Barbara Corcoran
Founder, the Corcoran Group, one of Manhattan’s leading real estate firms
Bad times are the best times to move your business forward, especially if you are a small business. The big guys are back on their haunches, waiting things out. If you are willing to stick your neck out, this is when your energy and creativity can outmaneuver the big companies. This is your opportunity.

Robert Shiller
Yale economist who correctly called the bubbles in real estate and tech stocks
People in America invest mostly in America, but if you were on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you wouldn’t have all your investments here. You would think, “Maybe there are other opportunities on the other side of the world.”

Joline Godfrey
CEO of Independent Means, which teaches financial literacy to families and children
Raise your children to make a job, not just take a job. If they don’t know how to create a plan, they’ll always be beholden to someone else.

Burton Malkiel
Author of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street,” which showed the folly of trying to beat the market
Best advice I can give: The first section of my new book with Charlie Ellis, “The Elements of Investing,” is titled “It All Starts With Saving.” If you don’t put money aside now, you won’t have money later on.

Lynn Truong
Co-founder, Wise Bread personal-finance blog
Good money management is a lifestyle. If you surround yourself with people who share the same values, you’re more likely to stay on track.

Jack Bogle
Vanguard Group founder, who popularized investing through index funds
Best advice I can give: There is much that is worrisome in our economy. That’s why your bond position should be commensurate with your age. In my case that means I have more than 80% in bonds. Someone in their fifties should consider 50%.

The value of the bond position is not just that it provides you some protection in a down market — it does, of course. But its value is that it keeps you from making behavioral errors such as selling stocks during a panic.

Liz Ann Sonders
Chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab; chairs the firm’s investment strategy council
One thing I see with our clients and individual investors is an aversion to risk, and a favoring of fixed-income funds and Treasuries. In the past 20 years, we’ve been in an environment that’s been good to bonds relative to stocks. But it’s rare for that to happen over an extended period — and the last two times it happened, the subsequent five-year period favored stocks.

Barry Ritholtz
CEO of FusionIQ and author of “Bailout Nation,” which lays out the roots of the credit crisis
Best advice I can give: Always remember that price is the most important aspect of an investment. Today we keep hearing people talk about “toxic paper” on bank balance sheets. Well, it’s toxic to the banks because they paid 100¢ on the dollar for it. To somebody who gets to buy it at 30¢ or 40¢ on the dollar, it’s not toxic at all. So there is no such thing as a toxic asset. There’s no such thing as a damaged property. There is only a bad price.

Bill Gross
Managing director of Pimco and the world’s most influential bond fund manager
Best advice I can give: Most of Wall Street is focused on next month’s numbers, but by taking a long-term view on economic statistics and investment fundamentals, you stand a better chance of not getting whipsawed by the volatile economy.

Maria Bartiromo
Anchor of CNBC’s Closing Bell and author of “The 10 Laws of Enduring Success”
Best advice I can give: Darwin said it: You need to be adaptable. As it relates to your portfolio, if you regularly put money into your 401(k) or invest in mutual funds, you might have to change your strategy as the economic times change around you.

Mark Cuban
Owner of the Dallas Mavericks; sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo just before the tech bust
Best advice I can give: Unless you think you’ve done more research and have better insight on a stock than a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, why are you trading?

Liz Claman
Fox Business Network anchor and author of “The Best Investment Advice I Ever Received”
Best advice I can give: We all have to learn from our mistakes of overleveraging ourselves and acting like 5-year-olds — “I want four cookies.” You don’t need four cookies; you only need one. It’s not about what you want, it’s about what you need.

Best Money Tips Ever is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Warren Buffett
Millions of people read Buffett’s books and follow his firm, Berkshire Hathaway’s, every move. But the real secret to Buffett’s personal fortune may be his penchant for frugality. Buffett, who is worth an estimated $47 billion, eschews opulent homes and luxury items. He and his wife still live in their modest home in Omaha, Nebraska which they purchased for just $31,500 more than 50 years ago. Although he’s dined in the best restaurants around the globe, given the choice he would opt for a good burger and fries accompanied by a cold cherry Coke. When asked why he doesn’t own a yacht he responded “Most toys are just a pain in the neck.”

