Brian Wiegand is no stranger to start-ups. His first business, BizFilings, launched in 1996 from his basement and later sold for $15 million to a public company. He and business partner Mark McGuire went on to start two others. The most recent was Jellyfish.com, which caught the purchasing eye of Microsoft only 18 months after its inception. The two could have stayed after the sale, but decided corporate life wasn’t for them.

Now the duo has launched their fourth online company, Alice.com, an online service in the consumer packaged goods industry. The site connects manufacturers directly to consumers, bypassing large retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target. Wiegand, Alice’s CEO, and McGuire, the company’s president and co-founder, recently explained their slightly unorthodox business model to Inc..

Read the interview at inc.com.

A Start-up Takes on Wal-Mart is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

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

Don’t worry, be crappy. Perfectionism, first of all, is an illusion. Nothing is perfect. Even worse, perfection stands in the way of revenue and truly learning what customers think because nothing is in their hands yet. When your product is “good enough” (but not “perfect”), ship it, and see what happens.

Don’t give out lofty titles. Just because a roommate was there during the drunken weekend when you came up with the idea for your company, doesn’t mean he should be CTO. Someday, you’ll need to hand out titles like director, vice-president, and chief whatever officer, so keep them in reserve. Until then refer to each other as “co-founders” and describe the area of responsibility: for example, “programming.” If your roommates aren’t cool with this, they’re doing you a favor by showing their colors now.

Don’t hire your family. The probability that your spouse or relative is the best person you can get for a job is 0%. The probability that people will hate working at company with spouses and relatives is 100%. The probability that one of you will have to go someday is also 100%. Never hire out of expediency. Always hire the best person you can get. This usually means not hiring your family unless you’re Jack or Suzy Welch.

Don’t ask people to do something you wouldn’t do. This is the Golden Rule of business. If you wouldn’t fill out ten fields of information and provide a credit card number for a free password, don’t expect your customers to. If you wouldn’t work on weekends stuffing envelopes, don’t expect your employees to. If you wouldn’t invest in your company, don’t expect venture capitalists to.

Read all twelve at openforum.com

A Dozen Don’ts for Entrepreneurs is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

In your startup, you will hear all kinds of excuses from your new sales staff. Excuses like, “The prospects have never heard of us!” or “If we would only advertise on [insert the most expensive media here], we could sell more.”

A good lead dog in your organization doesn’t use excuses–he or she just gets things done. He leads by example and soon sets a high standard for the others to emulate.

Here are five attributes of lead dogs:

1. They have been successful before, whether in a state championship softball team or as an Eagle Scout. Once they have been to the promised land, it is a feeling they love to recreate.
2. They never complain or whine.
3. They are sponges for new information, ideas and advice.
4. They love hearing you tell the story of their success. Learn to tell it well, and often.
5. They are highly principled. In the playground, they were the ones who would quit if the teacher spotted the other team a lead.

usnews.com

Why Your Startup Needs a Lead Dog is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

When Faith Borden, 16, of Metuchen, N.J., applied for a job in March to be a counselor at a summer day camp, she looked around and saw “all these 30- and 40-year-olds,” she said. “Usually it’s just teenagers.”

Also facing a competitive job market, Max O’Dell, 14, of Cary, N.C., started Smiley Inc., a custom T-shirt design business. He paints shirts in his driveway and hangs them in the garage to dry; revenue so far has been $170.

Unemployment for 16- to 19-year-olds is at its highest rate since 1992 — at 22.7 percent in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is causing some teenagers to rethink their notion of work and to embrace entrepreneurship.

“This is a generation raised to believe they can do anything, and the first to grow up with entrepreneurial celebrities like Steve Jobs of Apple and Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google,” said Donna Fenn, who interviewed 150 young entrepreneurs for her forthcoming book, “Upstarts: How Gen Y Entrepreneurs Are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit From Their Success.”

The Internet may be the most significant catalyst for teenagers’ entrepreneurship. The ability to start a business online has lowered many barriers to self-employment faced by young people — you need only a domain name and a Web site to set up shop and are largely anonymous to customers, who never have to know your age, said Alan Lysaght, co-author of “The ABCs of Making Money for Teens.”

