StartupNation Blogs

On a recent appearance on The Big Idea with Donny, I was one of three people on a panel. It was our role to help people fed into the show via satellite and phone.
It’s a huge challenge to be in the hot seat and be ready to fire away with valuable advice. But it’s thrilling, [...]

It seems logical the manager’s total efforts should be focused on the product or service itself; that all energy be directed to the work that must be done, the customers who must be found, and the money that must be made.
And this is the problem! Focus entirely on these tasks without an overall strategy of [...]

Yesterday was a tough day for many Moms- myself included.  The baby boy that inspired the birth of my company, Glamajama, isn’t such a baby anymore.  He started Kindergarten at a new school with no friends at his side, a teacher he’s never met, and all kinds of new rules and procedures he’d have to [...]

“Why? Because I’m the mommy and I said so.”
- Anonymous mommy
Do it now and let’s get on with whatever is next!�
Point-of-sale is a phrase taken from the cash register industry. It describes action “where the purchase takes place.” Consider the latest generation of cash register which instantly updates inventory and orders new product. Before the customer [...]

The numbers are gloomy. Statistics show that of one hundred new business startups, eighty will be out of business within five years. Too often, the causes of these failures are recurring inefficiencies and their offspring: fire-killing and distraction. Most business owners wake up in the morning with only a vague sense of their ultimate, primary [...]

Product development is a crucial step in building a company that will produce top sales. Through the years, innovation has been at the core of creating successful business models or new products. The question you must ask yourself is, “How can I tell if my product will satisfy customer needs in innovative ways that lead [...]

Lots of the big boys, are big boys for a reason – they grew fast. Before there was a Starbucks on every corner, there was a McDonalds. One can argue that the former has a markedly more positive impact on property values, but both companies made the decision to go public. I’m not making a [...]

As if we didn’t know it, the New York Times wrote today,
“Banks struggling to recover from multibillion-dollar losses on real estate are curtailing loans to American businesses, depriving even healthy companies of money for expansion and hiring.”
Yep, tough times. We all are well aware of the fact that everyone’s getting more conservative including customers, vendors [...]

Your employees are not mind readers or fortune tellers, and your business is not a free-form venue for experimentation, or a place where individual preference based on mood, time of the day, or random circumstance can rule the day. Your purpose and methodology must be clear, concise, consistent, and understood by everyone involved. Aim for [...]

I made a public promise on this week’s telechat with Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. The promise was to use the techniques that Dan recommends at a very high-powered sales presentation that I was to give yesterday to a big potential partner.
Well, I did [...]