Unexplored business ideas that make the future

The Rent-To-Own Business Opportunity and New Business Model

2008-07-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

Many customers use their rent to own business opportunity to help establish credit for home ownership and help acquire a credit-worthy status. In fact, brokers and lenders around the country are beginning to use alternative scoring systems that factor in non-traditional scoring reports from national bureaus then mix in information that includes regular payment histories such as rent-to-own payments.

Rent-to-own fills a valuable economic niche in the marketplace and research indicates that RTO is used by a wide variety of consumers-from college students and military personnel to those who must relocate often or those who simply want the latest and greatest wide-screen TV for the big game this weekend. Yes, you pay more for rent-to-own. You pay more because you get more from the transaction. And in today's economy, market dynamics are driving rent-to-own prices down while keeping the same valuable services retail cannot provide.

Because the rent-to-own agreement is only valid for the payment at hand, the customer can change the terms and payments at any time for any reason. The customer is never obligated to make the next payment and can return the product at any time for any reason. This payment flexibility and no-obligation is the cornerstone of the rent-to-own industry and its popularity with millions of customers.

The growth of rent-to-own public companies and independent dealers is fueling competition in the marketplace creating many more payment options for the rent-to-own consumer. Many companies are offering three to six month rental agreement ownership options that are lowering rent-to-own prices. Again, the customer chooses the payment options and can change it at any time for any reason very easily with rto online. If a customer chooses a fewer number of payments, the rent-to-own price is significantly lower and is competitive to retail. If the customer chooses a higher number of payments, the total cost will be more than retail. At the end of each rental agreement, the customer can either terminate the agreement without any cost or obligation, renew the contract by making another advance rental payment, change the rental agreement terms with a different payment or execute his or her early purchase option to obtain ownership of the product. Rentals can be for one week, two weeks or one month at a time. If the rental agreement is renewed a prescribed number of times-usually a total period of 12 to 24 months-the customer obtains ownership of the item.

At every rental agreement, the customer is told in writing and orally the total dollar amount and number of rental payments he or she will have made by the time ownership is an option. These consumer disclosures are mandated by 47 state rent-to-own laws. The overwhelming majority of customers do not pursue the ownership option. Approximately 75 percent return the rented item within the first four months or exercise the early purchase option; fewer than 25 percent rent long enough to own the item. If the customer returns the product during payments, the customer can re-instate his or her payment history within a specific time period governed by state law. Many rent-to-own companies offer lifetime reinstatement rights through their rent to own web sites.
Because renters pay as they go, and no credit is extended, credit reports on customers are not obtained and no debt is incurred. Previously rented items are refurbished and re-rented at reduced rates.

Top 10 Small Business Opportunities For Military Personnel

2008-07-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

Veterans own over 5% of all small businesses in the United States. This growing number of small businesses, upwards of 4 million, is due to the success rate of veteran business startups being higher than the average due to the experience veterans have gained serving in the armed services. While there are a number of services to help veterans with business education, loans, and many organizations to help place veterans in jobs, until 1999 there were no services specifically focused on helping veterans start their own small businesses or franchise businesses.

Currently the armed forces offer several programs and opportunities for ex-military personnel who are interested in starting their own small business, including home based businesses that will allow veterans to work from home. The army in particular now offers the Army Advantage Fund. This program offers those who qualify money to help start a small business. For a 3-year enlistment you can earn $25,000, for 4 years up to $35,000, and for five or more years you can earn up to $40,000. Here is a list of 10 great home business opportunities and small business franchises that can each be started for less than $40,000.

#1 Spring Green is a Lawn care service franchise that has been serving communities for more than 30 years. They are locally owned and operated and invite franchisees to join them in service the $30 billion dollar lawn care industry. Spring Green also has a flex-start program, which allows franchisees to keep their current job while building the base for their new business. Also Spring Green offers a specific military assistance program as well that has a working grant from spring-green for veterans.

#2 Health Career agents offers veterans the important and profitable business opportunity of working in the health care business market. There is a critical shortage of healthcare professionals all across America. Who understands recruiting better than the armed forces? Put that experience to work by helping to recruit health care professionals through being either an owner/operator of a franchise, or becoming a Health Career recruitment agent

#3 American Business Systems, LLC is a state-of-the-art, web based electronic billing system. This solves medical offices' cash flow and billing problems. No special education or certification is needed, as full training and ongoing support are provided to the franchisee. By signing up medical offices you reimburse their claims and charge a small percentage fee to process the billing through the electronic system that dramatically speeds up the billing process and reduces errors that lead to insurance claims being rejected.

#4 If your military service has left you with extensive experiences in technology and computer systems the Tech-Hero on site Computer Service franchise is looking for you. With a reputation of being professionals that work with customers to resolve computer and technology issues. Called heroes because of their desire to solve problems rather than bog down clients with "geek or nerd" terms the Tech-Heroes goal is to provide customers with exceptional service without making them feel ignorant or insignificant.

#5 In Your Home provides meaningful and important services to the senior population by providing advice, modifications, remodeling, and on-going maintenance and repair to elderly homeowners who want to "age-in-place." If you have patience, solid work ethic, and a respect and care for elderly citizens, then In Your Home is a great small business opportunity to assist those senior members of the community to maintain their living standards so they do not have to relocate to nursing homes and elderly care facilities.

#6 If you have a head for finances, organization, and the passion to be successful then you should consider the Blue Coast financial group. Adding the title of Blue Coast Financial Advisor to a resume can provide an abundant source of additional income. Blue Coast Financial Advisors are fully trained upon becoming franchise owners and specialize in money saving analysis of companies and small businesses. Many businesses overpay for their workers compensation packages, equipment lease and rental insurance, research and development tax credits and many more. Blue Coast Financial Advisors are trained to recognize these oversights and correct them saving the companies that hire them thousands of dollars in unneeded expenses.

#7 If a more hands on type of home based business is what you are seeking in your small business venture look no further than PosiGrip. PosiGrip is a high profitable turnkey, home-based business with virtually no competition. Providing resurfacing and traction to slick and slippery-when wet surfaces such as concrete, tile, ceramic, and more, PosiGrip helps to combat the more than 9 million disabling slip and fall injuries accounting in more than 95 million lost work days each year. Each customer that utilizes your service also qualifies for a federal tax credit as a result of the safety provided by PosiGrip surfaces.

#8 For the small business owner who is looking for complete flexibility in their business opportunity the DVDNow kiosk is a very attractive option. This incredibly low cost business opportunity provides people with the convenience of renting a new release DVD from a kiosk in a convenient location such as a grocery store without the hassle of having to make an additional stop at a video store and wading through hundreds of out of date titles. The DVDNow kiosk can be serviced when you want, and by only carrying the most popular titles you save on stocking older movies, which only represent 10% of all DVDs rented. The DVDNow kiosk is quick and easy to start and offers immediate return on your investment.

#9 In the same vein of servicing machines the Vendstar vending machine company provides another 100% cash flow small business. The Vendstar owners set up as many vending machines as they choose to manage and service and can service and refill those machines at their convenience. With a cash-based business becoming a profitable small business owner is as simple as finding a location where people are and setting up your first Vendstar vending machine.

#10 Finally a business with continuing demand and constant need for more franchisers is the home inspection business. With Home Team inspecting you receive all the training and support you need to become a fully trained and licensed home inspector. Whether you choose to run your business with a work force of one or manage a team of inspectors, the Home Team Inspection service provides a necessary component in all purchase and sales of homes. People always need a place to live and with more and more homes being built everyday each sale requires an inspection. With Home Team Inspection Services you can quickly set up your own inspection franchise today.

These great opportunities appeal to the wide variety of skills and abilities that typically lead to high success rate in military personnel. For the military person seeking to run their own small business with the leadership and management skills that lead them to success in the armed services, these opportunities can help them find that same success and accomplishment in the business world.

Start-Ups Key to States' Economic Success

2007-02-21T06:49:00.001-08:00

New small businesses are the most important factor in driving personal income, employment, and other factors, research shows.

Start-ups are the single most important factor driving a state's economic success, according to a new study by the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy.

The study, which was released Monday and examined U.S. Census data on small-business start-ups by state between 1988 and 2002, found their success or failure rates had a profound impact on gross state product, state personal income levels, and total state employment.

For instance, raising the number of small-business start-ups in a given state by just 5 percent tended to boost gross state product -- the sum total of a state's economic output -- by 0.465 percent, the study found. By contrast, a higher number of small-business closures tended to impede state economic growth.

Similarly, a 5 percent hike in small-business start-ups increased a state's employment growth rate by 0.435 percent, while raising personal income by 0.405 percent, the study found.

The study defined small businesses as those with fewer than 100 employees. Based on the median number of small-business start-ups across all 50 states per year, a 5 percent increase was equal to roughly 445 new small businesses.

"Every one of our models indicates that states with more new small firm establishments grow at a higher rate over time, even after we control for the level of economic activity and a variety of other factors," researchers said.

"Now more than ever, state policymakers should be aware of how their decisions affect small business," Chad Moutray, the agency's chief economist, said in a statement.

"Creating an environment that values entrepreneurship and risk-taking is sure to increase economic growth, personal income, and employment," Moutray said.

A Portfolio of Young Business Owners

2007-02-21T06:44:00.001-08:00

Meet six students who have already taken the entrepreneurial leap.

Laima Tazmin

Age 17, LAVT, New York City

When we first wrote about Laima Tazmin in 2004, as part of an article titled "25 Entrepreneurs We Love," she was a high school freshman with her own website design company, LAVT, in New York City. Today, as Tazmin is finishing her last semester, her business continues to expand. Now it manages 20 ongoing projects, including designing banner ads starting at $1,000 each, for clients such as the producers of the movie Saw II and of Kanye West's second album, Late Registration.

The company earned $25,000 in 2006, and Tazmin put that money toward paying family expenses while her mother struggled to find work. "It was overwhelming, but I managed," says Tazmin. "The independence and maturity I learned helped my adult clients feel calm and comfortable."

Tazmin hasn't found it easy to make the transition from solo businessperson to manager. Lacking time for supervision and coaching, she has burned through 10 freelance designers. The problem is that, in addition to her company, she maintains a roster of high school activities. She's a shooting guard on the basketball team ("I like scoring points--I'm not a passer," she says) and works on the yearbook staff ("I get a little too control-ly," she admits). Tazmin, who will attend Columbia University in the fall, is also working, predictably enough, on starting a second business. It will create Web portals for college towns.

Derin Coleman and Rayneshia Rodgers

Both age 17, Bling Buckles, Oakland, California

Derin Coleman and Rayneshia Rodgers have been friends since the seventh grade and business partners since 2004. Together, they run Bling Buckles, an Oakland, California, company that sells custom chrome belt buckles with white rhinestone lettering for $25 apiece. Bling grossed $2,075 during the last academic year, selling belts primarily at events sponsored by BUILD, a program in the Bay Area created to teach high school students in low-income school districts about entrepreneurship.

"They work great together," says Curtis Below, an executive at GetActive Software, who serves as the company's mentor. "Rayneshia is the more outgoing of the two, chatting up customers and constantly throwing out ideas. Derin is mature and does whatever needs to be done with a smile on his face."

The partners, who are juniors at a charter school called Lionel Wilson College Preparatory Academy, were tested during their first holiday season in business, when Bling faced a big backlog of orders. "Derin and I were making buckles over Christmas vacation and on our lunch hours," says Rodgers.

Just as the company is taking off, however, its future is in doubt. Rodgers and Coleman are applying to colleges far apart. In fact, in addition to launching and running a company, BUILD helps students prepare for the college board exams. Eight out of every 10 BUILD graduates have been the first members of their families to go to college.

Not that the passion for entrepreneurship is lost in the shuffle: "I like school, but running a business feels more real," says Coleman. "Oh, I can learn how to make a million dollars? Okay, I'm listening."

Omar Faruk

Age 18, BlueStream, New York City

Omar Faruk believes that social entrepreneurship can make the world a better place. He's CEO of BlueStream, a Web management company that specializes in helping nonprofits with limited resources. The business grossed $40,000 in 2006 and earned Faruk the Youth Entrepreneur of the Year award given out by Ernst & Young and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. "Make a difference first, make the money later," Faruk says.

In 1997, at age 9, Faruk immigrated with his family from Noakhali, Bangladesh--"The district that Gandhi visited," he notes--to New York City. The family had been well off back home but ended up with eight people sharing a three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. By the time Faruk enrolled in high school, he was spending a lot of time online and learning the ins and outs of Web design. Three years ago, he started BlueStream to build websites at a cost of $200 and up for fledgling nonprofits. The idea was to marry his interest in social activism to his interest in technology. One of Faruk's customers is Intertradingcorp.com, an organization that helps women in Guyana sell crafts on eBay. "Omar helped the idea to flower, and he makes the world of commerce so much fun," says Avi Shiwnandan, Intertradingcorp.com's founder.

In the meantime, Faruk is trying to bolster his grades in an effort to get into Babson College, where he hopes to study social entrepreneurship. Shiwnandan, for one, is not worried about Faruk's prospects: "I have no doubt he will make a lot of money in his lifetime, even if it isn't his main ambition."

Jake Fisher and Weina Scott

Both age 17, Switchpod, Miami and Rochester, Minnesota

Only five years ago, two enterprising teens might have mowed lawns to earn spending money. Today they can start a company on the Web. That's how it worked for the co-founders of Switchpod, Weina Scott and Jake Fisher. And, oh yeah, they live 1,440 miles apart--she's in Miami, and he's in Rochester, Minnesota.

The two met via a message board in June 2005, got to talking about podcasts, and started Switchpod within the month. Scott already had a Web design business, which she started at age 13. Fisher, for his part, says, "I wanted to get into a business at the beginning of some new technology bubble."

Their basic podcasting package, which covers hosted space on their servers, costs as much as $30 a month, but they'll give it for free to customers who take out an advertisement on their site. By the time Switchpod's product had generated 800,000 downloads, a company named Wizzard Software came calling. The Pittsburgh-based business, which makes speech-recognition and text-to-speech technology, was looking to add podcasting to its product mix.

Wizzard Software CEO Chris Spencer, 37, remembers that it took him a while to realize that the students he was negotiating with were in high school rather than college. Odder still, Scott and Fisher met face-to-face for the first time at Spencer's home in Fort Lauderdale, where their parents brought them to sign the paperwork transferring ownership of Switchpod to Wizzard in an all-stock transaction worth $200,000. The sale also provides the partners with annual salaries of $40,000 for a 20-hour workweek. It acknowledges that their schoolwork comes before business.

Eye On the Prize

2007-02-21T06:44:00.000-08:00

Secrets Of Entrepreneur Athletes.

Nothing sticks like a lesson learned while hurtling 10,500 feet through the air at 120 miles per hour. So it is no wonder John Hart improved his listening skills when he started jumping out of airplanes.

Hart, the owner of Selection.com, a background-check company in Cincinnati, had always cared more about getting his point across than listening to others. "I was a creator. I built things, and I moved on. I didn't take the time to listen," says Hart, 45. Then five years ago, he took up team-formation skydiving, a test of grace and guts in which up to 17 people leap simultaneously from a plane and arrange themselves in a pattern in the 35 seconds before their parachutes open. This requires jumpers to know in advance what their teammates will do and to communicate through eye contact and hand gestures while plunging through the air. "When I took up skydiving, I couldn't randomly decide what I wanted to listen to," Hart says. "I had to pay attention to everything."

