After 17 years in the NFL, Packers quarterback Brett Favre is finally retiring. He will go down as one of the greatest players in the history of the game, and not just because of his numbers. What made him legendary were his intangible qualities–qualities you can learn from and apply to your business.

Be dependable Favre played in 275 consecutive games. It takes more than physical durability to achieve something like that. It takes dedication, determination and sheer will. Even if you don’t get hit for a living, find ways to make sure your customers and employees know you’re willing to do whatever it takes to show up for work every day and be there for them.

Be loyal Favre spent 16 of his 17 seasons with the same team and, in a climate dominated by lucrative free-agent comings and goings, never once even flirted with the idea of leaving the people who gave him his shot at greatness. It’s no different in business - take care of the people who take care of you.

Be fearless If there’s one thing people will always remember Brett Favre for, it’s his ability to make something out of nothing one play and nothing out of something the next. Call him reckless. Call him “gunslinger.” But never call him afraid. He did it his way and did it well more often than not. Be confident in yourself and in your vision, make even the failures your own, and you can’t go wrong.

Be adaptable Late in his career, while never fully relinquishing his free-wheeling persona, Favre continued to be successful because he proved himself to be coachable and versatile. Be willing to take a new course with your business if the market changes or if the nature of your product changes, and you can see the same kind of long-term success.

Have fun Every time Favre took the field, there was a sense that he’d play the game for free. There’s no substitute for taking that kind of joy in your work. It’s contagious in sports and it’s just as contagious in business. Your employees will follow suit and pass it right on down to your customers.

entrepreneur.com

Producers of the Internet-video serial “lonelygirl15″ — once thought to be an amateur project but later revealed to be the product of professionals — have raised $5 million from prominent technology investors to expand and introduce new online shows.

The new funding for EQAL, the Los Angeles company behind “lonelygirl” and another popular Internet drama, “KateModern,” illustrates Silicon Valley’s continuing push to move video onto the Web and find better ways to make money from it. Though the online-video industry got a big boost after Google Inc. bought video site YouTube for $1.6 billion two years ago, many companies are still struggling to come up with viable revenue models.

Todd Dagres, a partner at Spark Capital, the Boston-based firm that led EQAL’s round of financing, said the studio understands that “the Web is not TV, and you can’t advertise like you do on TV.”

Instead, EQAL, formerly known as LG15 Studios and led by Chief Executive Miles Beckett and President Greg Goodfried, plans to weave advertising into the content of their shows, Mr. Dagres said, and also to interact with its community of viewers.

Other investors putting cash into EQAL include Silicon Valley’s Ron Conway, who backed Google in its early days; Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of browser pioneer Netscape Communications; Conrad Riggs, a Hollywood producer involved with TV shows such as “Survivor” and “The Apprentice”; and Georges Harik, a former Google executive.

wsj

A five-year-old boy is thought to be the UK’s youngest person to patent an idea after inventing a labour-saving broom to help his father sweep leaves.

Sam Houghton, of Buxton, Derbyshire, was just three when he came up with a double-headed broom to collect large debris and fine dust simultaneously.

Sam, who was inspired by animated inventors Wallace and Gromit and Archie the Inventor from TV series Balamory, said: “I saw my Daddy brushing up and made it. There are two brushes because one gets the big bits and one gets the little bits left behind.

“I don’t know if I want to be an inventor when I grow up but this was fun.”

Sam had been watching his father at work in the back yard, swapping between a large broom, for leaves and twigs, and a small one, for finer particles, when he came up with his idea.

BBC UK

It’s like we’re watching a scene from that dumb reality show, “The Bachelor,” and in this case the bachelor is Yahoo.

Who will walk down the aisle with Yahoo? Microsoft? Google? Time Warner’s AOL? Even News Corp. is getting into the act, considering a plan to team up with Microsoft in its bid for Yahoo.

The Bachelor, aka Yahoo, has a lot of hot, crazy babes to choose from. If you’re a small business that wants to place ads on search engines to get people to click over to your Web site, you just may want to tune in.

Each potential merger scenario could affect the future of your Internet ad dollars.

Most analysts believe Microsoft will prevail in its bid for Yahoo, and while that may seem on the surface to mean higher prices for ads because there will be less competition, think again.

