Startup Spark

Carnival of Entrepreneurs Round 2

by Ben Yoskovitz on December 20th, 2006

The first Carnival of Entrepreneurs was a huge success. I received an overwhelming number of great submissions and I hope it generated some traffic and awareness for the bloggers that contributed.

Round 2 of the Carnival of Entrepreneurs is no different. Lots of great submissions. Lots of inspiration. Lots of practical guidance.

I encourage you to check out these posts, dig through these people’s blogs and expand your horizons.

And I’d also ask that you do what you can to support the Carnival. Link to this post. Tell your friends. Helping is easy, and I hope you’ll see the value in doing so.

Alright! Here we go…

My Picks

• Tim King reflects on 10 things that are different now that he’s self-employed. First off, you’ll laugh (not at him, but with him) at the intro to his post. Just go read it and see. After that Tim’s got some great insights into someone that’s just switched from employee to entrepreneur. His insights are great - raw, humorous and important.
• Brian Kim helps us find what we love to do. Brian will tell you that it’s not hard to find what you love to do, but you’ve got to ask the question. Once you understand why people don’t ask the question and you look at Brian’s steps for finding what you love to do, you’ll be a heck of a lot closer.
• Stephanie West Allen is puzzled by all the nonsense around designating people as workaholics. She cites two online surveys that have some fairly funny questions in them. From my point of view those questions don’t determine whether you’re a workaholic or not, they determine whether you love what you do (at least partially) and whether you care about the quality of your work. Um…those aren’t bad things. Stephanie’s not overly impressed with the labels people are throwing around, nor should you be.
• David E. brings us an example of incredible entrepreneurial spirit used to help cure a disease. You won’t find much more inspiration out there than this post. David’s talking about Augie Nieto, founder of a huge fitness business, recently diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Augie’s throwing his entrepreneurial spirit and guts into curing this disease. I wish him nothing but the best.
• Brandon Peele presents The Economics of Self-Awareness. Brandon tackles 4 concepts: sustainability, leadership, authentic marketing and innovation and how they can be the birthplace for self-awareness. It’s a long post but well worth reading. Brandon touches on many important points for any growing business. Makes me feel like someone that “gets it” will easily stand out from the crowd.

Smart Business Advice

• David Maister recognizes the pitfalls with constantly changing your mind and provides some great advice and experience on how to stay focused, make better decisions and be more successful. David hits on a theme near and dear to my heart which I talked about in Why Ideas Suck.
• Paul has some advice on how to get rich — you have to increase your hourly rate. He provides some very clear ways that you can increase your hourly rate, and why thinking that way when it comes to making money is important.
• Laura Young says that you have no competition. What’s that? No competition? Come on! Laura’s not really saying there’s no one else in your industry, but she’s saying that focusing too much on the competition is not the way to go. Having your own focus, knowing yourself and your business is the most important thing.
• Charles Green tells us we need to check our egos at the door. Solid advice about going in for the big close, pitch or meeting. Toss out the ego, don’t try and control everything. It won’t work anyway…
• Wayne Hulbert recommends getting feedback on your business ideas. I couldn’t agree more. This is something I’ve always pushed - if you have an idea tell people. He’s got some recommendations on who you should speak to as well.
• Jake Danger describes 3 kinds of self discipline. Most people will probably be nodding their heads in agreement with Jake’s final thoughts about doing what you love. My favorite part of Jake’s blog: the title — “Lunatic Wisdom: Life Beyond the Matrix”.
• Patrick Chan presents Know The Fundamental Skills Of Creative Thinking. In particular, I like Patrick’s thoughts on thinking ambiguously. What’s that now? Well, check it out yourself…
• Barbra Sundquist offers up a self assessment quiz for people interested in starting home-based businesses. A few questions that stand out for me — Do you know your weak areas? Do you have family support? Do you have enough to money to do it?
• Juuso Hietalahti provides some straightforward information on how to perform marketing research. It’s bigger than market research and aims to form a communication link between a company and its customers.
• Murad Ali recommends having a diverse workplace of different cultures and people of different backgrounds. He does a good job of explaining the benefits and values of doing so.
• Alexandra Levit says that working from home isn’t necessarily perfect. She work from home part of the week, goes to the office for the rest, and lists three qualifications you’ll need to succeed as an at-home worker.
• Mary Emma Allen suggests a smart spin-off idea for stay-at-home entrepreneurs. Mary definitely takes a more creative, “outside the box” approach to working-at-home. She’s pushing the envelope a bit in terms of getting people to think of what they can do from their homes.
• Emmanuel Oluwatosin recommends that you focus on solutions, not problems. He’s right. The most successful people are able to achieve their goals through visualization, and Emmanuel’s got a healthy reminder of that.

Online Business, Software and Entrepreneurship

• Cody McKibben has an interview with Rajesh Setty. Rajesh Setty wears lots of hats - blogging at Life Beyond Code, writing books and working on a few startup companies such as Suggestica and iPolipo. Two points stuck out - “a life of leadership” and “ROII”. Read the interview to find out what I’m talking about.
• Lynn Cognito provides answers on creating effective eBay listings. A picture speaks a thousand words, and Lynn’s right on the money when she says the picture closes the deal.
• Phil tackles issues of email etiquette expressing his frustration with people who don’t respond to emails. The reasoning they give him is funny (and sad at the same time.) His tips for how to respond to email should generate some controversy; since so many of us are overloaded by email and we all try to handle it in different ways. For example, Greg at LifeDev has a different opinion on when you should read your email.
• Sagar Satapathy offers up 5 software programs to help your small business. I haven’t used any of these so I can’t speak to Sagar’s choices, but I can tell you that getting better organized through the use of software (particularly to automate boring / time consuming / non-core tasks) can really help a small business / entrepreneur succeed.

And that’s the end of the Carnival of Entrepreneurs Round 2.

Please check out Carnival of Entrepreneurs Round 1.

And please spread the word!

Next week’s Carnival goes live December 27th.

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POSTED IN: Carnival of Entrepreneurs