Nov
11
What is your favorite child entrepreneur hero story?
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Education and Love for Learning, Entrepreneurship, Favorite Books, Ideas and Thoughts | 1 Comment
My son has become interested in business at a very young age (he’s 6 right now) and I would like to introduce him to inspiring stories of young entrepreneurs to give him ideas.
A little background. My son, of his own accord, has successfully sold his jokes by giving 1 for free and charging a $1 for more. He set up a toy sale out by the driveway at 5. He asks questions about the difference between Walmart’s and Apple’s margins. He hires his sisters (with his Halloween candy) to do work for him to make more money. This is a greater level of interest than his Dad for his age.
I want to encourage his interests in business and need some help.
We recently read of James C. Penny (founder of J.C. Penny) who set up a watermelon stand near the fairgrounds (his Dad scolded him for taking advantage of those within the fairgrounds who paid for selling permits). We read of Orville Wright and when he partnered with his 8-year-old sister to collect scrap iron from the neighbors and sell it to the junk yard (they had a bully attach them when they took the metal to the yard). Great stories.
This morning it occurred to me that if we could read together inspiring stories of young entrepreneurs, then it would give us both ideas.
Particularly, he wants to sell something this year for a project and has discovered from his toy sale (that only earned him $0.25 because he did it on a country road with little traffic) that he needs to find something he can sell and a place with more people to sell it. He needs ideas.
So, what are your favorite child entrepreneurial stories that my son and I can share together?
- Something a famous entrepreneur did when s/he was a child (famous examples).
- Something someone close to you has done that was interesting (non-famous examples).
- Stories you’ve heard as alternatives to the lemonade or toy stand (perhaps ideas that could work for a boy who lives in the country).
- Any children who’ve created very successful enterprises.
Please answer on LinkedIn, via a trackback from a post on your blog or in the comments. We’ll both be grateful!
Sep
16
Kindle Hint - FREE Mp3 Audiobooks that use the audible player
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Home, Family and Church, Ideas and Thoughts, Technology | Leave a Comment
Thank you Robin for letting me know that the Audible folder supports Mp3 files. Thank you Paul for the great place to find FREE Mp3 audio books.
I dream of the day when Kindle is opened up for developers and someone creates an application that combines text-to-speech, Audio books and the actual text. What a killer application for teaching my children to read. I know the technical difficulties of syncing the actor’s voice with the actual text. But one can dream 
Sep
11
Digital Content Markets Set on Fire
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Entrepreneurship, Ideas and Thoughts | Leave a Comment
Mark Cuban’s recent post is extremely thought provoking and, as an avid Kindle fan/user since its launch, I believe he’s onto something for the content business. I’m saving the link here for future reference.
Sep
2
Pogopalooza Professional Big Air and Extreme Sport Awareness
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Entrepreneurship, Ideas and Thoughts | 1 Comment
A friend of mine from my very own Burley, Idaho, Biff Hutchison, just won the Professional Big Air competition at the Pogopalooza in Pittsburg. I’m thrilled for him.
When Paul Allen offerred to let the first 10 entrepreneurs who contact him to run a survey on his 50 million users, I took him up on it and decided to gauge the publics awareness of pogo as a sport.
Here are the results (I’m thinking these stats will look very different over the next year as I see this sport taking off).
I’ll post the final after all 1000 responses come in…
What do you know about pogo as an extreme sport? (1215 responses) September 2nd, 2009
| I want a FlyBar or other stunt pogo stick | 1% |
| I’ve heard of Pogopalooza | 4% |
| I know some punk kids who do tricks on pogo sticks | 4% |
| I don’t know anything about pogo as a sport | 90% |
| I have a family member who wants or has a pogo stick for stunts | 2% |
Here’s a plug for FamilyLink (thanks for the survey Paul!)…
If your business would like to run a targeted survey with our 50 million users, please contact info@admazing.com. We can provide hundreds of thousands of responses in a very short time period with demographic targeting.
Mar
5
New Facebook Homepage and Status Updates on Pages
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Genealogy to Family History to FamilyLearn, Technology | 3 Comments
If you’ve logged into Facebook recently or have seen this webcast, you know a new Facebook home page design and status updates on Pages are coming this week. The new homepage is centered around sorting information from people important to you — family (I’d be nervous if I were We’re Related on this one as this level of integration might render them a lot less relevant), coworkers, friends and public figures (new home page tour). The new page design allows page owners to communicate to their fans via news feeds.
AllFacebook.com represents the new change with the following graphic.
You are at the center, viewing the information you want. We are already working on great ideas for integrating these features into our new Facebook application, Status King (as status updates are now more central to Facebook, there are real benefits for Status King) and our future application, MemoryPress. I want to mention a couple things on both here.
Immediate Status King Changes
Appropriately, the text prompting status updates is becoming “What’s on your mind?” rather than “What are you doing right now?” I suspect this is to reflect the way people are sharing links, information, insights, jokes and more via their status updates. Our hot new Status Tees will need to have an option to include the new phrase.
MemoryPress
MemoryPress fans know that we’re planning to bring MemoryPress to Facebook. Used for years for retirements, weddings, anniversaries, etc., we’re anticipating some great ways for MemoryPress to leverage the new segregation of friends, family, coworkers and public figures on the home page, because that’s the way our books have naturally organized themselves over the years.
We’re excited for how these changes will roll over into the API and what developers can do with the Facebook platform.
