Business Opportunities Weblog

Chron:

After more than a decade as a project manager in the tree care industry, Tim Scherpenisse was suddenly out of work. Two years later, he is an economic forecaster, strategic planner, marketing director and human resources supervisor. Specifically, he is a small-business owner. And the transition has not come without challenges. “It’s an obstacle not to let the business run you. If you’re not careful, it can consume you,” said Scherpenisse, owner of New Life Arboricultural Services in Grand Rapids, Mich.

For an entrepreneur to develop comprehensive business skills while staying sane is no small trick.
Burnout is a major pitfall.

“As that (skill set) is being cultivated is when I begin to see burnout occur,” said consultant Carol Crawford of the Alternative Board, which offers business owners peer support, private coaching and advice. “You’re not crazy, and you’re not lazy. Sometimes it’s just natural that it occurs.” Symptoms include changes in personality and behavior. They are “not a lot different than classic depression,” she said. The cause of burnout often stems from a pressing need for entrepreneurs to develop broader skills as their businesses grow.

Looking back, Warner wonders if he and his partner considered too much at times. He points to research that went into building a die shop down south, a project that never happened. “Once you start heading off track, you’re going down a bad road,” Warner said. “You’ve got to have yourself focused on what it is you want to do, what’s the goal.”

Image via LunaDiRimmel

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CBNNews:

The story of the accidental entrepreneur is iconic. It exists in infinite variations, though the theme is consistent: A person of accomplishment is forced from his occupation by a cruel twist of fate.

Rather than wallow in despair, though, he strikes out on his own. Inevitably, after a requisite period of struggle, he achieves success by dint of hard work and ingenuity. Michael Bloomberg may be the preeminent example here, but less grand versions abound.

Suddenly unemployed – and unemployable – the former artisan set up an advisory business that put his experience as an elite cutter to work helping jewelers and investors identify which diamonds in the rough had the most potential. Over time, he grew prosperous and came to view God’s mischief as a blessing.

I was lured away in 1995 by the old Chemical Bank, which, through a series of acquisitions, has grown into the JP Morgan Leviathan. After three months, Chemical fired me. It was a devastating blow. I was fortunate to be picked up by Bankers Trust, where I spent a year as a consultant. After spending some time dazed and confused I realized that what Chemical hired me to do – develop a systematic way of tracking and analyzing commercial loan information – was a good idea with a broad commercial appeal. And, despite my short-lived, ignominious career in banking, I was still equipped to bring it off.

He raised some additional seed capital from our friends, family and business contacts. With this dough in hand and a couple of clients signed on, we officially launched Portfolio Management Data LLC.
The first couple of years were tough. Despite my excellent mentoring, we made our share of rookie mistakes. But we persevered, working 60, 70 hour weeks, visiting every potential customer from here to Seattle and selling our butts off.

Image via shadphotos

If you want to start a pizza franchise, the real question to ask is, “Which one?” After all there are so many out there. Is a big box name the way to go, or should you take on a name that may not be as well known but offers something the others do not? Weighing the pros and cons may be the way to go while on the lookout. One of those franchises that are worth taking a second look at is Figaro’s Italian Pizza.

Established in 1981 and franchising since 1986, they are able to offer their franchisees and opportunity with a lot of experience under it’s belt. Through fresh ingredients it is their belief that it leads to pizzas that have “Flabors That Sing!” Through a complete training program that is updated regularly, as well as support in the operations and marketing of your franchise.

Continue reading Figaro’s Italian Pizza

The question isn’t, “Need a Maid?” That’s the whole business. Need a Maid? is a franchise opportunity for those looking to invest in the home or business cleaning industry.

Unlike some other opportunities available, this one will clean private homes and businesses. In an industry where people have less time to take care of their own homes and businesses are in need of companies that will clean their offices, this franchise will have the ability to reach out to a decent sized customer base.

Continue reading Need a Maid?

Matty Sallin Blog:

No one likes to wake up, especially by an alarm.