Carlos Slim
While most of the world is very familiar with Bill Gates, the name Carlos Slim rarely rings a bell. But it’s a name worth knowing. Slim, who is a native of Mexico, was just named the world’s richest billionaire – that’s right, richer than the uber-famous Microsoft founder. Slim is worth more than $53 billion and while he could afford the world’s most extravagant luxuries he rarely indulges. He, like Buffett, doesn’t own a yacht or plane and he has lived in the same home for over 40 years.

Ingvar Kamprad
The founder of the Swedish furniture phenomenon Ikea struck success with affordable, assemble-it-yourself furniture. For Kamprad, figuring out how to save money isn’t just for his customers, it’s a high personal value. He’s been quoted as saying “Ikea people do not drive flashy cars or stay at luxury hotels.” That goes for the founder as well. He flies coach for business and when he needs to get around town locally he either takes the bus or will head out in his 15-year-old Volvo 240 GL.

Chuck Feeney
Growing up in the wake of The Depression as an Irish-American probably has something to do with Feeney’s frugality. With a personal motto of “I set out to work hard, not get rich,” the co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers has quietly become a billionaire but even more secretively given almost all of it away through his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies. In addition to giving more than $600 million to his alma mater Cornell University, he has given billions to schools, research departments and hospitals.

Loath to spend if he doesn’t have to, Feeney beats both Buffett and Kamprad in the donation category, giving out less grants than only Ford and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations. A frequent user of public transportation, Mr. Feeney flies economy class, buys clothes from retail stores, and does not wast money on an extensive shoes closet, stating “you can only wear one pair of shoes at a time“. He raised his children in the same way; making them work the same normal summer jobs as most teens.

Frederik Meijer
If you live in the Midwest chances are good that you shop at Meijer’s chain of grocery stores. Meijer is worth more than $5 billion and nearly half of that was amassed when everyone else was watching their net worth drop in 2009. Like Buffett he buys reasonably-priced cars and drives them until they die, and like Kamprad he chooses affordable motels when on travel for work.

The dirty little secret of some of the world’s wealthiest people is that they rarely act like it. Instead of over-the-top spending, they’re busy figuring out how to save and invest to have that much more in the future. It’s a habit you might want to consider in order to build up your own little storehouse of cash.

investopedia.com

5 Billionaires Who Live Below Their Means is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Bee all you can bee is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The story began in Spain. Carasso’s father, Isaac, a physician, migrated from Thessaloniki, Greece, to Barcelona and started a business in 1919 to sell yogurt in Spain using cultures from the prestigious Pasteur Institute. He named the yogurt Danone after son Daniel’s nickname. Throughout its early years Danone yogurt was marketed as a health food and sold by prescription through pharmacies. In 1929, Daniel Carasso, having studied business and bacteriology, established the Danone brand in France.

Carasso and his company survived the Great Depression, World War II, post-war recessions, mergers and acquisitions, and changing consumer lifestyles to transform yogurt from an obscure ethnic food to a worldwide sensation. His story holds inspiring lessons about the healthiest ingredients in business: innovation, collaboration, and long-term commitment.

Along the way, Carasso remained dedicated to yogurt no matter what happened. He ignored the beginning of the Great Depression because he was too busy trying to find dairy stores for his product in France, as the New York Times reported. After fleeing the Nazis in 1941, he found U.S. partners with whom he created the American version, under the name Dannon. Yogurt rose from obscurity and niche markets into the mass consumer mainstream when adding fruit jam to the sour product proved a marketing breakthrough. The American Dannon was sold to Beatrice Foods, and Carasso returned to Europe after World War II to grow Danone into a global brand, merging several times along the way to form Groupe Danone in 1973. In 2008, the Groupe had worldwide sales of $20.48 billion.

