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

When you consider your business model (which includes your marketing efforts), you generally concentrate on these core components:

Why will people pay you? (money, votes, donations)
What does it cost you to sell your item…margins?
What protects you from competition, price-feature battles?
How will you turn an agnostic audience into loyal customers?

Early on when transactions had no costs, doing [...]

I picked up a book in the airport recently: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher. It’s a fast read and has enough tabloid photos to keep you interested. Her come-sit-by-me-and-dish point of view is disarming and I genuinely enjoyed her tales, her vulnerability and her wit. More importantly, I respect what she is doing.

Wishful Drinking

Carrie Fisher [...]

Recently, I was contacted by a PR firm (Attention) and asked if I would profile Blake Mycoskie on my blog(s). I’m ashamed to say how long it’s taken me to turn this piece around, however seeing the latest ATT commercial featuring Blake after a long day of meetings (at my day job) shamed me into finishing. My [...]

The love affair started about ten years ago. I was flipping through the channels on late night television and stumbled across one of Felix Trinidad’s early fights. He was an amazing athlete full of unwavering determination, brute physicality, and an innate ability for overcoming obstacles. It was no secret that he would often get knocked [...]

Obviously John Wooden is not on my advisory board, but he is in my Pantheon-of-Wonderful-People.
Quote to consider
No written word, no spoken plea Can teach our youth what they should be; Nor all the books on all the shelves It’s what the teachers are themselves. Given to John Wooden by his Father upon Graduation And now [...]

A friend of mine is thinking of starting her own insurance business, but she can’t leave her full time job until she’s tested the waters and determines if she has what it takes or if there is enough demand for her offering. We talked about the kind of marketing practices she could dabble in that [...]

I just learned about the 350 Project and thought I would share it out and ask everyone’s opinion:
3 - Think about which three independently owned businesses you’d miss most if they were gone. Stop in and say hello. Pick up a little something that will make someone smile. Your contribution is what keeps those businesses around.
50 [...]

Just got a newsletter from the School of Visual Concepts, a Seattle-based org providing classes in several disciplines, giving small businesses that needed vitamin B shot of knowledge to immediately apply in their environments.
“If you were thinking of attending our free “Get a Job in Tough Times” presentation tonight at the School of Visual Concepts, [...]

From Business Week: MBAs Go Micro
“For years, small companies have had trouble competing with the larger firms that typically hire business school students, but that is starting to change. With the recession making a dent in campus recruiting, career service officers are advising students to broaden their job searches to include small businesses. Students are [...]

If you position it right, you can market anything — especially if it aligns with a core human need. In this case,  Sarah’s Smash Shack was conceived to relieve people who are stressed-out.
Could the timing be any more appropriate?
Customers in San Diego can choose fragile tableware from the Smash Shack Menu—for example a set of [...]