There is also an abundance of information online about starting a business.

Laura Durst, 18, a recent high school graduate in Woodstock, Conn., in the state’s northeast corner, said that there were so few jobs for teenagers there that two years ago she began setting up a Web-based business, WorkInMyRoom.com. It provides teenagers with information and online resources to find jobs that can be done from home.

Ms. Durst said she was inspired by her mother, who also is an entrepreneur. “Seeing her work from home, where she could be her own boss, I liked the idea of that,” she said.

Ms. Durst’s revenue comes from advertising. She uses Google Ad Sense — which displays relevant Google ads on her site — and earns money when users click on them. She says she is making about $250 a month.

nytimes.com

Teens Are Building Their Own Job Engine is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The business model invented by Chris King, 19, a freshman at USC living in Huntington Beach, Calif., with his parents during summer break, is pretty simple: extract built-up lint from long, winding clothing-dryer ducts, and charge $39 for the service.

It’s a low-cost way to immediately boost energy efficiency and dramatically cut drying time for clothes.

“One neighbor said it took like an hour and 20 minutes,” King said. “Now it’s down to 20 or 30 minutes, tops. He’s super happy. He said, ‘Call me back next summer.’”

King said he got the idea after trying, unsuccessfully, to find a summer job.

“I started applying everywhere,” he said. “You know, the economic downturn. I got a couple calls back, but it’s hard to get a job right now.”

Instead, he began helping around the house.

“One weekend, my mom was complaining about how long it took to dry her laundry,” King said. “My dad tried to fix it. I was helping him.”

Like many others in his neighborhood, their house has a laundry room in the middle of the house. The duct that releases warm air from the dryer must be 18 feet long to reach an outer wall.

A kind of light bulb, perhaps with a greenish tinge, went off in King’s mind. A lot of his neighbors had the same floorplan.

The cleaning method – King wants to keep it secret for now – works most dramatically on long ducts. In only two weeks of offering the service door to door, he says he’s already picked up about 25 customers.

King, who is planning to be a business major, said he said he hopes to continue the service even after school resumes in August.

“I’ve already started marketing around a couple surrounding neighborhoods,” he said. “If everything goes as planned, I’ll try to expand as fast as I can.”

miamiherald.com

Out-of-work student now a green’ entrepreneur is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The concept is easy enough. You have some information, knowledge, or passion about a topic that others are interested in, as well. You set up an exclusive community and charge whatever fee you want to allow entry. Your members benefit from having access to, not only very specific information on the topic but also, a community of others who share their interest in that topic.

As an example, RestaurantOwner.com was started by Jim Laube. Jim had 20+ years in the restaurant industry and frankly was burnt out from the long hours.

He charges $99 to join and then under $20 a month to stay on as a member. Jim’s site has thousands of members.

With a normal business, regardless of how good last month was, on the first day of the new month you are basically starting from scratch with revenue. With a membership site, you know that if last month you pulled in say $15,000 for the month that this month is going to be very close to that number. Perhaps even more with a bit of marketing.

Some of the topics of the sites we have may come as a surprise you, including craft sites (embroidery, cross stitching), health, fitness, education, sports, dog enthusiasts, and how to get a cruise ship job.

One of the most consistently successful is the _____owner.com type sites. That is, choose a niche business and provide the tools for people in that industry. The previously mentioned restaurantowner.com is one example but that can be applied for almost any industry: hair salons, gas stations, CPA’s, handy man business, affiliate managers etc.

Everyone has knowledge or interests. Why not consider leveraging it in a very profitable way?

feedfront.com

A Look at the Membership Site Business is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Google co-founder Larry Page recently revealed in his commencement address to the University of Michigan that the basic platform for google was based on a sleep dream he had in college. Page, then 23, took the source material of his dream and worked it until it became a minor internet player.

Page told the college grads that he had a “vivid dream” at age 23 that woke him up in the middle of the night that he just had to write down.

Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and… I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work. Soon after, I told my adviser, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download the web — he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me. The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn’t even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking webpages to make a really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it!