The more Hart jumped, the more parallels he saw between his avocation and his business life. Specifically, he came to realize that when meeting with customers he talked a lot more than he listened. Selection.com provides companies with background-check software, and for more than a year customers had been complaining that the product was slow. Hart paid little attention. "We thought our application was superior to anything in the industry, and we made changes as we saw fit," he says. After skydiving for a while, however, he began to wonder if his selective listening could hurt the business.

For CEOs and CEOs-to-be, sports may be a more effective training ground than any business school, according to both psychologists and entrepreneur athletes themselves. Athletic endeavors help CEOs and CEOs-to-be develop such leadership skills as self-discipline, morale building, and teamwork. In a Harvard Business School study of roughly 30 graduates who had become entrepreneurs, almost all the respondents reported playing individual or team sports during their early years. "Many felt strongly that competitive sports had prepared them not just to compete in life but also to deal well with winning, with losing, with setbacks, with training, and perhaps most importantly, with others," the report states.

Most skills learned or honed through sports fall into two categories: self-management and teamwork. The former can be gleaned from almost any activity in which the athlete sets goals and seeks to improve in a disciplined manner. That includes not just team sports but also pursuits such as running, hiking, even fishing. For example, when Stephanie Forte isn't running Forte Creative Media, a PR company in Las Vegas, she can often be found rock climbing. Forte climbs at least twice a week and says the habits of mind she's developed scaling a cliff face also come in handy when she's sitting behind a desk. "In climbing, I need to be my own coach, to look at myself and my performance objectively and to be the athlete at the same time," she says. That talent for being "two people in one" has helped her evaluate her business performance as well. She recently turned an objective eye on how she is coping with growth. The verdict: Excessive attention to detail was leaving her vulnerable to being overwhelmed. So Forte quickly hired an assistant.

Focus is another habit of mind. Successful athletes learn to shut out distractions so they become one with the ball speeding toward them. They display identical focus in business meetings, not allowing anxiety to prevent them from capturing every nuance of the proceedings. Many top athletic and business performers also know how to manage adrenaline. Using techniques that range from deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation to positive mental imagery, they calm themselves when excitement or agitation threatens to interfere with good decision making.

Athletes also learn to manage problems in ways that make sense for business leaders. High performers set "process goals" instead of "outcome goals," explains Charlie Brown, director of FPS Performance, a coaching firm in Charlotte, North Carolina. That means they mentally divide competitions into tasks that will lead to victory, then focus on executing each task and not on the victory itself. A top runner, for example, won't say "I'm going to win the 100-meter dash," but will concentrate on calming herself before the gun goes off, then on establishing a smooth stride. Similarly, an entrepreneur athlete is less likely to obsess over landing a major investment. Instead, she may concentrate first on communicating key points with aplomb, next on listening closely to any objections and answering them well. Even if the athlete or entrepreneur fails, carving up the process makes it easier to analyze each step for weakness and tweak it to improve the results next time.

n team sports, athletes learn not only to master themselves but also to manage relationships and pursue a common goal. Team players "have to understand roles, responsibility, and accountability--what it's like to have a mission and a dream and to work collectively to achieve that," says Brown. And because many people learn better by doing than by studying, a football field or basketball court can be a highly effective classroom for future leaders, according to John Eliot, professor of performance psychology at Rice University and author of Overachievement: The New Model for Exceptional Performance.

One crucial skill business leaders acquire from team sports is motivation. Robert Maffei, president of Maffei Landscape Contractors, a $7 million company in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, played football in high school. "Once a week, the coach would blow a whistle and yell 'Bring it in!'" he recalls. "We'd get on one knee in front of him and have a meeting." During that meeting, the coach would designate players of the week, and each honoree wore a sticker on his helmet with pride.

Those huddles boosted morale and performance, Maffei remembers, something he naturally wants to do for his business. So every week, Maffei rings a bell and yells "Bring it in!" to his 80 employees. "My employees don't get down on one knee or anything like that," says Maffei. "But we gather at 7:20 in the morning on Thursdays for 15 minutes for a team meeting." Recalling how much that football sticker motivated him on the field, Maffei designed a more elaborate reward program for his company. Employers of the week receive gift certificates for Dunkin' Donuts or a local movie theater. Employees of the month are in line for flat-screen TVs or Xboxes. And the employee of the year walks away with an all-expenses-paid trip for two to the Caribbean.

Entrepreneurs also transfer behaviors that worked on the field--or in Hart's case in the sky--to their daily lives as leaders. As Hart paid more attention to his fellow jumpers and diving coach, his team started to win competitions. He tried treating clients the same way--and finally heard what they were telling him. "Although our application was beautiful to look at, it was too graphic-intensive," he says. "We completely reworked the design with the input of our clients." Sales growth at Hart's business has jumped from 19 percent the year he started diving to 31 percent today.

Perhaps the most universal effect is that sports exercise the persistence muscle. "Failure is part of the process," says Chris Kouloukas, founder and CEO of SOHO Hero, a franchiser of print and copy shops based in Atlanta. Kouloukas started out in Little League at age 7 and played baseball through his years at Troy University in Alabama. While he won plenty of games, he also got comfortable with loss. "The greatest hitters of all time hit .400, which means they fail 60 percent of the time," Kouloukas says.

Kouloukas brought that perspective to his business, refusing to let failure bog him down. "To get my first loan, I went to 54 banks before I was approved. Fifty-four banks!" says Kouloukas. "And even when I was sitting at the closing table, the banker looked me in the eye and said, 'Chris, I won't be upset if you back out of this deal. I still don't see how you're going to compete.'" But Kouloukas never lost faith. Today, SOHO Hero has 30 locations throughout the Southeast, and those setbacks are ancient history.

Of course, business leaders have also been known to transfer undesirable behaviors from the field to the office. Some athletes, for example, like to see what they can get away with. A sports cliché holds that "if a penalty isn't called, then it isn't a foul," says Rice University's Eliot. As recent corporate scandals attest, that kind of thinking isn't foreign to business.

But you should remember that the sports analogy has its limits. "In baseball, the worst thing that can happen is you can lose the game," Kouloukas says. "The stakes are higher in business. When you fail, you can lose money--and sometimes other people's money." So apply the lessons of the playing field to your business. But never tell yourself that it's only a game.

Exotic pets business

2007-02-21T06:43:00.000-08:00

Exotic pets now represent a $15 billion industry. Plenty of entrepreneurs have found a way to make money peddling kinkajous, hedgehogs, and other rare beasts.

When Paris Hilton takes to the red carpet with a new look or a new man in tow, people buzz. So it's no surprise that little girls everywhere began begging their parents for kinkajous last spring, after the hotel heiress started surfacing at parties with an adorable kinkajou perched on her shoulder. Even after Baby Luv garnered tabloid headlines by biting Hilton, the nocturnal mammals remain objects of desire.

As it turns out, kinkajous -- not to mention hedgehogs, sugar gliders, llamas, and other exotic animals -- have become increasingly common as household pets. That growing demand has helped transform exotics into a $15 billion industry, with plenty of entrepreneurs finding ways to earn part or all of their livelihoods from related businesses.

So why is Fido, at least in some circles, losing his status as man's best friend? "People always want something that nobody else has," says Marc Morrone, owner of Parrots of the World in Rockville Center, N.Y, which sells parrots as well as pygmy possums and other mammals and reptiles. "It's human nature to want to stand out in a crowd."

Morrone opened up shop in 1978, and says that as the popularity of exotics has grown over time, the industry has been forced to rehabilitate what some consider an unsavory reputation through increased regulation of animal importation and sales.

"In the old days, people went out and they caught animals in the wild and they brought them back," Morrone says. "Those days are gone."

Such improvements have brought new opportunities -- and more entrants to the industry.

For Brigitte DeMaster, owner of Bahr Creek Llamas and Fiber Studio in Cedar Grove, Wisc., breeding llamas began as a 4H project for her children. Her family is in the dairy business, and at an industry convention, she met a colleague who also raised llamas on his farm. After visiting the animals, the family purchased four and started to show and train them. "They were very clean, quiet, and easy to raise," DeMaster says. "And we fell in love with their eyes."

DeMaster can sometimes be seen transporting one of the family's 35 llamas in her minivan as she takes them to nursing homes, schools, or parades. The DeMasters sell baby llamas, called cria, as pets or breeding stock, but the bulk of their income comes from shearing the llamas to make yarn from the fiber. What began as a kids' project has blossomed into a business that includes a yarn shop and spinning-and-weaving school.

"Since we were involved in dairy and livestock, it was an added value to the farm," DeMaster says. "We feel that it's really enhanced everything on our property."

When he needed to finance his seminary education, Mike Smith, of Jack-A-Roo's Bennett's Wallabies in Swansea, Ill., began raising wallabies. "Raising and selling the animals paid for my doctorate work," Smith says. "Then it paid for vacations and little extras along the way."

"Fifteen years ago, I was raising ferrets just for fun and enjoyed them," Smith says. "We were struggling and needed some extra income. We live in goat country, and someone had included a pallet of wallabies from New Zealand along with a shipment of goats. I wanted them but I couldn't afford them, so I asked a friend if he wanted to go into the wallaby business. He said yes, and I've been making money and having fun with it ever since."

For David Lombard, owner of birdfarm.com, exotic pets have been more than just a sideline business. Eleven years ago, he lost his job as a sales manager and decided to go into business for himself. At the time, he had two small birds, and he saw how people who buy birds also buy plenty of toys and accessories for their pets. He started selling birds and bird accessories through his website, then opened a retail store in Boardman, Ohio, three years later. He sells bird food and cages, as well as more unusual products such as bird diapers with a patented "poop-pouch" and a hands-free vest-style carrier which lets pet owners bring their small-bird wherever they go.

"At first it was really scary," Lombard says. "I had no retail business experience myself so I surrounded myself with the best people I could find."

"Before I started the business, I used the last of my savings to fly down to Florida and learn as much as I could from breeder friends," he says. "I knew if I was going to do this, and make a living at it, I had to learn from the people I was going to do business with."

His business has expanded quickly, outgrowing three retail spaces in the past seven years. He recently sold the Boardman-based retail store and plans to continue selling online and open additional stores in Las Vegas and Myrtle Beach, S.C. "Since a lot of my business is not local -- of 100 birds, only 35 stay in the area -- I can do it from anywhere," Lombard says.

Like Lombard, Ken Korecky, president of Exotic Nutrition, saw an opportunity in the exotic-pet accessories and food market. At the age of 17, Korecky convinced his father to invest in the pet store where his son worked. Father and son became partners and ran the store for 20 years. Korecky then entered the sales department of a wholesale pet supplier.

"When I recognized a need for 'species specific' products for the exotic pets many of the stores sold, I began formulating, manufacturing, and packaging products for the exotic-pet trade," Korecky says. "I originally marketed the products to the 100-plus stores the company I worked for serviced. When my business grew, and the product line was in full demand, I left the company to run my business full-time."

Exotic Nutrition originally only sold its food and other exotic-pet accessories wholesale to pet stores, but in 2001, Korecky decided to offer the products directly to the retail market. "Once we designed the website and marketed our products via the Internet, our business grew," he says. "Cash flow enabled us to then broaden our wholesale marketing campaigns."

Exotic Nutrition is growing about 20 percent a year, and Korecky expects the opportunities in the exotic-pet industry will continue to expand, if for no other reason than by law of the jungle. "A pet owner that purchases a pair of animals will sometimes end up with five or six animals after a few years," he says. "Then they sell the offspring, which in turn creates more hungry mouths to feed -- and more customers that require our products."

(c) Inc.com

Hot New Market: Online Worlds

2007-01-22T18:57:00.000-08:00

Virtual worlds--those avatar-driven electronic spaces like Second Life and The Sims--are booming. Companies like Starwood Hotels are spending money to build virtual locations, and Reuters has assigned a journalist to cover Second Life goings-on. Should you be there, too?

Russell Holliman, co-founder of Podcast Ready, a Houston startup projecting 2007 revenue of $5 million, says yes. He has been using Second Life to host seminars about podcasts and his company’s software application, which enables portable media players to receive podcasts automatically. “When we have an event, we get quite a bit of traffic, and we expect that to grow as we develop our own location,” says Holliman, 35.

“There’s a tremendous amount of commerce that takes place [in virtual worlds],” says Steve Rubel, senior vice president of Edelman’s Me2Revolution PR practice in New York City (www.edelman.com). “If you sell or make something you can refashion and sell in the virtual world, you can do well.”

T. Sibley Verbeck, founder of The Electric Sheep Company, which is building virtual-world presences for companies like Starwood and Edelman, says it’s a bit early for entrepreneurs to spend big bucks developing their virtual world presence, with some exceptions. “Fashion is vibrant,” he says. “If you’re a small company that makes T-shirts or other things that can make your avatar look good, it makes sense. If [your] business involves building a community or reaching out to people through events, it’s a natural fit.”

Originally published in the February 2007 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine

Top Ten Business Industries to Keep an Eye on in 2007

2007-01-22T18:54:00.000-08:00

1. Service-providing industries

The long-term shift from goods-producing businesses to service-providing businesses is expected to continue in the United States as businesses outsource manufacturing jobs out to the rest of the world where labor is less expensive.

2. Education and health services

This industry is projected to grow faster than most other industries.

The growth in this sector will continue to grow, driven by increasing demand for healthcare and social assistance because of an aging population and longer life expectancies.

According to the Department of Labor, private educational services will grow by 28.7 percent through 2012.

Rising student enrollments at all levels of education will create demand for educational services, such as educational consulting businesses, home tutoring, etc.

3. Professional and business services

According to the Department of Labor, the businesses included in the professional and business services industries are expected to grow by a little over thirty percent.

This is an area that will be one of the fastest growing industries in our U.S. economy!

And within the business services industry, businesses who specialize in employment services will grow by over 50 percent!

Other businesses expected to grow within this hot industry are:

Professional, scientific, and technical services are expected to grow by over twenty-seven percent!

Businesses involved in computer systems design and related services will grow by over fifty percent and may add more than one-third of all new jobs in professional, scientific, and technical services.

The increasing reliance on information technology and the continuing importance of maintaining computer systems and network security will drive business growth significantly.

Management, scientific, and technical consulting services also will grow very rapidly, by 55.4 percent, spurred by the increased use of new technology and computer software and the growing complexity of business.

4. Information Businesses

Selling information is and will always be a profitable business. Within the next ten years, I believe it may get even hotter!

Information businesses and related industries are expected to increase and will even add well over half a million new jobs by 2012. This includes some fast-growing computer-related industries such as software publishers, Internet publishing and Internet broadcasting; Internet service providers, Web search portals, and even data processing services.

And don’t forget traditional businesses built around broadcasting, newspaper publishing, periodicals, books, and directory publishers.

5. Leisure and hospitality

Arts, entertainment, and recreational-based businesses, including physical fitness and exercising (for instance, personal training) will grow by a little less than thirty percent between now and 2012. However, most of these businesses will be involved in the amusement industry, gambling, and the recreation sector.

Most of the growth is going to stem from the growing participation by the public in arts, entertainment, and the recreation activities. The reason these activities will tend to increase, according to the Department of Labor, is typically because of increasing incomes, leisure time, and the increasing awareness of the health benefits of physical fitness.

Accommodation and food service businesses are expected to grow by over sixteen percent. The growth in this particular field will be concentrated in food services and drinking places. The main reason why this business is going to be one of the hotter industries is due to a continuous trend towards increases in population, more two-income families, and a trend towards more sophistication in the population’s dining habits.

