and their presentation style.

Cristian: Applications for Pitch George are already closed; can you say a few words about the participants?

Ami: The participants are current GW students, alumni and local high school students. I’m sure it will be a great group of students, and we look forward to awarding the ideablob.com cash prizes to the most promising graduate and high school students.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Marketing Treasure Hunt:
The Value of Franchise Opportunities to Entrepreneurs
Congratulations for being one of the people who have realized what it would really take to succeed in this world. What does this mean? Well, you are one of the people who have realized the fact that entrepreneurship is the true answer to success.

Most people nowadays think that the only way they can succeed in life is to go to a good school, graduate, get a job, and get promoted until they are at the top of the company. Well, here’s some news for you: even executives do have some people to answer to.

The ones truly at the top of the corporate chain of command are the ones who started the business in the first place: entrepreneurs. You see, entrepreneurship offers you the chance to be the boss. Entrepreneurs get the real money while executives get salaries.

But how do you get to be an entrepreneur? Well, you’ll need to resolve yourself and make a decision to take a risk. What you need to do is start your own business and strive to be the best.

If you think about it, you will realize that Bill Gates had to start somewhere, didn’t he? You need to start somewhere too. Most entrepreneurs open up small size businesses. These businesses often cater to their immediate community. However, these types of businesses rarely become big. In fact, most businesses like these often die out with their owner.

Another disadvantage with businesses like this is the fact that the risk factor of failure is much greater. By starting your own business, you will have to establish a name and reputation, something that isn’t really done easily or quickly.

So, most entrepreneurs turn to franchising opportunities in order to get their business going. Franchise opportunities help entrepreneurs by providing them with the name and reputation that comes with a big corporation. Franchise opportunities help entrepreneurs get started in the world of business.

Read full article.

PR Web:
Downward trends in the stock market, housing foreclosures and massive job layoffs are creating a tight squeeze on family budgets across the country and the globe. But while budgets have been reduced the entrepreneurial spirit hasn’t — especially in the growing “mom owned business” sector. As much as one-third of moms recently surveyed (Allen & Gerritsen, 2008) say they have had to find new sources of income to deal with the impact of the current economy. Women’s small business consultant and mentor, Nicole Dean, understands this kind of pressure all too well and decided to do something about it.

“When I started working at home several years ago I was pleased that I could pay things like the car note. Eventually I was able to pay the mortgage. When recent economic changes hit our household I was pleased that the income from my home business had grown so significantly that I could cover all the bills myself. Women thinking outside the box and choosing to become entrepreneurs to save “the family farm” isn’t a new phenomenon but it is a trend being fueled by the Internet and the marketplace access it offers to new business owners. That’s why I created the service http://showMomthemoney.com”; explains Dean.

Dean created showMomthemoney.com to help women sift through the borage of make-money-at home-offers that have proliferated throughout the Internet and that often target vulnerable audiences like cash strapped women who are at home caring for children. Dean’s showMomthemoney site offers a wide range of resources, guides and information many moms have turned to recently not just because of the resources offered, but because of Dean’s respected profile in the work at home mom community.

Anchorage Daily News:
In mid-Spenard, in a tiny house the color of salmon roe, sit racks of trays and 30-gallon barrels crawling with crickets, mealworms and mice.

A little shop of horrors to the warm- blooded of the species. A gourmet buffet to those whose blood runs cold.

This is the Alaskan Reptile and Cricket Ranch, Dianna Smith, proprietor.

It’s no picnic being a bug and rodent rancher. Smith has hundreds of thousands of worms and bugs to tend to. Plus, she just got a shipment of 748 mice, and they are some righteous breeding, eating and excreting machines. Chores keep her busy seven days a week. Filling feed troughs, cleaning pens, launching the occasional escapee roundup.

Smith wants her charges healthy and happy, even though they’re destined to be lunch. No, especially because they’re destined to be lunch. People’s pets depend on them — snakes, lizards, frogs and birds in particular.

Although the reptile part of her business isn’t happening yet, she swears it’s coming. Designer snakes, lizards and such.

“Eventually I’m going to have my own little retail,” she said. “I’ve dreamed of this ever since I was little girl. If it kills me I’m going to have myself a reptile store.”

Read full story.

PC World Canada:
Find an Affordable Web Host
The Web site for your new business has to reside somewhere. How do you pick a Web host that won’t leave you high and dry?

Most hosting plans for small companies offer similar features: basically unlimited storage space, support for common databases and publishing systems, and anywhere from a few gigabytes to 2 terabytes of data transfer per month. Expect to pay between $5 and $15 a month for the service, with a one- or two-year up-front contract.