There is nothing inherently special about Larry Page that isn’t also in all of us. He just took the ball and ran like Forrest Gump with it.

examiner.com

Larry Page founded Google on a sleep dream is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Baskin said she got the idea five years ago while flying to Texas to give a speech on how to be your own boss. En route, she scribbled on index cards the steps she’d learned while building her own business. Then she described the steps in her talk.

“The audience went crazy and afterwards they wanted to know where they could buy the cards,” Baskin recalled.

Baskin, owner of Tribe Inc., a seven-year-old agency, is selling sets on Amazon.com for $24.95, alongside various start-your-own business books.

Atlanta executive coach Mariette Edwards, owner of Star Maker Enterprises, suggested not relying on the cards 100 percent, but said, “This could be a tool to help you think through all the aspects of having a business. I see so many people who are lost and completely overwhelmed.”

The cards are colorful, the tips snappily written. They come in four sections: vision, launch, follow-through and milestones.

ajc.com

Entrepreneur puts start-up wisdom on cards is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Laura Hunter and Jennifer Walker never thought of themselves as entrepreneurs until about five years ago, after a little advice from country crooner Kenny Rogers. Today they are published authors, Web site operators and sought-after consultants in a big niche market.

The two moms – they have eight kids between them – run Moms on Call LLC, which offers real-world advice and counseling to newly minted parents.

Their consultation business has exploded – it grew 600 percent in three years. Their book, “Guide to Basic Baby Care,” has sold more than 20,000 copies and been translated into three languages. They recently started online courses in child care on their Web site that take parents from infancy through age 5.

Walker and Hunter believe a good part of their success is due to the fact that modern moms often live hundreds of miles from their natural support network – the mothers, sisters and aunts in traditional extended families who aided in child care.

The two pediatric nurses admit that a lot of people have stepped up to help make their business a success. One of the first was singer Rogers.

About five years ago, he called Hunter to consult with him and his wife, Wanda. The couple had twins when Rogers was 65. At the time, Hunter was doing consultations using a few photocopied sheets of instructions.

“I was getting ready to leave, and Kenny was flipping through [my] folder and he said: ‘It’s not copyrighted.’ He said: ‘You’ve got something here. You have to copyright this.’ His attorney … called the next morning.”

Getting children to sleep through the night is the most common question they get. Sometimes, the calls and e-mails are just strange.

“I had one e-mail that just said ‘hit on head by chicken,’ ” Hunter said. “I called and the kid was screaming and the dad was panicked. He was standing by the freezer and dropped a frozen chicken on his child. It all turned out fine, but that was what was worrying that dad at that moment.”

Moms on Call LLC
An in-home consultation is $300 for two hours. Includes a book, DVD, swaddling blanket and six months of follow-up assistance. Phone version is $250. Online courses are $29.95 each. Their book can be ordered online for less than $20. On the web: www.momsoncall.com

ajc.com

Moms’ niche is babies’ care 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

It’s not your average science fair when the 16-year-old winner manages to solve a global waste crisis. But such was the case at last month’s May’s Canadian Science Fair in Waterloo, Ontario, where Daniel Burd, a high school student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, presented his research on microorganisms that can rapidly biodegrade plastic.

High school girl discovers styrofoam-eating bacterium.

Daniel had a thought it seems even the most esteemed PhDs hadn’t considered. Plastic, one of the most indestructible of manufactured materials, does in fact eventually decompose. It takes 1,000 years but decompose it does, which means there must be microorganisms out there to do the decomposing.

Could those microorganisms be bred to do the job faster?

That was Daniel’s question which he put to the test by a very simple and clever process of immersing ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth, and then isolating the most productive organisms.

The preliminary results were encouraging, so he kept at it, selecting out the most effective strains and interbreeding them. After several weeks of tweaking and optimizing temperatures Burd was achieved a 43 % degradation of plastic in six weeks, an almost inconceivable accomplishment.

mnn.com

Boy discovers microbe that eats plastic is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

