The Carnival of Entrepreneurs #15 Unleashed

Welcome to the 15th edition of the Carnival of Entrepreneurs. This is a mammoth edition with 35 submissions listed below.

As always there’s a little something for everyone – the home-business entrepreneur, people just starting, and people interested in online marketing.

Please help promote the Carnival of Entrepreneurs by linking back to this post. And, it’s important that we support the writers as well – visit their blogs, leave comments and dig deeper into what these people have to offer!

My Carnival Highlights

• Christine Kane never stops surprising and inspiring me. She presents Rust Never Sleeps which is an odd title for a post about putting your guts out there, giving things a try and taking chances. Go get inspired.
• Mike Buckley recounts an amusing story about two stores selling vacuum cleaners. You might not care much about vacuum cleaners but go read the story anyway because there are some great lessons there.
• Charles Green presents Built to Last — Not which talks about the idea that people aren’t building companies to last anymore. Just “lasting” isn’t enough. He’s completely right.
• Pawel Brodzinksi reminds us that it’s always a good idea to solve small problems before they become big problems. It’s a good lesson and a good reminder. We’ve all been bitten in the rear by something we tried to sweep under the rug. Plus, his post has pictures of wild pigs in it (which may or may not be in reference to his bosses & managers – you can decide!)
• Betsy Flanagan has a cool interview with Matt Shobe, one of FeedBurner’s founders. This is a podcast interview, so you’ll get a chance to hear Matt speak, and the interaction between the two of them. Matt’s got a long history of entrepreneurship and with FeedBurner’s incredible success it’s a great listen.

Smart Strategy, Planning and Implementation

• CA offers up some issues in strategy implementation. There’s no absolute checklist when implementing a strategy but there are some good guidelines here. CA writes, “Strategy execution is like a multi-horse chariot – if all the horses do not pull in one direction, you are not going anywhere.”
• Ellesse presents How To Find A Good Mentor. I’ve never really had a mentor, but I’ve heard many people recommend it strongly. I would probably recommend it myself to young entrepreneurs looking to get a leg up, so this post might help you find the right match.
• John Ingrisano introduces us to a master of working smarter not harder, Dr. Dennis E. Hensley. You can’t help but be inspired (and jealous!) of people who are masters of time management and insanely productive.
• Dan Harris presents China: Small Is The New Big, Part II. It’s a playful title off Seth Godin’s book, and what Dan’s talking about is small and medium sized businesses looking to China for manufacturing purposes, whereas for the most part up to now it’s been bigger companies.
• Ben (not me) presents Small Business Tax Tips For Rookie Entrepreneurs. Ben’s got 7 basic tips that you’ll want to follow. My #1 tip when it comes to taxes – don’t mess with the tax man, it’s not worth it.
• Darrell Williams reminds us that networking is key to marketing your business. Darrell uses the term “hidden marketing” – when marketing is taking place for you that you don’t know about. “Hidden marketing” sounds a bit mercurial to me, I would much prefer the term “word of mouth marketing” which has a much better, more positive ring. But the concepts are the same.
• Sagar Satapathy presents 101 Bonehead Mistakes Every Manager Should Avoid. There are some doozies in there.
• Puspha Sathish has 20 cultural norms you need to know about doing business in India. Doing business outside of your own country is always challenging for numerous reasons – time zone differences, styles of doing business and cultural norms.
• Scott Young presents Planning the Unpredictable – his guide and tips for project and risk planning.
• Lead Optimize espouses the concept of the Flower Shop Model and looks at other businesses and industries where it could apply.

A Dose of Inspiration

• Susan Velez reminds us that the power of intention and the law of attraction do exist and work.
• Neal presents Brain Fitness: Shift Happens. It’s a catch title for sure, and Neal’s talking about brain fitness coaching, which looks pretty interesting. I know I could use a brain massage…
• Thom Singer presents Your Personal Vision of Success Makes the Difference. It’s a quick, poignant look at how successful people envision themselves, and how they manage to not get caught up in the minutae of things. That’s not always easy!
• Alan Torres has some ideas on choosing a self help guru, site or program. There’s certainly a lot of fluff and junk out there so any quality advice on how to get help is always worthwhile.
• Debra Moorhead presents It’s Always a Wide Chasm. She’s posting in response to a reader’s submission which I think is great. Taking what readers send you via email – questions, comments, etc. – and providing insight from that. It’s a great way to engage the audience and community further.
• Wanda Grindstaff has a jolt of inspiration for us in her post Urgency To Create Your Life. There’s no time like the present, right?
• Denise Grier presents Entrepreneurs are Risk Takers. the idea of risk and entrepreneurship is an interesting one. Some believe risk is a fundamental part of entrepreneurship. Others disagree. What do you think?
• Wayne Hulbert suggests that people should empower themselves through entrepreneurship instead of waiting around for the people at their work to empower them.

Internet-Related Resources

• Rich Brooks offers up his explanation of holistic web marketing. Rich reminds people that you need to use different strategies all at once to see what works and gain the benefits of multiple efforts. The sum of your web marketing efforts should be greater than its parts.
• Gary Lee looks at a way people are making money with domain names without just buying and parking them waiting to sell them for a higher price. Personally, I’d rather people build niche-content websites to provide real value to visitors instead of just a simple blog dominated by ads, but there’s nothing illegal about it. It just doesn’t create a lot of value for the guy visiting from a search engine who thinks he’s getting something useful.
• Vahid Chaychi goes into how to make money with AdSense arbitrage. The concept is fairly simple – buy cheap keywords to drive traffic to a site that’s monetized with higher paying AdSense ads. Like Gary Lee, this isn’t so much about providing valuable content as it is about “working a system” – which is OK – but I still feel people searching are left getting less than the best bang for their buck in terms of results.
• Tim King presents How The Oldest, Safest Innovation Redefined a Web 2.0 Website. You’re just going to have to read this post to understand what’s going on. There’s a mix of Gilmore Girls, pop culture, web marketing and innovation. Yup.
• Laura Young presents Social Networking: Friendship or Creepy Marketing Mayhem? She’s questioning the entire value of social networking and what it means to be “friends.”
• Alex presents Lowest Common Denominator Laws And the Subprime Lending Market. He writes, “While the rest of us toil to produce, we continually bump up against ‘Lowest Common Denominator’ laws that are designed for society’s lowest echelons. When will the other 90% of us refuse to be held to standards designed for the 10% of screw-ups out there?”

Other Great Content Worth Checking Out

• John has just entered the world of blogging with his site Small Business Leap. Good luck with your new venture, John – and good luck with blogging!
• Tracy Coenen takes a look at Multi-level Marketing Businesses and the problems that exist with them.
• Nickel says NCRC Sure Looks Like a Scam To Me. Apparently, after registering an LLC, Nickel received mail solicitation from a company called NCRC to pay money to have their LLC company registered on the NCRC website. Strange.
• Sireesha presents an interview with John Nail, Principal of Industry Radar and Founder of Employease.
• GameProducer suggests that you negotiate with terrorists. Actually, he’s talking about being flexible in how you handle situations and focused on results.
• GP unlocks the door on the Bed & Breakfast business and tells us what it’s like and what it takes to get there.

That concludes the Carnival of Entrepreneurs for this week! What a great edition. I hope you enjoyed it.

Next week the Carnival takes the long trip to Australia and pays a visit to Leah Maclean’s Working Solo. Leah’s a great entrepreneur with tons of valuable insight. I encourage you to check out her blog.