Entrepreneurship makes renaissance men of us all. Whether you are starting a virtual currency trade marketplace or a street-corner hotdog stand, chances are you will find yourself doing things that are way outside your field. A decade of food preparation experience probably didn’t prepare you for patching up the drywall behind your oven after an [...]

Keep up with Elise and her story of becoming a successful entrepreneur: What do you Know? Education Just Notes Golden Numbers How Much? Neither Borrower nor Lender Be Walking Many Paths Horse Trading Three Card Monty It is All Shelly’s Idea “I am not sure I believe you.” Sean laughs brightly, charmingly. “Believe what you [...]

The free music school, which is the main component of my current venture (a musical education non-profit on the island of Roatan, Honduras), just finished its first day of recording for a Christmas CD. The CD, once completed, will be sold to raise funds for the school. The first recording day went well, though it [...]

Look up the terms “Entrepreneurship” and “Creative Destruction”, specifically as they relate to the writings of Joseph Schumpeter and Werner Sombart. I don’t have nearly enough space here to recap the volume of writings I discovered on this subject, but one point in particular deserves discussion here: Economic and political theorist Joseph Schumpeter advanced two, [...]

An old friend, someone who reads this column, sent me a cute picture. Uncertain of the copyrights, I have chosen not to display the picture here but the essential jist was as follows: Formatted like one of those “motivational” posters, the caption read: “Entrepreneur: you need to start young”. The inset photograph features a brightly [...]

There comes a time in any business’s first year that you, the owner, sit down and ask yourself: what can I do without? Whether it is a cash flow shortfall, an unexpected expense, an emergency, or the sudden withdrawal of an important client, you will find eventually find yourself at the close of month with [...]

Keep up with Elise and her story of becoming a successful entrepreneur: What do you Know? Education Just Notes Golden Numbers How Much? Neither Borrower nor Lender Be Walking Many Paths Horse Trading Three Card Monty “Is taffeta too gouache?” “What?” Elise asks, confused. “For the party, for the store: is taffeta too late-nineties-Breakfast-Club-retro? It’s [...]

Regular readers of this column are aware that I often allude to my familiarity and facility with the “boring” details of small business. It is true, I feel generally comfortable dealing with strength/weakness analyses, amortization tables, and quarterly tax projections. Even so, I would never open a business without the aid and assistance of an [...]

I am sorry for all the (part n)s suddenly coming together here—poor planning on my part. For clarification: Monday and Tuesday of this week constituted part one and two of a two part essay on business models and goal setting for new and prospective business owners. Today’s column constitutes the fourth of a four part [...]