Confessions of a Public Speaker

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While there is a plethora of books such as Public Speaking for Dummies, and many similar titles; Confessions of a Public Speaker is unique in that it takes a holistic approach to the art and science of public speaking. The books doesn't just provide helpful hints, it attempts to make the speaker, and their associated presentation, compelling and necessary. Confessions is Scott Berkun's first-hand account of his many years of public speaking, teaching and television appearances. In the book, he shares his successes, failures, and many frustrating experiences, in the hope that the reader will be a better speaker for it.

An issue with many books on public speaking is that they focus on the mechanics of public speaking. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with that approach, Confessions takes a much deeper and analytical look at public speaking. The book demonstrates that the best public speakers are not simply people with fancy PowerPoint's; rather they are excellent communicators with a strong message.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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Bamboo Bikes As A Business

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http://bamboobikestudio.com/

Shoppers at Urban Outfitters can already design their own bikes in a rainbow of colours, but a new venture in Brooklyn takes that notion a step further. At Bamboo Bike Studio, customers actually build their own bamboo bicycles by hand through the company's guided weekend workshops.

Bamboo is "a renewable and performance-positive material growing right in our backyard," as the studio puts it, and it's stronger, lighter and easier to work with than steel. In Bamboo Bike Studio's weekend workshops, expert bicycle builders lead consumers through the process of assembling their own custom-fitted ride. On Saturday they begin by selecting an ideal mix of bamboo for comfort, strength and speed, then choose a geometry that fits their body and riding style.

Next, they learn to use hand tools and the studio's antique drill press to turn seven pieces of bamboo into their bicycle’s frame. After lunch, they choose a fabric to join and lash their frame together. On Sunday they put their component package—pedals, chain, wheels and handlebars—on their frame. After learning a few basic maintenance techniques and a final safety check, they're ready to ride. Tuition for full bike weekend workshops is USD 932; for customers with their own components, a frame-only weekend workshop is priced at USD 632.

All proceeds directly support Bamboo Bike Studio’s collaboration with the Columbia University Earth Institute-based Bamboo Bike Project and the Millennium Cities Initiative to seed the first bamboo bike factories in developing countries.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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How to profit from complaints

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http://www.stellaandchewys.com/

(Fortune Small Business) -- Obstinacy can push an entrepreneur to persevere when any sane person would quit. But obstinacy can also kill your business if it keeps you in denial.

Because I am obstinate, I pursued my dream of creating a premium pet-food company that sells what it claims to sell and not some unidentifiable substance in a dressed-up bag. Stella & Chewy's ingredients include organic fruits and vegetables and meats that are free of antibiotics and hormones.

Originally we packaged our foods in transparent bags. In fact, transparency became our guiding philosophy. Today we offer open plant tours, publish our meat sources and test every batch of food for salmonella and E. coli using codes that can match each bag to its lab result online.

To launch the company in 2003, I pounded the pavement, visiting every pet-food store in Manhattan -- where I lived then -- and some outside the city. By 2006 Stella & Chewy's was sold in 250 stores, mostly in New York City. In 2007 I moved the company to Muskego, Wis., where I opened a manufacturing plant. That year our revenues were almost $500,000.

But getting my product into stores was just the beginning: I then had to persuade pet owners to buy it. We were competing against much bigger pet-food companies whose monthly marketing budgets dwarfed our annual sales. So we invested in brochures and a Webs ite and even stood on sidewalks distributing samples. Eventually we developed a loyal following.

With more customers came more feedback -- much of which I dismissed. Your dog doesn't eat lamb? He's allergic to blueberries? You hate the name Stella & Chewy's? You're concerned about where the cows sleep? We responded diplomatically to these concerns. Still, my gut told me that I knew what was best for my company.

I was also fielding complaints about ice crystals on the food. Ice crystals form when the air temperature changes. Practically every frozen food item develops ice crystals by the time it hits the retail store because of slight temperature changes during transport. For this reason, most frozen foods are packaged in opaque bags or boxes. Studies have proved that ice crystals have little, if any, effect on either the quality or the taste of the food. Basically, there's nothing wrong with a little ice.