The Wake n’ Bacon gently wakes you up with the mouthwatering aroma of bacon, just like waking up on a Sunday morning to the smell of Mom cooking breakfast.

A frozen strip of bacon is placed in the night before. Because there is a 10 minute cooking time, the clock is set to go off 10 minutes before the desired waking time.

Once the alarm goes off, the clock sends a signal to a small speaker to generate the alarm sound.

We hacked the clock so that the signal is re-routed by a microchip that responds by sending a signal to a relay that throws the switch to power two halogen lamps that slow-cook the bacon in about 10 minutes.

Photo by Matty Sallin.

The best activities for kids are the ones where the kids can get out and have fun. TheaterFun is a business opportunity that gives people the chance to create a business which will keep kids having fun while letting the children use their imagination.

As an educational program, TheaterFun gives the license holder the chance to teach children from preschool to middle school about the theater performance process. An opportunity that lets them reach into that actor that many children have inside and lets them play it out.

No experience is necessary to run this business. With a minimum investment of $9,995 and the training offered, anyone can do it. It just takes a love of kids and the heart to be able to turn this into a successful business. The licenses are available throughout the US and in many other countries.

Image from Franchise Direct.

Many moms are just as fashion forward minded as any other person out there. So when they are reduced down to simple baby styles after having a child, it can be a little depressing for the once fashionable mom. Tivoli Couture takes on that problem head on with all the baby products carried within the store.

Stella Rubinshteyn, the founder, was inspired by Tivoli, Italy as well as the villas and castles located there when she came up with the name for her business. The best part may be that it also reads as “I lov it” when reversed. Exactly as her customers feel when they purchase one of her products.

It is through Stella’s business that parents can finally feel like they do not have to give up style for necessity.

What kind of products do you sell within your store, Tivoli Couture?

Tivoli Couture offers a large selection of reversible and coordinated line of baby and toddler blankets, stroller liners, bibs, tooth fairy pillows, our original patent-pending Bandana Binky Bibs™, Cuddle Bottle Blankets™, Royal Blanket Capes™ and other gifts and accessories inspired by little kings and queens. We design and create innovative and functional products that fuse basic and luxury items for babies and kids. Our customers are ordinary people with extraordinary tastes that demand quality, attractiveness, ingenuity and function. Ready to gift, our coordinated sets make our line really stand out. Most of our products are reversible for versatility.

What are some of the customer favorites?

Some of the staple products we designed are stroller liners that protect the strollers from spilled, juice, crumbs and diaper leaks and offer babies the ultimate comfort “luxury” ride. Parents can choose from the reversible fiberfill stroller liners with a 100% cotton side that reverse to a super soft cuddly minky back or the Memory Foam liners with a 100% cotton cover and a removable insert. Our Bandana Binky Bibs™ are a stylish alternative to the traditional bibs and are perfect for chronic droolers and older kids that want to stay clean in style. They come with a safe removable attachment that keeps the baby’s pacifier or teething toys within the baby’s reach when needed. Another unique product our customers are buzzing about are our Cuddle Bottle Blankets™, which are baby bottle sleeve covers designed with our signature Cuddle Bubble Minky fabric babies love and colorful themed tags that stimulate and entertain baby’s senses, soothe and comfort.

Continue reading Fashionable Necessities For Your Baby

We currently have one giveaway open from Sterling and Pearls. They have donated one pearl bracelet, like the one shown here, to be given away to one of our readers. Their are 3 optional lengths for the winner to choose from.

If you’d like to enter you have until August 3rd at 11:59pm. Visit the giveaway post for more information.

All giveaway rules apply. Only qualifying entries will be counted.

From the minds of children come… great business ideas? That’s how it worked for Lisa Leake! One day her daughter asked for a butterfly shirt and from there a business was born. As her tagline says, “clothing inspired by a child’s imagination.”