How to pick one from the dozens out there? Look for reviews from recent users, with a particular focus on how quickly the host resolves problems and how often the service goes down. If you expect sudden, big influxes of traffic due to promotions or Digg-like flooding, you’ll want to ensure that the host can handle it. Ask about these issues if the company doesn’t have written policies.

If your business is blog-centric, you can get started for free with a hosted service such as one from WordPress. You can always move to your own Web host later when you outgrow it or are ready for more.

Get Logos and Design Work
Numerous Web sites, such as Logo Ease and LogoMaker, will design a free logo for you based on options you set via a Web interface. The quality varies, but generally you can get the logo for free for online use. The services make money if you want to download the logo in EPS format, which is more suitable for printing on T-shirts and coffee mugs. A Web search for “free logo” will turn up dozens of additional alternatives.

Another, possibly better, approach is to seek out an independent designer to work on your logo. If you don’t need anything fancy, you can find someone to do the job for $50 or less through a simple Craigslist ad. The advantage is that you get to work with a live person (with genuine artistic skills) to create something unique for you rather than a cold, computer-generated logo.

As for Web design, you’re unlikely to encounter someone who can create an original site for you for a fee within our $100 budget range. If you can’t afford a real designer from the start, begin with a simple layout and customize it as you go–but try to avoid making incremental changes every day or week. When it’s time to redesign, do all the work at once to avoid confusing and alienating your readers for a protracted time.

Build an E-Commerce Site on the Cheap
If you’re planning to sell a lot of physical goods, you’ll need a service that can handle e-commerce transactions, process credit cards, and provide security for both. Setting all of this up on your own server is an expensive, time-consuming task laden with security risks. It’s best to outsource the functions to a hosted service targeted at merchants. Such services can be surprisingly affordable. Yahoo’s popular Merchant Solutions start at $40 a month. E-commerce sites at Netfirms start at a mere $15 a month. You can customize both extensively to match your desired look and feel.

Read more.

Springwise:
Home security may be an age-old need, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be addressed in a thoroughly modern way. To wit: AlertMe, a service that combines home security and energy monitoring for automatic delivery via the web or a mobile phone.

Originally released in January, AlertMe is a wireless system whose security component monitors doors and windows and detects motion or other potential emergencies within the home. Users can self-install the technology without the need for wires or drilling; rather, they simply place a set of sensors around their home. Those sensors then communicate wirelessly with a hub that gets plugged into the home broadband connection. Then, in the event of a burglary or a smoke detector going off, a sensor is triggered to alert the hub, which sends the information to the AlertMe servers; those, in turn, send an instant alert to the user via mobile phone. The system is controlled via key fob, with battery backup and GPRS connection in case broadband goes down.

In September, AlertMe announced a new application for its platform that will add energy-monitoring capabilities to the security system. Called the Smart Plug, the new technology plugs into any outlet and uses the same AlertMe hub to monitor and control the energy use of any appliance that’s plugged into it. More.

news.newamericamedia.org:
When An Pham immigrated to the United States from Vietnam in 2004 at the age of 40, she left behind her career as a college teacher. New immigrants from Vietnam like her often found entry-level jobs in the nail industry. But Pham sought a different path.

She wanted a new career, but thought “I’m too old to go to school.”

While reading a Vietnamese language newspaper, she said she saw an ad from Anew America Foundation about a business incubation certification training, and decided to sign up.

”At first, I [thought] I get a job,” said Pham, who said she eventually wanted to start her own business. “The program,” she said, taught her, “how to do a business plan.”

Pham’s first venture was opening a store in San Leandro, Ca, that imported and sold pottery from Vietnam. The pottery in Vietnam is “beautiful and cheap,” she noted. “I thought, why don’t I bring my pottery here to sell?”

As she grew her business, Pham took ESL classes at Berkeley City College, eventually earning an associate’s degree in international business. She’s currently enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program in international business at San Francisco State University.

Pham has moved onto her second business, and founded Global Investment for Trade, LLC., through which she promotes business and education exchanges. Pham was honored last Thursday by AnewAmerica Foundation with the “Entrepreneur of the Year” award for her work to connect businesses in Vietnam with power from solar and wind.

“Our entrepreneurs are not only connected to the local economy, but the global [one] too,” said Mimi Nguyen, AnewAmerica Foundation senior program manager. “An, she’s creating jobs on three continents…” Read full story.

Can you make a business from shopping bags? Can you make shopping bags eco-friendly? There is actually a way to make them both - saving the planet from plastic bags and make a business out of it. What can be better for a Greenpeace volunteer? Here is what I found out:

Cristian: Hi Faith. Welcome at Entrepreneur Interviews. First tell us a little bit about yourself.