So I ignored the complaints. After all, I told myself, we were better than competitors that wouldn't even reveal their products. We weren't hiding anything.

In 2007, the popularity of frozen pet food soared after some of the bigger American pet-food manufacturers issued recalls. Some of their products had been contaminated by melamine, a chemical found in an ingredient many of those companies imported from China. Thousands of dogs and cats died from the tainted food, so consumers sought smaller pet-food vendors that they hoped would have better control over their ingredients. Suddenly we had more competition.

Our sales kept growing, but not as fast as those of our rivals. Retailers told me that consumers who were new to the frozen pet-food category -- crucial customers for sales growth -- were choosing products packaged in opaque bags. Hearing this over the phone from a store employee or from the occasional customer was one thing.

However, when I visited the stores and forced myself to consider my product objectively, I had to agree: The ice crystals undercut the look I wanted. The food didn't appear fresh; it looked as if a blizzard had hit the inside of the bag.

We switched to opaque bags and overhauled our in-plant freezers so that the food would freeze faster, resulting in smaller ice crystals. Customers responded: In 2009 Stella & Chewy's was sold in 2,500 stores across the country. Annual revenues should exceed $5 million this year.

Today we can afford to use consumer focus groups. It's tough to sit behind a one-way mirror and listen to people criticize the brand. "Is this a treat or a meal? Why no pictures of cats on the bag? Why does Stella [one of my dogs] look like a Cyclops on the logo?"

But now I take a deep breath and remember that the critics might just be right.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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Christmas Decorating As Business

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The following is an excerpt from the book, Tinsel by Hank Stuever.

Tammie, who most of the year is one of those mothers devoted to her children’s success in school, maintains a business on the side: She does people’s Christmas decorating for them, because they no longer want to do it themselves. She charges by the hour. It’s not that she needs the money. It’s that Christmas needs her.

It is still well before Thanksgiving, but Tammie is already booked to do one or two houses per day, six days a week. Her last job can be squeezed in as late as Dec. 11 or 12. (There would be something seriously wrong with a woman in these suburbs to not, as Tammie puts it, “have her Christmas up” by the 12th.) The jobs in her clients’ homes take anywhere from a few hours—she’ll charge $400 or so to do the living room only—to 14-hour marathon efforts to fully decorate several rooms in one of those 6,000-square-foot Hummer houses, those red brick or limestone-covered mini-castles with Rapunzel-ready turrets in front. On these big jobs, Tammie recruits mercenary elves (her friends, usually), charging the client $1,200.

Tammie recognizes opportunity in another woman’s meltdown moments. Her clients eventually tell me about how overwhelmed and helpless they felt until Tammie arrived in their lives. The sheer size of their dream houses got the best of them. On a first consultation, Tammie has a new client drag out all her cardboard boxes and Rubbermaid tubs of Christmases past from spare closets, extra bedrooms, garages, and walk-in attics. These spaces are usually filled to bursting with the signs of full-blown affluenza: never-ridden bikes and hardly trod treadmills, abandoned lamps, vases, pots, boxes and boxes marked “keepsakes.”

Tammie will take a long look at the Christmas junk, zeroing in first on the key item: What condition is the family’s artificial tree in? (Tammie’s rule on prelit Christmas trees is that anything less than 100 lights per foot isn’t worth assembling.) Next, she wants to know what the client had been doing on her front door, porch area, and foyer. (A wreath? Of greenery or of decorative twigs? Ribbons?) What sort of Nativity scenes does she own? (This is also Tammie’s way to ascertain, if she does not already know, the degree to which the house is, in her words, “Christ-centered.”) What objects should go in the kitchen? How to decorate the dining room table, sideboard, and chairs? What rooms upstairs will need decorating, e.g., auxiliary trees? How does the client feel about a tree in the master bedroom?