Carasso’s success involved a lifetime of innovation, yet the innovations were often very simple. Enhancements to make a product more user-friendly can quickly propel something from the margins to the mainstream without radical new inventions. Carasso’s success is a tribute to finding creative but very simple innovations that keep enhancing the product and cause leaps forward in popularity. Adding jam to yogurt doesn’t require scientific genius or grand statements about disruptive technologies, but it was game-changing for yogurt anyway.

For instance, the same thing happened with the growers’ cooperative marketing cranberry juice under the Ocean Spray name. For years, the tiny tart berry grown in New England bogs was an acquired taste for a small niche market. Ocean Spray’s Dannon-like breakthrough was the creation of blended juices to add sweetness and pizzazz – cranraspberry, cranapple, crangrape, cranpeach. (They tried cranprune, but that didn’t work, as many of us would have predicted.) Successful companies are open to creative partnerships to add something from outside the core to enlarge a product’s appeal.

Contrast Carasso’s long-term dedication to yogurt with the way many businesses have been conceived in recent years — as empty vessels for making money rather than enduring contributions to well-being. Before the recession, the world moved so fast that tech products could become obsolete in months, if not minutes. Before the recession, some entrepreneurs dreamed less of their product and more about cashing out. During the recession, some entrepreneurs are undoubtedly thinking about giving up rather than selling even harder.

Daniel Carasso lived though a century’s worth of turbulence and destructive change, some of it much worse than anything happening today. He persisted when others gave up, reached out to partners to help him implement his vision, remained true to his values, and never lost his passion for yogurt. Maybe it wasn’t consuming his product himself that gave him a long life; maybe it was enduring confidence and belief in his product. Doing what one cares about — as a force for good in the world — is the real prescription for personal longevity.

bloomberg.com

Love Your Product and Live Longer is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

According to the patent’s abstract, the Jackson-devised system relies on “a hitch member movably projectable through a stage surface. The shoes have a specially designed heel slot which can be detachably engaged with the hitch member by simply sliding the shoe wearer’s foot forward, thereby engaging with the hitch member.” Jackson co-developed the technique as an improvement upon a previous method in which he and his dancers were rigged up with harnesses and cables.

mediabistro.com

Michael Jackson’s Design Legacy: Patented Anti-Gravity Shoes is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

1. Arlington, Va.
2. Columbia, Md.
3. Fargo, N.D.
4. Fayetteville, Ark.
5. Fort Collins, Colo.
6. Knoxville, Tenn.
7. Lincoln, Neb.
8. Madison, Wis.
9. Round Rock, Texas
10. West Des Moines, Iowa

usnews.com

10 Great Places for Entrepreneurs to Retire is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Shreelaxmi Suresh received recognition for her work after she developed a website for Kerala Bar Council, located in the country’s south.

The youngster has displayed a keen interest in computers and art since she was in Kindergarten.

With a little assistance from her father, Shreelaxmi managed to find a ‘knack’ for web design.

At the age of eight, Shreelaxmi had already created the official website of her school, a website for deaf people and a news website for children written in Malayalam language.

Her newest creation, The Kerala Bar Council site, aims to update people on legal matters and offer free legal aid through the website.

bigpondnews.com

Nine-year-old starts up web business is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

From drop off to pick up every aspect of the pet’s comfort has been thought through, with pre- and post-flight walks, comfortable waiting areas, and boarding on either side if necessary. The animals are walked (or carried) onto the plane where they board the main cabin, escorted by pet attendants. The interior of Pet Airways’ planes have been converted to carry 50 pets and the attendants—not pet owners. Kennels in all sizes are mounted to vertical rows, and each pet travels in comfort and safety inside the cabin, not underneath.