• Ultra Light Startups caters to “bootstrapping” entrepreneurs, says founder Graham Lawlor, who started Ultra Light by gathering a group of friends and fellow entrepreneurs in New York last year to brainstorm some business ideas. The informal gatherings morphed into monthly meetings in locations around the country that include pitch sessions and panel discussions on topics of interest to new business owners.
• The Funded is an online networking group for startups seeking venture capital, following the same entrepreneurs-helping-entrepreneurs model as Ultra Light, with a focus on sharing information about investors. Founder Adeo Ressi says the free networking site lets its more than 12,000 members dish about specific investors anonymously. Resso adds that a thorough application process ensures members are actually business owners.
• Venture Architects, a business plan development firm, has helped hundreds of companies obtain more than $500 million in investment capital since 1998. But when entrepreneurs call Venture Architects looking for startup dollars, managing director Melissa Krinzman advises them to get back to basics first. In a world of get-rich-quick schemes Krinzman advocates slowing down and backing up.
• North Venture Partners, “Venture capital is a secretive and unfamiliar realm to most entrepreneurs, and we wanted to give people a clear idea of how investors see their business compared to other businesses seeking the same funding,” managing partner Alex Bernstein says.

Lifelines For Your Start-Up is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Someone crazy enough, in a bad economy and with a newborn son, to start a free local magazine about barbershops. Someone driven enough to load 20,000 copies of Barbershop Digest each month into a Chevy truck his dad gave him and deliver them to 600 shops all over metro Atlanta.

He and his pages celebrate the barbershop as a sanctuary from the societal message that African-American men aren’t valued. For Egeston, this is where life became vivid and full of possibility.

In 2005, he hatched the idea for a magazine. “I went to my barbershop and was listening to some barbers talk trash about jumping rope. They issued a challenge to anyone who could jump rope for three minutes without stopping. Someone bet me $100 I couldn’t do it,” he recalled.

“Three minutes later, I was a barbershop legend. I never got the money but instantly saw the camaraderie and the spirit of barbershops in a different light. I wanted to take the barbershop experience home.”

Egeston persuaded his co-worker and neighbor Travis Hudgons to design the magazine. College friend Angus Wilson takes pictures when he’s not working at UPS.

The ads haven’t sold well, and by March, the third issue, Egeston asked his wife to dip into her retirement account. She never considered no.

“My hustle is laying in my lap as I write this message … without a care in the world and without a clue that his daddy won’t be sleeping the next few days. Not because he keeps me up with diaper changes and feedings. But because I share a common trait with the kats holding clippers and the dudes selling wares and the activists fighting for change. That trait is, we all found our reason to hustle.”

ajc.com

Trips to barbershop inspired entrepreneur is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The program, called FastTrac has been used in recent years to teach people how to start their own business.

Now, the Michigan Small Business & Technology Development Center says FastTrac will expand dramatically, and train close to 800 people this year who’ve lost their job.

Greg Main is head of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. He says even the expanded program isn’t really big enough. But he says it’s needed.

“To find the resources to do more means that you gotta demonstrate success,” Main says. “And so what we need is a few success examples so we can go to the legislature and say it’s worthwhile putting money into these kind of programs.”

The training programs typically meet once a week for eight to ten weeks. At the end, instructors help potential business-owners find the money to start their business.

publicbroadcasting.net

Entrepreneur Training Program For Displaced Workers Ramps Up is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

René Burton personifies the name of her business–It’s Never Too Late. Like so many of us, Burton knew what her passion was, but life had other ideas.

At age 57 Burton earned her bachelor’s degree in science management. She continues to add certifications that allow her to follow her passion–helping people over 55 become physically fit so they can live their lives to the fullest.

Now Burton is making plans to expand from her Southern California base and go national. At age 73, Burton is living up to her trademarked business name–It’s Never Too Late.

Reflecting on lessons learned, here’s the advice she offers would-be entrepreneurs:

1. Be passionate about your business. This passion will carry you through life’s detours and bad times–and be assured, there will be tough times.
2. Ignore age as a deterrent. Burton was 57 when she went back to college to realize her dream. She was 60 by the time she completed her studies.
3. Get good professional help. Don’t try to do it all on your own. Burton had an attorney to help her incorporate and trademark her business. But she did not have a business plan, a marketing plan or people to rely on. These missing links cost her dearly, particularly when she made her first videos. She lost valuable time and a good deal of money before she found people who understood her vision for her products.
4. Maintain control over your own business. As her business grew, Burton was approached by an executive who wanted to get involved and help her grow. She realized just in time that this would cost control of her vision and her company. She resolved then and there to always maintain control of her business. She worked too hard and waited too many years to lose the “roadmap” in her heart.
5. Get involved in the community. Burton not only works in traditional senior facilities in her area, she is involved in local organizations and is a well-known participant and advocate for National Senior Health and Fitness Day. These activities help keep her in touch with her passion and help her decide what her next steps should be.

womenentrepreneur.com

It’s Never Too Late to Start is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Muziic software created by 15-year-old David Nelson enables computers to mine YouTube’s rich database of songs and play customised lists of tunes free of charge.

