Category Archives: Business At The Speed Of Thought

Finding the money, dreaming big and spending small

Can You Start A Legit & Profitable Business For Under $20?

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Can you start a business for under $20?  Scott Allen says yes in 10 Legitimate Businesses You Can Start for Under $20.  He also tells you exactly how to spend your 20 bucks in each case.

Some of these business, although a good idea,  might take a little longer to get money rolling in like Webpreneur.  I should know.

More promising for immediate cash flow:

eBay Seller

I have a cousin who haunts the garage and estate sales, specializes in silver, jewelry, old books and post cards and makes several thousand a month on eBay.  Of course it does take time to buy, photograph, price and upload.  Or you can let someone else do it for 30% of the take.

Or, as Scott says: “Yes, there really are people who make a decent living buying things at garage sales and flea markets and selling them on eBay. The big secrets? Stick to products you know (or learn before you start) extremely well, package your goods carefully, and provide impeccable customer service. It helps to have a digital camera or a scanner, but it’s not required.

Spend the $20 on: Your first inventory at a garage sale.

Other business I think are very doable and at a professional level you probably already have the necessary skills:

Consultant

As Scott says: “Getting into consulting is relatively simple. All you have to do is know how to do something better than most people do, and be able to either teach people how to do it or be willing to do it for them. Networking is the key to success in this business, so start by making a list of everyone you know and giving them all a call.

Spend the $20 on: $14 on a box of clean-edge laser or inkjet business cards and $6 buying your first prospect a cup of coffee one morning.”

Desktop Publishing

“It’s amazing how many people have a computer and still don’t know how to make a decent flyer! If you’ve got a good design sense, are extremely familiar with your word processor, and already have a laser or high-quality inkjet printer, you can get into desktop publishing. Create a really great-looking portfolio for yourself and go door-to-door.

Spend the $20 on: Some high-quality paper to create your samples on.”

Scott also mentions: Personal Services – Shopping & Errands and Tutoring, both of which you can get into and start making money immediately.

Others depend on your personal level of interest in them.  If you like selling, for instance, Avon might be for you.

  • Housesitter / Petsitter
  • Avon Independent Sales Representative
  • Secretarial Service – Typing / Transcription / Proofreading

Others I think might take a little more skill and experience like

Professional Organizer

If you’re looking for extra income you might want to look over the details of all these possibilities at Legitimate Businesses You Can Start for Under $20

Hope this starts you thinking of all the ways you can start now, for very little and build a profitable business, one which will tide you over in tough times.

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How to Avoid Killing Innovation

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Guy Kawasaki, marketing and Net guru, recommends this in his Tweet: The Top Five Innovation Killers

Although the article mentions 5 top innovation killers, there were 2 that really resonated with me:

  1. An intolerance of failure. The #1 top tactic for innovation, according to expert innovators, is to ‘experiment fearlessly’. Nothing works first time, so you may as well get it wrong as soon as you can. If you cannot accept failure you are unlikely to see too much innovation, no matter how much money you throw at it.
  2. A desire for a magic pill, not a daily exercise regime. This requires innovation as a way of life rather than as an isolated change programme.

I have always seen people looking for a magic pill or a silver bullet to solve all their problems in business.  In fact, in my 20′s, in a fuzzy, unformed way, I probably thought that as well.  But experience shows that success most often comes from putting one foot in front of the other every day. Wasn’t it Einstein who said genius is 1 part inspiration and 99 parts perspiraton?

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From The Mouth Of A Guru: Creating A Successful Conference Ecosystem

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Chris Brogan is one of the Net’s most popular bloggers.  He maintains a warm and personal tone woven in with his business pitch as someone who teaches businesses and ordinary folks to use social media.  He does this by way of his blogs and tweets, but from a money making stand point, mostly by his conferences, which are well attended by celebrity techs as well as ordinary Net denizens trying to learn to do a better job of social media.  Since he succeeds at making money at it, I thought I ‘d share with you how Chris puts together a conference.  I found particularly interesting Chris’s thoughts about “extending the conversation” to other platforms, as I can see the potential to really increase the impact by reaching larger numbers that way.