Faith: Hi Cristian. The environment and other ethical issues have been something that have always interested me and I believe to be of the utmost importance. I have always tried to put this into practice in my everyday life and raise awareness of these issues through my work as a teacher and the various volunteer positions I have taken over the years at Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Amnesty.

Cristian: And a few words about your business?

Faith: Bags of Change is totally unique. Our beautiful shopping bags are not only attractive and affordable alternatives to throwaway plastic bags, they also give customers a great discount incentive to shop ethically in over 70 shops across the UK, www.bagsofchange.co.uk/shops
So, by helping to change people’s shopping habits, we’re also helping to reduce the amount of plastic bags used in the UK and supporting small, independent, ethical retailers at the same time.
As we like to say, ‘It’s all in the bag!’

Read the rest of the interview.

Best Syndication:
Many people decide to start their own business because of gut feeling or an understanding of the industry in which they wish to establish their enterprise. However, instinct is rarely a compelling reason to abandon the security of regular employment to chase a dream.

Research and planning are both valuable weapons in any potential small business owner’s armoury. Establishing the size and nature of the potential market and then planning how to infiltrate and exploit it are vital first steps before launching into business of any kind. Without knowledge of the size of the market, the number of potential customers and competitors, products or services cannot be developed and sold at sustainable market prices.

That is where the business plan comes into its own as it is the blueprint for future development of the enterprise. It serves as both the agenda for running the business and also an indispensible document with which to approach potential partners, banks or other financial institutions to secure business finance.

Fortunately, there are many people and organisations willing to offer help to people wishing to write their own business plan. It need not be an expensive exercise and indeed should be treated as the first serious challenge by anyone wishing to establish their own business empire. In the age of the internet, valuable help is also offered by peer groups via blogs or forums, which is in addition to help that is available from banks and government organisations.

Free advice to entrepreneurs as well as small and medium enterprises on a whole range of issues affecting them is widely available from such organisations. They have specialists in situ for whom, for example writing a small business marketing plan is bread and butter to them; a valuable resource indeed!

New Mexico Business Weekly:
A new business resource center aims to help military veterans succeed as entrepreneurs.

The nonprofit Veterans Procurement Assistance Center, which opened in mid-September, is unique in more ways than one. It is one of the only privately funded veteran’s business centers in the country.

Executive Director Archie Garcia, principal founder of the center, said the organization is better able to be an independent advocate for veterans. Most veteran’s business centers are funded either by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or by the federal government.

“We don’t want to bite the hand that feeds us,” Garcia said, explaining that to be a true advocate, the center had to be free of federal ties.

In addition to volunteering his time and resources to the assistance center, Garcia runs his own e-commerce software company, diversityvendors.com, out of his home. As a veteran of the U.S. Navy with 25 years experience in business, Garcia knows first-hand about the difficulties of navigating the system, and many veterans are saying the assistance center is a much needed entity. Read more.

PowerHomeBiz:
1. Implement systems that measure and track the results of ALL of your marketing, advertising and publicity efforts

2. Look for new ways to re-position products or services you provide to attract a new market segment. Example: Re-position Yoga as “Fall Prevention Strategies for Seniors

3. Find new distribution channels for your products whether it’s through the Internet or other retailers who are selling complimentary products or services.

4. Create Joint Venture Arrangements with other complimentary, not competing Businesses. For example an accounting firm could go to their legal firm and offer to hold a seminar on “Tax Reduction Strategies” for the their (legal firms) clients as a special bonus.

The accounting company may get new clients and the only cost is their time. One stipulation, the accounting firm must offer a special seminar to their clients on “How To Structure Tax Shelters for Estate Management”. Both companies benefit.

5. Have a “Rewards Referral Program ” for your existing customers and let them experience how it will work.

6. Know the numbers in your business. Find out what products and services make the most profits and which ones make the least.

Start promoting or up-selling those first. Do you know the average transaction value which is the average amount each consumer pays you at the point of purchase? Go find that out now and then ask yourself the question “How can I increase that amount by 10% by adding or bundling in extra value?

There’s more here.

Chain Leader:
Today, as our world seems to get smaller through computer technology and instantaneous communication, the option to outsource a wide variety of services is easier than ever before. In fact, there are very few restaurant operators today that don’t outsource. It’s a cost-effective solution that frees up operators to focus on managing and expanding their companies. Here are functions chains should consider outsourcing.

1. Equipment repair, preventive maintenance and facilities cleaning
Keep your equipment in top-notch condition and properly maintained by professionals without having to staff this talent in house. It’s less expensive to properly maintain equipment than to repair it.