Fly with Pets AirwaysFly with Pets Airways is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

With a top speed of 120 knots, the bespoke wooden yacht is designed to transport the super rich to and from the neighboring islands. The Sea King yacht comprises two decks that are fitted with a range of lavish amenities. The top deck comes with a cockpit, passenger bench and two sun loungers, all finished in leather with metal and wood detailing.

Sea King Wooden Luxury Yacht is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The study by Sara Mednick, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego and the VA San Diego Healthcare System, and first author Denise Cai, graduate student in the UC San Diego Department of Psychology, shows that REM directly enhances creative processing more than any other sleep or wake state. Their findings will be published in the June 8th online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“We found that – for creative problems that you’ve already been working on – the passage of time is enough to find solutions,” said Mednick. “However, for new problems, only REM sleep enhances creativity.”

Mednick added that it appears REM sleep helps achieve such solutions by stimulating associative networks, allowing the brain to make new and useful associations between unrelated ideas. Importantly, the study showed that these improvements are not due to selective memory enhancements.

physorg.com

Creative problem solving enhanced by REM sleep is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Frazier was honored Tuesday as the inaugural Angel Investor of the Year by his peers during a ceremony at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center. The event was hosted by FundingUniverse, a South Jordan-based company that connects entrepreneurs with investors and lending sources.

Frazier, a Utah native living in Salt Lake City, said he was surprised to be honored, but was grateful for the recognition. He said he has been investing in start-ups for 14 years since moving back to Utah from Minnesota, where he was a health-care company executive.

“Frankly, it’s fairly hard to find a business to start yourself, so it’s much easier to find somebody else that’s got one that’s got a great idea … to just help them move it along.”

“I’ve got about 30 businesses that I work with,” Frazier told the Deseret News. “Mainly, the thing they need is some cash and the second thing is some contacts to help extend their (professional) network.”

In exchange for his financial risk, Frazier said, he gets an equity stake in those companies — about half of which never make it, he added.

He said he hopes his efforts to help young entrepreneurs get started sets a good example for his eight children, who range in age from 10 to 29.

deseretnews.com

Angel investor honored for helping entrepreneurs is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

In choosing Mr. Mirkin, a chemistry professor and nanotechnology research director at Northwestern University, the program recognized his invention of a disease-detection method that is sensitive to low levels of proteins and can help catch Alzheimer’s disease and several forms of cancer and heart disease at early stages. The school also recognized him for creating a miniature printing tool that allows researchers to study cancer cells and viruses in new ways.

Mr. Mirkin, who has more than 70 patents and many more pending, owns Nanosphere and NanoInk, two Illinois companies that sell his inventions. He also has started one other nanotechnology firm.

The program is scheduled to announce the award on Wednesday. It called Mr. Mirkin a “prolific inventor and entrepreneur” whose innovations have the potential “to transform the future of medical diagnostics and patient point-of-care.”

Mr. Mirkin’s products use nanotechnology, which is based on the science of very small particles, to help researchers study diseases. His disease-detecting method, branded as Verigene, is thousands of times more sensitive than conventional methods to low levels of proteins or nucleic acids that show a person could develop a certain disease. The method can return results in an hour as compared with several days, in some cases.

wsj.com

Inventor to Receive MIT Prize is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Michael Adams\Eddie’s Energy Bars “I started the business because I hate being bored. I need to do something every minute of every day.”

Adams launched ‘Eddie’s Energy Bars‘ three years ago, inspired by an entrepreneurship class he took in high school. He liked baking, and business and wanted to make a little extra cash.\

Michael: “Multiple bars have shelf-lives of 6 months to a year. That’s not real food- why would you want to eat something that’s a year old?”

With the help of his parents, Adams baked and sold the energy bars locally. When he was away at college, he worked on marketing, while Jeanne and ‘Ed’ – the company’s namesake – took over many of the cooking duties.

Ed “We have a hard time finding a place to sit and eat now.” At a point now where they have to turn down some customers.

