I’ve been using this for a long time, but if you’re still calling 411 you should try Google’s 411 service, Goog-411. It’s free and better in one important way than your phone company’s information service: Have ever had your car battery die in the middle of the night, in a scary part of a strange town? When I was younger, I had just that experience.
I had my cellphone, so I called information. When the operator requested a business name, I said, “Just give me the first towing company in the system.”
She said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
“Ok?” I wondered. “How about ‘A Towing’?”
“We have no listing for ‘A Towing’.”
“‘AA Towning’,” I tried.
“No I’m sorry. Goodbye.”
Ouch.
Suffice to say, I had to walk.
If it had happened today I could have used Goog-411 and actually asked for a business category! Watch the video for a demo.
Necessity really is the mother of invention. Do you wish you could fit more tables in your pizza restaurant but are held hostage by the size of the pizza tray? The owner of Formaggios Pizzeria Restaurant in Tampa, Florida was, until he came up with the idea for the Pizza Butler. Here’s his story:
Six years ago my family and I moved to Tampa, Florida where for the first time in my life, I got involved in the restaurant business. As the owner of an extremely well known and popular 80-seat restaurant called Formaggios Pizzeria Restaurant, I quickly realized that owning a restaurant was a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week business that demanded tremendous attention.
One Sunday evening at Formaggios I saw one of my waiters struggling to balance an 18″ pie with one hand while trying to reposition items on the dinner table with his other so that the additional pie would fit. I have 42″ square tables yet my wait staff still had difficulty finding room for two pies on the table. This was a regular occurrence.
That particular day while watching my waiters jockey for table space, I was struck with an idea for a space-saving tray. It was a vision I knew I could produce back in New York at my business, Hi-Tech Metals, which manufactures high-end metals. So I flew back first thing Monday morning, quickly designed and fabricated a prototype, and shipped it back to Florida the next day. As soon as we tried it in our restaurant, we all knew the headaches of our space issues were over. I immediately pulled it from use and went to a patent attorney.
This little “Z” pan was perfection. I decided to call it “THE PIZZA BUTLER.”
I have already changed the tables in my restaurant. I switched all my two top, six top and four top tables, which were 42″ in depth to 30″ which has allowed me to successfully add 5 more tables to my restaurant. I am now turning over 22 tables instead of 17.
How does someone make money from free iPhone applications? Yesterday, they relied on using the free version as a trial version or advertising for the paid version of their application. Starting today, though, developers can monetize their free apps directly with Google AdSense for Mobile Applications.
On any weekend, you’re likely to find Bridget Lane baking cookies.
But her cookies are a little more complex than the average chocolate chip treat and not just because they’re gluten free. Lane’s cookies got their start in a special situation and have grown into a business designed to nourish those in special situations.
Lane, who lives in Lafayette, is the mother of a 61/2-year-old and two 5-year-old twins, all boys and all on the autism spectrum. When her eldest was diagnosed at age 3, Lane and her husband, both dietitians, decided to try a gluten-free diet for their son, a regimen some families say has helped their autistic children.
As she began homing in on the right technique and ingredients — she says one secret is her flour that’s a mixture of brown rice, white rice, tapioca and potato starch — the idea of starting a cookie company bubbled up to consciousness.
Lane got to work filling out the paperwork to set up a nonprofit, called One Mom on a Mission. Its cookie business, appropriately enough, is called Helping Hands Bakery.
Lane’s idea was bigger than simply making cookies for a cause. She wanted to offer work to people with disabilities to help them find a purpose in the larger community.
Helping Hands currently employs about 10 part-time workers, half of whom have disabilities.
“They come. We teach them how to do everything from scooping cookie dough, cookie creation, cookie formation,” Lane says.
Some of those employees help Lane present samples in Whole Foods.
“We don’t want them back in some warehouse,” Lane says. “We want them to be back in the community with the rest of us.”
A glue-gun base became an invaluable welding tool, a pool ladder became a support stand and a wooden disc became new hope for disabled cowboys.
Those are just a few examples of the creative responses 25 Touro University students seeking master's degrees in occupational therapy came up with when charged to invent a product to improve a disabled person's quality of life.
The challenge — the final project in an assistive technology class that marks the halfway point of their two years of study — gave students the chance to blend life experience with their professional training.
Student Pamela Morales designed a welding tool for her brother, Rick Boyer, who teaches welding at Southeast Career and Technical Academy.
Boyer's hand was severed in an automobile accident in 1982, and while doctors were able to reattach it, he has a limited range of motion.
The welding rod gun Morales designed allows her brother to squeeze a large handle that slowly feeds the rod into the weld, instead of having to put down his tools and manually feed the rod into the weld — something he had to do more than 30 times with each rod previously.
A year ago Kris Drey couldn’t care less about Twitter.
With 13 years of Web site experience, Drey is no technophobe. He serves as vice president of product marketing at Fliqz, an online video-hosting service with 20 employees in Emeryville, Calif. But when he first skimmed Twitter, the popular micromessaging service launched in 2007, Drey saw a lot of mindless chatter and very little that seemed useful to a video business.
Still, with the economy taking a dive, Drey persisted. He was looking for ways to spread the word about Fliqz without spending any more of his maxed-out $15,000 marketing budget. Not only was Twitter the fastest-growing social media service around — its user base grew by a whopping 1,841% in 2008, to 14 million — but it also wouldn’t cost him a dime.
“The only overhead is your time,” says Drey, 40. “You need to pay attention.”