“The Muziic player is a pretty cool little thing,” said analyst Matt Rosoff of technology industry tracking firm Directions On Microsoft.

“It looks and works a lot like iTunes in that it is a downloable desktop application; but you get all the content from YouTube. You have an all-in-one-place library of music for free.”

Google has been trying to develop ways to make money off of YouTube and that goal could be undermined by a Muziic Player that lets users tap into the video-sharing website’s music while avoiding advertisements.

“Hopefully, they will work something out,” Rosoff said of Muziic and YouTube. “Muziic is analogous to a subscription music service, but it’s free.”

Nelson and his father, Mark, launched the self-funded internet enterprise this year and bill it as the first “YouTube for music.”

David Nelson is Muziic’s chief technology officer, having switched from public school to taking online high school classes from home in order to devote more time to the website and the player software, according to his father.

“We served thousands of downloads of the Muziic Player and Encoder in just a few hours!” a message about the incident on the website’s blog said.

“We’ve expected and anticipated extreme growth in our website and application … However, within less than a week of our ‘unofficial’ launch, we have been – over abundantly – blessed with huge amounts of traffic!”

watoday.com

Teen’s invention puts YouTube music on tap is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

More such plants are on the way in Spain. Solar Millennium and its Spanish partner expect to start up a twin plant, Andasol 2, next spring and plan to begin building a third 50-MW plant early next year.

Spain’s Abengoa Solar and Sener, meanwhile, are each testing solar thermal plants with integrated molten-salt storage. Both use a “power tower” configuration in which arrays of mirrors direct sunlight onto a central solar receiver where the light directly heats a molten salt. This configuration matches that of Solar Two, a 10-MW solar thermal demonstration plant at Sandia National Laboratories, in New Mexico, built in the 1990s. The power-tower design makes energy storage cheaper and more compact because the salts can be safely heated well beyond the limit of the synthetic oils.

ieee.org

Largest Solar Thermal Storage Plant to Start Up is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

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

Inventors Hope “Bataround” Is A Big Hit is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

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.”

Help for handing over a family business 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

“A mug shot is a couple notches below your driver’s license picture,” said Devin James, 41, dressed casually in sweat pants, sneakers and a ball cap. “And everyone takes a messed up driver’s license picture.”

In JAIL, the stars are the readers’ neighbors, charged with everything from drug possession to prostitution to murder. Thousands of arrests each week in the paper’s three-county distribution area provide plenty of material, all obtained free from police and sheriff’s departments.

James carefully chooses the mug shots on the front page — issues with attractive women on the front move fastest.

“Sex sells,” James said.

James said he got the idea nearly a decade ago after a three-month stint in the Orange County Jail after he says he got into a loud fight with a girlfriend and the police sided with her. He denies hitting her.

Using $600 he earned moving furniture, James started the newspaper in December.

“The timing is right for this paper now,” he said. “America is in the midst of a crime wave.”

Associated Press

Entrepreneur Sells Mug Shots is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Customized Evlove Intimates lingerie is sold primarily through private home parties. Invited guests sip wine while they select from a wide array of designs, samples, fabric swatches and decorative touches including ribbons, appliqués, rosettes and bows. Dombroski hooks up her laptop to a TV screen where guests view and revise their choices courtesy of her online design studio. Prices for a lingerie set run around USD 100, with prices for individual pieces USD 35 and up. Purchases are delivered in about three weeks. Dombroski recently launched a website to enable customers to design and place orders online. But most of her business is through home parties, with the number of bookings increasing each month, mostly through word of mouth.