Michael “They can’t quite grasp that we make our bars in a 200 square foot kitchen- with one oven and one mixer. I don’t think any of us thought it’d get this big.”

Despite the company’s success so far, Adams says one of his biggest challenges – outside of juggling college and his company – is selling consumers on his product. These bars are fresh– which is normally a selling point, but not necessarily when it comes to energy bars.

Michael “People are used to taking an energy bar and throwing it in the glove compartment, and when they run off the road in a blizzard they can eat it. That’s not true with our bars- unless the blizzard is in the next 2 weeks.”

No blizzards in the immediate forecast, but the Adams have had to weather a flood of orders recently. And somehow Michael still managed to pull in a 4.0 G.P.A. last semester- while managing the business from afar.

After next year, that will no longer be an issue. Though Michael hasn’t decided if he’ll continue to grow the company after graduation. He’ll have to see if he has the energy.

necn.com

Entrepreneur runs “energetic business” while at college is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

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

16 Rules for Success in Business & Life in General is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Michelle Harvey formed the Pittsburgh Town Shopper delivery service in September and works almost exclusively as a personal shopper and courier for Downtown residents who don’t yet have a neighborhood grocery store.

“There’s nothing here,” said Lopez, who moved here from Los Angeles last summer. “At one point, I didn’t even have a car, so that (Pittsburgh Town Shopper) was extremely convenient for me. I didn’t have to find a way to go out and get food or order from Dominos.”

Pittsburgh Town Shopper is hardly the first Web-based grocery delivery service, but there are few, if any, in the Pittsburgh area.

“I think I have a niche,” said Harvey, who declined to disclose sales figures or the number of customers she has. She said her services, which cost $39 for an average delivery, are in demand and she hopes business will grow to the point where she has employees to shop as well.

Pittsburgh Live

Entrepreneur Delivers Much-Needed Service is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

“Before I became a marshmallow king, I spent several years in the early 1990s as a banker in Hamburg. I was struck by how much my wife missed American junk food. She’d drive eight hours to Belgium and spend $12 for a $3 box of Oreos. It got me thinking that there might be a demand for American-branded products, not only among expats but among the locals.

“It took me 2-and-a-half years to land my first sale, to a German catalog company. Unfortunately it wanted small quantities of a lot of different items. Soon I was exporting almost 2,000 different American food products- Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Bisquick, cake mixes. “This wasn’t the most profitable way to do business- the margins were too thin, and we depended on the cooperation of major brands. It made more sense to develop our own versions of American food that wasn’t available overseas, selling the product instead of the brand.

“We started with marshmallows. My manufacturer offered to develop a private label for me, and Rocky Mountain Marshmallows was born in 1996. We launched our pretzel and popcorn brands shortly after. Our marshmallow-exporting business grew so well – doubling in sales every year from 1996 to 2004 – that my co-packer, Doumak, purchased the Rocky Mountain brand from me on the condition that we continued to export it. In the past two years we have nearly tripled marshmallow sales.

“Politically the U.S. is unpopular abroad. But we see an almost unlimited opportunity for growth for our products. We recently shipped marshmallows, popcorn, and pretzels to new clients in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. American culture, at least as it’s manifested in food, is pretty bulletproof.” –as told to Alessandra Bianchi.

CNN Money

Meet America’s marshmallow king is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

1. Your family & friends will always understand the time commitment, even when no money is coming in.
2. Your friends’ constructive criticism is never out of jealousy
3. Your college degree is all you need to secure the knowledge entrepreneurship requires
4. Your lack of a college degree will ensure your business fails
5. Anyone that has tried and failed automatically must be trusted because “they’ve done it”.
6. If the majority of your peers call the idea silly, it probably is.
7. You have to spend money to make money (this one is borderline, but a lot can be earned by charging people for your knowledge on something)

Personal Finance Advice

Six Self-Employment Myths is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

After racing bicycles professionally for two years and realizing that I was no Lance Armstrong, I found another way to make a living on a bike. I had spent 20 years organizing bike treks with friends through the Alps, the hills of Tuscany and the countryside of Provence. Noticing a growing appetite for such trips, I founded Destination Cycling (destinationcycling.com) in 2002. I now run tours on my bike 70 days a year.

