Honor State Banker teaches Youth Build Manistee Entrepreneurship class
This month John Nale was the guest entrepreneur for the Youth Build Manistee Entrepreneur Class. This class, presented in conjunction with the
Michigan Small Business & Technology Development Center, is meant for young aspiring businessowners and consisted of 15 students 18 to 24 years old.
The class included an assessment of qualities needed to become a successful entrepreneur, John's personal experiences owning a business and questions and answers.
John Nale founded and owned Port City Organics in Manistee from 2000-2004. Port City Organics has recently expanded into a new building.
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Take Five 5 Tips For Effective Business Planning | | |
Examine your motives. Make sure that you have a passion for owning a business and for this particular business.
Clearly define your business idea and be able to succinctly articulate it. Know your mission.
Be willing to commit to the hours, discipline, continuous learning and the frustrations of owning your own business.
Conduct a competitive analysis in your market, including products, prices, promotions, advertising, distribution, quality, service, and be aware of the outside influences that affect your business.
Seek help from other small businesses, vendors, professionals, government agencies, employees, trade associations and trade shows. Be alert, ask questions, and visit your local SCORE office.
Source: SCORE
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Be in the game
Some people say that they "refuse to participate in the recession." Really? REALLY??? That's a huge mistake. Recessions reshuffle the deck and present incredible opportunity to rethink, reposition, and innovate. In marathons the lead changes hands or is extended on the hardest parts of the race course. This recession won't last forever. Don't wake up one day and think "I missed my chance." Ask yourself and your team right NOW: "Where is our opportunity?" Then ACT.
By Joe Calloway
Engage Consulting Group |
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Fear of Shipping
Shipping is fraught with risk and danger.
Every time you raise your hand, send an email, launch a product or make a suggestion, you're exposing yourself to criticism. Not just criticism, but the negative consequences that come with wasting money, annoying someone in power or making a fool of yourself.
It's no wonder we're afraid to ship.
It's not clear you have much choice, though. A life spent curled in a ball, hiding in the corner might seem less risky, but in fact it's certain to lead to ennui and eventually failure.
Since you're going to ship anyway, then, the question is: why bother indulging your fear?
In a long distance race, everyone gets tired. The winner is the runner who figures out where to put the tired, figures out how to store it away until after the race is over. Sure, he's tired. Everyone is. That's not the point. The point is to run.
Same thing is true for shipping, I think. Everyone is afraid. Where do you put the fear?
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MEMBER FDIC | EQUAL HOUSING LENDER |
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| Positive Economic News
Fed's Bullard says U.S. economy won't double dip
(Reuters) - The U.S. economy will not slide into a double dip and inflation risks linger in the medium term, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard said on Tuesday. Read the full story HERE. |
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Jobs data show labor market improving
(Reuters) - Private sector employers added jobs in May and the economy's dominant services sector increased payrolls for the first time in more than two years, building evidence that the labor market was picking up steam. Read the full story HERE |
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Don't wait to protect your brand
Small businesses can be copied and stripped of name, logo
By Deborah L. Cohen 
updated 1:09 p.m. ET, Mon., June 14, 2010
It took her a couple years, but small business owner Melanie Mann is glad she registered her company logo with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Mann, who co-owns Baby Swank, a Wilmington, N.C., seller of bedding, furniture and novelty items for children's rooms with partner Jamie Mayo, waited two years before registering her distinctive logo that incorporates a baby's bottom. Just two months after getting clearance, Mann received an unexpected solicitation from a children's retailer in Virginia with a logo strikingly familiar to her own.
"I was just shocked," said Mann, 33, who initially became aware of the rip-off after she received a promotional mailer sent from her competitor. "The whole thing was copied. They saw either my website or my business card."
Mann's attorney quickly fired off a "cease and desist" letter informing the Virginia business it was infringing Baby Swank's trademark rights, and it soon abandoned use of the mark.
"When you open a business you don't think about it, you're so involved in living and breathing the opening," said Mann. "You don't think that years from now someone is going to want to buy this store; someone might want to open another one."
Mann got lucky. Many entrepreneurs who follow the same course, neglecting to protect the critical identity of their business from the start, suffer consequences that include copycats or worse yet, news they have infringed someone else's name and must abandon it for a new one.
"The time to think about a brand is absolutely before the brand gets traction," said Mann's attorney, Anthony Biller, a partner with Coats & Bennett in Raleigh, N.C., and chairman of the American Bar Association's Intellectual Property Law Trademark Committee. Read full story HERE |
News You Can Use
Work Smart: Brainstorming Techniques to Boost Creativity By: Gina Trapani
Coming up with good ideas is a major part of your job, so you want to have the right tools on hand to generate as many ideas as possible during a brainstorming session. Here are some tools and techniques for doing just that.
When you want to do free-form thinking and gather ideas and tasks around a central concept, try a mind map. In the middle of the page, write down your topic. Then, all around the topic, jot down tasks, words, ideas, and connect them by drawing lines between them and branching similar ideas off of them. The most effective offline tool for mind mapping is probably a classic whiteboard, wet marker, and eraser. To mind map online, check out MindMeister.com, a free Web app where you can create, share, and publish your maps. The advantage of mind mapping is that it's not linear bullet points, and because it's unstructured it can encourage more free thinking.
Sometimes all you want to do is generate a bulleted list or outline of your ideas as they come to you. The low-tech solution is lined paper and a good pen, but if you want the ability to easily rearrange the items on your list or outline, you'll want some sort of outliner program. Microsoft Word's built in outline view is an easy way to make bulleted lists. In Word, press Ctrl+Alt+O to switch to Outline view.
When you can help it, don't brainstorm alone. The more people involved in your brainstorming session, the more ideas you'll generate, and the better your chances for finding the right idea will be. Pull key people together either in an on-site or virtual brainstorming session, and go to town. Allow for bad ideas to come out and stand to create the possibility of spurring on better alternatives. MindMeister supports collaborative mind maps--you can share maps you make there with collaborators. Google Docs offers excellent collaborative features like live-typing, where several people can be brainstorming in the same document at the same time, and you can watch other people's cursors as they type their ideas.
When you're brainstorming, create the environment your brain needs to get creative. Give yourself plenty of writing space and utensils; get everything out of your head and onto paper to make room for new insights. When you can, get yourself out of your normal workspace--go outside, or to the conference room with the great view, or to the coffee shop--to get the creative juices flowing. When you can, choose an open space with high ceilings. A 2007 study showed that people in rooms with high or vaulted ceilings tended to think more freely and abstractly.
If generating ideas is a regular part of your job, make sure you have tools you love to use on hand all the time. Splurge on a fancy pen or notebook, something that you love to write with, and take it with you on the train or to the dentist, and write whenever you have a chance, capturing any thought that might be useful.
Gina Trapani is the author of Upgrade Your Life and founding editor of Lifehacker.com. Work Smart appears every week on FastCompany.com.
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