The 13th Carnival of Entrepreneurs At Your Doorstep

After a trip through Africa, the Carnival of Entrepreneurs is home again at Startup Spark for its 13th Edition. Plenty of great stuff for everyone to enjoy, so dig right in!

And a quick thank you to everyone who has submitted content, and to everyone that promotes the Carnival. I hope more people continue to promote the Carnival and blog carnivals in general to spread the word and make them better for everyone.

My Carnival Highlights

• Rob May presents A Startup Idea Postmortem: Proof That Good Ideas Aren’t Always Good Business. Go read this NOW. Seriously. Rob gives you some great insight into a startup company he created, developed and started to implement. But…then he and his partners closed it down. It’s a fascinating, fun and personal read. Plus, you should take away a few important lessons too.
• Emmanuel Olawutosin presents Imagineering: Engineering your Imagination down to earth. Two things caught my eye about this post and make me want to highlight it. First is the quote he uses, “The quality of your life will never appreciate beyond the quality of your heart.” Second, Emmanuel recommends that you do not start your day by reading the newspaper, it’s filled with too much negative news. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that before…
• Smarty has a business idea — to create places in cities where people can take naps. This is a highlight for me because the idea made me chuckle (not in a bad way), and it’s brave for someone to put their ideas out there and solicit feedback. Go tell Smarty what you think.
• Katie is running a poetry contest with a twist. The poems need to be business or entrepreneurship-related. You’ve got until March 31st to make your submission and win a $20 Amazon gift certificate. Go for it!
• Jeffrey Strain recounts the story of a friend who started a business counting coins for people. The basic premise: He went around to people’s homes and counted their coins for free, giving them paper money in exchange (because people hate taking coins to a bank.) He made money because in each home there were higher-than-face value coins that he profited from. That’s genius. But I am curious — did he tell people how he was making money? Otherwise, wasn’t he stealing?

Inspire Me, Please!

• GP recommends cleaning your closets to get your life in order. Considering I’m neck-deep in boxes having recently moved houses, I was almost too afraid to read the post. I’d say it’s always a good idea to take stock of what’s messy in your life and clean it up…it’s just that taking out the trash in -40 degree weather is so irritating!
• Alan has 6 tips for helping you deal with problems. As much as we all realize that life is full of problems, it’s always nice to be reminded that there are ways through them.
• Marcy Nala eloquently reminds us to learn how to live. We can all use some inspiration once in awhile…
• Wanda Grindstaff asks After the Decision – What’s the Next Step? These two sentences tell you want you can expect: “Did you expect bags of money to drop on your doorstep after you decided to be rich? Did you expect the man of your dreams to knock on your door after you decided to get married?” Heh. Made me chuckle.
• Thinking-Rich.com presents Wealth Without Competition. You’ll always have competition. Get used to it. Overcome the fear of it and move on.

Give Me The Practical Stuff!

• Michelle Cramer presents Choosing Powerful Text for Your Business Cards. Michelle makes a good point that you can do more with your business card by adding some additional text that stands out — a description of your service, incentives and calls to action.
• Matthew Paulson offers 10 Ways To Make Money Without Spending a Dime. Matthew rightly points out that these techniques often take up quite a bit of time, and let’s not forget that time is money. If you spend 50 hours earning $5 you spent more than a dime…What’s important to remember is that with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit and some elbow grease you can make things happen.
• Matt O’Connor recommends article marketing as a way of generating traffic to your website. I’ve dabbled in article writing and marketing but not to the extent that I’ve seen significant results from it. Still, I know it works because I’ve seen enough examples of it being successful.
• Debra Moorehead is reviewing “The Science of Getting Rich”. In part 6 of her review she’s looking at the concept of maintaining faith.
• Barbra Sundquist reminds us of the importance in hiring proper help for professional services such as lawyers, accountants and bookkeepers. This is always sound advice. You shouldn’t do this stuff on your own – it’s not worth the trouble. Outsource it and get it done right.
• Working at Home Mom suggests ways to promote your business.
• Dave Prouhet is talking about business failure. He notes that it’s easy to say, “learn from your mistakes” but it’s rare that people ever explain their mistakes and the lessons learned. Dave’s got 5 mistakes worth learning from…
• Mike Buckley recounts the story of going to buy a car with his daughter. It’s an interesting and funny anecdote and he ends the blog post beautifully, “To build your business, you have to be a walking advertisement. There shouldn’t be anyone that you meet that doesn’t know what you do for a living.”

Other Great Pieces of Interest

• Trent presents What Does A Manager Obsessed With Chaos Theory Have To Do With 18% Interest On Credit Card Bills? I had no clue either, until I read this post. When you’re finished (and it’s not that long a post) you’ll understand the genesis of credit cards and walk away thinking, “…sneaky…damn sneaky…”
• Becky McCray has a great list of entrepreneurial resources for people looking to take ideas into real businesses.
• Michael Anuzis tosses in the first ever podcast submission to the Carnival of Entrepreneurs entitled Cheaper Space Flight and Curing Cancer. Go listen. There are some big ideas in there.

That’s it for this week. I hope you found a few pieces of interest for you – a bit of inspiration, some helpful advice and a whole whackload of entertainment.

Next week the Carnival heads over to A Mogul To Be written by Robert McIntosh. I look forward to it!