It may have been inspired by her daughter, but the business has since grown to include other shirt designs that individually inspire all minds alike. Lisa was kind enough to chat with me a little about fliggity and share some of her own experiences in an interview.

What is fliggity, what are some of the styles and sizes your clothes come in?

fliggity offers clothing inspired by a child’s imagination. The products are not typical for children’s clothing because the idea is for the shirts to be fun for kids to wear. Available in sizes 6 months up to child large there are four different product categories: “shirts that fliggity fly”, “how old am i”, “stylish superheroes”, and “tiggity tie dye”. Moms tell me all the time that their child will not take off their fliggity shirt because they love it so much!

What is the inspiration behind the design?

My 3-year-old daughter, Sydney, initially gave me the idea for “shirts that fliggity fly” and the company was born shortly thereafter. Sydney still provides me with ideas for new designs that I am working on!

Continue reading Children’s Clothing That Fliggity Flies

Dorm Room Biz:

Alright guys, here is a quick and simple business idea to get you started on the right track when you get back to school and are ready to make some money!

Every year, thousands of new students and old students return to the dorm rooms on their college campus.

This usually means that besides the student, the students parents are there on campus helping their child move all of their stuff into their dorm room.

At the end of August, it can get pretty hot out during the middle of the day when moving a bunch of boxes and heavy items, so why not offer to lend a hand?

Put together some flyers and signs that you can hand out and put around campus offering help with moving a students belongings.

If I were a father and had a car full of boxes and stuff, I wouldn’t mind paying another student $10 to help move the items. It gives the parents a chance to take it easy, go slower, and not be paniced or worried.

Having a helping hand when moving in to a dorm room will also give the student a chance to work on unpacking the items while someone else is carrying them in for them.

Equip yourself with a dolly or cart that you buy or borrow from someone and you are all set to start moving. An extension of this would be to just rent the carts or dollies to families to use when moving.

For a couple bucks, it would be worth it for parents to pay to not have to make 100 trips back and forth to the car, walk up and down the stairs, or wait in long lines to use the elevator.

I have seen this personally work and believe it is a good idea. I have also seen it happen in different capacities - organizations have used it as a fundraiser or organizations have even used it as a community service event.

If it works well enough during move in, why not offer the service at the end of the school year when students are moving out?

Photo by MSDesigns.

Reuters:

As music retailers struggle to stay in business, a Los Angeles firm is doing nicely targeting a demographic that gets bigger every year — prisoners.

More than 2.3 million people were locked up in federal, state or local systems at midyear 2007, according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, and they want their Michael Jackson and Pink Floyd just like everyone else.

Enter North Hollywood-based Pack Central, which runs a mail-order operation for about 50,000 prisoners. It stocks about 10,000 CDs and 5,000 cassette titles.

Cassettes account for about 60% of unit sales, since CDs are contraband in many prisons because the hard plastics can be used for nefarious means. The screws that hold many cassettes together are also verboten, so owner Bob Paris must manually remove them. A bigger problem is that the music companies have largely abandoned cassettes.

Paris says he started stockpiling cassettes five years ago. “People thought I was nuts when I invested tons of money in analog prerecorded music on tape,” he says.

He plans to order small runs of his best-selling catalog titles from cassette manufacturers, although some new titles would also sell well in the format, Paris adds.

Given the harsh business climate for music retailers, Paris is thrilled that his business has sales hitting more than $1 million annually.

“I have dodged every conventional bullet that has hit most music retailers,” Paris says. “I don’t have to worry about downloading, legal or illegally. The beauty of it is that prisoners don’t have Internet access and never will.”

Photo by nilob.

Worcester News:

A Worcester couple are hoping to escape unscathed when they enter the Dragons’ Den and pitch their innovative idea to some of the most successful businessmen in the country on national television.

Neil and Laura Westwood have already beaten thousands of other competitors to showcase their idea, Magic Whiteboard, on the popular BBC2 series in front of millions of viewers.