We began offering trips for serious cyclists that duplicated famous races such as the Tour de France in 2005. Our clients are typically Fortune 500 executives. The journeys are very complex for me to manage. We ride 100 miles or more a day for 21 days. I never know when a tire will blow or a hail storm will strike. Our customers pay us $30,000 for the experience of a lifetime and, in some instances, six figures for exclusive tours. They expect us to plan for the unexpected.

FSB Magazine

Destination bike tours go wireless is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

“We learned that we also enjoyed starting companies in niche markets. Our mantra when it comes to starting new companies is to fail fast, fail frugal, and fail fearlessly. We started 10 companies before we had our next successful next company, which became Speck Products. We tried new stuff, didn’t spend a lot of money, and if it wasn’t going anywhere, we shut it down. We never bet the farm on a new venture, which allowed us to keep trying.

“We come up with the majority of our ideas internally. For instance, we came up with the idea for Camera Armor at a trade show. We want to play in niches — we don’t want to go mainstream.”

Yahoo Finance

The Idea Guy is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

1. Determine if you can work side by side.
2. Discuss your goals.
3. Write a business plan and solicit feedback.
4. Define each person’s role.
5. Keep the lines of communication open.
6. Be circumspect when talking with clients.
7. Form a united front.
8. Set firm boundaries and honor them.
9. Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.
10. Don’t deal with family matters during business hours.

AllBusiness.com

How Couples Run A Home Business Without Running Each Other Down is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The company, based in Silver Spring, Md.,makes and sells Remodulin, a drug that treats pulmonary hypertension (PPH), abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries that supply the lungs. The rare, incurable, and often fatal ailment causes shortness of breath, fainting spells and fatigue. Most treatment options, ranging from daily pills to intravenous medicines, are fully reimbursable by insurance companies.

Rothblatt describes watching her daughter, Jenesis, battle PPH when she was diagnosed as a little girl. Jenesis survived on a mix of pills, but doctors warned that if her condition worsened, she would have to take Flolan, a GlaxoSmithKline (Charts) drug that stays in the bloodstream for only three minutes. It must be continually administered via a catheter threaded directly into the groin or neck. Unstable at room temperature, Flolan requires patients to carry an ice pack 24 hours a day to ensure that it stays cool.

“The treatment seemed worse than the disease,” recalls Rothblatt, stroking one of the three mohawked Labradoodles that roam her offices. “My vision became an inhaled version of the medicine.” Her first step was to develop a drug that lasted longer than Flolan.

FSB Magazine

A mother’s race for a cure is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

“I realized I had two options: a car wash or a chocolate store,” Crail recalls. “I’m not a car-wash kind of guy, so I opened the chocolate factory.”

Crail wasn’t exactly a candy man, either. He mixed his first batch of chocolate on a Ping-Pong table and got it all wrong. The nut clusters were as big as hockey pucks. The peanut-butter cups were a size D. But it turned out that folks were hankering for supersized sweets. Crowds gathered, and not just for the chocolate. Part of the fun was watching the new shopkeeper fumble around in his open kitchen.

“Resort towns are perfect for chocolate,” Crail says. “No one’s on a diet when they’re on vacation. People have money to spend, and they’ve got to bring something to folks back home.”

Today Crail’s Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is the largest U.S. chocolate retailer in terms of locations, surpassing Godiva and See’s. Rocky Mountain (rmcf.com) has 325 stores in 44 states and this year plans to open 40 more. Revenues rose 13 percent, to a record $31.6 million, in fiscal 2007. (Same-store revenues, however, were flat.) Profits climbed 17 percent, to an all-time high of $4.7 million, propelling the company to No. 80 on the FSB 100.

