The Niche Beat
Money Matters & Business Start-Up
Avoiding Financial Pitfalls Traveling salesman Ray Albert Kroc started the McDonald’s empire after buying the name and concept from the McDonald brothers in the 1950s, but turning a profit proved to be a challenge, despite the popularity of the hamburgers. Although Kroc sold 200 franchises within five years and the unit’s were grossing $37 million […]
Growing Power
Will Allen Many ventures are largely inspired by a single idea, but the founder of the nonprofit Growing Power used several diverse sources of inspiration in order to develop his international organization. After leaving the corporate world, Will Allen began growing, selling, and teaching others how to grow produce in an urban setting. These activities […]
Adele’s Talent for Business
Updated 5/21/2025 Originally published in May 2012, this post is so outdated it’s laugh-out-loud funny…original title…Adele…eep. Some fans without using AI may be able to answer the following question: What information in this post changed? Note that the underlying theme of this post is evergreen. She doesn’t have runway model looks, doesn’t dress provocatively, and […]
John Brown: Entrepreneur and Abolitionist
Photo: Martin M. Lawrence, 1859. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2009633569/ Editor’s note: According to the admin dashboard, as of 4/8/2025, the actual count is 317…the views count shown is an error message. John Brown struggled throughout his life as a businessman, living near the poverty level. Few influential historical figures have failed so […]
Andrew Jackson Beard
Railroad Safety In the 19th century, 6,500 people invented a device that would solve the problem of workers who were often killed or maimed during the process of attaching trains on the railroad track, and they applied for and received patents. Beard’s design was by far the most advanced, and although there seems to be […]
George Lucas
Business Superstar In the 1970s, with the exception of Disney Studios, movie merchandising was a tiny industry when George Lucas offered studio executives a deal they couldn’t refuse: he would work for free as the director of a new release in exchange for their granting him product licensing rights to the movie. Lucas’s offer was […]
National Association of Black Writers
The State of the Writing & Publishing Industry for People of Color The National Association of Black Writers held a conference in New York last weekend. C-SPAN’s Book TV broadcast the program. Segments such as Black Writer’s in the Marketplace, and, The Role of Social Media: Black Writers Take Literature to the web contains a helpful overview […]
Starting a Successful Restaurant
Insights from Danny Meyer The CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group dishes with Charlie Rose about his success as a creative restaurateur. The creator of the Shake Shack and other successful food concepts, Meyer discusses how he changed from a political science major to the food industry, and eventually realized that being a chef was […]
Restaurant Impossible
Soups On? Owning a restaurant is at the top of the list for many budding entrepreneurs. But it is an industry with a high failure rate. A new program debuted in January to help failing restaurant owners, and after watching certain episodes, some people might be tempted never to eat out again. But overall, this is […]