Nice!

Sometimes getting published on paper feels better than the online thing!

Any ideas?

Well, I got news for you. There are Self Publishing services out there which make things very easy! Let’s have a look at authorHouse and see how easy thing really are.

authorHouse publishes your books on demand (meaning you don’t have stocks to pay up-front, both paperback and hardcover books are printed as orders are received, rather than doing large print runs that sit in warehouses, waiting for orders.) Therefore you have 2 costs:

• the initial cost
• the printing on demand cost

The good news is that the initial cost starts around $600 and it’s already including most of the things that used to be daunting:

• Custom full-color cover,
• ISBN assignment,
• Electronic distribution !! When your book is finished, it’s available for order at thousands of online booksellers, including Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and through the AuthorHouse online book store.
• Bookstore availability !! With a unique ISBN, your book will be available at more than 25,000 retail outlets worldwide.

I’ve made with bold the things I thought can be a show stopper for publishing a book easy. Here are the full packages.

If you have a look at the Quick tour, you will see that actually the most difficult part is writing the content! If you still think that publishing a book is complicated, have a look at their bookstore to have an idea about what kind of authors have already used the service. And the good news is that they also have an office in UK – well in fact I believe they started in UK then expanded to USA and Canada.

Should I write a book? What do you think?

So let me have a look on my PDA to see what ideas I’ve collected for the blog (a PDA is a wonderful thing if you want to surprise yourself from time to time with the amount of things you can actually forget). I’m copy pasting from the PDA – no idea what some of the items really mean because I don’t quite remember why I wrote them):

• Do you have entrepreneur blood? – completely lost here, what was I thinking?
• Make your employees happy – it’s an entrepreneur task or Making your employees happy, how much is HR?
• Grow your business at the same pace with growing your customers
• Shareholders families – big influencers for a small business
• Up-selling to older customers (maybe I already wrote about this?)
• I had a look today at how I will be looking at 60 (just need to find that service that based on your photo can shape your aging process)
• Doing Business in Romania – why the milk is so expensive
• It’s about how you finish – do a little more for your customer
• Learn to say you are sorry
• Entrepreneurship changes reality
• Entrepreneurship stereotypes or Why all the mummies have problems walking?

So anyway, I’m planing doing some force blogging over the next 2 weeks and write about all the subjects above. They say it’s called building anticipation, I call it PDA cleanup

I have plenty of subjects on my PDA, ready to publish, so keep close!

Sales guy: “I have to wear my best suit when going to a customer, to show him respect and suggest the quality of our business”

Serial entrepreneur: “Wearing a suit is not necessary, you should dress in a way that makes you comfortable. If you dress casual, then it should be from top brands.”

Me and the serial entrepreneur: “Dressing a suit when visiting a customer, might just mean you are inferior to the customer, and you need the suit to protect you. If you dress casual, you show the customer that you are strong enough and don’t need a suit.”

And then again, I remembered something that I’ve read, seen on TV or somebody told me: when you get hired first time, you will probably dress casual. As you move along on the hierarchy, you will wear a suit to show your social and professional position. And when you get really rich, you will again dress casual, but this time you will wear Premium Cowboy Boots. Because when you are rich enough you don’t need to suit to show who you are, but you really afford premium footwear.

Now, I needed to see with my own eyes what Cowboy boots look like?

Got to the Metboots site and find out that there are in fact a lot of western boots brands: Dan Post Boots, Larado Boots, Dingo Boots, Abilene Boots and many more. And you know what? They have cowboy boots even for Women (Entrepreneur)!
I think they are great gift because they are not just shoes, but the symbol they represent: stability, quality, success. If you are in the States, the good news is that Metboots gives free shipping for orders over $100. Now, who can send me a pair of Cowboy Boots over here? I can already picture myself wearing a pair of these with a pair of denims!

And talking about reading, I know I don’t write as often as I should (although I have plenty of writing ideas each day) so, I’ve also implemented Feedburner. Even if I might space out from time to time, you can now register to feedburner by RSS or email in the top right column, and get my writings whenever they happen!

Well, hope to see you come back here more often now!

entrepreneurs ==> a new week of opportunities

employees ==> a new week of overtime work.

If you are an entrepreneur still thinking as an employee, well you still have some things to find out about entrepreneurship…

If you have read my latest guest post on the Business Opportunities Weblog, about Why do Entrepreneur’s Ignore Their Time?, then you know that I have bad habits in spending my part time entrepreneurship time (can I use “time” twice like this?). As I mentioned on my guest post, I spend quite some time reading and analyzing visitors logs on my site.

This way I noticed a new interesting link pointing to the Small Business Entrepreneur blog It seems that I’ve made it to the Liz Strauss Successful and Outstanding Bloggers list . There are stories that Liz never sleeps !! which I can confirm as she answered my e-mails on the fly . She’s making blogging a better thing showing that the strength of the blogosphere comes from relationships, interconnectedness, and community.