CNN Money

A chocolatier’s sweet success is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Meet Zlatko Zadro, president of Zadro Products in Huntington Beach.

After careers selling large computers and refurbishing real estate, Zadro decided in 1983 to try marketing one of his inventions.

The result is an international company that makes 350 products, many of them patented. It has 40 employees in Huntington Beach and 800 in China. Many inventors can learn from Zadro’s practical approach that focuses on customer needs, not his own desires.

Start with a problem. The whole thing started when Zadro thought about the difficulty men had shaving in the shower. The hot water supposedly softened the skin and whiskers for a more comfortable shave, but men couldn’t see to shave because a regular mirror fogged up.

Zadro attached a thin tube behind the mirror, dispersing hot water to keep the mirror the same temperature as the air to avoid fogging.

He hired people to help with the design because he’s not an engineer, but he built the prototype himself in his garage.

Zadro started selling the mirrors whenever he spoke to college business classes and broke onto store shelves through the Los Angeles Gift Show.

OC Register

Inventor Has 350 Ideas On Market is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Answer: Here are a few things to ask yourself: First, do you really need business partners to build a successful company? If so, will these friends make strong and trustworthy business leaders? And perhaps most importantly, are you willing to risk hurting your friendship if the partnership falls apart?

Complete article at startupjournal.com

Can Friends Be Strong Business Partners? is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

1. A faster and better way to create newsletter articles.
2. A strategy for getting published.
3. A low-cost way for a small business owner to market online.
4. A method to communicate and connect — especially important for business owners.
5. Satisfaction of some inner need to share.

Why do you blog? Or, if you do not currently blog, tell us the reason you do not.

smallbiztrends.com

Five Reasons For Small Business Owners To Blog is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Fun is also critical for keeping your employees happy. Statistics and experience both show that employees who enjoy their jobs are more productive and will stay with a company far longer than employees who do not enjoy their jobs.

Fun at work doesn’t have to be an extravagant ordeal. It could be as simple as taking an hour or two once a month to attend an interesting seminar or having a company cook-off where your staff tests their skills to see who makes the best cookies or appetizers.

Or it could mean taking the time to go out for coffee or a drink after work. Whatever the culture of your company is, find something that will engage and motivate employees.

Yahoo! Finance

Have Fun With Your Business is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The gifts were the brainchild of entrepreneur Lisa Honig Buksbaum. In 2001, Buksbaum closed her marketing firm, Boxtree Communications (Buksbaum means “boxtree” in Yiddish), which boasted a roster of brands such as Colgate and Lipton, to launch Soaringwords, a New York City nonprofit that helps sick children and their families.

Buksbaum, 46, understands from experience the need for this type of support: Within a span of ten months in 1998, her 35-year-old brother died suddenly of an asthma-induced heart attack, her father had a recurrence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (he defied the odds and survived) and her 9-year-old son became gravely ill with rheumatic fever, which left him bedridden for four months. “Everyone wants to do something positive, but they don’t know what to do to help,” she says.

Since its founding in 2001, Soaringwords has boosted the spirits of more than 150,000 pediatric patients in the U.S. and, through its Web site, reached children as far away as China, Israel, Mexico and Russia.

CNN Money

An entrepreneur’s nonprofit helps sick kids is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Read the article at Business2.0

How to avoid Internet stock scams is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

After leaving NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1982, Johnson built the prototype for what would become the Super Soaker in his basement workshop. He had several false starts, but “a good challenge keeps me going,” he says. Although he applied for his first patent on the water-gun design in 1983, it wasn’t issued until 1987. About that time, he decided to leave the Air Force and work on several private projects, “any one of which might have made it,” says Johnson. But when he left the Air Force, they all fell apart. “There I was with no home, no job and a family of five to support.”