The product is a statically-charged, re-usable whiteboard that can be stuck up on walls, glass, wood, and wallpaper without the need of any pins, tape, or glue.

Westwood said Magic Whiteboard consists of 25 perforated sheets on a roll which can be used singularly or together to create a larger board. “It’s reusable, recyclable, portable and lightweight,” he said. “You can write on it and clean it off.

“It’s like a replacement for the flip chart which, we believe, is about 20 years out of date.

Photo by Roy Booker.

BusinessWeek:

When Ilene Drexler was laid off as a corporate consultant in January 2004, she decided to launch a professional organizing business, The Organizing Wiz, out of her one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

But gaining the trust of potential customers was a challenge at first, in part because she wasn’t running her solo operation out of an office building.

To compensate, Drexler offered free organizing sessions to friends and family at their homes and offices. It worked. “Their testimonials bridged that credibility gap,” says Drexler.

Drexler is one of roughly 16.5 million home-based businesses in the U.S. today, a segment of entrepreneurs who add more than $530 billion to the national economy each year, according to the Small Business Administration.

For such operations, one perennial challenge is establishing credibility without the luxury of an office suite or a corporate mailbox. How do these business folk persuade customers that the company can be competitive when the head honcho’s desk is five steps away from the head honcho’s living room?

Moreover, do these entrepreneurs have the responsibility to tell customers they’re home-based from the beginning?

The key, say home-based entrepreneurs, is to be honest.

Though owners need not proclaim that they are based at home, they do have an obligation to paint an accurate picture of their company for clients. “You don’t have to shoot yourself in the foot by saying, ‘By the way, I’m home-based,” says Thomas White, the Hilton chairman of business ethics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

“But don’t overpromise in terms of your size or expertise—and make sure people are getting what they pay for.” While obtaining an 800 number is a courtesy to customers, giving them the illusion that you’re in an office suite is not.

“Ask yourself, if somebody found out the truth, would it create a credibility issue?”

Photo by enimal.

LFPress:

Baby, take off your coat, your shoes, whatever — but if you’ve shopped at Billy Thomson’s downtown store, you can definitely leave your hat on. Your hat, after all, may be the best part of your outfit. From Ed Hardy (grafitti) hats to Castro-style headwear and stylish new versions of everything from cowboy to drivers’ caps, Thomson’s Headquarterz can cater to just about anyone who wants to leave his or her hat on.

The 28-year-old entrepreneur opened Headquarterz five years ago, after returning from business management school at Ryerson University in Toronto. “In Toronto you can buy any kind of hat. I would buy a lot of hats there at these Big-It-Up kiosks in the mall, and when I came home I noticed the only thing you could really get were team hats,” says Thomson, whose parents Billy and Diane own the Scots Corner.

He looked into opening a Big-it-Up franchise in a London mall, but costs to rent kiosks were too high for the recent grad, he says. “So I found this place, which is better for business — it’s a great location,” he says. To keep things exclusive, Thomson says he only carries four of every hat — which can run from $10 to $225.

Image via Mellahaney

CentreDaily:

As Janet Long found out, mom does know best. With her mom’s secret recipe in hand, Janet incorporated Elaine’s Toffee Co. three years ago with her dad and two sisters. In no time at all, the San Francisco-based toffee business was booming, and continues to experience strong growth with an expanded national distribution network that includes top retailers.

Today, Janet can be seen featured in the LegalZoom television commercials, sharing her experience of starting Elaine’s Toffee Company. Being on the commercials has elevated Janet to celebrity status and she is recognized everywhere she goes. The television exposure has also spread her business reach beyond her small Bay Area community to now include consumers and retailers across the nation.

Janet and her family’s story shows that all it takes to start a business is a great idea and the right resources to make it happen. In this case, Janet and her family loved and enjoyed making their mother’s toffee recipe and were able to create a booming business by doing so.