Here is what I got from the About Liz Strauss page: “According to EatonWeb, “Liz Strauss is perhaps the most influential relational blogger on the Internet.””

There is one downside to this: now feel like writing about Small Business Blogging – the smart way to build business exposure through founders self branding (and no, I haven’t used the marketing bullshit generator to come up with this title

Now, I just need to have more time for this article, which reminds me: Why do Entrepreneur’s Ignore Their Time?

I’ve started by an updated view over an older post I did about Entrepreneurship being taught. You can read it, it’s called: “Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught, A Response“

I’m now preparing a second guest post about “Entrepreneurship differences caused by various business environments”

English is really a great tool if you do business elsewhere than your own country, but because so many “foreign” people speaks English is also probably the most misused language on Earth. We have “French English”, we have “Russian English”, we have “Indian English” or “Asian English”. The bad part is when people start putting you in categories from the way you speak, and not all the categories are so good.

If you are classified in the “Wrong category” like Eastern European, it affects your Business. I mean…lets say you are from USA and some guy calls your office and tries to sell you something with that Eastern European accent. Would you do business with the strange speaking guy or with the one next door?

It’s bad for the Business and it’s bad for you as a person visiting USA. But hey, English is a tool and not a purpose.

• One of them is Laurentiu, who started blogging in full force with his new Love cheaters blog about secret dating and mysterious love affairs. What can I say, he’s a sales guy and did find out a passionate subject to write about – for which I admire him truly. I just hope that the stories he is writing about are not real life-experiences
• The other one is “Black” and he is blogging about … nothing. http://www.blackonstuff.com/ is mostly about shareware sales, conferences and e-commerce.

I wish the luck and the best of blogging!

PS: I’m a little jealous on such a great subject like “love cheating”. I don’t really have any experience in it, but it’s such a good choice!

Hold on, that’s not a post about Honda Motorcycles!!It’s about special bonds with your customers.

Now, probably from the hippie times (or something) people think there is something bad and ugly about bikers. They seem to get in all sorts of problems, if you ask strangers they will say bikers are dangerous people, if you ask family they will say biking is a dangerous thing (notice the double danger). OK, I’m not such a dangerous man, but I did break my leg last year. So, anyway, I’m using the motorcycle as a mean of transportation (traffic is horrible here in Bucharest) but also discovered lately I can use it as a business tool (this needs some explaining).

Motorcycles and biking in general are expensive habits here in Romania (parts really expensive, expensive insurance and so on) therefore you will find out that motorcycling is not a sport for the poor ones. We have one niche here (people that can afford it).

Also, motorcycling is quite dangerous here (bad roads, no traffic discipline) so bikers are more or less adrenaline junkies. Most likely it takes a busy, stressed man that needs some sorts of excitement in life to make it an adrenaline junkie. So we have another niche here (busy, stressed and successful people).

If you mix the two niches, you will find that a biker should be: busy, stressed, successful and “financial stable”, which translated in fewer words is “manager”. Of course this is just an assumption, but I need to somehow prove my point.

Anyway, I got to find out that a lot of successful managers are bikers. Getting back to how bikers are, you have to know that bikers are a special community. Somehow, once you put your life in the hands of another biker, needed his help to recover from accidents or something similar (I did rushed to the Hospital few friend bikers in the middle of the night when they called me) you will develop special feelings for fellows alike. And this helps the business.

Not sure how to explain, but when I’m dealing with another biker, I don’t just see a customer, but more like a partner in doing something interesting. I trust him, he (probably) trusts me. No other way around, because you never know when he is going to help you on the side of the road.

Business is not just about customers, it’s about special bonds, communities and trust. We all do business better when we have a special connection with the customer. When was the last time when you had a special relationship with your customer? Only when you will have this, you will have a successful business that creates a real value and a real service to it’s owners and customers.

” The objective of this module is to provide students with the information and training they need to understand and locate information about basic entrepreneurial and management skills that will be advantageous in the business world.”

Do you have an expression “You are in the books?” A small step for humanity and a huge step for me )

Time to celebrate – three partners and one employee!

So what have we done lately? We did well:

• One of the partners went from part time to full time.
• We have a Spin-off, called Inprogress which is a media agency for the local market, under the management of the “full time partner”
• We hired our first employee to work for Inprogress. Which means we are not a part-time company anymore
• We did get a proper office (meaning outside the house)
• We did some profit last year, thanks to the joined work of all 3 partners. Still waiting the final figures from our bookkeeper…
• We managed to get things streamlined and going by themselves

Thanks Simona, and Tina! I’m having a beer right now, and hopefully will party on Saturday. Will bring pictures soon

Text Link Ads is about placing fixed ads on your site (fixed like in they are not going to change for the entire month after having selected them). I have to say that I somehow enjoy Text Link Ads more than contextual advertising because:

• They give you much more control over what you are selling
• They bring in a stable income (once you placed them on your site, they will bring revenue regardless if visitors click on them or not)
• They are not so affected if you have a different content – meaning if you make some content about the last movie you saw they aren’t going to change and display movie content ads even if your site is about entrepreneurship

Nice.