In any case, here’s how Chris puts it in The Art of Butts in Chairs | chrisbrogan.com.

chairs I run a series of conferences. Logistically, they require the same things most conferences run on: great speakers, relevant exhibitors and sponsors, and eager attendees. The goal is to get the right speakers to draw the right attendees who might also be of interest to the exhibitors and sponsors. It’s a kind of ecosystem. It’s also not exactly the easiest business in the world. People don’t have a lot of budget to spend on attending events. Companies aren’t exactly sending them any more. It’s not all doom and gloom, but it does require more work than it used to, with regards to moving interested people from their office to my conference hall.

Some thoughts.

Be clear about the offer – I try hard to bring the best speakers for the specific content I’m trying to share with my audience. In my event, I’m looking to educate marketers, PR types, and companies representing brands on the theme of “From Strategy Into Action.”

Be open about the request – I try not to bury people in marketing for the event. I send out email marketing about once every two weeks (unless I have a technical accident). Beyond that, I’ll send a tweet every few days (currently around every 3rd day), and that’s about it. I try not to bury folks in advertising for it, but I’m very clear about my ask.

Be empowering – My goal with building events is to put the right people together in a room. I select my exhibitors and sponsors because I believe their tools are the right tools for some of the folks coming to the event. That’s on purpose. Bringing a guy like Chris Kieff from Ripple6 in contact with the kind of people who need what his company sells is exactly why we bother to do a face to face event. But just as much, it’s great to introduce someone who comes as an attendee to Tim O’Reilly or Charlene Li or any of the speakers we have coming. It’s important that we empower people to connect.

Extend the conversation – We’re looking at this right now. I’m selecting the right social platform to wrap around the event so that we can have conversations in and around the event, and not just at the event. The challenge is that no one really wants to join yet another social platform. They’re short term environments and don’t really live beyond the event walls very often. So, I’m looking for other ways to extend the conversation. Hash tags on each session as well as the event might help. Encouraging more flickr and Flip video usage will help. What else, do you think?

Empower Others to Reach Out – One thing I’ve yet to do for this event, but will ask soon, is I ask speakers to make sure to reach out to their constituent bases and invite people who might want to hear them speak. I also encourage exhibitors and sponsors to reach out to prospects. If it’s going to benefit someone to be at an event, I try to connect it all up. By giving speakers a few ways to reach out, I hope to bring the people who might want to gather a way to do so.

Outside of the Event – Sometimes, people can’t make an event for one reason or another. I think it’s always good to build something up outside the event. Some would argue that this might dig into the value of the event itself. Maybe. But I think more of the business networking happens during the event, in between the sessions, than at dinners and tweetups. Sometimes, it’s just nice to blend the location into the experience, and nice to connect with people who can’t make the event for whatever reason. Most events I attend these days have a non-related event like a Tweetup around them. I think it’s prudent.

What Else?

What else do you think face to face events need to have to be of value? What do you want from the events you pay to attend? Are you going to any conferences this year? What makes you choose which events to attend?

Photo credit, daveybot

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How To Survive: Diversify Your Offerings, Move From “Want” To “Need”, Pivot To Change

My father, who rose from a hardscrabble life to become an extremely successful entrepreneur, used to tell me:

“Always have at least three businesses because there will never be a time when one of them isn’t doing badly.”

Was he right on that!  Particularly in the midst of a recession.

But even if you don’t have three entirely separate businesses, it is still possible to adjust your product mix so you have three or more entirely different offerings targeting different needs, possibly even from the same consumer. Look carefully at your business and learn to pivot.  I have.

I was reading recently that for a number of years Target, even though much smaller, had been beating the brains out of Walmart, in terms of growth.  Retail experts attributed this to it’s trendier clothes and name designers.  Then, lo and behold, the recession hit and the trend flipped.  Walmart is now beating the brains out of Target and the gurus tell us it all has to do with groceries.  Yep, mundane old cereal and peanut butter.

Because now vendors need to be selling more of what people need not what they want. As this article put it, why buy a new shirt when you can just reach in the closet and get one.  On the other hand you need to eat.  So you need to buy groceries and Walmart has more of them, although Target is scrambling to catch up.