6. Financial activities

The US Department of Labor has said that businesses involved in financial activities are projected to grow by 12.3 percent over the next ten years.

One sector to keep an eye on is heavy industrial and commercial equipment leasing and rentals. The US is expecting a growth in employment in within this particular sector by almost forty percent!

Another “hot pocket” in the financial industry is any business having to do with finance and insurance. Both are expected to see positive increases into 2012.

If you look at the employment in securities, commodity contracts, and other financial investments and related activities, which are expected to grow 15.5 percent by 2012, you’ll be able to see a perfect trend toward a continued dependency on capitalism and the importance of money. Look at baby boomers who, in their peak savings years, fall into categories and age brackets of tax-favorable retirement plans. The more this generation continues to outlive prior generations, the more they will be looking for businesses who can help them with their finances.

Also, as individual nation’s economies continue to merge towards a globalization of the securities markets, the more businesses involved in this industry will be in very, very high demand.

7. Construction Related Businesses

As the housing market, at the time of this writing, continues to grow and the demand for new housing increases, the construction business will account for the bulk of the construction related industries.

8. Professional and related occupations

Professional and related businesses will grow the fastest and add more new jobs than any other major group. Through the 2012 period, a 23.3-percent increase in the number of professional and related work is projected, a gain of 6.5 million.

9. Management, business, and financial business

Businesses who direct and manage the activities of other businesses, government agencies, and other organizations are expected to increase by over fifteen percent by 2012.

Among the financial management businesses, accounting and auditing firms will grow quite a bit because of the increased number of businesses growing throughout the world and into the global economy.

Management analysts also will be one of the fastest growing businesses in this group, along with personal financial advisors, with increases in the 30 percent range for each.

10. Installation, maintenance, and repair

Being in the business of installation, maintenance, and repair means you may install new equipment and/or maintain and repair older equipment. These businesses will grow by over thirteen percent through 2012. The fastest growth rate will be among heating, air-conditioning, and refrigeration mechanics and installers, an occupation that the Department of Labor states is expected to grow 31.8 percent over the 2002-12 period.

The main reason this business will have increasing growth potential is partly due to increased newer construction -- both commercially and residentially. With the exception of housing being built in colder regions, cooling systems will be the norm in newer construction – both commercial and residential.

15 Ways to Ensure Success

2007-01-11T06:33:00.000-08:00

How Century Furniture Is Beating the Odds--and How You Can Follow Their Lead

Made in America. The phrase is starting to take on the same quaint, anachronistic feel as “Mr. Smith received a gold watch from the company after forty years of loyal service.” It’s simply another stark reality of our globalizing world. But to assume that American manufacturers have to padlock the factory doors and move overseas is to deny the innovative spirit--and bulldog determination--that birthed and nourished our nation’s economy.

Just ask anyone at my company, Century Furniture. We're a Hickory, North Carolina-based maker of fine, high-end home furnishings, and we’re doing what many view as the impossible: We're keeping our factories open.

Nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Century has seven manufacturing facilities and some 1,200 business partners (we don’t call them employees because each one actually owns a stake in the business). It's one of the last holdouts in the area that proudly calls itself “the Furniture Capital of America.” About two-thirds of its wood manufacturing competitors have closed up shop and moved their manufacturing to China.

It’s not hard to understand why so many manufacturers have made the choice to move overseas. The average skilled American worker earns 28 times what his counterpart in China earns. Factor in our escalating health-care costs and our far more stringent governmental restraints, and you can see the depth of the challenge.

Fortunately, I thrive on challenge.

When I arrived at Century in 2000, the company was enjoying a banner year. Business was growing, profits were robust. A record number of employees showed up every day to craft the expensive, luxurious wood and upholstered furniture for which Century is known.

But I barely had time to get my office set up when what I call “the perfect storm” abruptly ended the sunny day in which my new company was basking. September 11 triggered a massive decline in consumer confidence, the stock market, and, consequently, consumer spending on big ticket purchases. Prices plunged. Simultaneously, Chinese imports shot through the roof.

In the wake of those dark days, along with my leadership team, I made the decision to keep Century’s manufacturing--the bulk of it, at least--on American soil.

We had to honestly assess our strengths and weaknesses. We had to identify those niches in which we could effectively compete and focus our energies on adding value to our products and services. And yes, we did have to cut our workforce--20 percent across the board. But here we are, still standing, and we haven’t closed a single factory.

So how is Century pulling off such a feat? Here are a few guiding principles:

Principle 1: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Take a long, hard, objective look at everything you’re doing. If it doesn’t add value or maximize efficiency, stop doing it. If your customers don’t care about it, stop doing it. Rethink every process. When you hear the words, “But we’ve always done it this way,” ignore them. Change is hard, and it does upset numerous apple carts.

Principle 2: Take action--you can't afford to wait for all the facts.
Knowing that uncertainty will always exist, be a confident decision maker. Don’t fall prey to “analysis paralysis.” Opportunities pass quickly, and if you don’t grab them quickly, someone else will. Once you’ve made a decision, don’t fret over it. No one has ever figured out how to turn back time and un-do anything. Even if 20/20 hindsight proves your decision was a mistake, well, mistakes are learning vehicles for all of us.

Principle 3: Get comfortable with ambiguity.
The ambiguity I refer to here applies only to business decisions. There's no ambiguity about integrity, honesty and the core values that provide a moral rudder. Those qualities must remain constant. However, when operating in a globalizing economy, there are few cut-and-dry rules; there is no clear right and wrong. Even if you don’t make the wrong choice, you might not make the most “right” choice, either. Accept that fact.

Principle 4: Find your brilliance and leverage it relentlessly.
Every company must decide what it does best--indeed, what it does better than anyone else--and infuse that brilliance into its entire operation. Century is differentiating itself via a three-pronged approach:

1. It provides a luxury experience to consumers by offering top-of-the-line quality and mass customization.
2. It innovates relentlessly, in products, in design partnerships, in sales strategies.
3. In an industry known for moving at a snail’s pace, Century gets furniture to its customers on an average of three short weeks after the order is placed.

That’s our brilliance, and everything we do is based on being the best at bringing it to the customer. We had T-shirts made that say “We have one standard: The Best.” It’s a simple concept that everyone at every level understands. Its simplicity gives it its power. If a worker sees a tiny flaw in the finish on a headboard, she will make sure the problem is corrected--in order to live up to that standard.

Principle 5: Being all things to all people is the golden rule for failure.
When I took over Century, the company had strayed outside its traditional “fine home furnishings niche” and was making furniture for hotels and yachts. We had extraordinary competencies to make just about any kind of sofa, chair, bed, dresser or table. We let ourselves be lured into those arenas. But ultimately, we realized we couldn’t really be competitive in these areas, so we cut them out. Trying to be all things to all people doesn’t allow you to differentiate, it doesn’t reward you for creativity, and it doesn’t reward you for fashion leadership. In the end, we walked away from 15 percent of our business.

Principle 6: Cut the fat. Leave the muscle. Get lean!
In addition to the aforementioned 20 percent reduction in workforce--which hit management and workers alike--Century embraced lean as a strategy. We focused on getting rid of all waste, eliminating anything the customer wasn’t willing to pay for. We streamlined and reconfigured our upholstery plants, reducing the distance an average piece of upholstery traveled from 908 feet to 522 feet. That’s a 42 percent reduction that results in the elimination of 1,300 miles each year. (These items are pushed by hand.) Not only does this save time, it reduces dirty upholstery skirts, fabric tears and broken furniture legs--not to mention employee fatigue.

Principle 7: Embrace globalization.
Take advantage of what’s best in the world, as long as it reinforces your strategy. You can and probably should use outsourcing on a selective basis. At Century, we stopped making chair frames, for instance, deciding it made sense to have those made overseas. We leveraged our brilliance in finishing, customizing and providing innovative design to the purchased frames, and our customers appreciate the value we create with that strategy.

Principle 8: Create a culture of trust.
A culture of trust centers on authenticity: Don’t pretend you know all the answers, and don’t make promises you can’t keep. I've had to look into my employees’ eyes and say, “Yes, the plant might have to close. Yes, you could lose your job. But the future is in our hands, and that's a good thing. We're all going to pull together to do our best to keep this company going.” That was a difficult thing to do, but it was also the right thing to do.

Principle 9: Foster a sense of ownership.
How do you instill an entrepreneurial mindset in your employees? First, ensure that your employees literally own a stake in their company. (Century does so via its ESOP.) But just as important, share your vision with your employees every chance you get. The only way to create organizational clarity is to communicate the same message at all levels of your company. Whether I'm talking to upholsterers or board members, I make sure my message is the same: This is the vision. These are the initiatives. These are the action steps.

Principle 10: Hire and retain the very best people.
You know the basic rules: Hire smart people, passionate people, people who fit your culture. These basics all still apply. But when you’re hiring people who must do the near-impossible, that is, keep your American factories running in a tough global economy, you’ve got your work cut out for you. You look like a big risk. So make it a priority to convince the best and brightest that you have an environment in which they can do their best work. Learn how to play up your strengths. For instance, we use the finest materials in our furniture--exotic woods, imported stone, hand-hammered wrought iron, exquisite fabrics--and that’s a big draw for highly creative people. They appreciate having access to beautiful materials with which they can practice their art.

On the other end of the employment spectrum, don’t be afraid to cut people loose when the passion isn’t there. This isn't just for your benefit, but for theirs as well.

Principle 11: Reward people for a job well done.
Yes, financial rewards are always welcome. But don’t forget the power of recognition and praise. I give my outstanding employees my special Crystal Bear Award. I don’t give them out indiscriminately so these awards mean a lot to the people who receive them. We also look for fun ways to celebrate our successes at Century. There can be no success without celebration.

Principle 12: Innovate, innovate, innovate! Look outside the paradigm for new ideas.
When you have an innovative culture, a culture filled with divergent thinkers who feel free to express their wildest ideas, you have something no competitor can steal. Century’s innovative culture manifests in unusual products like the radial table from its Oscar de la Renta Home collection. The table, based on an 1835 design, has a patented mechanism that allows its round top to expand, making room for eight leaves that slide in between its pie-shaped swirl mahogany wedges. Retailing for $25,000, it's Century’s top-selling table in both units and dollars and the highest margin item in its line.

Likewise, when Century entered the leisure furniture category four years ago, it debuted a finishing process used on the outside of boat hulls to make furniture nearly impervious to weather. This innovation allowed the company to be the first to use woods other than those from the teak family and to finish them to the same standards as indoor furniture.

I'm a big believer in the philosophy, “If you can’t hire it, rent it.” That’s why Century collaborates with such diverse names as fashion giant Oscar de la Renta, British interior designer Kelly Hoppen and international designer Richard Frinier.

Principle 13: Choose your customers (or those who influence your customers).
Century has fired a few retail partners who can't meet the needs of affluent consumers. Simultaneously, we're aggressively increasing the segment of our business that sells directly to professional interior designers. I've never heard anyone say, “You know, I finally used a designer to redo my living room, and I really regret it.” People are always thrilled with the results when they hire a professional designer--and the kinds of people who do so are the same kinds of people we want as customers. It’s a natural fit.

Principle 14: Give customers what they really want.
Are you giving your customers what they really want, or are you giving them what you want them to want? Just because you're in love with your own products and services doesn’t mean the customer will be. Do continuous market research. Ask the customer what she wants. Keep an eye on trends that are revealing themselves, and be mindful of how your company might leverage opportunities that arise from them. This is no guarantee of success, of course, but it does make success more likely.

Principle 15: Practice perpetual optimism.
Some psychologists believe there's a strong connection between a person’s mood and his conception of the future. Just the simple act of saying, “We have a plan” calms people and creates a positive mood in the organization--which, in turn, makes it more likely that the plan will be successful. To lead in an environment of ambiguity, you must defeat anxiety in yourself so you don’t risk infecting the people around you. Strive to manage your moods--employees will follow your lead.

Principle 16: Never, ever be a victim.
I refuse to be a victim, and I refuse to have victims working for me. I’ve read that Jack Welch fired the bottom 10 percent of his workforce every year. The people who comprised that 10 percent were “victim types” who could no longer effect change and drive the business forward. Jack was right—victims and other low performers bring everyone else down with them.

The message is clear: even as the world transforms itself, old-fashioned strong leadership, superb quality, and uncompromising service still count.

I do not believe outsourcing is an inevitability. But more important than the final outcome is this lesson: don’t give up without a fight. In the ’80s, everyone thought Japan would take over the world. Well, clearly, it hasn’t. China is the emerging powerhouse right now in manufacturing, but the key phrase is “right now.” There will always be another China. We as an industry and as a nation will always face challenges, so we always need to be in fighting shape.

Tutoring arena is ripe for new businesses.

2007-01-09T21:13:00.001-08:00

Colleges keep getting more competitive, and parents want to give their children every possible edge. Add to that the No Child Left Behind Act, which re-quires schools to provide tutoring services if their programs don't meet performance standards, and you have a solid market in education and tutoring. According to data from Eduventures LLC, an educational market research and consulting firm in Boston, revenue in the tutoring, test-preparation services and supplemental content industry for kindergarten through twelfth grade grew 6 percent in the 2004-2005 school year, reaching $21.9 billion.

Online tutoring, a $115 million market, is one of the hottest areas, especially for high school and middle school students, notes Eduventures senior analyst Tim Wiley. Selling tutoring services to schools is also sizzling, though Wiley notes entrepreneurs in this arena should be prepared to meet all the local, regional and state school requirements. For grades three through eight, reading and math tutoring is always in high demand, but look to science tutoring as a growth area in the next few years. Preschool education, too, is expected to grow exponentially, says Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute of Early Education Research at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey--especially as more states mandate preschool for all children.

Carving out a niche in this market is Marc Stelzer, 41, co-founder of the Learning Breakthrough Program in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. His developmental and learning program helps children age 6 and up with academic, cognitive and even motor skills. Marketing the product online as well as through therapists and professional associations, Stelzer expects sales to reach $600,000 in 2006--his first year in business.

Getting Started
Thinking of jumping into a kids" education and tutoring business? Here are some ABCs of starting up:

Buy materials sparingly at first. You may be excited about starting a tutoring business, but don't clean out the teacher supply store on your first visit, notes Kim McLapp of CleverApple.com, a tutoring business information resource. You likely already have much of what you need--a computer with internet access and a decent printer. Plus, a variety of free teaching materials and lesson plans can be found cheaply online or at your local library. Wait until you book your first charges to purchase the grade and subject specifics you might need.
Organize your policies. Determine your pricing and makeup policies up front, notes McLapp. Make sure your policies are written out and clear to the parents and students. She suggests getting payment up front for the week, and having a "no-show" policy where makeup sessions are available, for example, on only one Saturday of the month. "So you don't have people canceling on you all the time," warns McLapp.
Market where the parents are. Try to network with your local school districts, either to sell your tutoring services to them or to have them refer parents to your company. Advertisements in local parent publications or a flier in the local library can also help get the word out about your company, notes McLapp.
Start locally. Find out the requirements and regulations of your local community regarding tutoring services, notes Wiley. When providing tutoring services directly to the local school districts, there are a lot of variables to consider--especially as local values and politics determine the direction of this market.
Be careful with your money. Schools often pay on a 90-day delay, so make sure you have enough working capital to survive that cash flow crunch.