Dombroski’s ‘customerization parties’ are an inspired idea that could work just about anywhere for all sorts of products, including t-shirts, home fashions, fragrances and cosmetics. The founder’s advice for other fledgling entrepreneurs? “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. If you love the product, ask questions and network—a lot. And above all, be persistent.”

Springwise

Customized Lingerie is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Virtue(R)’s subtle blend includes top notes of apricot, pomegranate and fig that transition to a gentle heart of iris, warming to a golden base of rich, exotic woods of frankincense, myrrh, aloe, and spikenard. Several ingredients cost up to $4,500 per kilogram, making Virtue(R) a truly precious mixture of oils. It is available in a 1.7-fluid ounce French bottle and over cap, with 24-kt gold raised lettering on the bottle and embossed gold foil lettering on the box, pamphlet enclosed.

“The natural oils of Virtue(R) blend with the wearer’s own body chemistry to form your own signature fragrance. Uniquely beautiful and definitely unforgettable, it places the wearer in an ancient world of senses, enduring and timeless for over 3,000 years,” says Vicki Pratt, IBI’s president. “A gift for someone special or your own unique treasure, Virtue(R) brings a valued gift of scent and hope of a renewed spiritual self. No one has ever done this before in a perfume – developing a fragrance that reminds us of our, sometimes frail, conscious link to God.”

California News Wire

Spiritual Perfume 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

Dear Stephanie: “Start with a list of experts you can call on individually,” says Dorothy Adams, a board member of the Stamford chapter of the Connecticut Venture Group (cvg.org), who has served on several advisory boards.

To tackle strategic questions such as growth, someone with investment-banking expertise would be helpful. A fellow business owner whose marketing savvy you admire might be another smart choice. Explain that you’d like to ask them for advice now and then. They’ll probably be flattered.

“No payment is really expected,” she says. “It’s a nice idea to offer them payment in kind. You could thank your advisors with cookies.” You may also want to check out the Alternative Board-TAB (TABSanAntonio.com). It brings the leaders of non-competing businesses together to exchange advice.

FSB Magazine

How can I form an advisory board? is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The company’s founder, Marlena Cervantes, views Flexpetz like an extended family: “When our dogs spend time with their extended family members, they are lavished with love and undivided attention. We feel our this concept allows our dogs more love and attention than single ownership can often provide.”

Membership is limited, and each dog generally spends time with a small group of people. Monthly membership costs USD 39.95 plus a daily fee, and members can reserve their pooch of choice online. Before being allowed to rent a dog, members go through a mandatory training session with a certified Flexpetz dog trainer. The service aims to expand to New York, San Francisco and Boston soon, followed by other cities in the United States and abroad. One to set up locally? Or how about starting a website that matches two or three owners, facilitating fractional dog ownership based on location, availability and personality?

Unusual Business Ideas That Work

Rent-A-Pet is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

But starting a business is a complicated, risky, all-consuming effort. Indeed, just two-thirds of new small businesses survive at least two years, and only 44 percent survive at least four years, according to a study by the U.S. Small Business Association.

1. Determine if you’re an entrepreneur or just a wannabe.
2. Pinpoint an opportunity.
3. Make sure there’s a market for your idea.
4. Write a business plan.
5. Determine your business structure.
6. Look for funding.

Fortune

6 Steps To Creating A Super Startup 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

Lambert also uses a potent mix of marketing savvy and passion, spiced with some serendipity, to run his site. The Beerbelly, by the way, is a neoprene bag that fits under a shirt and can be used to avoid paying $9 for drafts at sporting events.

eCommerce-Guide

Beer Belly is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

And when you switch your job, cellphone carrier or home city, you have to notify everyone you know that you have new phone numbers.

A new service called GrandCentral, now in its final weeks of public beta testing, solves all of these problems. It’s a rather brilliant melding of cellphone and the Internet.

Its motto, “One number for life,” pretty much says it all. At GrandCentral.com, you choose a new, single, unified phone number (more on this in a moment). You hand it out to everyone you know, instructing them to delete all your old numbers from their Rolodexes.

From now on, whenever somebody dials your new uninumber, all of your phones ring simultaneously, like something out of “The Lawnmower Man.”