Which brings up to the Web.  And to other businesses as well.  I was also reading about an entrepreneur who was burning through cash and man hours and scrimping to develop a new, hopefully game changing, software product.  When the recession hit, he put that on hold to offer a web design and development service.  Cash now for something businesses need to have not want to have.

The lesson here is that there is, no doubt, some way you can think through your offerings and, for the moment, move away from the big ideas and toward the practical, the everyday needs, the things you can execute efficiently in a shorter time frame for a customer.

Seth Godin wrote about this on on March 13, 2009

Pivots for change

“When industry norms start to die, people panic. It’s difficult to change when you think that you must change everything in order to succeed. Changing everything is too difficult.

Consider for a minute the pivot points available to you:

  • Keep the machines in your factory, but change what they make.
  • Keep your customers, but change what you sell to them.
  • Keep your providers, but change the profit structure.
  • Keep your industry but change where the money comes from.
  • Keep your staff, but change what you do.
  • Keep your mission, but change your scale.
  • Keep your products, but change the way you market them.
  • Keep your customers, but change how much you sell each one.
  • Keep your technology, but use it to do something else.
  • Keep your reputation, but apply it to a different industry or problem.

Simple examples:

  • Keep the musicians, but change how you make money (sell concerts, not CDs).
  • Keep making guitars, but make bespoke expensive ones, not the mass market ones that overseas competition has made obsolete.
  • Keep the punch press and the lathe, but make large scale art installations, not car parts.
  • Keep your wealthy travel clients, but sell them personal services instead of trips to Europe.
  • Keep the factory that makes missiles, but figure out how to make high-efficiency turbines instead.”

There you have it.  If you like this post, Tweet me.  Thanks.

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Hot Conference Networking Tips From the Gurus

Scott Allen, who writes about entrepreneuring and has just come from SXSW Interactive and picked up some tips from networking expert and author Thom Singernger on how to network a big multi-day conference.

In Top 10 Conference Networking Tips, Scot says “one of the main reasons that people site for attending a conference is the networking opportunities. Yet they often leave the event feeling they made few or no connections. Here are 10 Tips to help you get the most out of connecting with others at a conference:

1. Have a plan. Know in advance whom you want to meet (directly or the type of people), which speakers you want to hear, and what tradeshow booths you want to visit.

2. Set appointments in advance. If you know that there will be people in attendance whom you know that you would like to see, call or email a few weeks in advance to schedule a time to meet for coffee, a meal, or a drink. Do not hope to “run into them”, as your paths might not cross at a time when you can spend quality time together.

3. Do not focus on meeting the celebrity speakers. While meeting famous authors, speakers, and other gurus is fun, you are one of hundreds who will come up to them and shove a card in their hands. Instead, place you focus on meeting other people in attendance at the event. It is the other attendees who you are most likely to bond with and create real long lasting mutually beneficial friendships.

4. Talk to the people sitting next to you. When you walk into a seminar, take the time before the presentation begins to say hello to the people seated around you. I call this the “power of hello”. Once you have said something as simple as “hello”, it will be easier to talk with them later in the week if you see them again.

5. Ask questions of people you meet. Never lead with your “elevator pitch“. People are more interested in themselves than they are in you, so ask them questions to help them get to talking.

6. Put your technology away. Do not run to your phone, BlackBerry, or laptop at every break. When you are working on electronics you send the message that you are unapproachable because you are busy. Utilize the time on breaks to converse with others.

7. Do not automatically send a LinkedIn or Facebook request. So often people immediately send social networking link requests to people they just met. However, different people have different policies about whom they link with. If they believe in only connecting with those whom they have established relationships, you make it awkward if you send them a link too early (which they then ignore). Best is to ask people if they would welcome such a link at this time. Be respectful of the fact that they might use social networking differently than you do.

Immediately following them on Twitter is okay, as Twitter does not require a mutual connection acceptance.

8. Read their stuff. Many people are active bloggers, twitterers, authors, etc… If people create the written word, seek out their work and read it. It is a great way to get to know people by reading their stuff, but they will also be honored when you tell them that you read their blog or follow them on Twitter.