Keep your restaurants in spotless condition by hiring an experienced cleaning service. Regardless of whether you have five or 50 restaurants, this service moves the responsibility for basic cleaning from your expensive hourly staff to a low-cost service with the same results.

2. Legal services including franchise development and sales
For small chain operators, legal and franchising (development and sales) are some of the most frequently outsourced services. As you grow, your dependence on a more comprehensive legal department will grow. But while you’re small, outsourcing these services makes a lot of sense. When you start spending upwards of $100,000 a year, you will probably bring the legal and franchising departments in house. Until then, outsource it.

3. Accounting and payroll services
Accounting and payroll tracking, computation, processing and management are some of the most frequently outsourced areas. Most restaurateurs outsource their accounting and payroll functions when they’re still one-unit firms. Very few operators handle the technicalities of accounting and payroll when their time is better spent managing the company. More.

Interview with First Global Xpress - an innovative shipping company
November 11th, 2008
no comment Posted by admin

You would think that running a shipping company with the current fuel prices and the financial turmoil it’s probably not a very good business. Well, think again: think about shipping for less (exactly what people are looking for in a slowing economy) and shipping greener (in a fuel starved time). I’ve got the chance to talk about all this with Justin Brown from First Global Xpress - a new breed of shipping companies that work on business models better adapted to the new economic situation. Here is what I found out:

Cristian: Hi Justin and Welcome on board. Tell us a little bit about your company, what does it do?

Justin: Hello Cristian, thank you for taking the time to learn a bit about First Global Xpress. FGX is an international air courier company. FGX competes with larger courier companies including FedEx, UPS, and DHL in the international shipping market. We have been able to compete successfully because we ship directly from point A to point B (unlike our hub-and-spoke competitors). By shipping direct FGX saves our clients time, money and even reduces their carbon footprint.

Read the rest of the interview.

In celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week Nov. 17-21, Northwestern Oklahoma State University, as a partner in the Oklahoma Partners in Progress and member of the Northwest Oklahoma Alliance, will play host to Entrepreneurship Day “From Passions to Profits: Building Your Business” in the Student Center Ballroom on the Alva campus from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 20.

During this week, regional entrepreneurship events are taking place statewide to assist communities (the “we”) and entrepreneurs/small business owners (the “me”) in hearing from other entrepreneurs and communities about what it takes to start/operate a business in a community.

“This event fosters our university mission of ‘preparing its members for service as leaders and entrepreneurs,’” said Patti Wilber, associate dean for economic development.

“We are particularly interested in providing this opportunity to our students interested in entrepreneurship,” Wilber said.

Keynote speaker Clay Clark, president and founder of DJ Connection, Inc., in Tulsa, was named Oklahoma’s 2007 Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

Oklahoma communities noted for their entrepreneurial spirit will have representatives speaking about what they are doing in their areas.

Other speakers include Dr. Janet Cunningham, university president; Wilt Brown, Hobart city manager; Bill Baker, Sallisaw city manager; Maxine Thomason, Mangum mayor. Business owner speakers Tommy Hudson, Rural Waste Solutions, LLC; Steve Weber, Cactus Canyon; Glenna Mae Hendricks, Small BIZ Survival; Con Pekrul, Plain View Winery; and Matthew Bixler, American Iron Sports, will speak during various points of the day about marketing and managing, networking and other related topics.

While attending Northwestern, Bixler became involved with the Walch Center for Business Development and Career Services and was able to develop a business and marketing plan.

“He is a success story from Northwestern’s incubator and has a main office in Tonkawa,” Wilber said.

Bixler is the founder and manager of American Iron Sports and was the driving force for the invention of “The Natural.” “The Natural” not only catches pitches thrown by a hurler, it also indicates whether the pitch was a strike or a ball.

Resource providers will be on hand to answer questions at their booths.

Registration for the event closes Friday, Nov. 14. Contact Yolanda Creswell, assistant director of the Walch Center for Business Development/Career Services, at (580) 327-8438 or yfcreswell@nwosu.edu for registration information.

Are you looking to start a consulting business? Do you wonder if you will be expected to know everything that could possibly go wrong with your clients’ problems and potential problems?

The fact is, you don’t need to know absolutely everything in order to start a consulting business. And the notion that you would even be able to know everything when it comes to technology is very unrealistic. The following 3 pieces of advice can help you learn which skills and what type of knowledge you need to have to start a consulting business the right way.

Read the article.