He returned to JPL and began shopping his water gun to toy companies. After two frustrating years, he hit the jackpot with Larami Corp. By that time, he had already sunk close to $15,000 into the project, and his licensing check was only $5,000. But Larami’s goal was to produce 100,000 water guns the following year. In 1990, despite little advertising, the gun — first christened Drencher — became a sellout. Renamed the Super Soaker in 1991, Johnson’s invention became the number-one toy in the country.

Larami has since been sold to Hasbro, but Johnson, who lives in Atlanta, still works with the company on updating the Super Soaker. His quarterly royalties have made him a millionaire, giving him the wherewithal to start his own research-and-development company, which is currently working on energy technology. Before his invention took off, “I had days when I’d stop and think, Why is it taking so long?” says Johnson. “But I never thought about giving up.”

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine

Lonnie Johnson and the Super Soaker is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Goldsmith also works with entrepreneurs, including Jonathan Klein, who started Getty Images. In an interview with FSB editorial director Brian Dumaine, Goldsmith dissects five common (and particularly annoying) habits that he says can hold back even the best small-business owner.

1. Winning too much
2. Starting with ‘no,’ ‘but’ or ‘however’
3. Adding too much value
4. Playing favorites
5. Goal obsession

Are you an entrepreneur who can relate to these habits? Can you name other annoying habits?

FSB

5 annoying habits of entrepreneurs is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Faux Pas #2: Confusing networking with direct selling
Entrepreneur’s need to understand that networking isn’t about simply gathering contact information and following up on it later. That’s nothing more than glorified cold calling. There’s a better way to build long-term business.

Faux Pas #3: Abusing the relationship
Never mislead your networking partners or anyone else. Trust is everything when you’re talking about relationship networking.

Full article.

All of these Faux Pas directly relate to good people skills. The prevailing theme of all three is to treat your referral partners and potential referral partners with professionalism and care.

Networking Faux Pas is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

www.fastcompany.com

Your cell phone, the mobile remote control is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

But his early urge to push the envelope has served Cairns well in later life. He went on to found Ocean Design Inc., and to invent electric and fiber-optic connectors that have led to more than 50 patents.

Now, Cairns has written a book, “The Inventor’s Pathfinder: A Practical Guide to Successful Inventing,” which encourages people to invent and gives them the steps to follow.

If necessity is the mother of invention, Cairn’s book is no exception. He discovered most books about inventions were written by lawyers and focused on obtaining patents. “There was nothing to walk someone through the process,” Cairns said. “I wanted to provide a road map, a path to follow. Anyone who wants to spend the time to do it right, can.”

Cairns said when he talks to groups, he asks for a show of hands from those who’ve had ideas for inventions. Almost everyone raises a hand. Then, he asks how many did anything with their ideas, and no hands come up. “The beginning inventor’s biggest problem doesn’t seem to be getting interesting ideas; it’s knowing what to do next,” Cairns said.

news-journalonline.com

The Inventor’s Pathfinder: A Practical Guide to Successful Inventing is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

As surely as seasons change, entrepreneurs face a new personal finance challenge at every turn, whether it’s a sudden cash flow squeeze or a hike in taxes. And with stocks now wobbly, the path to wealth may seem less certain than ever. That’s why FSB recruited expert financial advisors to give custom-tailored advice to three busy entrepreneurs: one who owns a budding apparel company, another who runs a successful mortgage business, and a third who has just cashed out and is now considering his options. Here are some financial tips, including the latest on new tax laws and strategies, to help you make the most of life’s seasons.

Read more here

Three roads to wealth is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Owners of pricey SLRs solve the problem by popping a wide-angle lens onto the camera body; Kodak (EK) engineers gave the EasyShare V570 pocket camera the same capability by equipping it with two independent lenses–one zoom and one wide-angle–that switch automatically. To draw attention to Kodak’s breakthrough configuration, industrial design consultant BlueMap highlighted the dual-lens system and shrouded the camera in a retro-cool design.

Read the review.

A wider angle on the market is a post from: Top Business Opportunities