9. Introduce others. When you meet cool people, be the conduit who connects them with others who might be beneficial to them. This includes others at the conference, as well as other people you might know back home. If you ask the right types of questions, you will easily spot connections that can help others. Don’t ever worry about “what’s in it for me”, but instead just be the person who helps others. You will over time that others will help you too.

10. Follow up. If you meet interesting people and you never follow up, it makes no difference. Own the follow up after you meet people and send them an email (or better yet, a handwritten note) telling them how much you enjoyed talking with them, and plan for future discussions.
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A few of the attendees at Thom’s session had some great additional tips:

  • When attending evening parties, get there early. That way a cluster of conversation builds up around you and you don’t face the challenge of working your way into other clusters like you do if you arrive late.
  • Another great way to meet people at parties is to play the role of informal host. For example, know where the host or celebrity guests are, where the bathroom is, the name of the waitress/bartender, etc. Stand near the entrance and be of service to people.
  • When you get business cards, jot a brief note on the back – where you met them, what you talked about, etc. That will make it much easier to follow up with them.
  • A great way to follow up with them is not only to follow them on Twitter, but also to make a brief post about your conversation with them. Promoting other people is a great way to create value for them and build the relationship. (If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, see Twitter for Entrepreneurs. If you’re already on Twitter, you can follow @ThomSinger as well as me, @ScottAllen.)

I invite you to follow me as well, @gretchenglas,thanks.

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Spiffy Digital Goods To Enhance Your Blog Or Website – For Net Setters

You know how it is when you start reading one thing on the Web, become engaged, then, like following a trail of crumbs, it leads you into a whole different experience?

Well, that is what I did when I got intrigued reading about a new blog, Netsetter , about online entrepreneurs dubbed here  “the net setters”,  remniscent of the old,  jaded term, the jet setters.  I pretty much got hooked when I stumbled upon the author/creator’s bootstrapping experience. More on that in a minute.  First, let me tell  about my discovery of a site, which I plan to use and you may want to use as well ,which offers tools and resources for “net setters”. It’s Envato, a digital goods marketplace and from there you can find, FlashDen ,a  community of buyers and sellers of stock Adobe Flash components; FlashDen’s sister site AudioJungle, which has branched into music tracks, loops and sound effects.  And you can also find:

  • ThemeForest – a marketplace for buying and selling site templates and CMS themes
  • VideoHive – a marketplace for buying and selling stock footage, motion graphics and video project files.
  • GraphicRiver – a marketplace for buying and selling layered photoshop, vectors, icons and add-ons.

Now, the back story. I am always drawn to stories of entrepreneurs who bootstrap their way to glory.  I’ve bootstrapped businesses many times and I also like to share these stories because I think they show the light at the end of the tunnel when you’re in the tough midst of a bootstrapping experience  yourself.  The founder of Envato and also Netsetter is a fellow named Collis.  He has the archetypal bootstrapping story.  I’ll let him tell it:

“..Having no money is pretty much the ultimate constraint a startup can be under, and for most bootstrappers that’s not far from how they have to operate.

Having nothing forces you to figure out a way to bring in some income – any income – and to do so fast. It forces you to work out how to do things in the cheapest way possible. It forces you to really, truly evaluate what is necessary in your business and what is simply deadweight.

When my wife and I cofounded Envato, we did so while working a freelance business where invoices always got paid late and cash flow was erratic. We started out with some modest savings in the bank but by the time our first site was up, we were thirty thousand in debt, I had worked for four months without a day off, lived for two of those months with my in-laws to save money and still there was no sign of a reprieve.

Because we spent everything we had, and then some, on building our website we were forced into a series of practices that made our business ultimately viable. We had no revenue, so none of the three founders could quit our jobs – we just started working one in the day, and one in the evening. We had no money so we couldn’t hire anyone beyond our one valiantly underpaid freelance developer, so every job had to be done by one of us – regardless of whether we knew how to do it. We had no advertising budget so we had to embark on a series of guerrilla marketing strategies trading time and ingenuity for money. We had no content on the site and no users, so we made a whole heap ourselves and invited, cajoled, persuaded and begged people to test it out.

In short we saved and scrimped, worked in odd hours and off hours, used our lack of income as a motivator to find revenue quickly and basically did it tough. Nobody saw a pay cheque for the first year, and even today after two and a half years when we have a staff of twenty something, I’m proud to say that all the management team and founders still get paid far less than the top authors on our sites.