How to profit from India's mobile content market

2007-01-09T21:13:00.000-08:00

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- India's mobile content market is booming, but lacks an advertising network to help monetize all of those pageviews.

Investment level: $100K - $500K

Risk Level: Medium

Ashu Mathura's three-person startup in Amsterdam is just a few months old, but it already has some big customers. His business: software that allocates space on cell-phone screens on which companies can advertise.

Look up a stock quote on a cell phone in Belgium, for instance, and an ad for Postkrediet, a Dutch financial company, pops up. Postkrediet pays a fee, and Mathura gets a slice.

The early returns have been so promising that Mathura wants to roll out the service next in India, where a booming but nascent mobile market lacks the means to monetizing content - and has room for dozens of ventures like Mathura's that could operate in different regions.

Mathura launched his company, called Mads, with a little over $100,000. His two developers wrote software that collects ads and serves them on mobile webpages.

Mads buys ad space from content publishers - ringtone catalog sites, mobile game companies, other mobile Internet sites - and sells that space to advertisers.

The same model, Mathura says, holds even more potential in India, where the number of cellular customers is expected to jump 71 percent this year to 130 million.

Hundreds of content creators are popping up, but the market is highly fragmented and separated by regional dialects, making it unattractive to a major digital-media player like Razorfish.

"These are mom-and-pop developers creating content for a huge number of local markets," says Taha Rangwala, an analyst with Pyramid Research. These shops don't have the money or time to hawk ad space, Mathura says, and they're eager for the revenue.

The 20 Smartest Companies to Start Now

2007-01-09T21:12:00.000-08:00

Howard Schultz, Steve Case, Vinod Khosla, and other major investors are sharing their best startup ideas. And they're willing to give a collective $100 million to the entrepreneurs who can make them happen.

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- Asking venture capitalists for great startup ideas is a little like asking Curt Schilling what pitch he's going to throw next. When we posed the question to dozens of VCs and investors around the country, more than a few indignantly shot back, "Are you out of your mind?"

But after some friendly prodding from our reporters, a surprising number of them couldn't help but start jawing about companies they would love to build - if only the right people could be found to perfect the technologies or the business plans and make them seem possible.

The result is this list of 20 tantalizing business ideas, ranging from a host of new websites and applications to next-generation power sources and a luxury housing development. This isn't small-time thinking, either: These investors -which include some of Silicon Valley's most successful VCs as well as serial entrepreneurs like Steve Case and Howard Schultz are backing their ideas with a collective $100 million in funding to the entrepreneurs who can get them off the ground.

We don't guarantee you'll land a multimillion-dollar payday or even get your foot in the door. But with the ideas now in your hands, consider yourself halfway there.

The Ultimate iDrive

The Investors: Jonathan Fram, managing partner, and Howard Schultz, co-founder, Maveron

What they've backed: Cranium, Eos Airlines, GameLogic

What they want now: A driver's tech fantasy fully realized: an in-dash computer with a keyboard built into the steering wheel and a full-screen heads-up display projected on the windshield.

It's not fantasy at all, actually. The technology behind the system that Fram and Starbucks (Charts) founder Schultz envision - laser or cathode-ray tubes that convert pixels into projected light - was invented for jet fighters more than 30 years ago, allowing pilots to read cockpit data without taking their eyes off the sky. Commercial pilots now rely on it, and automakers have experimented with in-car displays that flash data like speed and RPM in a corner of the windshield.

Fram, a former IBM (Charts) computer design engineer, wants to invest in a startup that can take the concept to the next level, since carmakers, he says, have been too slow and risk-averse to push technology that has obvious safety implications.

A key advantage of projected displays is that they don't distract drivers' attention nearly as much as cell phones or dashboard controls. They create the illusion that they're floating 15 feet in front of the vehicle - and a GM (Charts) study has shown that eyes can refocus much faster when they're switching between the road and a projected display than when they're toggling back and forth between the road and the dashboard.

"This way," Fram says, "you can stare straight ahead with hands on the wheel to drive and check e-mail at the same time. That's vastly safer than drivers looking down and taking one or both hands off the wheel to play with their BlackBerry." Adding voice-to-text features, he adds, would also help ensure safety. It's up to a startup team, of course, to make that a convincing case.

What they'll invest: $5 million for a deeply qualified 20-person team to deliver a prototype and a plan for pitching a commercial version to automakers within three years

Send your pitch to: jfram@maveron.com. -- S.H.

A Flyweight Database

The Investor: Tim Draper, founder and managing director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

What he's backed: Hotmail, Overture, Skype

What he wants now: A new database company. Don't yawn. Draper loves startups that can upend corporate giants with simple products and cheap technology.

Oracle (Charts), IBM, and Microsoft (Charts) have had a stranglehold on the $13.8 billion database business for more than a decade, and while newer players like MySQL are making a dent, Draper thinks there's an opening for a startup that can deliver most of the benefits of standard Big Blue products without millions of lines of code or an army of consultants and IT managers. "I'm not sure yet what this company would look like," Draper says, "but it would not have the technology baggage of the entrenched monopolists. If it can penetrate the market cleverly like we did with Hotmail and Skype, it might not take that much funding."

What he'll invest: $3 million for a working application

Send your pitch to: karen@dfj.com -- M.V.C.

Four Trends in Technologies for Growing Your Business

The New Power Play

The Investor: Elon Musk, co-founder, PayPal

What he's backed: SpaceX, Tesla Motors

What he wants now: As Musk's two most recent investments - in a space rocket and an all-electric sports car - suggest, the 35-year-old entrepreneur likes to think big. So he's intrigued by the promise of a next-generation battery called an ultracapacitor, capable of powering everything from cars to tractors. Unlike chemical batteries, ultracapacitors store energy as an electrical field between a pair of conducting plates. Theoretically, they can be charged in less than a second rather than hours, be recharged repeatedly without sacrificing performance, and far outlast anything now on the market.

"I am convinced that the long-term solution to our energy needs lies with capacitors," Musk says. "You can't beat them for power, and they kick ass on any chemical battery."

Musk would know: He was doing Ph.D. work at Stanford on high-energy capacitors before he helped get PayPal off the ground. At least one startup, EEStor in Texas, and a larger company, Maxwell Technologies in California, are working on ultracapacitors. Yet Musk believes a university-based research group has an equal shot at a commercial breakthrough, since universities are where the most promising research is bubbling up. "The challenge is one of materials science, not money," Musk says.

The team to pull this off, he says, would need expertise in materials science, applied physics, and manufacturing. Musk wants to see a prototype that can power something small, like a boom box. "Make one and show me that it works," Musk says. "Then tell me what's wrong with it and how it can be fixed."

What he'll invest: $4 million over two years for a working prototype

Send your pitch to: mbb@spacex.com. -- M.V.C.

A Better Energizer

The Investors: Samir Kaul and Vinod Khosla, partners, Khosla Ventures

What they've backed: BCI, Codon Devices, iSkoot

What they want now: Khosla, a legendary Silicon Valley VC whose winners have included Juniper Networks and Redback Networks, and Kaul are looking for an engineering team to build a lithium-ion battery with five times the life of anything found in cell phones, PDAs, or cameras. Matsushita and Sanyo are pushing the limits on lithium-ion cells, as are a couple of promising startups. But as with ultracapacitors, Khosla and Kaul think the right inventor will come from an academic lab. "We see research that proves it's attainable," Kaul says. "This is not a flying car. If it was, I'd ask for 20 times."

What they'll invest: $2 million for a 10- to 15-person team to show proof of concept

Send your pitch to: cj@khoslaventures.com. -- S.H.

Spreadsheets That Truly Excel

The Investor: Amanda Reed, partner, Palomar Ventures

What she's backed: Attensity, Edgewater Networks

What she wants now: A Web-based platform to make company spreadsheets--for revenue forecasting and other analytical chores - more easily viewed, updated, and shared by managers. Many small-business execs still rely on e-mailing Excel files around the office to share data forecasts. Software apps like NetSuite import data but not the formulas embedded in spreadsheets.

What she'll invest: $5 million for a team of five engineers to create a prototype in less than two years

Send your pitch to: businessplans@palomarventures.com. -- S.H.

Patient Monitoring to Go

The Investor: Corey Mulloy, general partner, Highland Capital Partners

What he's backed: AccentCare, Archemix, Yoga Works

What he wants now: An engineering team to design implantable wireless devices capable of 24/7 patient and data monitoring for conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.

Companies like Medtronic and Boston Scientific have multibillion-dollar R&D pipelines for medical devices but are increasingly finding it cheaper to simply acquire early-stage companies--so a startup need only get a product to an early testing stage, and can then let a bigger player worry about taking it commercial. Mulloy considers implantable hardware an ideal target market, since it can exploit recent advances in low-power wireless chipsets, materials, and microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS. A device designed to monitor a diabetic patient, for instance, might trigger a bedside alarm for spikes in blood sugar levels, send continuous data to a doctor, or both.

"HMOs are looking for ways to proactively manage individual diseases like congestive heart failure and diabetes," Mulloy says. "These kinds of devices take us toward that."

What he'll invest: $10 million over three years for a functioning prototype, software to manage wireless data, and early-stage trials

Send your pitch to: lmontilla@hcp.com. -- M.V.C.

New Tricks for Old Drugs

The Investor: Kate Mitchell, managing director, BA Venture Partners

What she's backed: Acusphere, Cogency Software, Wayport

What she wants now: A team of researchers that can identify, patent, and market new uses for prescription drugs with expiring patents. The typical drug discovery process at a large pharmaceutical company can last 15 years and cost $500 million. But "repurposed drugs"--already approved by the FDA for safety in treating specific illnesses--can be turned around quickly and cheaply and used to treat other maladies. Typically the process can occur in as little as three years, with a cost that Mitchell says tops out at about $150 million after clinical trials.

BA recently closed venture deals worth more than $25 million for three startups that are selling such repurposed drugs. One is taking drugs originally aimed at depression and using them to treat insomnia. Another has hit on a treatment for obesity with a medication traditionally prescribed for people suffering from seizures.

But Mitchell is convinced that dozens, perhaps hundreds, more drugs are waiting to be repurposed and turned into blockbusters. "These are virtual drug companies, some with as few as six people," she says. Finding the right people, of course, is key. Major drug companies typically don't bother doing further research on drugs with expiring patents. But many doctors and university researchers do. So identifying those specializing in a given therapy or condition would be a starting point. Acquiring a patent or some other type of intellectual property protection is another prerequisite for a business plan. "Without that, it's a nonstarter," Mitchell says.

What she'll invest: $10 million over two years for preclinical research and trials

Send your pitch to: bavpbusinessplan@bankofamerica.com. -- M.V.C.

Search for the Small Screen

The Investor: Danny Rimer, general partner, Index Ventures

What he's backed: Last.fm, MySQL, Skype, Tellme

What he wants now: Delivery of new types of Web search to mobile phones. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are all taking a swipe at this, but Rimer believes they're betting on a losing strategy by simply shrinking their existing desktop features into a handheld package. He says he's willing to invest in new search applications that, for example, depend as much on voice recognition as on text input and would offer up everything from shopping and news headlines to driving directions and restaurant reviews with a few voice commands and keystrokes.

"The form factor, the battery life, the way you interact with a phone is radically different from how you use a PC," Rimer says. "The large Internet companies are simply taking their PC-centric, text-based solutions and porting them to phones. That's not the right solution, and I just don't think they come from the right context to do this the way it needs to be done."

Like many of the startups he funds at Geneva-based Index Ventures, Rimer expects this one to make heavy use of open-source software to hold down development costs. An ideal founding team, he says, would be no more than four or five people and should have a prototype ready before sending him a business plan. And don't bring up the matter of a financial exit. "That will get the door slammed on you," he says.

What he'll invest: $2 million for a working demo application

Send your pitch to: danny@indexventures.com. -- M.V.C.

GPS-Guided Coupons

The Investor: Jeff Crowe, general partner, Norwest Venture Partners

What he's backed: Jigsaw, Nano-Tex, Telcontar

What he wants now: GPS-enabled ads and coupons piped to your mobile phone at just the right time and place. Location-based marketing is a concept that's been bandied about for years, but only now is the required technology becoming cheap enough to implement. Companies like Yahoo and Google, meanwhile, have proven inept at building quality services for wireless carriers. Though the timing is ideal for a startup to build the technical pieces, persuading customers to sign up for a steady barrage of marketing offers may prove the bigger challenge. "The behavioral piece is the biggest uncertainty, but you've got to make your bets now," Crowe says. A startup needs experience in lightweight applications for cell phones and in location-based services.

What he'll invest: $3 million for a demo application and retail partners ready to test

Send your pitch to: bizplans@nvp.com. -- M.V.C.

Text Ads on the Fly

The Investor: Charles Moldow, venture partner, Foundation Capital

What his firm's backed: CarsDirect.com, Netflix, Simply Hired

What he wants now:: Text-messaging software that allows local merchants to send offers to mobile phones. Some companies already do this in basic form; Moldow's idea would give merchants more control. "This is bringing the blue-light special to your phone," he says. Five or so people could write the code; a sales demon is also needed to enlist merchants. Prove that you can pull this off in one city and Moldow will listen to an expansion plan.

What he'll invest: $5 million for working technology

Send your pitch to: cmoldow@foundationcapital.com. -- M.V.C.

The eBay of Product Placement

The Investor: Roger Lee, general partner, Battery Ventures

What he's backed: Peerflix, PrimeRevenue, Spot Runner

What he wants now: An online marketplace that automates the sale of product placement for Hollywood studios. Product placement in movies and TV shows has been around for decades, of course, but whether it's BMW buying into James Bond or Pottery Barn placing furniture in a sitcom, there's still no efficient way for brand managers to see what's available and buy on the spot.

Lee, a co-founder of application-hosting company Corio, is prospecting for a team to develop an online auction site that would aggregate product-placement opportunities and put them in front of advertisers the instant they emerge - often when scripts are finalized by writers and producers. To augment the service, Lee says, the startup might also measure the results by tracking viewership or box-office figures against the resulting sales of the product that was placed. "There are opportunities for dozens of product placements in every show," Lee says. "The studios and writers just need the right vehicle for selling them."

The biggest challenges for such a startup--as many failed business-to-business marketplace founders will tell you--would be seeding the site with enough inventory to get the big brand managers interested in the first place and then creating a big enough market to keep both the buyers and sellers coming back for more. That's why Lee would want to see commitments from both studios and a handful of top ad agencies before moving ahead. "The good news is that television advertising is already a $50 billion-a-year business," Lee says. "You don't need a huge share to move the needle on a startup like this."

What he'll invest: $6 million to get the auction site developed and running in 18 months

Send your pitch to: rlee@battery.com. -- M.V.C.

Helping Vlogs to Flog

The Investor: Steve Krausz, general partner, U.S. Venture Partners

What he's backed: PodTech Network, Verity, Vontu

What he wants now: A matchmaking site that brings new forms of advertising to one of the Web's fastest-growing new phenomena, the video blog. Popular vlog Rocketboom got the concept off the ground earlier this year by auctioning off 15-second house-produced ads at the end of its Web newscasts; then-host Amanda Congdon also wore T-shirts from startups eager for exposure.

Krausz wants a startup that can offer a clearinghouse of placement opportunities from major advertisers like Apple (Charts) and Nike (Charts) - from 10-second trailers to insertion of products in the creative. Videos would be subject to screening and approval by the advertiser, but Krausz thinks that's a service that could eventually be outsourced. Payment to vloggers could be negotiated any number of ways: They could receive fees based on impressions, click-throughs, or both. The startup, of course, would take a healthy cut. "It would allow this explosion of user-generated content to get an additional revenue stream," Krausz says. "Nothing like this exists yet."

