Q&A: A Lemonade Stand Lesson for Minors Often Overlooked
A: Unfortunately, the aspiring lemonade stand owners who were shutdown may have skipped a key first step: researching the idea.
Dee Adams is the author of the fact-gathering tips guide
Q & A: What Is the Single Most Important Thing One Should Know Before Launching a Startup?
Dee Adams is the author of
Finding Your Niche: Discover…
Q&A: Best Industries for Women Entrepreneurs
Q: Given the Me Too movement and other gender issues
es, what industries are best for women
with dreams of entrepreneurship?
A: In theory, one should pick a field of interest regardless of gender bias within the industry. Identify possible mentors and influencers. Investigate industry problems beforehand and create a strategy for navigating potholes. Otherwise, based on the issues cited in your question, there would be few fields for women to enter.
Check out the following three related links about women and entrepreneurship in specific industries.
C-Span’s Book TV with journalist and author, Emily Chang, Brotopia: Breaking up the boys’ club of Silicon Valley, Publishers Weekly article about why women become independent publishers, and Marin Tockman of Dashing Bicycle-Bike Shop, the only female-owned bike shop in the southern US, according to PBS program, Startup.
References
Update: And check out the Get Out There episode from Roadtrip Nation…https://www.pbs.org/video/get-out-there-5u6sgy/
Three unforgettable segments.
BookTV-C-Span.org/Brotopia
https://www.c-span.org/video/?440902-1/emily-chang-discusses-brotopias
Publishersweekly.com
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/73469-the-indie-publishing-feminist-revolution.html
Startup-usa.com/season5
http://startup-usa.com/episodes/season-5/https-youtu.be-ji11wUFxgj0-rel-0/Marin-Tockman
Dee Adams is the author of
Finding Your Niche: Discover…
Q & A: Aptitudes and Technology
Q. Does technology and the internet change aptitudes?
A. No, because aptitudes are an innate ability.
What does change are tools used to perform
tasks and how aptitudes may be used.
Dee Adams is the author of
Finding Your Niche: Discover…
Q & A: Funny or Unusual Business Ideas
Q: What’s the funniest or most unusual business
that you have found or thought up?
A. Well, in the funny category that
has to be Goat Yoga.
Most unusual was
a segment on Shark Tank in which the idea involved
mailing messages that were written on
potatoes to customers.
I still don’t understand that one.
A shark supposedly funded the idea!
The most unusual idea that I thought of was inspired
by the Bulwer-Lytton comical fiction writing contest.
The idea was to start a humorous business contest in which contestants would submit a wacky idea with a two sentence pitch.
The funniest most ridiculous submission would win a cash prize.
I thought the contest would be a great idea and fun way to promote Finding Your Niche, but I quickly dropped the idea when a veteran business counselor said that the marketplace would associate my book with wacky ideas.
Dee Adams is the author of
Finding Your Niche: Discover…(Which has absolutely nothing to do with wacky business ideas.)
Q & A: What Aspiring Furniture Designer Should Know
Q. Recently, co-hosts on The Talk discussed the sale of
George Clooney’s Tequila company for one billion dollars.
The topic was entrepreneurial aspirations.
Sara Gilbert of Roseanne fame was revealed to be
a talented furniture designer, aapparently researched
the possibility of starting up such a venture.
What advice would you have?
A. Saw the show and got the impression that
Gilbert found the requirements for launching
a furniture design and production company
complicated and daunting.
,The takeaway from George Cloone’ys
success should focus on how he and his partners set up their business model.
Since the tequila company was a leisure pursuit initially,
the pressure to start and run a business was not part of the equation.
Gilbert likely has the structural visualization aptitude and may need a business with a tangible hands-on element versus a business dealing in abstract ideas, according to experts in the field of aptitudes research.
And should spend a lot of time researching dos and don’ts for her aptitude pattern and then design the business model based on that information. Note that many people do not have the structural visualization aptitude, which is the ability to visualize ideas.
References
The Talk. CBS.com
http://www.cbs.com/shows/the_talk/
Forbes.com
https://www.forbes.com/sites/taranurin/2017/06/22/investors-doubt-george-clooneys-tequila-is-worth-its-1-billion-offer/#643bc3e024ea
Johnson O’Conner
Research Foundation
Jocrf.org
Smithsonian Magazine.com
Sam Malone Famous
for His Rocking Chair
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/famous-his-rocking-chair-sam-maloof-made-furniture-had-soul-180958943/
Dee Adams is the author of
Finding Your Niche: Discover…
Q & A: What’s Your Favorite TV Sitcom Episode Featuring Entrepreneurship?