No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers in turn. No longer does it matter if you’re home, at work or on the road. Your new GrandCentral phone number will find you.

GrandCentral in a nutshell

1. “One number for life”. Users pick one out of probably 20 given by GrandCentral. Users then can assign upto 6 numbers to this new number; when a call comes in, all phones will ring simultaneously.
2. No applications to download. Just a computer with internet connection.
3. How much? It’s FREE with unlimited incoming calls and core features.

What can users do with GrandCentral?

1. Customized greetings — Record a different voice mail greeting for each person in your address book. Specify, on a per person basis, which phone rings, which ringback music plays and whether the call goes directly to voice mail.
2. Web button — Install a “call me” button on Web site — a great, free way to field calls from eBay, MySpace or dating-service Web page.
3. Quick changes — With a quick click at GrandCentral.com, direct all calls to voice mail; direct all calls to a new, temporary number (like a hotel); or prevent home line from ringing during work hours.
4. Record calls — Users can record a conversation at anytime by pressing 4 on the phone, and pressing 4 again discontinues recording.
5. Switch lines — Anytime during a call, press the * key to make all phones ring again, so that users can pick up on a different phone in midconversation without the other person knowing.
6. Listen in voice messages — Don’t want to pick up? Press 3 to listen in while someone’s leaving a message. Press * to pick up the call.
7. Ringback Music — Replace the ringing sounds the caller hears while waiting with music—in GrandCentral’s case, any MP3 file of choice.

All of this works smoothly and quickly, and the Web site does a noble job of organizing that dizzying number of functions. And all of these features are free, even those that would be expensive or unavailable from your phone company.

Downsides

1. Local numbers might not be available. So neighbors would have to call long distance
2. Specific numbers require annual fees.
3. GrandCentral offers a huge list of additional features that aren’t so simple. If you’re not careful, GrandCentral can turn into a full-blown hobby.

nytimes.com

One Number That Will Ring All Your Phones is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

The response is a booming market of products being developed and sold specifically to the unhirsute — a new front in the nearly $5 billion onslaught of male grooming products in the United States.

“I’m a former comb-over wearer,” confessed Howard Brauner, founder of the two-year-old company Bald Guyz. “I would spend half an hour in the morning making it look right, and then finally I just realized it was ridiculous. Once I decided to really go bald, my wife would get annoyed at me for using her expensive shampoos. But I had to use something to clean my head”

For that particular ablution, Brauner now uses a head wash that’s part of the line of products he developed in response to his wife’s complaints. Bald Guyz also puts out pocket-size individual head wipes, for use on the go. And there is a conditioner, to be used twice a week. “Your skin up there is either dry or irritated or oily,” he said.

New York Times News Service

Hair Care For Men Without is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Salespeople who ignore the woman when a man and woman are looking for a car came up last month when Times-Dispatch readers voiced their customer-service pet peeves. So what’s a male-dominated industry like the car business to do?

Enter AskPatty.com, started by a couple of entrepreneurs who thought they could make money straightening out the problem. The site educates women about all things automotive, with female experts who write articles and answer questions on repair, maintenance and car buying.

AskPatty.com certifies dealerships as female-friendly after they have passed a course on how to communicate with women. A check of the Web site found no dealerships in the Richmond area that are certified. To be certified, members of a dealership’s sales team must read a book on how to communicate with women, “How to Get Rich Selling Cars and Trucks to Women,” and take a training course. Then they must pass a 134-question test, which takes about an hour to complete.

The Web site gets about 20,000 visitors each month. About 50 dealerships have signed on for certification services. Dealerships pay $225 per person for 12 months of training and $795 a month for the dealership certification.

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Web Site Aims To Help Women Seal Deal is a post from: Top Business Opportunities

Switchpod is a podcasting hosting service that provides both free and premium accounts. You can create a podcast with their technology, upload it to Switchpod and be podcasting to the world in a matter of minutes.

Switchpod’s product soon generated 800,000 downloads and was bought out by Wizzard Software in an all-stock transaction worth $200,000. The sale also provides the partners with annual salaries of $40,000 for a 20-hour workweek.

startupjournal.com

America’s Next Business Tycoons is a post from: Top Business Opportunities