Image via LChayim

The Wall Street Journal:

In its early days, Chris Wallace’s company didn’t always have enough work to keep its staff fully occupied designing interactive Web sites for clients. But it didn’t want to lose any talent. So he and his co-founders decided to tell employees they could pursue their own interests in their downtime, doing just about whatever they wanted, on the clock.

An unexpected side benefit emerged. Employees spent some of their spare time writing music and building photography and video skills. When the company needed ideas to pitch to potential clients, it tapped into employees’ personal projects. Wallace says he has had meetings with potential clients where 40% of the work he showed them was done by employees in their downtime.

His company, SuperGroup Creative Omnimedia Inc., has grown to 15 employees and expects to post close to $3 million in revenue this year. These days, downtime is less frequent. But management’s philosophy is the same: As long as employees get their work done, they’re free to pursue outside projects from their cubicles. The company continues to lean on employees’ personal projects to help win new clients and expand the work it does with existing clients.

For the most part, he says, granting employees more freedom engenders loyalty and hard work. Employees tend to “come in early and stay late.”

Photo by frencenz.

Commercial-News:

Monica Williams, a medical doctor, can now add to her accomplishments a pending patent for an invention called Pacimals — stuffed animals with built-in pacifiers.

Her invention came about less than two years ago, when her then-2-month-old daughter, Mackenzie Smith, gave her an idea.

Monica had first noticed in the hospital that nurses would tape a pacifier to a small thin blanket that sat on babies’ chests in the nursery.

Monica tried sewing a pacifier onto plush toys, and Mackenzie decided she liked it.

“It anatomically laid on the chest well,” she said.

The idea has become Pacimals.

The process proved long, but eventually, Monica wrote her own provisional, which is a placeholder document filed with the U.S. Patent Office before an actual patent is published.

She researched similar inventions to make sure her idea was unique.

“I wrote my patent based on what I read and saw,” she said.

Over the next year, she did work in project development, marketing and sales.

Photo by Love Kub.

Success Magazine:

John was 53 when the bad news hit. His department was being moved offshore. Since joining the company eight years earlier, he had worked his way up to a solid position in middle management with a decent salary and great benefits. Now, he was out of a job.

Having spent his entire adult life in corporate positions, he knew he could go job hunting. But this was the fifth time he’d had a “secure” position shot out from under him, whether through downsizing, restructuring or other reorganization. With a wife and two teenagers to clothe and feed, he was no longerwilling to trust his future to this game of corporate roulette.

Across the country and around the world, legions of people are abandoning their dependence on big business and seeking independence through their own enterprises. Every month, about 1 million Americans go through some type of job change or loss, and increasingly they are deciding to start their own businesses.

In a recent report titled Work, Entrepreneurship and Opportunity in 21st Century America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said, “Millions of Americans are embracing entrepreneurship by running their own small businesses, through independent contracting or direct selling.” The report also cited a recent Gallup poll finding that 61 percent of Americans now say they prefer to be their own bosses.

Security, which may come as a surprise, is a big reason behind the move. Only a generation or two ago, going into business for yourself was considered risky, and the safest route was to get a good job in a large firm. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, companies like IBM made “employment for life” the gold standard of job security.

Now, working for a traditional corporation has become the risky option. Working for yourself has become the new job security. “If I’m working for someone else, I’m trading time for money, but I’m not building any equity,” says Duncan MacPherson, co-founder and co-CEO of Pareto Systems, a consulting firm. “As an entrepreneur, I’m the master of my own destiny.”

Read more.

Photo by qute.

The Dallas Morning News:

To all the usual reasons that small businesses are put up for sale – personal problems and personnel squabbles among them – add economic woes this year. But even as for-sale listings rise around the country, so is buyer interest.

“When economic times get tough and people can’t find a job, they will go out and buy a job,” said Ronald Hottes, president of the Business Team, a broker in Torrance, Calif.

The problem for owners is that prices appear to be softening.

The nation’s largest listing site, bizbuysell.com, recently had 50,000 businesses for sale, vs. 43,000 the same time last year, said Michael Handelsman, bizbuysell’s general manager.