Coming back on the changes I’ve did to the blog, following the feedback from my fellow blogger Black on Stuff I’ve did some improvements to the blog – meaning restoring some useful features -. Put back comments and trackbacks, took out the header picture that wasn’t related to the blog.

As I’m looking forward to migrate the blog to be a Small Business Entrepreneurship resource rather than a personal journal, I’ve did some changes of my own, like changing the blog name in Small Business Entrepreneur and bought a new domain for it: http://www.small-business-entrepreneur.org

I’m planning to add more and more small business resources and make it a truly inspirational place for small business owners and start-ups.

I’m supposed to write about 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Me and tag some other people. Let’s see how this is going to work.

1. I’ve used bootstraping to start my business, even if I had enough personal funding to start not 1 but 3 businesses. Just enjoyed to see it growing from “nothing”.

2. I’ve never studied English in school, although nowadays I’m writing more stuff in English than in my mother tongue. It has to be related to watching a lot of English movies on VHS as a child.

3. I used to play Chess at “professional” level as a child. Had to let it go when I’ve lost all the games at a competition, just because I didn’t feel like playing chess that week.

4. I’m obsessed by cars, motorbikes and everything that goes on gas in general. However, I’m driving a low cost car and riding the bike for utilitarian reasons (horrible traffic in the summer). It’s a paradox.

5. Although I’m writing a blog an let the World know about my stuff, I’m a very shy guy. Shame…

Now, let’s tag some people:

- Dane Carlson
- Chuck Huckaby
- Becky McCray
- Philip Young

Write your own “5 things”, tag the next five people you would most like to hear about, link to them and back to this post and let’s see what you come up with.

That’s my Blog Juice:

Want one for your blog? That’s a free tool offered by Text Link Ads which is by the way a very good tool to monetize a blog:

PS: I’m now preparing a new set of articles on Moonlight Entrepreneurship.

I hope my entrepreneurship path and experiences made an interesting story for his readers!

I guess you already have some used books at home about Entrepreneurship which you could let go. Or, if you would like to participate to his effort you could purchase and send a favorite used business book via Amazon to:

L.Haddock
Pre Release Program
South Central Correctional Facility

P.O. Box 279
Clifton, TN 38425-0279

Read the entire story here

Blogging is used for business. For fun. Why not for charity?

That’s nice…

That is something I thought about in the first 5 minutes after noticing the PVC windows on the building. But was I thinking the same when I was working for the PVC windows manufacturer? No Sir, not at all. Let me tell you what the problem really was: work stress!

Here is why.

First, I was having a lady boss that was really unprofessional, yelling all the time and not knowing her job at all. Because she was very lame in the PVC business, client relation or anything else related to the PVC windows business or even sales or marketing, she was trying to cover these with terror. So I was really having a very poor social environment at my work place. Next, I was tricked on the monthly wages…I was getting far less money that initially discussed previously. And probably the most important – the heavy work load. I mean the moments when I went to the bathroom were really the only moments of relaxation.

I believe that work stress is amongst the most important enemies of productivity, creativity and performance. “Job stress can be defined as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker.” That’s why I left that job in 6 months and I still think was my worse working experience. Simply, considering my working conditions described above my goals were: getting out of the lady boss office, getting more money and work less – I bet the company really wanted something different. The sad thing is that my next jobs solved some issues but not all. Bottom line, not all managers understand that you are providing them some services for which they have to pay. They don’t own you in any way, they are just buying something from you.

Here is what National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health say about stress: “Employers assume that stressful working conditions are a necessary evil-that companies must turn up the pressure on workers and set aside health concerns to remain productive and profitable in today’s economy. But research findings challenge this belief. Studies show that stressful working conditions are actually associated with increased absenteeism, tardiness, and intentions by workers to quit their jobs-all of which have a negative effect on the bottom line.”

Stress at work is probably one of the reasons why people start a business of their own. This won’t offer them a completely stress free life, but will probably give them the chance to reduce it by:

• Balance between work and family or personal life (something I already wrote about here)
• A support network of friends and coworkers
• A relaxed and positive outlook

Been to a party yesterday: celebrating 5 years of existence of the company where I previously worked as a Project Manager. Nice to meet my ex-colleagues from InterAKT doing great. And as the ex-workers were invited too, this was a nice sample of the managers’ people skills which I have to say is really impressive.

They simply discovered that ex-workers can be a good PR tool, why not keep a good relation with them.

So what do you need?

• keep in contact with the ex-workers
• let them know that they are welcomed to any social activity of the company
• invite them to the parties

And of course, you have to be a good company…

What do you get? Good manna and PR.

Good luck to them!

Congratulations Dane and all the best to you an your family!