What he'll invest: $2 million for a proof-of-concept site and sign-on from a handful of top advertisers

Send your pitch to: steve.k@usvp.com. -- S.H.

The Social Marketplace

The Investor: Jim Breyer, partner, Accel Partners

What he's backed: Brightcove, Facebook, Prosper

What he wants now: Social-networking sites may be sprouting like weeds, but none yet operates as a bona fide marketplace, with members buying and selling their own creations as much as they blog, link, and post. Breyer, who sits on Wal-Mart's board, is interested in backing an international network for indie artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors, designers, and other creative types from dozens of countries.

Ideally, the site would have the download and payment features to create what he calls a "micromarket" for members' wares. "There might be a Chinese student filmmaker with a five-minute film who wants to reach a niche of U.S. users," Breyer says. "He could find people willing to buy his films, and maybe a producer willing to bankroll more." Transaction fees would supplement ad revenue.

Breyer wants a five- to 10-person team to build a prototype using a peer-to-peer structure that would reduce bandwidth costs, and to identify core groups of users that would get traffic moving to the site.

What he'll invest: $10 million

Send your pitch to: jbreyer@accel.com. -- S.H.

A Matchmaker for Mashups

The Investor: Todd Dagres, general partner, Spark Capital

What he's backed: Akamai, Qtera, Veoh Networks

What he wants now: A Web-based service that allows users to combine their own videos with a library of licensable clips and music to create video mashups online. Want to create a cameo for yourself in Glengarry Glen Ross? Have your boss stand in for Lumbergh in Office Space? That's at the core of Dagres's idea.

He sees two main tasks for a startup. First is building a video-editing program that's as easy to use with a browser as iMovie is with a Mac. Second is inking enough licensing deals to create a video library big enough to get the concept off the ground. "Digital content is starting to be treated like intellectual property exchanges," Dagres says. "Studios have all this content that they would love to monetize- this helps them do that."

What he'll invest: $4 million for a working site and editing software

Send your pitch to: spark@sparkcapital.com -- M.V.C.

Luxury Living on a Budget

The Investors: Donn Davis, president, and Steve Case, founder, Revolution

What they've backed: Exclusive Resorts, Flexcar, Miraval

What they want now: A design scheme for a community of affordable new homes, packed with luxury amenities and based on green values. This is yet another baby-boomer play, but AOL co-founder Case and partner Davis - who helped bring fractional ownership to the ultraluxury-home market with Exclusive Resorts - don't think builders like KB Home (Charts) and Pulte Homes (Charts) have all the angles covered.

Sustainable living and "wellness" lifestyles are big draws among retiring boomers. But so is price, Davis says, as more and more people worry about shrinking retirement incomes.

That's why he'd like to see a development based on more modest homes inside a community that offers an eclectic mix of perks--a spa, yoga classes, a community garden, room service, and so on. Revolution is looking for a small team to identify the developable land, map out home architecture and design, and assemble the right mix of services.

"It's about lots of services, lots of amenities, lots of convenience," Davis says. The plan ought to consider not only location options but also different sales models: Homeowners should be able to choose among full or fractional ownership and different levels of property management, perhaps even taking part in selling the community's services to outsiders.

What they'll invest: $5 million for the right plan

Send your pitch to: tigesavage@revolution.com. -- M.V.C.

Trip Planning 2.0

The Investor: Mike Kwatinetz, founding general partner, Azure Capital Partners

What he's backed: Knowledge Adventure, OQO, VMware

What he wants now: Concierge-grade trip planning over the Web. Imagine getting a message on your BlackBerry alerting you that your villa is booked, dinner reservations are confirmed, and a driver will pick you up in an hour for the flight to Belize. It's not live agents making that happen, but software that taps into the growing number of travel-industry databases - of hotel chains, restaurants, limo services, amusement parks - to assemble smarter, more personalized itineraries than can be found on major travel hubs like Orbitz and Travelocity.

What he'll invest: $5 million to create a working prototype within two years

Send your pitch to: mike.kwatinetz@azurecap.com. -- M.V.C.

Clean, Green Office Space

The Investor: David Kirkpatrick, co-founder, SJF Ventures

What he's backed: Evco Research, Salvage Direct

What he wants now: An enviro-friendly office-maintenance service. Most businesses hire different vendors for recycling, janitorial, and supply services. Kirkpatrick thinks a startup can cobble them together in a tidy green package for clients willing to pay a premium not just for the convenience but for a stamp of eco-approval to tout to employees and customers. Buying a handful of small vendors in a specific region would be the starting point. "Roll-ups in this industry have often been good investments," Kirkpatrick says.

What he'll invest:: $1 million for a plan that spells out the acquisition strategy

Send your pitch to: deals@sjfund.com. -- S.H.

A Weapon Against Superbugs

The Investor: Bill Ericson, general partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures

What he's backed: ParAllele BioScience, Pharmix, Sabrix

What he wants now: A device that can identify new types of hospital-borne infections in just a few hours. Two decades ago hospital-acquired infections were rare, but a series of "superbugs" have since evolved that fend off most antibiotics; roughly 1.7 million Americans a year contract infections during hospital visits, and 99,000 of them die.

Standard procedure for dealing with hospital-borne infections is to order a culture and then blast the patient with antibiotics for up to a week while doctors await test results.

Ericson, who's spent a decade investing in life sciences and software, thinks a solution lies in the emerging discipline of molecular diagnostics, which uses mass spectrometry and so-called gene chips to allow infinitely more detailed views of genetic material. Ericson sees the technology leading to a kind of forensic DNA lab for hospitals, where staffers scan a sample in an hour or two and determine the strain. "I want a device that can identify the pathogen, tell me what it is resistant to, and do it in a matter of hours," he says.

Ericson is not looking for a finished prototype but expects proof of the device's potential. "Anything in biology is unpredictable," he says. "But you need to come out of a two-year period with a clear demonstration of principle."

What he'll invest: $10 million for patent-protected research

Send your pitch to: bericson@mdv.com. -- M.V.C.

Optimized Sales for the Little Guy

The Investor: James Slavet, partner, Greylock Partners

What his firm's backed: Digg, Evite, Facebook

What he wants now: A Web-based service that helps small online publishers choose the most profitable way to sell their ad inventory - whether that's direct sales, Google's or Yahoo's ad networks, or other channels. Large digital-media consulting firms like Aquantive already provide this service for big clients; what's lacking is a nonproprietary service that can do it for smaller players. "Unless you're one of the larger sites," Slavet says, "you've either got nothing to help you or some hacked-together system that isn't efficient at all."

Yet the capability exists, Slavet says, to monitor ad revenue across a variety of sites and recommend the right sales approach for a specific category. Slavet wants a leader from a top ad network to head up the effort and a technical team that has experience building ad-optimization systems. Since pricing would be based on a percentage of additional revenue, Slavet expects some proof that your system can generate it.

What he'll invest: $3 million over two years for an operating startup with a handful of beta clients

Send your pitch to: jslavet@greylock.com -- M.V.C.

The Next Massively Entertaining Idea

The Investor: Bill Gurley, general partner, Benchmark Capital

What he's backed: Linden Lab, Shopping.com, Zillow.com

What he wants now: The next massively multiplayer online hit, whether it's built around a core game like World of Warcraft or a virtual community like Neopets. "Anything," Gurley says, "where people are entertained massively together." Benchmark has placed some big bets in the MMO sector, including Linden Lab, maker of Second Life, and Sulake, which runs Habbo Hotel, a game site geared for teens. "I think we're far from finished in this space," Gurley says. "There is a lot of room for new ideas going after different areas of interest."

Gurley will not hazard a guess on what demographic could be ripe for the next MMO hit. "These things are like catching lightning in a bottle," he says. "There's an element of game design and social curiosity that you have to get just right."

What he'll invest: $5 million for a working game or site that shows MMO growth potential. "It's so hard to predict what will take off," Gurley says, "that it's easier to pay more for something that's further along."

10 Ideas to Grow Your Homebased Business

How to Succeed As a Young Entrepreneur

2007-01-09T21:11:00.000-08:00

If you've got a business idea you can't stop talking about, why wait to flex your entrepreneurial muscles? Here are five tips to get an idea out of your head and into the marketplace.

Take a calculated risk.

While Michael Neustel was an undergrad at North Dakota State University he began a lawn-sprinkler business. It folded because he could not devote enough time away from school. Now a patent attorney and founder and president of PatentWizard LLC, a software company in Fargo, N.D., Mr. Neustel says the experience taught him the importance of researching the market and workload. "Young people can fail without losing time or hurting their life, then try again," he says.

A young person's flexibility is an opportunity for success, says Mr. Neustel. Most are single, have few financial responsibilities and often can live on a relatively little money, he says. "It's tough to focus on a business while paying the bills and working a full-time job," he says. The entrepreneurial leap for a college student may be as simple as taking a semester off from school or enrolling part time. This stage of life is also a time for a young business-minded individual to evaluate whether the risky lifestyle of an entrepreneur is a healthy fit. "Look inside yourself toward where you are in life and ask, 'Am I willing to take a risk?' " says Mr. Neustel.

Overcome early hurdles.

During his freshman year at Princeton University in 2001, Tom Szaky, 24 years old, began working on a project to create organic plant food made entirely from organic food waste and packaged in recycled soda bottles. The company, called TerraCycle, now located in Trenton, N.J., began to grow, and by the middle of his sophomore year, Mr. Szaky went on sabbatical. Due to his age, investor interest was slow.

"In the beginning, investors totally blew us off," he says. Knowing his age was the primary deterrent, Mr. Szaky remained patient and persistent. Eventually, a radio interview led to an investment of a couple thousand dollars by a caller, and from there TerraCycle grew one investor at a time. Today, some of TerraCycle's 15 products are found at Wal-Mart and Home Depot, and he expects revenues this year to be around $1.5 million. "Believing in the idea is critical, especially for a young person, because you have to get passed those first hurtles."

Make the most of your school's resources.

Matt Stucke, a 2004 graduate of the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D, received first-place honors at UM's 2003 annual Emerging Leaders Academy Entrepreneurship Fair for his invention of an athletic shoe cleat guard. With help from his school's entrepreneurial organization, the Harold Schafer Leadership Center, Mr. Stucke created a board of directors consisting of faculty and local business owners. "The directors were investors with the mindset of supporting me," he says.

Mr. Stucke, who now runs an Edward Jones Investments office as an investment representative in Fargo, N.D., called the product SafeSole. With the board's help, he acquired a U.S. patent and entered national trade shows that led to relationships with manufacturers.

Be proactive in finding entrepreneurial resources at your school, says Mr. Stucke. This will be the beginning of your network and will give you experience to decide if you want to become an entrepreneur. Many universities have entrepreneur centers that connect students with industry professionals to explore hands-on business ideas. Also, take advantage of your university's career services and alumni association.

Experienced professionals can help.

"Mentors are vital," says Mr. Stucke, who can call his mentor for advice any time of day. Mr. Stucke was connected with his mentor, an entrepreneur and business owner, while an undergrad through his school's entrepreneurial organization. Approach an experienced professional for one-on-one advice through your alumni association, while networking at a trade show, entrepreneur fair or any professional setting that seems appropriate.

"The smart kids are the ones who get business cards and hound professionals to talk during lunch," says Wes Moss, an entrepreneur advocate and former contestant on Donald Trump's "The Apprentice" television show. However, you must do your research. "People are flattered when asked for advice," he says. But be well-informed about the person you are speaking to and know specifically what you want to talk about.

Adopt a learner's mindset.

"People have great ideas in their head all the time, but it's the people who get it in a business plan who succeed," says Mr. Moss. Learning small business while digging your hands in it may slow your progress, but don't rush, says Mr. Neustel. If you are stuck, write down the reasons you aren't carrying out your idea, then solve them one by one, says Mr. Szaky. "People get stuck in thinking about the process, but you have to start somewhere," he says.

By JAMES CAVERLY

100 Service Businesses to Start Today (Part 2)

2007-01-09T21:09:00.000-08:00

Business-Plan Consulting

Not only is a business plan crucial in obtaining bank financing, but it's an invaluable tool for anticipating--and tackling--a business's inevitable ups and downs. With your writing skills, spreadsheet know-how, and general business savvy, show clients how to present their best-laid plans . . . while accomplishing your own.

Packing and Unpacking Service
Packing up to move to a new home or office--not to mention unpacking on the other end--is enough to leave one feeling upended. Thank goodness for packing and unpacking entrepreneurs who, with their hassle- and time-saving services, make moving seem like magic.

Business-Travel Management
Make the skies even friendlier for business travelers--and less costly for business owners--as a business--travel manager. Help book low-price tickets, keep expense records, manage frequent-flier miles . . . and reap the high-flying rewards.

Carpet Dyeing
For a fraction of the cost of replacing unsightly or stained carpeting, carpet-dyeing professionals provide hotels, community centers, nursing homes and other businesses an attractive alternative. So go ahead, lay the options at your clients' feet . . . and start making wall-to-wall profits.

Hospital-Bill Auditing
There's nothing worse than being laid up in the hospital for a few days . . . except maybe the pile of often confusing bills that follow. The remedy: hospital-bill auditors, who--thanks to their billing savvy and attention to detail--make way for their clients' smooth recovery.

Specialized Staffing
Helping clients meet their workforce needs is a matter of finding a niche and filling it--and keeping up with human resources trends. Work your way up in the industry by developing a roster of specially skilled workers, then use your "people skills" to build your business.

Bookkeeping
Though today's software makes keeping your own books easier, it doesn't make it much less time-consuming. That's why, for business owners with little time to spare, a bookkeeping service is not only a time-saver, but an asset.

Computer Repair
In today's computer-based society, computer "downtime" can be both costly and aggravating. As a repair professional--equipped with some basic diagnostic equipment and technological savvy--you can get clients' computers back up and humming again.

Referral Service
For referral-service entrepreneurs--who act as a "welcome wagon" to newcomers--getting to know new as well as existing businesses pays off in more ways than one. Local companies pay to get their services introduced to newcomers, while these new customers pay for a little friendly advice.

Video Brochure
Make record profits taping corporate video brochures. Just get your video recorder handy, and zoom in on the action. Video-editing skills and special-effects techniques help you pull together the big picture--and reel in the profits.

Executive Search
Take your business to a "hire" level: As an executive-search specialist, help busy clients find the right man--or woman--for the job. Your job involves placing ads and conducting interviews to screen potential employees for clients. Put on your best interviewing suit, and get down to business.

Freight Brokerage
One sack of flour for a dozen eggs . . . Gone are the days of such no-frills, local trade. In their place: a sophisticated global commerce system requiring a thorough knowledge of land, sea, air and rail shipping rates and regulations. Knowledgeable freight brokers are indispensable to this burgeoning scene.

Long-Distance Reselling
By buying time in bulk from wholesalers, long-distance resellers ring up sales by servicing long-distance consumers--often at significant savings. You make the call: Either purchase the telecommunications equipment you'll need now, or rent it and simply focus on the marketing of your service.

Computer Consulting
Tap into a surging market as a computer consultant. Whether you're an expert at Linux, putting together hardware components, or networking, a growing number of computer "newbies" will surely benefit from your services.

