The Carnival of Entrepreneurs #18

Welcome to the 18th Carnival of Entrepreneurs which features some of the best entrepreneurial content from around the blogosphere. As always there’s tons of content for you to enjoy, and I hope you will all find something of value – discover a new blog, get more interactive with these bloggers and help them out.

Carnival Highlights

• Silicon Valley Blogger presents How To Manage The Financial Stress Of A New Business or Startup. Starting a business is always a challenge, and a big part of that is dealing with the finances of it. How will you pay for things, feed your family, grow the business and survive?
• Ispf tackles the pros and cons of being a weekend entrepreneur. Lots of us dream about starting a business, and many of us do so on the side, while maintaining full time jobs. It’s a huge challenge. This is a well-balanced article looking at the pros and cons of taking that approach.
• John McCrea has 5 Keys To Surviving Dry Spells. John’s talking about people who are self-employed and get into those inevitable periods of time where there’s no work and you hit a bit of a funk. I liked this thought: “…time is the ONE commodity that can’t be replaced once it’s lost. And downtime is just that – the gift of time.” But John, why can’t I comment on posts?!?!
• John Ingrisano presents 10 Rules for Surviving and Thriving as a Small Business Owner. It’s a great list. #1 and #2 are great points, and many will look at them as contrasting points as well; the trick is, they’re not.

Pratical & Helpful Guidance

• Edith Yeung presents The 7 Rules of Networking Made Easy. Few of us are great at networking, so it’s always worth revisiting how to do it effectively and successfully.
• Joshua Dorkin has some very important advice on establishing partnerships for real estate deals.
• CA presents What to do when your small business screws up. CA writes, “There will be times when your small business screws up big time. Despite best intentions, screw-ups happen. It happens in the best of businesses. How you deal with the problem will determine your success at retaining customers in such circumstances.”
• Harrison offers advice on whether you should buy a franchise or start your business from scratch.
• Naomi Williams has some basic advice on developing a strong company brand even for small businesses or stay-at-home business owners. The key point is that the smallest of biggest can still have a very powerful, effective and slick corporate brand. You don’t need millions of dollars to pull that off.
• Sagar Satapathy presents Leadership 101: How to Command Respect through Body Language.
• Debra Moorhead suggests that we’re all managers of some kind and we need to learn how to manage things properly.
• Ponn Sabra offers us a time management system she uses to help her manage her online business.
• Dave Prouhet presents Poor Employee Performance. Dave is providing some practical advice on how to handle poor employee performance and the importance of doing so properly.
• Samuel Peery presents Applying GTD principles to your personal finances. We can all use help managing our personal finances. Heck, I could use help finding my T4 right now! Anyone?

Food for Thought

• Kelly Anderson asks Where are the women at college business plan competitions? Women still don’t make up the proper proportion of business folk but we know the number is growing. Kelly has some suggestions to get more women involved.
• Majic has 13 things people worry about too much. It’s an interesting list, and Majic also wonders about creating businesses to play on those fears, and how successful that might be.
• Almomento presents 9 Ways to Incorporate Win-Win Philosophy Into Your Business. Taking a slightly different perspective on things can you turn a competitor into a partner? It’s an interesting question…
• Steven Silvers presents The good, bad and ugly of creating research to get publicity. He has a warning to companies that take the tactic of sponsoring research for the purposes of getting PR.
• Golbguru takes a hard look at the milk bottle game at Carnivals. It’s funny and interesting at the same time. Maybe I’ll open up one of these games on the street instead of a lemonade stand…
• David provides some resources for apparel manufacturers and designers looking for business help in New York.
• Wayne Hulbert says that blogs are a secret weapon for small business. He writes, “A blog provides global reach for your independent business. In the past, a startup entrepreneur was confined by geography and limited cashflow to a very localized area. In countless cases, that small trading field was insufficient to develop a viable customer base. Opportunites for minor niche markets were simply not possible. If not enough potential customers and clients were within easy travelling distance of the company location, the business failed from lack of revenue.”
• Allen Torres breaks down the concepts behind emotional intelligence.
• Steve Faber lists a number of reasons why home-based business opportunities fail. If you’re thinking of starting a home-based business, take a look.

Inspire Me!

• Alvaro Fernandez presents Brain Exercise FAQs which is an interesting look at brain plasticity and brain exercise. My brain needs a good steam…then maybe I’ll put it on the exercise bike, OK?
• Susan Velez writes about keeping your motivation up. It’s definitely a challenge, but one that the most successful people in the world have surely mastered.
• Wanda Grindstaff asks What can we learn from Don Imus? She sums it up here, “…our goals are greater than we are. Our desires are huge and drive us to be giants. Our dreams are real and in order for us to achieve those dreams, we are bigger than the crisis of the moment.”
• Jim uses racing as a metaphor for business success in his blog post The Business 500.

Success on the Web

• Matt O’Connor offers up some basics on Internet marketing strategies.
• Matthew Paulson has a few ways that you can’t make money online. I don’t believe in easy schemes, making money online takes time, research, strategy and smarts.

Conclusion

Another huge Carnival with tons of great content. Thank you to everyone that’s submitted – I hope you’ll spread the word!

Next week the Carnival rides out of town to visit Roberto Alamos and you can make your submissions at the Blog Carnival website.

Enjoy!