Brokers say buyers are often retirees looking for a second act, or laid-off executives looking for a business to run.

Retirement, illness, divorce, death – and simple burnout – still drive the majority of owners to sell, but in the rocky economy, some otherwise solid businesses are now having a hard time.

An unpleasant truth is that many, if not most, businesses don’t sell.

The main reason, according to Louis Vescio, owner of Sunbelt Business Brokers in Melbourne, Fla., is that “most small-business owners keep bad records,” so buyers cannot get an accurate financial picture.

Photo by a51media.

Gun safety is something that gets discussed a lot, whether is locally or nationally. Those who have guns or use them want to make sure they will remain safe. Whether it’s in a home with little fingers, or safe from potential theft.

Don Graham took his own needs and was able to formulate a gun rack that would do everything he needed of it and more. They are quickly becoming the way to keep guns stored for many people.

The process may have taken many years for him to get down to what he wanted of it, but he has been successful. As the only seller of these racks, they can be found through his website: Firearm Security Racks, Inc.

I got an opportunity to ask Don some questions about his racks and the process he has gone through to get where he is today.

What inspired you to create your locking wall gun racks?

One Saturday morning in November of 1993, I opened my closet door and realized that all of my rifles and shotguns were loosely stored, leaning against the closet wall, being very susceptible for gun theft and small children. I then realized I had to do something to lock these guns away to protect them as well as my own liability for child safety purposes. I could not afford or have room enough for a large gun safe, and a gun cabinet would not provide enough security. Later that morning, I went out in my garage with a sketch pad and started to design a metal locking gun rack that would be inexpensive and provide the protection I needed for my firearms. After several months of measuring and re-measuring the exact dimensions of each piece of the gun rack and numerous other changes of the design, I started cutting parts out from metal with a hacksaw, drilling holes and had a local welder weld theses pieces together to make the first 9-gun rifle/shotgun rack. A few months later I designed the handgun rack. And just in the past few years I have added a 3-gun rifle/shotgun rack and a locking gun case rack.

Continue reading Firearm Storage Is Made For All Gun Owners

The New York Times:

To go shopping these days, more Americans are trading in their car keys for a keyboard.

Online shopping is gaining at a time when simply filling up a gas tank to head to the mall can seem like a spending spree.

A number of retailers — including Gap, Victoria’s Secret and J. C. Penney — are experiencing double-digit sales growth at their shopping Web sites, creating a surprising bright spot during an otherwise gloomy time for sales in brick-and-mortar stores.

One popular strategy for getting shoppers’ attention is offering free shipping, in contrast to many other businesses, like airlines, that are adding surcharges and other fees to offset their higher costs.

“With gas being such an issue, we know that mall traffic is down more than off-mall traffic,” said Mike Boylson, chief marketing officer for J. C. Penney, which had an 8.7 percent increase in Internet sales in the first quarter of this year.

Retailers are walking a fine line in encouraging online sales. Of course, they are happy to attract more shoppers to their Web sites, but not at the expense of in-store sales — an important measure for investors.

Then again, the Web can drive in-store business, whether shoppers go into a store to return an online purchase or whether they buy an out-of-stock item through a computer at the store.

Online retail sales, often made all the more alluring by the lack of sales tax, have grown right from the start, but still represent a small percentage of total retail sales. And while e-commerce growth has slowed in the current economic downturn, analysts do not expect it to cease. In fact, online sales represent one of the only positives for many retailers.

Photo by J. Emilio Flores.

College Startup:

Your laptop is your shop. You store your inventory in your dorm room. You cooked up your idea in your backyard. Or the basement.

It’s a tiny endeavor, yes. You may not know where it’ll end up when college is done. Not for sure, anyway.

But students like you became Silicon Valley’s most unassailable businessmen.

Pursuing business during college is easier now than it was before. Blame it on the internet! Young people like yourself can start a business with your own savings or by borrowing from your parents and relatives. Resources online give you access to information about setting up your own enterprise; they link you to other entrepreneurs who can teach you, or who can expand your business through partnerships.