Limousine Service
With a limo and some insurance, you could be the driving force behind a new business venture. Stretch your market by adding more drivers and cars to your fleet. Then, once you've established a reliable reputation, start driving home your limousine-service sales.

Language Translation
Falling foreign-trade barriers and improved communication technology translate into success for language translators and interpreters. An ear for multiple languages puts you at the forefront of this global movement.

Office-Relocation Service
Helping businesses get plugged in to a new neighborhood comes easy for office-relocation-service entrepreneurs who, as "locals," know who's who in providing such services as printing, restaurant delivery and equipment repair.

Office Plant Maintenance
Set your roots in a growing business as an office-plant-maintenance entrepreneur. Regular watering, light pruning, and fertilizing are all in a day's work. Though a green thumb is helpful, some clients may also request maintenance of their silk plants. Either way, your business is sure to grow.

Professional Office Consultant
It's one thing to spend a day at the office, and another altogether to run the office. As a professional office consultant, you'll oversee such responsibilities as marketing, insurance and daily operations for professional lawyers, doctors or other specialists--while leaving the rest to the "pros."

Miniblind Cleaning
Put an end to dusty miniblinds in offices, homes and other buildings with your miniblind-cleaning service. Immerse blinds in tanks of gentle, yet effective, cleansing solution . . . and give clients a squeaky-clean new perspective on the world outside their windows.

Office-Support Service
Typing, filing, sorting mail, entering data, and answering phones are just a few tasks an office-support service can perform to help out harried business owners. Hand out business cards to every businessperson you know--and get ready to spend a productive day at the office!

Apartment-Prepping
Move in on the housing market with some basic plumbing, painting, caulking and scrubbing skills. Busy landlords and leasing offices can both benefit from your handyman skills, while you, in turn, make some handy profits repairing vacated units for clients' new tenants.

Debt-Collection Service
Money makes the world go 'round: You get paid when your clients get paid by the people who you get to pay them. Sound complicated? It doesn't have to be: As a debt collector, it pays in more ways than one to have some persistence in tracking down clients' delinquent debtors.

Restaurant Delivery Service
When "Let's do lunch" means eating at the office, an ordinary sack lunch doesn't have to suffice. Thanks to restaurant deliverers, busy professionals can order their meals from local restaurants. By collecting a delivery charge and tip, operators get a good taste of entrepreneurial success.

Catering
A caterer's place is in the kitchen . . . cooking up hot profits, that is. So long as your kitchen is commercially approved--and you've got a knack for stirring up some "dough"--you've got the makings for savory success. Service weddings, holiday parties, and other festive gatherings; if you're lucky, clients will have your cake and eat it, too!

Seminar Promotion
If there's one thing consumers can never seem to get enough of, it's information. Give 'em an earful by planning and promoting informational seminars. You don't need to be an expert yourself; just schedule the speakers, reserve a location, promote the event, and get ready to collect the profits at the door.

Window Washing
Business has never been clearer for window washers. Grab your bucket, squeegee, and glass-cleaning solution, and rap at the dirty windows of local businesses and residences alike. Add repeat customers, and you'll soon be on a winning streak.

Valet Parking
Drive right up to entrepreneurship as the owner of a valet-parking service. Restaurants, hotels and convention centers can all use the services of a well-dressed, bonded parking staff. The key is having your own team of drivers to keep clients' customers--and their cars--on the move.

Professional Organizer
Neatniks need apply: If you've got a knack for neatness, why not help the organizationally challenged? Messy closets, home offices and commercial offices alike could benefit from a more efficient setup. Put some order into others' lives, and arrange yourself some pretty profits.

Power Washing
Oily driveways, mud-caked semi trucks, or barnacle-ridden boats . . . You name it, and entrepreneurs equipped with specialized power-washing equipment can probably clean it. For spotless results, target commercial as well as residential customers.

Marketing and Sales
Sales-Lead Generating
Streamline salespeople's efforts by identifying prospects and generating sales leads. Some footwork, market research, and a phone set you on the path to compiling a list of potential customers for your clients.

Public-Relations Agency
A way with words, enthusiasm and persistence are all necessary in this competitive business. Networking--by developing contacts with reporters and other media--is also crucial to helping your clients go public with press releases and more.

Copywriting and Proofreading Service
Wanted: creative writer with a knack for finding typos and misteaks . . . er, mistakes. Writers who help ensure clients' advertising copy is both catchy and fault-free may not win a Pulitzer, but they will have some profits to write home about.

Direct Mail/Coupon
Cash in on consumers' coupon-cutting craze with a direct-mail coupon service. Get started by selling ad space in a direct-mail coupon package to local businesses. When you mail coupons to local residents, your clients will benefit from the exposure and you'll benefit from a first-class business of your own.

Mailing Services
Post record profits fulfilling clients' envelope-stuffing and bulk-mail-processing needs. Advertise in the business section of your local newspaper, and start looking for your check in the mail.

Sales Training
Don't sell yourself short: With some self-promotion and marketing know-how, you could have what it takes to build your own business as a sales trainer. By sharing your sales savvy with other busy business owners, you not only help boost clients' bottom line, but yours, too.

Welcoming Service
Welcoming-service entrepreneurs--who greet newcomers to town with a package of coupons, samples from local businesses, and other community information--not only provide a welcome service to newcomers, but to local businesses, as well.

Home Services
Packing and Unpacking Service
Packing up to move to a new home or office--not to mention unpacking on the other end--is enough to leave one feeling upended. Thank goodness for packing and unpacking entrepreneurs who, with their hassle- and time-saving services, make moving seem like magic.

Handyman Services
If it's broke, you can fix it. Advertise in local newspapers and bulletin boards, then get busy repairing everything from leaky pipes and stopped-up toilets to jammed cabinet drawers and broken windows.

Home-Entertainment Installation
Just watch a novice attempt to connect the wires, cables and other components of their new or relocated stereo and television equipment, and you're likely to view consumer impatience at its finest. But with your sound electrical and wiring expertise, you'll have all systems buzzing in no time.

Mortgage/Debt-Reduction Service
By explaining alternative payment structures to clients (which can result in a smaller total payment in a shorter period of time), mortgage and debt-reduction-service professionals are helping to relieve America's debt--one citizen at a time.

Pool Services
Make a splash in the pool-services business with little more than some cleaning equipment and a water-test kit. Just load up your tools in your car and make the rounds in your neighborhood. Then dive right into business by marketing your service to homeowners' associations, apartment complexes and individual residences.

Lawn Care
When push comes to shove, you've probably got what it takes to make some "green." Just roll up your sleeves and start mowing, clipping and fertilizing lawns for office complexes and residential clients alike.

Home-Inspection Service
A keen eye for structural detail paves the way to success in your home-inspection service. Start by assessing clients' homes for problems such as structural damage and foundation abnormalities, then refer customers to contractors who can ensure their homes are in good repair.

House Painting
Brush up on your painting skills, and get ready to paint the town red--or white, blue or beige, for that matter. Just load up your truck with brushes, rollers and ladders, and get primed for business!

Local Moving Service
Be a mover and shaker with your own local moving service. This is no business for the faint of heart, however: Make sure you're equipped with some upstanding leveraging techniques . . . as well as brawn.

House-Sitting
Is there a sitter in the house? If so, homeowners can rest assured that, while they're away, their plants and pets will be tended to. Don't wait for opportunity to come knocking; a reliable set of references get you in the door.

Home Decorating
Home in on the decorating business with your flair for design. Work with local furniture and accessory stores, paint shops, and carpet and drapery outlets to coordinate clients' interiors. And remember: The key to getting in the door of this business is decorating your own home, first.

Pet-Food and Supplies Home Delivery
Lugging pounds of pet food and supplies from the store each week or so can be a burden on pet owners, but it's certainly not too much for pet-delivery entrepreneurs. Once you've sniffed out some leads, start serving up success by delivering pet supplies directly to customers' doors.

Custom Closet Systems
Calling all closet-organizing fanatics: It's time to come out and show your stuff! With a few hooks and shelves, and a lot of creativity (but checking any fear of small spaces at the door), you've got the makings of a custom closet-systems pro . . . with plenty of room to grow. New homeowners and long-time closet accumulators alike make up your potential clientele.

Residential Cleaning
Not only is residential cleaning a good way to keep a body busy, but it's also a way to clean up some profits while you're at it. Start on the ground floor by mopping, sweeping and dusting one house, and work your way up from there!

Computers and Technology
Computer Repair
In today's computer-based society, computer "downtime" can be both costly and aggravating. As a repair professional-equipped with some basic diagnostic equipment and technological savvy-you can get clients' computers back up and humming again.

Computer Consulting
Tap into a surging market as a computer consultant. Whether you're an expert at Windows 95, putting together hardware components, or networking, a growing number of computer "newbies" will surely benefit from your services.

Internet Research
Practice makes perfect when it comes to surfing the internet. With some search-engine and self-marketing savvy, put information at clients' fingertips--and "net" profits at yours.

Web-Site Designer
With specialized software, creating websites comes easy, so long as you have some basic technical and graphic savvy. Home in on business by helping businesses establish a site; existing clients will need help keeping their websites up-to-date, as well.

Children's Services
Children's Party Planning
Do parents a favor and plan their next children's party. From hiring Sesame Street character look-alikes to coordinating games, decorations and food, you're sure to be the life of the party by allowing parents to relax and have fun, too. Plan birthday, holiday, and religious-ceremony celebrations . . . and let the festivities begin!

Child Care
As a child-care provider, you'll need a state license, plenty of baby-sitting experience, and a lot of patience and TLC. Whether you "sit" at your place or theirs, you'll find busy parents aren't your only clients; many office complexes, gyms and other businesses need quality child care, too.

Child-Identification Program
Safety first: When it comes to keeping tabs on children, there's no excuse for kidding around. By offering parents a complete child-identification program, including information files, fingerprinting, identification tags and photos, you not only set parents' minds more at ease, but provide a safety net for our next generation.

Children's Fitness
If there's one thing that never seems to run out, it's a kid's supply of energy. Tap into that vast resource with a children's fitness program. Put your knowledge of children's education and physical fitness to the test by renting a location, then coordinate activities such as tumbling, dance, gymnastics and karate. And hop to it!

Children's Transportation Service
For working and nonworking parents alike, transporting junior to and from school (as well as to after-school activities) can become, well, taxi-ing. By providing a reliable children's transportation service, you give busy parents a break-and keep their busy kids on schedule.

Baby-Proofing
Stairs, cabinets, electrical cords and outlets-they're all potential baby hazards. New parents, grandparents, and even baby sitters could all benefit from a more kid-friendly house. So grab your tools and be prepared to get down on your hands and knees (it helps to view things from a baby's perspective).

Computer Training for Kids
Reading, writing, arithmetic . . . and computers. Though it seems like kids today are born speaking computerese, they've got to start learning somewhere. Teaching them the basics early on is sure to put kids at the head of their class . . . and you at the head of your own business.

Nanny Placement
For busy parents, finding a good nanny isn't child's play. Nanny-placement agents-who screen applicants, check references, match personalities, and set schedules-provide clients an invaluable service by saving them considerable time and worry.

New Mother/Infant Home Care
Make new babies' homecomings from the hospital less tiresome for parents by providing the in-home care and support they need. Preparing meals, diapering the baby, and providing light housekeeping are all a great relief to proud-but occasionally exhausted-new parents.

Tutoring
Thought your proficiency in high school algebra was all for naught? Think again: As a tutor, you could help others bone up on their studies. Whether it's reading, writing or arithmetic, help your students reach the top of their class with a little experienced guidance and support.

Event Services
Photography
With your eye for photo opportunities-at weddings, parties, special events and more-you could be zooming in on profits as a freelance photographer. Be prepared to work weekends and evenings (when many clients will need your services) and to hire an assistant to help you juggle your photo paraphernalia.

Errand Runner/Personal Shopper
Calling all shopaholics: Here's one business where you can truly shop till you drop . . . without spending a penny of your own! Personal shoppers-who may also perform other errands, such as picking up prescriptions or buying groceries-can never complain about a lack of things to do.

Family-History Video
Money can grow on trees . . . family trees, that is. Family-history videographers are hitting home by filming personalized accounts of weddings, births and other memorable occasions. Should a customer's other family members give the film a thumbs up, you may be looking at future generations of customers.

Mobile Disc Jockey
As a mobile disc jockey, weddings, parties and other events are all music to your ears. Start jammin' with a collection of compact discs, a CD player, and a speaker system, then pass on the word about your services to wedding and event planners.

Wedding-Planning Service
Getting married isn't always as simple as saying, "I do." There's a caterer to be contracted, a location to be rented, and flowers to be ordered. So when it comes to making matrimony a more harmonious event for the new couple and their families, wedding planners take the cake.

Event Planning
If your life has been, well, uneventful until now, we have a solution: Be an event planner! Whether it's a party, wedding or convention, you're sure to be at the center of all the action when you coordinate everything from room rentals and speakers to decorations and food.

Photo Birth Announcements
For birth-announcement producers, business is booming as fast as the population! Some basic desktop-publishing software, scanning equipment, and the names of new parents put you in the starting blocks; from there, create fanciful photo-cards, including those all-important details: name, birth date, time and weight.

Videotaping Service
You may not win a producer-of-the-year award, but you'll win the appreciation of your clients when you capture their weddings, bar mitzvahs, birthdays and more on videotape. Keep the film rolling at special events, then edit a final version for clients' own special screenings.

Reunion Organizing
Reunite 'em 'cause it pays so good: Whether it's one big happy family or one big high school class, reunions can be a joyful-and lucrative-occasion for reunion organizers. Schedule the accommodations, coordinate the catering and entertainment, send out the invitations, then sit back and let it all "come together."

100 Service Businesses to Start Today (Part 1)

2007-01-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

At your service: Convenience-craving consumers are always looking for a way to do things better, faster and cheaper. Often, that means turning to a specialty-services entrepreneur who knows how to get the job done right. Here, we provide some inspiration for aspiring service providers-from adventure-tour leaders to window washers. With 105 ideas to choose from, you have no excuse not to get started today with your own service business.

Personal Services
Mobile Pet Grooming
Snip, clip and brush your way to success as a mobile pet groomer. Fido and his owner will both appreciate the convenience of a "doorstep" doggie-grooming service. With the proper training and experience, a van and some grooming tools, start barking up the right tree by marketing your business in your neighborhood and others.

Collectibles Search
Collectibles searchers, who carefully canvas swap meets, thrift stores and garage sales, can collect a bundle locating objets d'art for clients. Once you've found your niche--be it antique lunch boxes, dolls or grandfather clocks--advertise your services in hobbyist publications, at collectibles stores, in specialty forums on the internet, or on eBay. Soon you'll be taking up a collection of your own.

Diaper Delivery
Whoever said cloth diapers couldn't be convenient--and user-friendly? Velcro diaper "wraps" replace awkward pins, and pickup and delivery take the dirty work out of diapering. Equipped with a "clean," propane-fueled delivery truck and some washing machines, you can provide an environmentally friendly alternative to disposables. Talk about a change for the better!

Dry-Cleaning Pickup & Delivery
Are you clothes-minded? Then try on the dry-cleaning pickup-and-delivery business for size. Provide pickup and drop-off at a place that's convenient for busy professionals, then follow suit by arranging with a local dry cleaner to do the actual cleaning.

Mobile Locksmith
You hold the keys to success as a mobile locksmith. For best results, be ready for 24-hour action with a cell phone and van. With some training and basic equipment, you'll have this business mastered--lock, stock and barrel.

