StartupNation Blogs

Good evening Startup Nation visitors! Today we begin a 15-part, five week crash course that will help you decide whether or not franchising is the right thing for you. Starting your own business can be extremely daunting.

What is the right business for me?
How do I get financing (or do I even need financing)?
Home based? Retail? [...]

Sounds like a dream come true has occurred among us. Through the winning combo of tenacity, a great idea, having access to the right information and support network here at StartupNation, Suzy Batiz made over $1 million in first-year revenue selling her novel toilet scent spray product line called, “PooPourri.” Yes, you read that correctly.
You [...]

I was absolutely fascinated by this article in the NY Times. It reveals how the brain works and how habit patterns are literally carved into our brains in the form of neural pathways. It went on to describe the fact that we can significantly strengthen our mental capacity by consistently trying the same things in [...]

I recently spent an hour on the line with Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid and more recently Beyond Booked Solid, as well as Howard Behar, former president of Starbucks who recently published, It’s Not About the Coffee.
I hope that many of you attended the call live.
For those of you who didn’t, check out [...]

We were at wine-aided dinner the other evening and started in on a discussion of favorite products from eras gone by. There were four of us at the table, and product names and brands starting spewing from our mouths immediately! (See list below - we wrote them down to save and share here.)
The products [...]

Last evening I went to a networking event organized by the StartupNation community members from northern California. I had no idea what to expect.
I had spent the day in and out of meetings with hotshot techophiles from Silicon Valley, and had heard more references to "Web-2-dot-0" and "agile" and "offshoring" to make my head spin [...]

You’ve got a killer idea.
(But, hey, you have a busy life.)
You’ve never seen or heard of a business like it.
(But does the idea already exist and you just haven’t seen it?)
You have the money to start it up.
(But you’re not sure you want to risk the [...]

Read an article today from a well respected authority suggesting "hot businesses to start today"…. One of those "hot" ideas….."start a coffee shop". A what?!?! You’ve got to be kidding! With Starbucks and 10 other major brands on every corner in every community, how can that be a hot business idea?
Starbucks has taken a hit [...]

The StartupNation.com community is rockin’ powerful. How do I know? I often am contacted by a community member who finds that their forum comments show up in a Google search for their company name or website. This is good, no?
Well, it depends. If your comments are positive, encouraging, smart & provocative and add value to [...]

I was in a Starbucks the other day for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up and I was amazed at how the caffeine-ologists were able to create drink after drink without looking at anything in writing. One “associate” would listen to the drink order, call it out to the next guy & at the other end of this [...]