“Heaven would be if Microsoft purchased Yahoo, kept Yahoo intact under the Yahoo brand, and used Yahoo search and Yahoo Search Marketing to power Microsoft Live,” she says.

MSNBC YourBiz

Jordan Lakoduk/ entrepreneur-”I started ‘Dotcomr‘ in early 2004. My brother was getting his senior pictures taken, and he was talking to the photographer and she mentionted that she needed a website. And my brother mentioned that my brother does websites. I was really fortunate to have a really successful business person trust a high school student to get a website done and then pay me.”

Jordan’s computer savvy has really paid off. Not only has he been able to tuck some cash away, but it’s earned him attention with the McElvy Foundation. They awarded him $40,000 for college!

Jordan- “I had no idea that you could get scholarships just from being a business owner at such a young age.”

But “Dotcomer” has been a lot more than a paycheck for Jordan. It’s taught him several aspects of running a business including how to conduct himself in a professional way.

Jordan-”It’s taught me to just be aware of how you act when you’re out in public or when your with people that could bve your potential clients in the future. You never know who you’re going to be workign with.”

kxmc.com

eBay is requiring that users in Australia use its PayPal payment service on all transactions. Aside from transactions in which the buyer picks up items in person and cash-on-delivery, no other payment method will be permitted, and eBay is banning sellers from using their own merchant credit card accounts if they have them. eBay said it is making the changes “to make buying on eBay.com.au even safer and selling more reliable.”

According to the new policy, all items listed for sale on eBay.com.au on or after May 21, 2008, must offer PayPal as one of the payment methods. Beginning June17, all items appearing on eBay.com.au must be paid for using PayPal or pay on pick up. Visa and MasterCard are accepted only when processed through PayPal.

The only exceptions to the policy will be for listings in the categories of cars, motorcycles, aircraft, boats, caravans, trailers, trucks (commercials), services, real estate and businesses for sale.

Marketing Profs Daily Fix:

Holly Suttmann, a former schoolteacher, started the Black & Light Candle company. Holly really understands word of mouth. She’s proof that every business can master these inexpensive techniques.

Lessons from Holly:

1. Cultivate key talkers. She’s sent me two personal notes and really built a relationship with me.
2. Use samples. People can’t talk about a product they haven’t seen.
3. Make it easy to spread the word. Holly sent me a stack of postcards to forward to friends.
4. Make your talkers look good. She gave me a discount code to share.
5. Add remarkable features. Sometimes you need a reason to talk that is more than the product itself.
6. Create a fantastic product.

The lesson: High-touch, high-quality word of mouth is effective and inexpensive. Are you spending more on cold sales letters and glossy flyers than it would take to get real word of mouth?

THE e-commerce bandwagon bypassed millions of carpenters, massage therapists, lawyers and other service providers, mostly because it is impossible to drop an appointment into a shopping cart without unleashing a scheduling nightmare.

“This is something that’s been needed for a while, but no one has been able to do it successfully,” said Greg Sterling, of Sterling Marketplace Intelligence, an online consultancy. “With these new services, there are a lot of circumstances where it can work quite well for both the business and the consumer.”

When Jennifer Brinn opened a practice in massage and Reiki (a Japanese stress-reduction technique) in San Francisco in 2003, she relied on a day planner and lots of “e-mail and phone tag” to book appointments. Last year, she began testing HourTown, an online booking service started by a former product designer for PayPal, Ryan Donahue.

HourTown, like its competitors, BookingAngel and Genbook, is an online calendar tool, with a twist. Users fill the calendar with personal and business appointments, but they can also transmit to the Web any blocks of time they would like to make available for business appointments. Customers can book a time directly from the service provider’s Web site, or, in the case of Ms. Brinn, they can reserve a slot and wait for her to confirm the appointment with an e-mail. Either way, it is free for customers.

Last year, Ms. Brinn started buying text advertising on Google around the same time she added the HourTown booking technology to her site (www.jbrinn.com), and since that time her client base has doubled to more than 200. HourTown, she said, helps her attract more impulse buyers.

After numerous prototypes and years of tinkering, Rick Chambers and Larry Kost believe they’ve invented the perfect apparatus to accomplish just that: The Bataround.