Graffiti Removal & Abatement
Equipped with some paint and other preventive treatments, you're set to serve residential as well as commercial clients with your own graffiti-removal-and-abatement business. City governments and schools can also benefit from the removal of unsightly "tagging" in their districts.

Golf-Club Cleaning
Take your best shot with a golf-club cleaning service. Not only will you be offering golfers a clean edge to improve their game, but you'll be offering a way to protect their investment from the rusting, pitting and discoloration of dirty clubs.

Self-Defense Instructor
You can never feel too safe or secure. People of all ages and backgrounds can benefit from the self-defense skills you can teach them. Get your business jump-started by training others in the disciplines you've learned--Aikido, Karate, or simply basic safety-awareness skills.

Adventure Tours
Got a taste for adventure? Whether it's exploring South American caves or touring English teahouses, you're sure to find a fanatic following . . . so long as you do all the footwork first. Put your service on the road to success by coordinating transportation, food and lodging. Your clients only need to worry about one thing: having fun.

Pet Sitting
When it comes to creature comforts, most canines would choose their own backyard over a kennel any day. Thanks to pet sitters--who take care of pets while their owners are out of town or busy--Fido can have his kibble at home. This business isn't just for the dogs, however; gear your services toward all creatures great and small for maximum profits.

Mobile Massage
Success is close at hand for mobile massage providers. Advertise your stress-relieving services at local workout clubs, spas and physical therapists' offices. Then bring your trained hands--and a portable massage table--to clients' homes or places of work.

Personal Chef
Cook up tasty profits as a personal chef. Those with culinary competence can likely find a hungry clientele among the ranks of America's busy working families. Or, market your business to clients for those special occasions when they prefer to dine in--complete with restaurant-quality food and service.

Mobile Mechanic
As a mobile mechanic, a good knowledge of automobile repair techniques and a list of referrals help you rev up sales. Put your business in the fast lane by bringing your service directly to clients' homes or places of business.

Seamstress/Tailor
As a seamstress or tailor, sew your way to success altering clothing and/or creating new apparel from scratch. Spread the word about your service at local boutiques and dry cleaners, plug in your sewing machine, and start stitching.

Court-Paper Serving
You can't beat the legal system . . . as a great resource for business, that is. Private attorneys, who lack the time to do much footwork themselves, often turn to registered court-paper processors to serve their summonses. Come judgment day, you'll be courting success.

Porcelain Repair
Rub a dub, dub, a porcelain-repair entrepreneur in the tub: Fixing unsightly chips and cracks in tubs and other porcelain accessories puts entrepreneurs in business. With a porcelain-repair kit in hand, sinks and tubs are made like new again.

Cover Letter/Resume Service
Not everyone knows how to look good on paper. With your editing and basic layout skills, a laser printer, and some high-quality stationery, you're set to start showing clients how to put their best foot forward in their resumes and cover letters--and how to get in the door of potential employers' businesses for an interview.

Mystery Shopping
Now, you can shop till you drop . . . and get paid for it! Just put on your shopping shoes and put service personnel to the test as a "mystery" shopper. Rate local retail stores' employees on attitude, friendliness, and overall quality of service, then report back to your store-owner clients, helping them to ensure their service really is number one.

Tax-Form Preparer
One thing is certain: There will always be a need for tax preparers. Come tax season, businesses and individuals alike need help preparing numerous tax forms and understanding the latest tax regulations. Equipped with some specialized computer software, start scheduling your career as a tax preparer this fiscal year-and get ready for some returns on your time and investment.

Wedding-Guide Publishing
For photographers, bakers, caterers and florists, wedding bells mean big business. Help them get a piece of the action by publishing a wedding guide with space for local advertisers. Include some basic wedding-planning articles, and you'll find June brides aren't the only ones to benefit from your premarital publication.

Mobile Car-Wash and Detailing
Take your business on the road, and clean up on profits as a mobile car-wash and detailing pro. Let a little soap and water do wonders . . . along with a few rags, brushes, and elbow grease; then drive home sales by marketing your services to car dealers, rental fleet owners, and corporations.

Used-Car Inspection
Sometimes, it takes a little more than a kick of the tires to evaluate a used car. With some basic diagnostic equipment and mechanical know-how, however, used-car inspectors can help steer clients away from "lemons." Developing a roster of appreciative customers puts you on the road to referrals--and success.

Professional Organizer
Neatniks need apply: If you're got a knack for neatness, why not help the organizationally challenged? Messy closets, home offices and commercial offices alike could benefit from a more efficient setup. Put some order into others' lives, and arrange yourself some pretty profits.

Windshield Repair
To find potential clients for your windshield-repair business, simply canvas local parking and used-car lots for cars with cracked, chipped windshields. A basic repair kit enables you to offer clients what is clearly a better alternative to costly glass replacement.

Private Investigation
Blaze your own entrepreneurial trail while following others' footsteps-literally. As a private investigator, make your mark in the industry by keeping a keen "eye" on other people's activities. Clients include attorneys gathering evidence for a case, or individuals seeking information about a significant other.

Hot to generate new business opportunities

2007-01-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

Follow these guidelines for creating a plan that will help you bring in more business.

Entrepreneurs often live with the hope that if they build it, customers will come. But in today's economy, it takes a lot more than hope to get people to purchase your products or services: New business-building practices are a must if you want to expand.

Another necessary element is a clear-cut plan for growth. But many entrepreneurs get obsessed with creating the perfect plan. Or they never get around to putting one together. Crafting a plan is necessary, quick and effective. And we can show you how to do it. The following seven steps should take you no more than four hours to complete-a small price to pay for a tremendous upside. The result? A road map that will infuse new energy, enthusiasm and vision into your company's growth plans. So let's get started.

Step 1: Focus on your core product. A very successful e-newsletter entrepreneur has built his business around this mantra: "Prospects buy when they trust your value is applicable to them and believe your company is stable." This strong position allows him to constantly check up on the services and value he's providing his customers. Keep this statement in mind as we go through the rest of the seven steps, because internalizing this mantra is the key to a solid plan.

It's common in small, service businesses that the entrepreneur feels he or she must do everything the "big guys" do to compete. The truth is, small-business owners can really never compete in the same way. So it's essential for small businesses to differentiate themselves by focusing on the unique capabilities and core products they bring to prospects. Specialization is the entrepreneur's greatest asset.

Step 2: Keep your pitch simple. The last time you asked someone at a party what their company does, did you get a clear, concise response? Or did your eyes glaze over by the time they got to the end of their explanation? My guess is, it was probably the latter. Now imagine that same pitch being presented to prospects who don't have a glass of wine in their hands to distract them! It's not a pretty picture.

What every company needs is a simple "elevator pitch." That's a short, concise message that can communicate your message to a prospect in 30 seconds or less. It explains the value your product or service provides so the prospect understands why it's applicable to them.

Try this little exercise to test your pitch clarity quotient. Ask someone who doesn't know what you do to listen to your pitch. Explain what your company does, and watch for signs of fatigue-eyes watering, lids getting heavy, and so on. Of course, you may have the perfect pitch. But if you don't, you'll recognize it right away from verbal and physical responses.

Step 3: Stay true to who you are. Knowing who you are and what gets you excited (and bores you to tears) will help you reach your goals. Nothing can derail a growth plan more than discomfort and procrastination-it's simply human nature to procrastinate over things that cause discomfort. And there are dozens of daily business requirements that every business owner detests. If you're finding yourself putting things off, it's time to start delegating

Stay true to who you are and what you do best: Hand off those tasks that will blow you off course because you don't like doing them, so you don't! Stretch and grow your capabilities in alignment with your interests and expertise. If accounting is your nemesis, hire a bookkeeper. If your personal organization is out of control, hire a temp to set up a new filing system. Always make sure that you're focused on your priority "A" tasks and delegate your Bs and Cs.

Step 4: Map it. Mapping your capabilities with your target clients' needs is an excellent way for you to determine your service strategy. You'll find that while you may be perfectly skilled in many areas, you're going after customers who don't need your particular expertise.

One common trait among many entrepreneurs is the urge to "cast a wide net" by being all things to all companies. In almost every case, however, a small business flourishes because it has a narrower service offering. Remember, a small company's value is that it can specialize in unique, top-quality services.

Develop a list of decision-making criteria that you expect your clients to use when choosing a provider in your industry. Then rank yourself (and be brutally honest) in terms of where you'd be positioned in each category. After this intense evaluation, make sure that your elevator pitch is still on target.

Step 5: Utilize marketing tools that work best for you. When deciding on a marketing strategy, implement one that fits your personality and the customers you serve. For instance, if you're terrified of getting up in front of a crowd, don't schedule yourself to participate on a panel in the hopes of generating business. You'll derail your efforts if you don't perform well.

Identify the top two marketing tools you've used in the past that have worked for your company. Let's say that's cold calling and a Web site. Then start adding new ideas for a fresh perspective. When selecting your marketing tools, also evaluate them from a financial and cost basis. Decide what will yield the best return on your efforts. Each tool should lead to a revenue-producing result in one way or another.

Step 6: Implement a plan of action. Up until now we've been in the planning mode, but now it's time to dig in and put it to work. Your action plan will also give you the map you can use to measure your progress.

Establish goals that can be reviewed at three and six months. At incremental points within each three-month period, keep checking your plan to see if you're meeting your goals. If you find you're missing the target, ask why. Were the tools appropriate for your target customer? Did you integrate the strategy, or did you just focus on one of the tools?

And don't forget to plug in specific actions that you'll do every day to help you meet your goals. That daily strategy will keep the goals of the plan top of mind.

Step 7: Exercise the plan. This final step is really straightforward: Just do it: Complete the daily actions, and then do something extra to accelerate your success plan. If you approach your plan and get butterflies in your stomach, either get over it or substitute an action that you're comfortable with so you stay on course. Don't let unplanned tasks waste precious time that should be applied toward reaching your goal. And most of all-enjoy the process!

Top 10 Ways to Have an Online Sale

2007-01-07T03:36:00.000-08:00

If you need money quickly or want a surefire way to increase your cashflow, it's time to throw a sale.Having a sale is especially easy to do if you've sell electronic information products (available as an online download), as your overhead costs are very low once these products are created. However, a sale also works if you have physical products that have to be shipped, especially if you want to get rid of older versions of a product (cassette versions, for example), or if you have slightly used products that have been returned (a scratch and dent sale).

There's one key rule to remember for your sale -- make sure your audience is aware that the sale has a time limit on it. Many shopping cart programs permit you to put an expiration date on price specials for products.

Here are 10 occasions for you to have a sale:

1. Special occasion sale. Your birthday, children's birthdays, wedding anniversary, business anniversary, half birthday, etc. are all occasions in which you can have a sale. I constantly receive sale promotions commemorating the owner's birthday or business anniversary. You can even have a little fun with this and create your own special celebratory occasion -- your cat had kittens, your child walked for the first time, your daughter lost her first tooth, you repainted your house.....you get the idea.

2. National holiday sale. Those of us in the US might plan for national US holidays like Labor Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day. All you need to do is consult the calendar and determine the national holidays in your country. One of my favorite sales I offered a few years ago was one on Independence Day here in the US. I asked if my readers wanted coaching to help them declare their independence to do such things as finally starting that business of their dreams, change their career to something that gives them joy, creating a new marketing plan for their business that will get results, or reinventing themselves or their businesses. A great online resource to locate holidays around the world is earthcalendar.com.

3. Special event day sale. Do you realize that there are special days to celebrate almost every occasion? In the month of October alone there are Billiard Awareness Month, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Celebrate Sun Dried Tomatoes Month, National Cookie Month, to name just a few. The book, Chase's Calendar of Events, is published annually with the current dates for these special events. You can learn more about these days at chases.com. You can even submit information to them for a day that you'd like create!

4. Seasonal sale. Back-to-school sales are very popular, as are spring-cleaning sales, winter stock-up sales, and "get ready for summer" sales. Of course, if you have an international audience, those readers on the opposite end of the world from you may not be able to relate to getting ready for summer when it's their winter season, so you might want to use these sparingly.

5. Brick-and-mortar sales strategy. Believe it or not, what works in the brick and mortar retail world also works online. It's very common for retailers to hold tent sales, inventory clearance sales, scratch and dent sales or close-out sales, so you can model that type of sale in your online business. In one of Tom Antion's workshops I attended a few years ago, he talked about having an inventory clearance tent sale and had a graphic of a red-striped tent that went out with his promotion. The great irony, he explained, is that he has no inventory because the items he had on sale were all electronic downloads. However, it was one of the most popular sales he had held, as the concept of a tent sale is very familiar to the American consumer.

6. Across-the-board discount or coupon sale. Give your contact list 25% off or 50% off of everything you sell, or create a coupon code or special link for a sale on certain items. You can make this coupon or discount available exclusively to your VIP list, whether that's your audience at a conference, your email newsletter list, or your current client base. Everyone feels special if they're on a VIP list!

7. Pre-release sale. Do you have a product that's almost ready to launch, a subscription membership site that's about to go live, or a printed book that's about to be issued? If so, give your list members the opportunity to buy it at a special price before it's released to the public. Consumers want to be the first to have the newest information, so give your list members first shot at your newest information.

8. BOGO sale (buy one, get one free). What works for Payless Shoes can work for you, as well. You can offer a buy one, get one free for one of your products, and pitch it so that if one of your customers splits the costs with a friend, they'll each get a full product for 50% off the regular price. Or, they can give the additional copy to a client or colleague. Another way to create a BOGO offer is for all of your same-priced products, i.e. if you buy one for $29.99, you can get any other product priced at $29.99 or less, for free!

9. Payment plan sale. I see so many furniture store ads proclaiming, "Interest-free financing! No payment until some date that's 2 years from now." If you have higher priced products, you can do the same thing. Offer to let your customers divide payments over 3, 4, or more payments. Sophisticated shopping cart programs will permit you to set up recurring billing, so that your client's credit/debit card is charged automatically on the same day each month for the appropriate number of occurrences.

10. Tax-free or free shipping sale. If your state requires you to collect sales tax on your products, offer to pay the sales tax for your customers. Each August the State of Texas sets the first weekend of August as a "Tax-Free Weekend" for clothing purchases in preparation for sending children back to school. You can create a similar offering in your business, but you'll need to check with your state tax office on the legalities of offering such a sale. Or, you can offer free shipping if they buy before a deadline you've set, or if they buy a certain dollar amount from you. Instead of standard shipping, you can also offer to upgrade the shipping to express if they meet certain buying conditions.

Take a look at what types of sales make sense for you, get out your calendar, and integrate them into your marketing plan. If you have a good sense of when cashflow is tight, a planned sale should significantly boost your revenue.

Donna Gunter

5 Secret to make endless stream of Income out of your passion

2007-01-07T03:34:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered why Bill Gates, the richest man in the world who is worth US$46 billion still works 18- hour days, every single day?Why doesn’t he just sit back and relax on the beach? The reason is like all millionaires, what drives him is never really the money; but rather it is the love of being at the forefront of technology. From young, Bill Gates had the dream of ‘putting a computer in every home running Microsoft software’. And it is this obsession which propelled him to his success today.

Similarly, Warren Buffett was obsessed with investing since a young age, Tiger Woods developed an intense passion for golf since young and Steven Spielberg loves making movies. When you are doing something you have an intense passion for, the focus, discipline and motivation always come naturally. And with these three factors combined together, wealth and success is inevitable.