I ask Tammie if anybody has a real tree, or if she ever uses real greenery on the mantel. Almost never, she answers bluntly. None of it is real. She tells me to underline this one fact in my notes: Fake is okay here. “Absolutely,” she says. “Fake is okay here. Diamond earrings. Christmas trees. If you want me to prove that fake is okay here, let’s you and I go to the Stonebriar Country Club pool one day and check everyone out. You will see that fake is okay here.”

Many times a client will just shrug when Tammie asks her questions. They tell her to do it all, signing off on a Tammie shopping spree. “Those are the ones who want to go off to work or wherever and come home and have it all done and looking fantastic,” she says, “and they just want to write you the check.” Which is fine with Tammie. It accommodates her idea that she is working magic.

This was an excerpt from the book, Tinsel by Hank Stuever.

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The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

Weekend Entrepreneur: 101 Great Ways to Earn Extra Cash

The Perfect Business

eBay 101: Selling on eBay For Part-time or Full-time Income, Beginner to PowerSeller in 90 Days

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The Little Company That Could

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http://www.woodentrain.com/

Surrounded by shelves stocked with 180 different wooden train cars, Sandy Oliver boxes orders at Whittle Shortline Railroad in New London, Mo. (pop. 1,001). Then she stops and picks up a bright blue replica of The Little Engine That Could.

"This is my favorite. I think it has personality," says Oliver, 48, about the beloved storybook character whose positive attitude and "I think I can" spirit help him conquer a mighty hill.

Owner Mike Whitworth, 61, likewise has a soft spot for The Little Engine That Could. The engine powered his little company into the national toy market in 2007 after more than a million Thomas the Tank Engine trains, made in China, were recalled because they were coated with lead-based paint. When parents began shopping for safe wooden trains made in the United States, they found Whittle Shortline Railroad.

"Our sales tripled in 30 days," says Whitworth, recalling how demand for his wooden trains skyrocketed. "We sold out. We had nothing left."

Since then, Whittle Shortline Railroad has steadily chugged ahead, even after the Mississippi River flooded its manufacturing plant in Louisiana, Mo. (pop. 3,863), in June 2008, prompting the company to relocate 30 miles north to New London. When production was suspended for a month, Whitworth continued to pay his employees.

But nothing about the little toy company is as surprising as its accidental origin. In 1994, Whitworth's wife, Pat, 61, gave him a Sears miter saw for a Christmas gift in hopes that he would make crown molding for their house. When the box sat unopened for two years and she threatened to return the saw, Whitworth set it up in his garage and began building wooden trains.

"The neighborhood kids would come by and I'd give them away," he recalls.

Word soon spread about Whitworth's handmade hardwood trains, and orders began rolling in from merchants and companies, including Amtrak. In 1999, Whitworth bought the 1880 Frisco Hotel in Valley Park, Mo. (pop. 6,518), and opened a retail store and offices for his toy company.

Like The Little Engine That Could, the former U.S. Air Force pilot and designer of mail-sorting machines for the U.S. Postal Service embarked on another challenge earlier this year. He invested more than $1 million in equipment to manufacture wooden puzzles, including a line of multi-layered puzzles.

"Nobody wanted to give me a loan, and I had to go to literally nine different banks to get small loans," Whitworth says.

His American Puzzle Co. now produces its own designs, plus George Luck Puzzles that previously were manufactured in China. "We're actually bringing jobs back here," Whitworth says.

Today, 30 employees craft the wooden puzzles, trains and trucks—cutting, sanding, painting, printing and applying decals to make the American-made toys, which are sold at 500 stores nationwide. The company has licensing agreements with nearly every major railroad, including Burlington Northern and Union Pacific. Employees gather around tables for "buffing parties" to hand sand each vehicle.

"Mike doesn't mind the investment of time," says Eric Brown, 43, who especially enjoys creating the colorful, finely detailed puzzles, which include up to seven layers of pieces.

