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Photolimn: Entrepreneur Uses Chinese Connection
Tweet Share on Facebook June 13, 2008 Comment (5)I was recently told about a very interesting online business called Photolimn.com. The entrepreneur behind this website is a guy from Southern California named Jim Bowler, who graduated from George Washington University in 2004. Like a lot of college graduates, Bowler decided to travel abroad in his first year out in the "real world," but unlike a lot of them, he went to work in China. While there, he decided to spruce up his room with a painting, so he met some local artists. Those interactions led to relationships that he retained when he came back to the United States in May 2007 and that he has used to start his business. The idea is that you submit a photo to the website, and for a fee you get back a painted version of that photo created by a Chinese artist. The results are pretty cool. Bowler also tells me that the number of orders he was receiving went way up after he paid for some ads on Facebook.
Bowler's business an example of how globalization and other broad trends aren't just things that small-business people and entrepreneurs read about in the newspaper. Thanks to better communication tools and other factors, they actually can ride those waves.
Bowler told me that while he was living in China, he noticed just how entrepreneurial people were there, defying the stereotype of attitudes in communist countries. "It's similar to the U.S. where a lot of people are starting small businesses," he told me. Years under communism have actually shaped this attitude, he said. When you know what it's like to live without capitalism, you appreciate it when you have access to it. Instead of just looking at these amazing changes and thinking, "that's interesting," Bowler built entrepreneurial relationships. He not only works with the artists he met in China but also with a number of studios throughout the country, several of which he found online. One might guess that it takes a lot of capital for a small business to go global. In Bowler's case, ingenuity was much more important.
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Best of the Small-Biz Blogosphere: Friday the 13th Edition
Tweet Share on Facebook June 13, 2008 CommentDawn Rivers Baker has more thoughts about Generation Y and entrepreneurship.
Robb Mandelbaum tells you what you need to know about McCain's speech on small business earlier this week.
Karl Palachuk on the recession that isn't.
Tim Berry on the importance of sales forecasts.
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A Health Idea Entrepreneurs Love
Tweet Share on Facebook June 12, 2008 CommentOn Monday, I was in a room in the Grand Hyatt in downtown Washington, D.C., with over 700 small-business people from across the country, most of whom were very concerned about the impact of the rising costs of healthcare on their businesses. This was at the 2008 National Small Business Summit, held by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, where a panel on healthcare featured Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Republican Rep. Charles Boustany of Louisiana, and Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation.
The panelists talked about their various ideas for reforming the country's healthcare system. Butler advocates a "connector" that would act as a clearinghouse for health insurance, similar to what was enacted by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. Lincoln said one central problem in our healthcare system is that it focuses too much on acute care and not enough on chronic care. Wyden discussed the bill he has submitted to Congress that would organize Americans into a national health insurance pool.
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More on Social Networking for Small Business
Tweet Share on Facebook June 10, 2008 Comment (1)I was skeptical the other week about the utility that small businesses can get from Twitter. Well, my skepticism has abated slightly after reading this post today from SmallBizMentor. Online shoe retailer Zappos is using Twitter in a creative way to show off the quality of its customer service. Zappos has set up a site that puts together all the times that customers and employees mention Zappos on Twitter (but I'm presuming that it doesn't put everything up there, only positive mentions?). Anyone who visits this site from the Zappos home page can see comments like this one from user "teampoop": "Thanks for the upgraded shipping on my wife's watch. She's stoked."
Twitter definitely involves a time commitment. Obviously, someone at Zappos spends time working on this. But if you have a business heavily connected to the online social world, with customers who would use or be impressed by the feedback you're getting at Twitter, that commitment might be worth making to shore up your brand and make potential customers feel more at ease.
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Best of the Small-Biz Blogosphere for June 6
Tweet Share on Facebook June 6, 2008 Comment (2)Marshall Loeb of WSJ's MarketWatch pokes holes in some of the common myths about starting up.
Scott Shane of Case Western Reserve University lucidly explains what seems obvious but is often ignored: When you start up, you need to pick both a favorable industry, and one in which you have close knowledge of how it works.
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How Entrepreneurial Is Generation Y?
Tweet Share on Facebook June 5, 2008 Comment (5)"Kids today!" is the oft-heard complaint from the older generation—that kids today are lazier, more obnoxious, etc., than any previous generation. Well, that tendency might extend to positive traits, too—like being more entrepreneurial. A couple of weeks ago, author Michael Malone got a lot of attention with this Wall Street Journal op-ed about why we're about to enter a brave new world of entrepreneurship. The basic reason is that the generation Y that is in high school and college now and will be running the country soon are more entrepreneurial-minded than previous generations. Malone's supporting statistics:
The most compelling statistic of all? Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18- to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35- to 44-year-olds. And 70% of today's high schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to a Gallup poll.
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Small-Business Employment: Not Too Shabby
Tweet Share on Facebook June 4, 2008 Comment (1)This Friday, the Labor Department will release the unemployment numbers for May, which may answer some questions about whether the economy is headed for or in a recession. But we can get a preview—especially if we're interested in hiring by small businesses—by looking at the National Employment Report released today by Automatic Data Processing, a business outsourcing firm that has 500,000 clients in the United States. The interesting finding is that small businesses—defined here as those with fewer than 50 workers—are actually adding jobs, while larger firms are shedding them.
Nonfarm Private Employment Highlights—May Report:
Total employment: +40,000
Small businesses*: +61,000
Medium businesses**: -3,000
Large businesses***: -18,000
Goods-producing sector: -37,000
Service-providing sector: +77,000
*Small businesses represent payrolls with 1-49 employees
**Medium businesses represent payrolls with 50-499 employees
***Large businesses represent payrolls with more than 499 employees
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Small Business and Charitable Giving
Tweet Share on Facebook June 3, 2008 Comment (1)Here's another tidbit related to the idea that small businesses and start-ups can do good while doing well, which I blogged about last week. A recent survey from SurePayroll, an online company that handles payroll issues, suggests that more small businesses want to be contributing to charitable activity but don't think they can afford it:
Although many small business owners indicated that they actively support their communities in at least one way, most said they would do even more if economic conditions were better.
"Small business entrepreneurs are often the ones who have formed businesses and established mission statements out of a need they have observed in their communities," said one business owner. "However, their growth and profitability are typically far less than large corporations, limiting their ability to meet social and community needs and still maintain a profit."
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How to Get Media Attention
Tweet Share on Facebook June 2, 2008 Comment (9)Evan Carmichael at the Young Entrepreneur Blog has five secrets for how a start-up can generate PR. I like that these tips aren't very work-intensive. They're fairly simple things that a one-man operation could implement. You don't need to hire a PR agency. I'd emphasize one of his secrets, and then expand on another. Emphasis on this:
Bloggers and reporters are some of the busiest people you could possibly hope to meet. They're actively looking for the most interesting, relevant, and linkable stories out there, preferably before anyone else can run with it. But truthfully, they spend most of their time hacking through the weeds of generic or over-the-top inbound emails, press releases, Facebook messages, Skypes, SMSes, Tweets, and IMs. It's almost a small miracle that anyone can ever get their story told.
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Best of the Small Business Blogosphere
Tweet Share on Facebook May 30, 2008 Comment (3)Some interesting small biz and entrepreneur stories:
- Ben Jones on why sales volume is king for small business, especially with today's economy.
- Jeff Cornwall on who might be the best presidential candidate for entrepreneurs.
- The Big Idea Blog on a 20-year-old entrepreneur millionaire.
- The Washington Post's Brian Krebs on a tax plan that could jeopardize the privacy of small-business owners.