Q. What’s your favorite TV sitcom eposide about entrepreneurship?
A. Probably The Honeymooners episode lands in first
place. But for a real world look at the challenge of
finding a business idea that works, check out the Saved By the Bell
episode about a group project for economics class. Frienship bracelets andBuddy Bands was the idea dreamed up.
References
Which Buddy Bands Salesman are you?
Trivia Happy.com
Dee Adams is the author of
Finding Your Niche: Discover…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nHMth6Ut0s?feature=oembed&w=1200&h=900]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Iv_zHJY2dM
Q & A: Financial Literacy for Entrepreneurs
.Q: What resource would
you recommend for teaching
beginners about money matters in business?
A: The answer would depend
on several factors. There is no one size fits all
resource. But here is a link for a C-Span
Video The Reckoning, by an author and professor of
the history of accounting.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/559713059924893504/
Now if your eyes just glazed over, you may be surprised.
The Reckoning is a fascinating historical overview of
American and European society and accounting related
issues in the 21st century. Using the information from
the talk to research antiquarian
hops for teaching materials of different eras as a start.
Q&A: Breaking into the Greeting Card Industry
Q: What kind of greeting cards might a new artist
consider offering to card companies?
A The Web has affected this industry with a
sizeable shift to e-greetings instead of traditional snail mail
For starters, the Greeting Card Association.org has a tip page.
Create a strategy that involves spotting and forecasting
significant trends in the marketplace that will inspire
ideas for innovative cards that people will want to buy
to give to someone else. For instance, questioning a
veteran seller in an upscale California city recently
revealed the following insightful market research:
There’s a need for more diversity in greeting card imagery. People of all ethnic groups, and that
includes Europeans, keep asking for cards featuring diverse racial groups in the illustrations.We feature many local artists and our customers like that, but so far we can’t find designs that caters to the many requests we get. At one point,
we brought in a line of African American cards but they
were all Bible verse themes…and didn’t sell well, said the seller.
Note that the response above came from a greeting card shop
in a small semi-suburban city, and the demographics are
multicultural but overwhelmingly European and offers
a rich source of ideas for an artist with an avid
interest in multicultural issues.
What other ideas might
be sparked by targeting established shops in other areas?
Your learning style, skill set, aptitudes, knowledge,
and marketing street smarts may mean using methods
other than questioning to find ideas for successful cards.
Check out the eye-opening 1996 LA Times article on
millionaire greeting card artist Sandra Boynton and
how she finds her ideas.
References
Greeting Card.org
http://www.greetingcard.org/AbouttheIndustry/WritersArtistsTips/tabid/80/Default.aspx
LA Times.com
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-03-19/business/fi-48835_1_card-designer.
Dee Adams is the author of
Finding Your Niche: Discover…
Q and A: How to Find Success in the Food Truck Business
Q: I live in India and plan to buy a food truck
with several friends. People are making money selling food.
What can I do to ensure success? I am an educated person and have
been a tech long enough.
A. Highly competitive business… like the Indian Ocean is moist.
The easier it is to enter an industry, the more challenging it
will be to succeed.
Since you have no experience in the business, step back and study the marketplace thoroughly. For example, profiling the competition, and learning how to
market a food truck
rofessional menus and buying a truck will not be enough
Even those with previous restaurant experience find that operating
a food truck is much harder than they thought it would be.
Key Questions and Issues Include:
Be sure that you have or can acquire the training, knowledge
and skill set necessary to succeed in the industry.
1. Have you spent a lot of time in your spare time watching the
work day routine of trucks that you choose to observe?
2. What will you do if one or more friends decide to walk away?
3.What tasks and activities will you be responsible for? Will you want
to do so day in for more hours than you anticipate?
4. Identify what exactly you dislike about your current position
Be aware that your dislike of your current job may play a major
role in causing you to act in haste.
References
India Times.com
http://ti.com/o7hr8tp
Kqed.org
The Chairman Food Truck
http://ww2.kqed.org/checkplease/tag/the-chairman-food-truck/