Under the umbrella of Envato. we’ve build digital goods marketplaces like FlashDen and ThemeForest, a chain of successful tutorial blogs at Tuts+, a popular freelancing community at FreelanceSwitch, some successful ebooks at Rockable Press and lots of other projects!”

Well, there you have it.  That’s how bootstrapping is done.  And Collis has done all this since 2006.  Pretty impressive!  Congrats!

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12 “Green Biz” Trends for Eco-Entrepreneurs

Scott Allen, one of my favorite entrepreneur watchers, reports on some news from his favorite business trend newsletter, Trendwatching, which has a huge edition this month on green business trends they’re calling “ECO-BOUNTY”.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m launching a site or two on “green biz”, so I’m trying to keep up with what’s out there.  In 12 Green Consumer Trends Mean Business Opportunity for Eco-Entrepreneurs,  Scott tells us:

ECO-BOUNTY refers to the numerous opportunities, both short and long term, for brands that participate in the epic quest for a sustainable society. Some of these opportunities exist despite the current recession, others are fueled by it, not in the least because of new rules and regulations. Downturn-obsessed brands who lose their eco-focus will find themselves left out in the cold when the global economy starts recovering.

The opportunities abound, and it’s not all being done by big companies. Innovative entrepreneurs are developing a wide range of green products and services, including: solar-panel shading systems, eco-friendly supercars, handbags made from old gym equipment and airplane seats, green education and tips for homes and businesses, bicycle and car sharing, eco-friendly marketing and even adult toys.

You can download a PDF of the briefing or browse the trends online:

  1. ECO-FRUGAL
  2. ECO-STATUS
    • ECO-ICONIC
    • ECO-STORIES
  3. ECO-INTEL
    • ECO-METERING
    • ECO-MAPMANIA
    • ECONCIERGES
    • ECO-TIPS
    • ECO-MATCHING
    • ECO-NAKED
  4. ECO-STURDY
  5. ECO-FEEDERS
  6. ECO-GENEROSITY
    • ECO-PERKS
    • ECO-FREE
    • ECO-REWARDS
    • ECO-BOOSTERS
  7. ECO-SUPERIOR
  8. ECO-EMBEDDED
  9. ECO-EDU
  10. ECO-TRANSIENT
  11. ECO-VERTISING
  12. ECO-EXPECTATIONS
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Best Twitter Apps

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If you’re going to use Twitter….. and you should…. you might as well get the best apps to support you…. to make the process faster and more automated. Serious users consider Tweetdeck a must.  Also Hellotxt can be useful, since it updates from web, mobile, sms, email, 3rd party applications, API to more than 35 social network at the same time.

You can also take a look at the 21 most popular Twitter applications ranked by TechCrunch that produced these monthly traffic results:

1. Twitpic 1,236,828
2. Tweetdeck 285,864
3. Digsby 233,472
4. Twittercounter 212,200
5. Twitterfeed 149,812
6. Twitterholic 147,164
7. Twhirl 143,333
8. Twitturly 88,793
9. Twtpoll 74,154
10. Retweetist 60,051
11. Tweepler 51,304
12. Hellotxt 45,754
13. Twitdom 45,411
14. Tweetscan 44,463
15. Tweetburner 41,754
16. Tweetvisor 31,621
17. Twittervision 30,708
18. Twitterfall 29,592
19. Monitter 25,433
20. Twibs 17,168
21. Twistori 16,229
22. Twitbin 14,986
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Guide To Using Twitter For Business

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Whether you’re a big business or a small business, you need to get the word out, particularly in this tough economic time.

This is Derek Halpern’s one-stop source for all Twitter resources that relate specifically to business. You will learn how people acquire customers and grow their business using Twitter. Additionally, you will see a few examples of large companies who use Twitter effectively.

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The Ultimate Resource To Use Twitter Effectively.

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Hopefully, like me, you are learning to use Twitter to enhance and increase your business.  Here’s some help getting there:

How to Attract and Influence People on Twitter — The Ultimate Twitter Resource , Derek Halpern great collection, broken into targeted pieces.

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