Dee Adams’ Online Class

Research Tips
for Budding Entrepreneurs:

Update August 2014
Without question an ironic, tragic and complex turn of a case
On May 13, nine days after a lawsuit was filed over the royalties in Searching for Sugarman, the director of the documentary reportedly stepped in front of a speeding train in Stockholm. Weeks later, Rodriquez was sued for breaching his songwriting contract back in the 1970’s…for the music he never knew was selling in South Africa.

Sources
Scribed.com
http://www.scribd.com/doc/221603763/Sugarman

Freep.com
http://www.freep.com/article/20130517/COL18/305170139/rodriguez-pursues-royalties-sugar-man

Hollywood Reporter.com
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/searching-sugar-man-stars-amazing-700729

Evaluating Material from Reliable Sources
Government, academic, and other authoritative sources rank high on the list of resource providers that offer credible information, but consider the following examples:1. Rodriguez: The rock star who didn’t know it 60 minutes reported on a 70-year-old laborer living in poverty in Detroit last Sunday, except this wasn’t your typical day laborer… an informative segment that takes a strange twist: Consider:

Several years earlier, a cash-poor Swedish independent filmmaker becomes fascinated by the folklore of a deceased Latino musician with a cultlike following in South Africa. He bootstraps an independent project using an Apple app to create a film that costs a few dollars.

The filmmaker discovers that the musician, long thought dead, is alive and living in Detroit… a musician more popular than the Beatles in South Africa during the apartheid revolution, according to 60 minutes.

An amazing story, but with a gaping hole: Who exactly profited from the musicians talent, and who was responsible for his overall marketing while he sold half a million records in South Africa? 60 minutes failed to explore this topic, merely noting that Rodriguez didn’t receive any royalties for his early work…

2. U.S. Small Business Book on home-based business published by the U.S. Government: Excerpt:

“Do you close deals with a handshake rather than insisting on written contracts and guarantees?” Good entrepreneurs are often comfortable with something less binding than written contracts….”
The paragraph also noted that, for many entrepreneurs, honoring a handshake is a matter of honor… Really?

3. Excerpt from a business book published by a leading Publisher:
“Get, borrow or steal your startup idea, it doesn’t have to be original…” Really?

4. Entrepreneur Magazine published a print edition last year entitled Bootstrap Your Business. It was then placed online with a different title: How to Bootstrap Your Business.

An informative article, if you didn’t mind learning how the CEO of an online babysitting co-op freelanced as a management consultant while waiting for her startup to become profitable. Two other companies were mentioned in the article with descriptions of their progress, but the overall content would not inform readers how-to bootstrap a venture.

Conclusion: content from highly credible sources doesn’t necessarily mean the content is 100 percent complete or reliable; sometimes, content from a highly reliable source misses the mark completely.

60 minutes has a reputation for investigative, expose journalism, but that slant was not included in their segment on Rodriguez.

The paragraphs listed in the government publication and the business book are recipes for disaster. And, although Entrepreneur Magazine offers a lot of good content, the article mentioned based on the misleading title is lemonade.

References
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57526420/rodriguez-the-rock-icon-who-didnt-know-it/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel

http://www.cbsnews.com/8334-504803_162-57527446-10391709/rodriguez-unplugged/?tag=contentMain;contentBody

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220733

Goodman, M. (November 2011). How to bootstrap your business. Entrepreneur Magazine.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220733




Book Excerpt

Free Finding Your Niche chapter samples
Save time, effort, and expense with this resource guide of tips on how to avoid the pitfalls of choosing an idea

FYN Cover TOC Intro Game Plan 2011-03-01
Table of contents & two sample chapters.
Click on the link to view or download,  628 KB PDF.




How Do You Market Greeting Cards?

Faulty Market Research
Despite producing line of top-quality greeting cards, and receiving excellent feedback, a new publisher discovered that her black-and-white photo greeting cards with custom written in elegiac verse were not selling.

Lesson: Unless people buy samples of a test product, positive survey responses, may often be meaningless.

 




Responding to Blog Post Comments

Technical Glitch Finally Cleared Up
A summary response to questions will appear periodically.

*A follow-up post to professional career-changers is in the works for posting next month

*Subscribing to the blog will be easier now that the widgets have been rearranged

*If you’re looking for more information on the topic of food industry gossip in general, a database research of trade publications might be useful, but interviewing industry professionals for war stories was the research strategy that I used to write the post.

How is the online class different from the book?
The book is designed as a resource tool to help you uncover the right business or evaluate your ideas, while the online class features certain topics from the book in further detail and introduces new subject matter.

Thank you!
Keep questions coming!