Derek Johnson is a young entrepreneur that back in 2007 while being a college student saw an opportunity to launch a website to allow members of a group to communicate more easily using their cell phones. Within a few months of launch the site grew to over 400,000 users and over 15 million text messages. It’s a concept that’s now been adopted by various websites and companies, most recently by cellphones provider o2 whose latest line of o2 phones is said to come with a unique web to mobile phone compatibility for a more seamless interaction. Here is the interview:

Cristian: Hi Derek and Welcome on board! I will get right on with the questions. So tell us a little bit about your business.

Derek: Our business is pretty simple, we have built a website that allows any type of group; athletic team, college organization, family, business etc. the ability to communicate more efficiently with their group members by using their cell phones. Tatango allows a group leader the ability to jump on a computer or their mobile phone and send one message, which then gets routed to all of their member’s mobile phone in the form of a text message. Tatango betters any groups’ communication, allowing their members to stay connected anytime, anywhere. Tatango is great for last minute notifications, weekly alerts, promotional advertising, or any message that needs to be delivered to all group members immediately. Email is the new snail mail and hardly ever gets checked, and phone calls take forever, groups need to communicate in real time, Tatango allows them to do that.

Read the rest of the interview.

I was very happy to find “StartUpArabia is a blog dedicated to new Arab technology startups and services, profiling and reviewing them, providing interesting market news and information, and sharing tips and advice for entrepreneurs.”

The blog covers interesting subjects from the following countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates.

I was initially attracted by the “Young Arab Leaders Launches Entrepreneurship Initiative”. The “Entrepreneurship Initiative” aims to nurture innovation among young, small and medium entrepreneurs in the region and provide them opportunities for training mentoring and networking. Through the programme, they will learn from the experiences of other start-up and early-stage companies in the region and receive mentorship from YAL members.

Here is the rest of the article.

Once the wave of exuberance over starting a new bootstrap business passes giving way to a lot of hard work accompanied by occasional disappointment, it’s time to take some serious stock.

Unlike the funded model, there may not be any big checks in your immediate future to solve some of your major problems (like having neither the time nor money to do all the things you’d like to do from day one in your business.) This presupposes, of course, that you’re bootstrapping for the long haul not just long enough to get backing.

Remember, whether you eventually take funding for your company or not, most of the principles below apply, either when trying to start a business from nothing or when making due with whatever funding you are able to raise.
Here is the list of bootstrapping tips.

I’m quite happy to say that Mike gave me a wonderful opportunity to talk about Entrepreneurship in Eastern Europe following his excellent report on Jamaican Entrepreneurship. I would say that writing this article puts a great deal of responsibility on my shoulders, first because I have to match Mike’s article with an equally interesting one, and second because Eastern Europe is actually called home by a lot of countries with very different perspective. Lot’s of things to say, so let me make some sort of list that we can follow later if it’s the readers’ wish.

The business environment in general is very dynamic.
In Eastern Europe entrepreneurship started some 20 years ago. Without any warnings, the economies, business environments and people were forced to compete with the Western countries that built their business models in the last 40 years since WWII. This meant that we had to skip some steps and put everything on fast forward. In a way that’s good, because it saved us from experimenting the harder, longer way. But it also adds a lot of stress, you have to be competitive in the shortest time available and usually with less resources.

Read the rest of the article.

A. Dawn Journal:
What kind of courage do you need to tell your dad at the age of 16 that you are planning to quit high school? Moreover, wouldn‘t it be a lot harder if your dad is an immigrant from India who came to the U.S. with only $25 in order to pursue a better life through education and a traditional nine-to-five lifestyle?

Gurbaksh Chahal gathered that courage and asked his parents’ permission to quit school when he was 16. His dad was nice enough to patiently listen what he had to say, but still was not convinced. He asked this kid to show him some proof. He had no idea what this kid was doing in his room on the computer day and night. Once Gurbaksh showed his parents his bank account, their eyes were about to pop out in disbelief, and they thought their boy was going to jail. They started to panic. Who wouldn’t? Especially an Indian parent, to whom saving $100,000 cash would be unimaginable over a lifetime. And here this 16-year-old kid is sitting on that kind of cash.

Gurbaksh assured them that this was not stolen money and he made it from his Internet entrepreneurship. His dad eventually calmed down after listening to his explanation and gave him a one year break from going to school. Gurbaksh was 16 at that time. Guess what happened after one year? His Internet venture went so well that he was able to make $40 million in two years. So here is this 18-year-old kid who made $40 by selling his first online company ClickAgents for $40 million. Gurbaksh, or G, is now 26 years of age and last year he sold his second company BlueLithium to Yahoo for $300 million. G’s current project is gWallet – a site that allows users to find great deals…