He did just that. Drey started posting three or four updates a day as @Fliqz (all Twitter IDs start with “@”) and subscribed to (or “followed”) the 140-character updates (or “tweets”) of anyone he could find who seemed interested in the online video industry, even if the person was just posting links to stories on blogs.
One Saturday afternoon Drey spotted a Twitter post from a Fliqz customer who was having trouble encoding video. After exchanging a couple of tweets with him, Drey called the customer on the phone, figured out that the guy had a corrupted file and fixed the problem. The customer posted a tweet of happy surprise.
Fast-forward a few months, and @Fliqz now boasts 1,358 followers. Thanks to Twitter, Drey snagged 21 new sales leads, and Twitter also helped him seal one $6,000-a-year contract. Fliqz signs or renews up to 30 deals a month, so the company is hardly tweeting its way to massive growth. But it’s not too shabby a return for a free tool. Drey estimates that he spends eight hours a week on Twitter, or the equivalent of 2% of his marketing budget every year.
You've got a great idea and a plan to turn it into a business. Now all you need are customers–and to get them, you need to spread the word about what you're doing. One problem: Your marketing budget makes your grade school allowance look like a princely sum.
Get Profiled In 2007, when Seth Mendelsohn founded Simply Boulder Foods LLC, a Boulder, Colorado, company that makes gourmet sauces, he started posting profile pages on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. Mendelsohn, 31, estimates he has "a few hundred followers, and they all want to hear about our company," which has projected 2009 sales of more than $100,000.
Make Yourself a Star Perhaps you've never thought of yourself as the next Larry King, but today's media vehicles make it possible for you to host your own show–for nothing. PR expert Karen Taylor Bass, 42, author of You Want Caviar, But You Have Moneyfor Chitlins, hosts her own show on the free network BlogTalk Radio, a social radio network where hosts can create free, live, call-in talk shows using an ordinary phone. The shows are archived and available for download as podcasts.
Pluck from the headlines Publicity 101 tells you to build a media list and send relevant news releases to the contacts on it. That works, but Stacey Dolezal Susini, 35, a former TV news reporter and the founder of Zontis Public Relations in Dallas, says you can get even more mileage by watching what's in the news. First, understanding the beats–or specific topics and regions–each reporter covers can help you better target your list. In addition, by piggybacking on existing headlines, you can put yourself in the spotlight.
Ah, the joys of working from home. No battling the rush hour traffic. No rushed lunch breaks. No crammed workspaces surrounded by sterile, gray cubicle walls. Sounds like a worker's paradise, doesn't it? Be advised, it may not be as easy as you think.
The following advice, provided by Linda Novey-White, a member of the SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) board of directors, will help you avoid many of the common pitfalls.
• Emphasize the office. A home office has to be just that, an office. If your workspace feels too much like home, you'll be doomed before you begin.
• Take a seat. You may be tempted to cut costs, but your office furniture is not the place to do it.
• Always stay connected. The advantages of working from an office — numerous phone lines and separate modem and fax lines — are a necessity for producing quality work at home.
• Be your own boss. To succeed as a do-it-from-homer, you'll need to block out all the at-home distractions.
Strictly for dogs and dog lovers, Best Buddies is like no other pet store. From free doggie ice cream day to a pet photo studio, they work hard to set themselves apart from the competition.
For the pet loving entrepreneur, their unique business also comes as a franchise opportunity.
Tell us a little about Best Buddies.
Best Buddies is a wonderland for dog and dog owners. We carry safe, stylish and affordable products to help take care of the four legged members of your family. From collars and leashes to designer beds and gourmet treats. We have it all. We also have many events for adults and kids such as "Art Day" where you get to paint your very own ceramic dog bowl and then take it home. We provide dog photography with a professional photographer in our studio. We also do free doggie ice cream every other Sunday and "Hump Day" (Happy Hour) every other Wednesday.
What inspired you to launch your business?
We started Best Buddies because we feel a need to provide the very best to the dogs that give is so much love in our lives. Dog parks and dog friendly restaurants are becoming more popular than ever and people are bringing their dogs with them on outings. It’s only natural that there would be a retail experience for people and their dogs.
What are some of the things that separate you from your competition?
We provide excellent customer service, products you won’t find anywhere else and an environment to rival the best shops in Beverly Hills. Our store is like none other. From the minute you walk in you notice you are in a special store, it’s not a typical pet shop by any means.
Do you think you’ll ever expand from dogs into other pet accessories?
The world of dog accessories is huge and just keeps growing. From time to time we may carry some cat accessories, but as a whole we specialize in dog accessories.
When did you launch your franchise opportunity?
We just started franchising this June. We are very excited to be able to share our passion for dogs with other people throughout the US. What does your opportunity entail?
We are offering our store as is in all markets within the contiguous 48 states. We will share both our supplier base and knowledge base with any interested party.
What are your requirements?
We require that the interested party have prior experience with retail, have a good business sense and of course a love of dogs.
What lessons have you learned since you started your business?
We have learned that dealing with dogs is way more fun than just regular retail, but it does require more work. Cleanliness is number one and making sure the items we sell are safe goes right along with it.
Do you have any goals you’d like to reach in the next year or so?
We’d like to have at least 3 franchises open by this time next year.
Any advice you’d like to share with other entrepreneurs that are thinking about turning their own business into a franchise?
Now’s the time. If you have a winning concept and you have the passion to move forward with it, do it.
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