Therefore, do not ask yourself which industry is the most profitable and best industry to be in right now. But rather, ask yourself this question: ‘If I had all the money in the world, how would I spend my time?’ Now you may ask yourself, ‘So what if I’ve identified my passion?’ Is there really a way to turn your passion into endless streams of income? The answer is ‘YES!’ And right now, I’m going to reveal to you 5 Secrets to Turn Your Passion into ENDLESS Streams of Income by building a highly profitable online business from home.

Secret #1: Identify Your Passion & Expertise

As mentioned earlier, if you want to be successful in any business, you have to be 100% obsessed with what you are doing. Only with this passion will you be energized and committed to succeed in your business.

Also, understand that for any business to succeed, it must be able to create maximum value for its customers. Therefore, begin by finding out which is the area that you can create the maximum value for your customers. Once you have identified the areas that you can build your business around, move on to Secret #2.

Secret #2: Find a Hungry Niche Market

The 2nd secret I’m going to share with you is the importance of finding a hungry niche market which is related to your topic of interest. Now, you may ask why should you choose a niche market. You may think that by choosing a broader market segment will enable you to capture a larger customer base. However, always remember that a niche market is easier and cheaper to dominate, as it is easier to position yourself as the best in that niche market. Once you have identified your very own niche market, find out what are the unmet needs faced by your target market and think of how you can help to solve them.

Secret #3: Create Products and Income Streams

Now that you have identified a profitable niche market and a common need they share, you must then come up with products and services which can solve their unmet needs and generate endless streams of income for you. There are various revenue strategies you can adopt. You can, for instance, sell a physical product or a digital product.

You can also sell your services online. However, if you have no capital to start with and want to start making money straight away without having to create products, then becoming an affiliate marketer would be the best strategy. As an affiliate marketer, you basically promote another company’s products. And for every customer you refer, you earn an affiliate commission. Hence, there are minimal startup costs and minimal risks involved but UNLIMITED potential Streams of Income.

Secret #4: Drive Tons Of Paying Customers To Your Website

You can build the most beautiful site with the best products in the world but if no one is able to find your site out of the millions of websites on the internet, you are as good as being non- existent. So how do you attract people to your website? Well, you can either get free traffic or to pay for it through advertising. The sources of free traffic are through 1. Search engines 2. Links on related websites 3. Giving away free valuable information 4. Viral marketing 5. Advertising on free classified ad sites. Alternatively, you can choose to pay for traffic through advertising through 1. Search engines 2. Ezines 3. Offline through brochures, direct mailers etc.

Secret #5: Build Long Lasting Relationships With Your Customers

Many people fail in their business simply because they fail to establish a rapport with their customers. They are short sighted and only care about making quick gains. However, the key to a successful and sustaining business is a huge base of loyal customers.

And in order to instill this sense of loyalty, you have to make an effort to build a rapport with your customers. Hence, you MUST create an opt- in list to capture your customers’ email addresses and send them regular follow up emails.

So, there you have it, the 5 secrets to turning your passion into endless streams of income. Remember, knowledge is power and it is absolutely essential for you to continuously upgrade your knowledge and skills in your industry.

Can one still make money on the Internet?

2007-01-07T03:31:00.000-08:00

A common question I am asked when talking about starting an e-commerce business is...“Didn’t the Internet bubble burst years ago, and didn’t that prove that it really isn’t possible to make money with an Internet only business?” Well, it’s true that building a business on the Internet isn’t what it used to be. Not long ago, the first person with an idea could build a web page and own the market. If you sold a widget, you registered the domain widgets.com and anyone who wanted a widget knew where to get one. Marketing was easy. A few posts in an online discussion group, an ad in the right magazines, maybe a TV ad if the venture capitalists had given you a bunch of money, and your fortune was made. The most difficult challenges during this period were technical. Entire teams were hired to design and build web sites. Another team was hired to integrate the shopping cart. This method made many millionaires and it was so easy that people forgot it was supposed to be a business. It became the playground for anyone with a neat idea. Eventually the dot-com bubble burst and fortunes were lost.

Immediately after the dot crash, the situation quickly reversed. It became more affordable to build a web site, but because dozens or hundreds of people were selling the same widget, marketing became important. Most of the technical problems had been solved so instead of hiring teams to do the work, sites could be built on contract for just a few thousand dollars.

We are now entering the next phase of e-commerce. While there are still plenty of people making money as web designers and programmers, a single person can do most of the work in an evening and have the entire web site running in a weekend. With modern web development tools, it is possible to build a functional web site with no knowledge of html, the language most Internet pages are written in.

Many web-hosting companies are offering point-and-click web site development. Usually these sites are based on templates designed by experts and can be customized to suit your needs and preferences. With these tools, you can build an entire e-commerce solution with shopping cart in a weekend. With services such as PayPal and Google Checkout, it is possible for anyone to accept credit cards over the Internet without a merchant account.

There are several ways to make money online. The most obvious is to open an online store. I suggest you pick a small market and target it instead of selling a wide variety of merchandise. By using a drop shipper, you can open a store without even carrying any inventory.

You can also make money using Google’s Adsense program. You may have seen ads on some web pages that say “Ads by Google” under them. Every time someone clicks on one of those ads, the website owner makes money. If you can get enough visitors to your site, you can make a lot of money this way.

If you are eager to start an e-commerce business or want to incorporate e-commerce functions into your existing business, there has never been a better time to do it. Prices are lower than they have ever been and the technology makes it easier than most people believe.

Jason Conley, e-commerce professional

Don't waste today online opportunities even on your day job

2007-01-07T03:28:00.000-08:00

What's is this connection between home businesses, online opportunities and WORK?

Whether you like your "day job" or not, you need to really consider starting your own home business. Online opportunities and online work are, at their peak folks. No matter what you do for a living, you just can't afford to ignore the opportunities that are available on the internet today. Whether you are a stay-at- home mom or a company CEO, there is has got to be a way that you can benefit by using the internet and I'm not just talking about a few bucks here and there. I'm talking about an lucrative business that will give you the lifestyle you have been dreaming about, but could not see your way clear to achieve.

An online business is invaluable to those people who need a regular supplemental income, or maybe even a full-time income. If you are unemployed or underemployed, the internet is a potential godsend. The combination of online opportunity, available work, and viable home businesses can do wonders for those who need just a little extra money, but for those of us who aspire to a different lifestyle, it is a Godsend.

As long as you have something to offer to the global market, the internet is your key to better rewards. It doesn't really matter what you do - you don't have to be a computer wizard to profit from today's high-tech world. You just need to be willing to learn. Just remember that these days, people still need very basic things to satisfy their very basic needs. If you can provide for the wants and needs of buying public, and do so at a reasonable price, you basically won't have a problem providing for your own needs. In today's capitalist world economy, you will be justly rewarded for the value that you provide.

Of course, starting a home business, any home business, does have its risks; but risk is simply the price of opportunity - in this case online opportunity. Think about it. Even if you work regularly for a paycheck, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are not taking any risks. Trust me, this I know from experience. We live in an uncertain world, and there always exists the possibility of our losing our jobs. Hey, if Steve Jobs can get fired from Apple (the company he founded!), then you certainly can get fired from yours! So don't harbor any illusions about job security. More and more, there simply is no such thing.

The growing job uncertainties of the new millennium only makes home businesses, online opportunity, and online work more valuable to the average person. You may think that you being rewarded amply in your job, but that's actually not the case.

Remember that your employer only keeps you employed because he or she profits from your labor, believe me, it's not for your good looks, charm or the Friday socials in the office. In other words, you are part of the production equation. If you produce $100,000 worth of productive labor for your employer, he may only get pay $25,000 - that's part of the game and he will do everything he can to keep costs down the barest minimum.

In order to get the most out of your skills, you must be prepared to strike out on your own. By starting your own home business, you will be taking advantage of online opportunity and work and building an sustainable future for yourself and your family.

Valuable experts tips to start an online Business

2007-01-07T03:25:00.000-08:00

The start up costs for an internet home business are next to nothing compared to the offline world of business start ups.

In fact it is a lot more simple to start and grow a business on the internet.

Of course you need some knowledge to begin your internet home business enterprise. But you don't need a "Bacc" to do business on the web.

All you need is some computer knowledge and some internet marketing basis and a good dose of determination.

Here is some basic tips on how to start an internet home business.

== 1.Write Your Business Goals ==

It is important to set goals and objectives and then take action to accomplish them. This will be your Business Plan.

Here Are Some questions you should ask yourself:

- Why do I want to start up an Internet Home Business?

- What product or service can I provide?

- Do I have the knowledge and expertise to provide this service?

- Do I know enough about the competition?

- Where will my customers come from?

Take the time to write down your questions and answers and thoroughly research your chosen market.

== 2. Choose A Product or Service To Sell ==

On the internet you can find hundreds of product or services to sell.

You can sell your own product by creating your own, or purchasing resale rights or being an affiliate with a good internet company.

Don't put your personal gains first. Make sure that the product will deliver what it promises. When you promote a product that leaves the buyer dissatisfied, you' ll only be ruining your business. So sell solutions and the money will come.

== 3. Business Domain Name ==

One important first step is to choose the best domain name you can. Keep it as short and simple as possible.

Think of domain name like " Google " or " Yahoo ". They are short and easy to remember.

I know that some people say to use keyword in you're domain name. But if you choose " Internet Business " there is million of site with this term.

So are you going to use for example "AprofitableInternethomebusiness.com" it might be a nice name but it is too long and not simple.

== 4. Web Site ==

Having A good business website is essential to succeed with an internet home business.

Here is the thing you have to plan to build your website

A) Decide on the website design (colour schemes, buttons, special effects etc). However, you may have a preference for a certain colour or look. To help you choose a design, you may wish to check out other people's websites or work with your web designer's pre-set templates.

(b) The content. There are many items you may wish to include on your website. The most common ones include:

1 Products And Services
2. Contact Information
3. Pricing
4. Testimonials
5. Frequently Asked Questions
6. Resources & Articles
7. Refund Policy
8. Privacy Policy
9. About Us
10. Site Map
11. Useful Links
12. On-line store

== 5. Choose a Web Hosting Company ==

What is a Web hosting Company?

A Web host is a company that provides server space for your website. You can think of a web host as a commercial building. The web host provides space for your website just as a commercial building provides space for your shop or office.

What are some of the things you should look for when choosing a web host? The criteria for choosing a free web host and a commercial web hosting solution are slightly different although they do overlap.

A) Web Space

Does it have enough space for your needs? If you envisage that you will expand your site eventually, you might want to cater for future expansion. Most sites use less than 5MB of web space. Indeed, at one time, one of my other web sites, thefreecountry.com, used less than 5MB of space although it had about 150 pages on the site. Your needs will vary, depending on how many pictures your pages use, whether you need sound files, video clips, etc.

B) Bandwidth allotment

Nowadays, many free web hosts impose a limit on the amount of traffic your website can use per day and per month. This means that if the pages (and graphic images) on your site is loaded by visitors beyond a certain number of times per day (or per month), the web host will disable your web site (or perhaps send you a bill).

It is difficult to recommend a specific minimum amount of bandwidth, since it depends on how you design your site, your target audience, and the number of visitors you're able to attract to your site. In general, 100MB traffic per month is too little for anything other than your personal home page and 1-3GB traffic per month is usually adequate for a simple site just starting out. Your mileage, however, will vary.

C) Reliability and speed of access

This is extremely important. A site that is frequently down will lose a lot of visitors. If someone finds your site on the search engine, and he tries to access it but find that it is down, he'll simply go down the list to find another site. Slow access is also very frustrating for visitors (and for you too, when you upload your site).

How do you know if a host is reliable or fast? If you can't get feedback from anyone, one way is to try it out yourself over a period of time, both during peak as well as non-peak hours. After all, it is free, so you can always experiment with it.

== 6. Shopping Cart ==

No e-commerce website is complete without a secure shopping cart. There are many shopping cart options. Many e-commerce business owners make the mistake of using Pay Pal to accept payments, which immediately tells visitors that their company is very small and not professional.

A good alternative to Pay Pal is a remotely hosted shopping cart. Remote shopping carts take the burden of maintaining security and credit card numbers off your shoulder and places the responsibility on another company. Remote shopping carts can usually be configured to look similar to your website.

In fact, your customers may not realize that they have left your website to place an order. The remote shopping cart provider will give you the HTML to add to your website. When your potential customer clicks on the Buy Now button, he or she is taken to the remote shopping cart to enter the personal information and payment details.

Depending on your choice of a shopping cart, you may or may not need a merchant account to process transactions. Some shopping cart services allow you to use their merchant accounts for a slightly higher fee.

== 7. How To Promote Your Business Website ==

Write An Article: Write an article promoting your site or product. Write an article on a hot topic many people would like more information on and submit it to various e-zines. How do you find out what's hot? Visit a few of the message boards and see what questions are raised often.

Search Engines: Thousands of search engines exist on the Internet. But, you should only be concerned with the top eight or ten. You should manually submit to the top eight: Alta Vista, Excite, Yahoo, Hotbot, Lycos, Northern Light, Infoseek, Webcrawler, and use one of the FREE automatic submission services like *SubmitPlus* to handle the smaller search engines.

Directories: List your site here too. Directories organize sites into categories. Good examples of Directories: Yahoo, Magellan.

Ezine Listings: If you have an e-zine to promote along with your site. Why not list it with one of the many e-zine services on the Internet. E-zine Library is a good one to start with.

Free Classifieds: You will have to submit to a ton of FREE classifieds to get any significant traffic. Why? You are competing with thousands of other Ads. Remember to work on your Ad copy and make it attention grabbing. Go to one of the popular search engines, type in Free Classifieds, and surf to the top 20 classified sites for beginners.

Often, these sites will lead you to several other Free Classified Sites. In response you'll get a stack of e-mail thanking you for listing your site while barking their promo. Best to get one of those free email accounts. Hot mail is a good one. So is Yahoo mail.

FFA Pages. Free For All's are worth a try. Be prepared for a avalanche of e-mails from FFA web site owners. If your title is attention grabbing you will get a few clicks. Good Attention grabbing headlines, FREE, Limited Time, Limited Offer, Proven, Secrets, and many more if you brainstorm. Check out the sales literature delivered to you by regular mail. Check and see what headlines grab your attention. And why? Incorporate them into your Online Ads.

Tell Friends And Family: If your friends, family, acquaintances, have an Internet Connection, e-mail them telling them about your new website, and ask them to visit often. Offer a FREE incentive if they tell a few friends to surf over. Perhaps, a FREE Ad in your e-zine.

Leave Business Cards or Flyers: Leave these promo pieces with small businesses in your community. All relevant contact information; email address, URL, telephone number, should be included. Offer a freebie to anyone who visits your site. A free e-book, report.

== 8. IN CONCLUSION ==

Think of your first six months primarily as a training period. Don't expect large earnings until after you've educated yourself.

Even the most dynamic, highest-earning entrepreneurs in the industry took MONTHS to begin seeing an income of any real significance with their internet home business.

Don't be a negative thinker and don't let the negative attitudes of others (even if they're family members, friends, or peers) influence you.

All the great men and women in history had to overcome the naysayers who said it couldn't be done-and then went out and did it. Think for yourself!

As long as you think positive and focused on your internet home business target you're on the right way to a rich life, which is directed by you and it will lead you to tremendous success and personal satisfaction.

Michel Richer, The Internet Home Business Specialist