It doesn’t sound like much: an elongated stainless steel frame, connected to an aviation cable with a batting practice ball bolted to the end. But with one person swinging the device in a circular motion, a little wrist action and the resulting centrifugal force can provide a whole lot of practice cuts for a batter in a short period of time.

In the summer of 2006, five years and some $70,000 in research and development later, Chambers and Kost, the engineer behind the bataround, finally put their invention on the market.

Lodi News-Sentinel

Bob Parsons credits 16 rules for propelling him from humble youth to his role today as CEO and Founder of GoDaddy.com.

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone.
2. Get and stay out of your comfort zone.
3. When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think.
4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be.
5. Focus on what you want to have happen.
6. Take things a day at a time.
7. Always be moving forward.
8. Be quick to decide.
9. Measure everything of significance.
10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate.
11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing.
12. Never let anybody push you around.
13. Never expect life to be fair.
14. Solve your own problems.
15. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
16. There’s always a reason to smile.

bobparsons.com

New and exciting work options seem to pop up all the time in today’s fast-paced cyber-world. Even so, certain fields have emerged as the most popular — and successful — online choices. Explore our hot picks to see if there’s something that fits your skills, talents or interests.

1. Coaching and Teaching
2. Communications/Information
3. Direct Sales
4. E-tailing
5. Event Planning
6. Parenting Services/Products
7. Personal Services
8. Virtual Assistant
9. Website Consultant
10. Work-at-Home Support

Mompreneurs Online

Think retailers are the only ones that should offer gift certificates, think again.

Every business can find a way to extend some form of gift certificate to clients and prospects. Think about the marketing factors at play with this tool. You allow others to pass your marketing message or gain some additional benefit from the relationship they have with your firm - service and product businesses alike can benefit from that way of thinking.

No matter what your firm offers, you can create gift certificates, with real value, and offer them to your clients to buy and use as gifts.

What about as a referral tool?

Two or three times a year send a mailing to your clients and strategic partners and enclose several gift certificates for your products or services (don’t call them coupons, coupons are for yogurt.) Ask the recipients to pass these along to anyone they know who might want to take advantage of the value they offer. And, tell your client that for each one of these that comes back in the door, they will receive some amount off of their next purchase. There is a little tracking involved in this tactic, but the instant rush of new business will make it worth setting up a simple process to accomplish this.

This tool stimulates thinking about your brand and makes you easier to refer - both good marketing things.

ducttapemarketing.com

CNN Money

Whether a child is groomed to take over the family business or mistakenly pushed into it, problems often arise when family and authority mix.

“Being in an emotional relationship and a business relationship puts a different, more difficult kind of strain on relationships,” said Getzler, who inherited his consulting firm from his father.

Difficult-to-solve personality issues are almost inevitable in family companies, and without an exceptionally strong patriarch or matriarch leading the family business, problems can mushroom.

Despite whether a favored daughter was groomed for the business or a son was mistakenly pushed into a position of authority, a parent might not have the ability to select an appropriate heir.

“Once the patriarch or matriarch retires or dies, many businesses become a free-for-all - despite carefully laid plans,” Getzler said.

To that end, Getzler offers some tips to help business owners make rational decisions about their successors. These strategies can also help owners make other tough calls when family relationships are at stake.

1. Set up an advisory board.
2. Employ a family business counselor.
3. Manage egos and salary demands.
4. Stop the feeding frenzy.

“Everyone gets along generally when there is a lot of money to go around. The fights start when someone feels they are working hard and not making enough,” Getzler said.

In the end, he insisted, “there’s nothing magical,” to navigating through difficult family business issues. “It’s about getting people to focus on the end result.”

Two Minnesota men have found their niche in the travel market by taking groups to scary places.

Dave Schrader of Circle Pines and Tim Dennis of Burnsville are leading groups on trips to haunted hotels and spooky cruise ships.

The two started an online radio show called “Darkness Radio” in January 2006. Within a year, their weekly broadcasts had made them celebrities among fanciers of otherworldly mystery.

They began asking stars of TV shows about the supernatural to cohost weekends at haunted destinations. Among the locations are the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado — made famous by the movie “The Shining.”

Travelers pay between $180 to $250 for the trips — not including transportation or lodging.
WKBT.com