Business Blogs: Trends, tips, and real-life anecdotes from industry experts.

3 Pieces of Life Advice from George Will on this week’s Roundtable

Don’t play poker with a man named Slim.
Don’t buy a Rolex from a guy out of breath.
Don’t take advice from someone who is screaming.*

*context: he was referring to the panic being felt on Wall Street.

What life advice do you have from Main Street?

This week’s featured invention is “Rotatable Pill Splitter”, from inventor Walt Cheney.  Walt works with our invention commercialization partner, Invention Home, to help him find marketing/licensing opportunities for his invention.  Walt created, prototyped, and patented a unique product to ease the task of splitting medications in halves and/or quarters.
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Rotatable Pill Splitter gives individuals a convenient and simple way to halve [...]

One of the hot topics in franchising (and marketing, in general) is social media, aka Web 2.0. During the franchise convention in San Diego last month I co-hosted a round table discussion titled, “Using the Web in the Sales Process” and probably 90% of the discussion focused on corporate blogs, integrating video into your marketing [...]

In a perfect world, you’d know exactly what your customers were thinking and could give them exactly what they want at all times. Unfortunately, things don’t quite work this way, so you’ve got to use the tools you have available to find out more about your customers. The availability of online surveys today anyone can [...]

Brand monitoring is essentially the process of researching mentions of your brand including its name, officers, products, and more.  This is a vital part of branding for many reasons.  It can help you find brand evangelists, join conversations with prospects, correct misinformation, find opportunities for free publicity, police your trademark, or even find ideas for [...]

You want to get in front of your target audience online. You want to drive more traffic to your website. You want to generate more leads through your website. And you want to do all of this cost effectively.
To that end, try the following three quick & easy Internet marketing tactics to give your online [...]

In a previous post (Giving is the new taking), I asked the question: What are some ways you are being kinder to your customers?
The terms social responsibility is often used synonomously with charity and volunteering with good causes. Over the last decade, there have been several innovative corporate donation programs popping up, and one characteristic many share is [...]

After having her corporate, IT vice president position terminated, Ronnie Fliss spent the next six months searching for a new job.  She was told she was either overqualified or too expensive for what was available so she decided to form Fat Murray’s Doggy Treats in 2003, www.fatmurrays.com.
As featured in the book, “Birthing the Elephant,” by Karin Abarbanel and Bruce Freeman, Ronnie shares her [...]

You just can’t put those grannies in a box.
Swiss Netgranny is a collective of 15 grannies who knit socks on demand and sell them online. Customers can choose their favourite granny from a gallery of ‘Grosis’, which includes information on why the women knit (’not for money, just to pass the time’) or about their professional [...]

This post is simple: A reporter for one of the top 3 news sites in the world contacted me. She interviewed me already, but has now asked that I inquire within the StartupNation community as to whether any of you have used severence pay to start a business.
She’s looking for a lead person to feature in [...]