Founded by Mark Zuckerberg as a student in Harvard, FaceBook was first restricted to students of the university. It quickly adapted to demand and has since expanded its base to anybody who is above 13 years old. Nifty and customizable applications were added later on. So far, it has a purported value of $15 billion and is the second largest social network on the internet.

Cookie makers undertook a humbler endeavor. Do you ever get hungry at the most unholy of hours? Especially when you’re studying? A few undergraduates decided to answer midnight snackers’ needs. Aptly called Insomnia Cookies, these students have been delivering fresh cookies and milk at any time their customers needed them.

Photo by albany.edu.

NorthBay Nugget:

Persistence is the key to succeeding as a young entrepreneur, says Christian Prost, owner of the Northriders bike store.

Prost started his business at the King Street Plaza three years ago with help from the Canadian Youth Business Foundation.

“My, what a scary feeling it was,” Prost said, remembering the anxiety of taking a big risk at 26 years old.

“You give up a job and a paycheque to jump into the unknown.”

“You need a huge amount of money starting a business, especially in retail,” he said, adding the $10,000 the CYBF loaned him helped get his store in shape for opening day.

“It was quite beneficial when getting the store up to standard so you can open it up to the general public.”

Prost said banks are of little assistance because they require collateral and CYBF offered a more “personable” service where a committee helps get the business plan ready.

“First off, never give up no matter how hard it seems in the beginning,” he said, explaining how there are low moments to get over.

“Some days, you wonder, ‘Why the hell am I doing this?’” Prost said, adding he’s happy he didn’t pack it in because there are days that make up for it.

He said there’s only one thing to do if you have a business dream.

“If you don’t try, you’ll always regret that decision.”

Photo by Dave Dale.

People who love feet will love Foot Solutions and their franchise opportunity. Certified by Board Certified Pedorthists (BCP), franchisees are also given the exam to make sure their own businesses stay BCP as well. The products are attractive to all kinds of people, creating a large potential customer base in many areas.

They do not leave their franchisees to figure out the business on their own, either. With extensive training for both you and the staff you hire, you will be ready in no time to take on this opportunity. They also help by offering Grand Opening support and other ongoing support systems.

Their training starts with you at home. Through online training they will get you started. That must be completed before you even begin the 2 ½ weeks at their main training center. This is where you will learn terminology, concepts and techniques to help you. You’ll also get the opportunity to learn how to make small modifications and adjustments to shoes, you’ll develop the knowledge and skills needed for foot assessment, as well as operations. The main general business skills will also be covered. Hands on training in a working store is also included.
Continue reading Foot Solutions

A picture framing business that has gained media coverage by giving customers a free orange is being used to help entrepreneurs throughout the world understand how they can improve their PR presence.

Martin Tracy, owner of The Framing Workshop juices the oranges for his own drinks since he avoids tea or coffee. So he put a box of oranges out for customers and the small gesture led to major media coverage.

Internet business guru Guy Kingston has now immortalized Martin on the web as the subject of the first video podcast for Mind Your Own Business, which has been producing audio advice for business owners since the dawn of podcasting in 2005.

Said Guy Kingston:

Too many public relations agents cost too much and do a lousy job. Martin Tracy has shown that if you put effort and a small amount of money into publicity you can do your own PR and generate great coverage.

We made the video so that other business owners could see how he did it and hear a bit of his philosophy about gaining media coverage. Giving an orange to every customer is not much of an outlay for tremendous coverage in the mainstream media and keeping his business on the radar.

Interestingly oranges have nothing to do with picture framing and he admits himself that it is the quirky unusual stories rather than the worthy big stories that excites journalists’ attention and leads to coverage.

The case study is the first video podcast on www.myobpod.com with more to be released over forthcoming weeks. They can be downloaded from iTunes or seen on the website.

Photo by Malkav.