One multi-dimensional puzzle depicts a toy box with layers of vintage trucks and planes, and another reveals a child's tea party behind a garden gate. The birch wood puzzles are laser cut, polished, sealed and printed in
permanent ink.

"We call them puzzles, but they're really works of art that come apart," Whitworth says. "They're simply the
best there is."

His little toy company's sales are projected to total $1.5 million this year, and Whitworth hopes to double his work force by spring.

Like The Little Engine That Could, Whitworth remains optimistic about the future and his company's American-made toys.

"I've never lost sight of our customer," he says in explaining his company's success. "It's a little kid who's going to chew on the toy."


If you like unusual business stories, read how I made a fortune picking cool domain names for other people.


The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

Weekend Entrepreneur: 101 Great Ways to Earn Extra Cash

The Perfect Business

eBay 101: Selling on eBay For Part-time or Full-time Income, Beginner to PowerSeller in 90 Days

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America's Best Young Entrepreneurs - Joanna Van Vleck

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http://www.trunkclub.com/

What It Does: Online clothes shopping service for men
Founder: Joanna Van Vleck, 26
Web Site: www.trunkclub.com/
Based: Bend, Ore.

When Joanna Van Vleck graduated from the University of Oregon in 2005 with degrees in psychology and business, she worked as a style consultant, taking men and women clothes shopping. No surprise here—most men disliked shopping but enjoyed the new duds. So Van Vleck decided the shopping process should be turned on its head. Instead of accompanying men to the shops, she would take the shopping to them. In January 2008, she opened a location she describes as a "swanky man hang-out spot," where hesitant shoppers were sized up and regaled with advice and brand-name picks. Within a month of opening, an angel investor approached her and offered to commit $500,000 to expanding the concept to other locations. But after Bear Stearns failed that March, he changed his mind.

Convinced her idea had potential, Van Vleck searched for another source of funding. During a meeting via Webcam with a new would-be investor, Van Vleck decided to shift gears. Instead of opening physical locations, she would operate the business virtually, using Webcams to meet with clients, assess their needs, and then ship a box of clothing to them. Clients would only pay for items they liked. With zero retail experience, she launched the site in November 2008, buying marked brands wholesale from suppliers and selling them retail. Trunk Club now has six employees, 36 independent contractors who work as fashion consultants remotely, and around 2,000 members. Van Vleck says the company is close to breaking even and is on track for $2.3 million to $2.5 million in revenue in 2009. She expects to close her first venture capital round with a Bay Area firm within a month.

If you like unusual business stories, read how I made a fortune picking cool domain names for other people.


The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

Weekend Entrepreneur: 101 Great Ways to Earn Extra Cash

The Perfect Business

eBay 101: Selling on eBay For Part-time or Full-time Income, Beginner to PowerSeller in 90 Days

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

How To Cash Your Creativity In

http://www.pickydomains.com/

PickyDomains.Com is a perfect example of how to turn one’s talent into a profitable business. With ever expanding Internet and tens of millions existing websites, finding an available domain name that’s not already taken by cybersquatters can be a real nightmare.

But one man’s problem is another man’s solution. Rather than to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for a domain name on the aftermarket, an increasing number of web entrepreneurs turn to professional “domain namers”.

While most naming agencies charge a non-refundable fee that can be as high as $1500 for a corporate domain, one service that unites 17 professional domain namers from countries like United States, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, decided to offer a risk-free service that costs only 50 dollars per domain.

After 50 dollars are deposited, clients start getting a list of available domain names via e-mail for a period of 30 days. If they see a domain they like, they register it and notify the service about domain acquired. The individual, who came up with the name, gets $25, the other half going to the service. If no domain is registered, the money is refunded in full.

While the idea is brainlessly simple, it appears that PickyDomains.Com has no competition with its risk-free business model. But that is almost certain to change as more people find out that finding available domain names for other people can be a profitable business.

Domain Names: How to Choose & Protect a Great Name for Your Website

The Domain Game

I've Got a Domain Name--Now What???: A Practical Guide to Building a Website and Web Presence