Feb
9
Status King Facebook Obama Bailout Ads - Costly
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Freedom, Government, Politics, etc. | 2 Comments
I’ve spent a lot of time on Facebook recently because my family and I launched an app that helps you find a funny Facebook status for your friend feed and then print the most clever Facebook statuses onto a T-Shirt.
Although some think social media is worthless for business, we opted to create a business that lives inside the culture of Facebook rather than try to capitalize on poor-performing ads I’m viewing constantly on the right side of Facebook. The visitor loyalty rates are astounding and the T-Shirt sales growing, and so it seems that you can make money with social media.
While spending this time on Facebook, I’ve noticed changes in the right ads that have made me sick about the state of our nation. Our debt, our “future money” disquised as government bailout money “from Obama” has crowded out all real innovation and commerce on the ads. This screenshot only captures two of the three ads on the page that were ALL take-advantage-of-the-bailout ads. It also sports a status about the bailout. Oh, Amerika…what has happened? Where is your honor, self-respect and personal responsibility for living beyond your means? (the “k” is intentional, think immigrant)
If we only understood how costly those Facebook ads will be to our country.
Oct
4
Opportunity Knocks and it’s not Paulson’s $700 Billion
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Entrepreneurship, Freedom, Government, Politics, etc., Ideas and Thoughts | 1 Comment
Last week, as my blood boiled when I thought of the freedoms we might loose as a result of the $700 billion transfer of power to the secretary of the treasury, I found myself reading articles, trying to understand what was happening, learning whether I could make a difference. It felt like a worthwhile thing to do, after all, the future of our country was on the line.
Then I read Seth Godin’s post on looking for an opportunity to do less, which hit home for me. I decided to write and call my senators and representatives and then forget about the housing crisis. Stop reading the articles. Stop wasting my time on something I had no power over.
Instead, I spend my time on our company and my family.
In a conversation with a good friend, he spoke of how wonderful a time this is to start a company. As the job market softens it will be easier to attract good talent to your team. He recently spoke with a technical leader in a large organization. Their research suggests that their ability to hire new programmers is going to surge in two months, not because they will have more resources, but because people will be looking for the work. He also commented that competition is so worried about their our cashflow problems and margin pressure that you have a chance to really grow if you dig in and work.
It’s a marvelous time to build a business, attract talent, stay lean and provide value to society.
So, the only reading I will be doing is studying the previous financial crashes historically to understand where is the best direction to steer our business. Did you know that the movie business thrived during the Great Depression? People needed an escape during difficult times…so they went to the movies. There are silver linings on the darkest of clouds. I thank Seth for reminding me to look at mine.
Hope.
That’s what President Uchtdorf called it today. Just saying that word makes me feel better.
Jan
30
I’m Not A Popular Guy Right Now
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Freedom, Government, Politics, etc. | 3 Comments
After a Personal Management class at the University of Scouting that I took my 11 year old scouts to last Saturday, I asked the instructor (who works for a local bank) how he advises the people in his bank when the dollar is loosing so much value and Bernanke dropped the interest rate again to help the stock market.
He said, “when I have little old grandmother’s who were getting 5 percent interest on their life savings coming into the bank and finding out that they get 2 percent, I’m not a very popular guy right now. These folks were barely making it as it was.”
Imagine that. Hard-working Americans who aren’t free-riding on the government, who’ve saved, who are now in their later years…and they’re savings are vanishing through their fingers. All so that we can shore up against the consequences of bad decisions by the Federal Reserve Board in the past. I couldn’t have painted a better picture how irresponsible policies to “stimulate the economy” hurt the poor.
This banker friend of mine, said, “2008 may be one of the most difficult years we’ve seen in a long time.” I fear he is correct and now wouldn’t be surprised if Bernanke does it again.
Sep
20
Create Space from Amazon Wants LuLu’s Business
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc. | 2 Comments
Well, I always knew they would and they’ve finally done it. Amazon has really stepped up to duplicate our friends at Lulu - it’s called Create Space and they’re going head to head. I created an account and it felt like I was on LuLu.com with different colors. DVDs, CDs, books and near identical offerings as LuLu.
Unlike LuLu, they’re even offering the ISBN numbers and submission services for free.
SelfPublishing.com has a good article analyzing the move. The article is focused on Author House buying iUniverse, but that news isn’t nearly as interesting as his discussion on Amazon’s move. Author House is just the link between the old world and the new, and, as far as I can see, their subsidy publishing business model has a limited shelf-life and reach. The do-it-yourself model will overshadow subsidy publishing as tools become better and the authors more technically savvy. I’m interested in seeing how Lulu approaches this new challenge coming from Amazon.
The weakness I see in the Create Space site is the lack of community tools for content creators to help each other. This is one of LuLu’s strengths. I suspect that Amazon considers the showcase a traffic driver to the website and that the rest of the community will be built around their books in their Amazon.com store. Still, there is a need for the community to help in the creation process when it’s expected to be do-it-yourself. That or the company needs to charge for doing the service like Author House does.
Amazon, generally, does well with their products…it’ll be fun to see how this self publishing space plays out.
Sep
28
Income per CPM - Monetizing Traffic
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc., Search Engine Marketing | Leave a Comment
How much can a website earn from 1000 page views (CPM)? It appears that it varies between $1 and $44 depending on how well you’ve learned to do it.
keep looking »