With the start of camping season upon us, I’m reminded of this business idea that Loyd from Yosemite Blog sent to me a few years ago:
Here's a great part time business to start…. camping spot savers! On major holidays they go in a few days in advance, set up a tent, and camp there until the payee gets there.
If they get a good spot the payee could "tip" them. We could get college students and high school kids above 18 to do it.
Maybe charge about $7.50 on top of the campsite fee not including tip. Pay in advance credit card deal.
Because a lot of campgrounds are first come, first serve and don't offer reservations or if they do they book quickly like the ones in Yosemite.
When you see the doctors standing in front of the whiteboard with all of the patients and surgeries mapped out on Grey’s Anatomy, that’s real life. Would you try to run your company from a whiteboard?
Xylemed thinks you shouldn’t either. They’ve created a program that will replace the whiteboards hospital use to track their patients and surgeries.
Nursing supervisors use a hand-written markerboard to keep track of the current roster of patient names, doctors treating them, procedures they're undergoing, and even critical contact information. Xylemed hopes to bring this into the 21st century with a software application that can replace all that scribbling and erasing. It's already being used at several locations, including Harborview Medical Center and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.
Dogs Love Running! is a small business success story. What started out as a one-man show is now a pet franchise opportunity available across the nation.
“We were looking for input on how to fine-tune our ideas,” says Reh. “The US Small Business Administration has free business counseling through their SCORE program so we started there first.”
John went on to meet about 4 different counselors over the course of a few weeks. Each time, ideas were hammered out in finer and finer detail. The end result is Dogs Love Running!, a professional pet care service that does not only traditional “dog walking”, but they’ll also run with dogs, too. Aside from the dog running/walking services, they also do pet sitting and can create customized private pet boarding and daycare solutions.
Sometimes, when you’re starting a business, you have to do almost anything to make it succeed. CNET has the story of one entrepreneur who was so desperate to start that he secretly lived and worked inside of AOL’s office for two months before security discovered his “apartment”:
Having spent several months legitimately working in the building, often quite late, Simons had noticed that although there were security guards with nightly rounds, there were at least three couches that seemed outside those patrols. Plus, they looked fairly comfortable. He claimed them.
This was his routine: He’d work until midnight or later, and then fall asleep around 2 a.m. on one of the couches. At 7 a.m. — and no later than 8 a.m. so he’d be safely out of his field bed before anyone else arrived — he’d wake up, go down to the gym for a workout and a shower, and then go back upstairs and scarf a breakfast of cereal and water or Coke. Then he’d work all day, finally waiting until everyone else in the building had gone home before returning to one of his three favored couches.
“I got a really good work ethic,” he said, “and I got in shape, since I had to work out every morning.”
But the real point was that he was spending next to nothing. The first month, he spent just $30, mainly on the occasional trip to McDonald’s or for “random food expenditures when I got sick of eating ramen and cereal. I could have not spent a dollar, but I was going crazy.”
Korean retailer Emart had a problem: their sales declined during the lunch hour. To counter this, they developed a time sensitive QR code that relies upon the position of the sun to create a shadow based QR code.
Dubbed “Sunny Sale,” Emart’s effort involved setting up a series of what it calls “shadow” QR codes that depend on peak sunlight for proper viewing and were scannable only between 12 and 1 pm each day. Successfully scanning a code took consumers to a dedicated home page with special offers including a coupon worth USD 12. Purchases could then be made via smartphone for delivery direct to the consumer’s door.
A Maryland teen invented a dipstick-type sensor that tests blood or urine and detects pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancer. WBALTV has more:
North County High School freshman Jack Andraka won what is considered the Olympics of science fairs with a diagnostic breakthrough in cancer treatment. The Crownsville 15-year-old won a $75,000 grand prize in this year’s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his new way to test for early-stage pancreatic cancer.
Andraka said the inspiration came from an uncle who died of the disease. He said the idea came to him in biology class.
“That’s what’s really cool about science to me — you can affect other people’s lives. You can basically do anything with science,” the teen winner said.
Cubify understands the problem with geeky, DIY, hard to build and calibrate printers; and their Cube aims to solve this. Currently on pre-order and due for release on May 25th, the device is about as consumer level as you can get.
At $1,299, it costs as much as a new desktop PC (and considerably less than the other leading consumer level 3D printer – the Makerbot Replicator) – but like all printers, they'll get you on the cartridges! Yes, you heard me right – the Cube eschews traditional standardized filament rolls in favor of device-specific filament cartridges, with a variety of garish colors available for $50 each. The simplified loading process means switching out colors or loading a new cartridges is easy.
Small Business Trends: What is the first thing franchisees who finds themselves in this situation should do?
Rush Nigut: The first thing a franchisee should do if the franchisor is in trouble is to review the franchise agreement to make sure the franchisor is meeting its obligations. If not, a franchisee will want explore whether there is a breach of contract and whether the franchisee can possibly terminate the agreement if that makes sense.
Small Business Trends: Franchisees spend a lot of time and money to find and keep customers. Can they keep their customers if the franchisor goes under?
Rush Nigut: Obviously, franchisees will want to keep their customers or clients; they've worked hard to get them. But they need to make sure that they avoid any non-compete enforcement. Many franchisees are under the mistaken belief that the customers belong to them. Instead, the termination provisions and non-compete provision written into franchise agreements tend to favor the franchisor.
Ernest Ebio and his wife, both fitness enthusiasts who love to hike and lift weights, didn’t like leaving their 11-month-old daughter behind during their workouts. That frustration led to a business idea — Ebio decided to create a line of kids’ toys modeled after gym equipment.
Ebio partnered with his brother David Catanghal to launch WOD Toys, which produces kid-sized barbells, medicine balls, and even kettlebells for infants and toddlers. The toys weigh between half a pound and four pounds each and are made of materials like plastic, polyester and leather.
The toys are currently sold online, and Ebio hopes to get them into stores soon. All are priced under $60.
On this day in 1962, The Old Bay Line, the last overnight steamboat service in the United States, went out of business.
The Baltimore Steam Packet Company, which was also known as the Old Bay Line, was an American steamship line from 1840 to 1962, providing overnight steamboat service on the Chesapeake Bay, primarily between Baltimore, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia. Called a “packet” for the mail packets carried on government mail contracts, the term in the 19th century came to mean a steamer line operating on a regular, fixed daily schedule between two or more cities. By the time the venerable packet line ceased operation in 1962 after 122 years of existence, it was the last surviving overnight steamship passenger service in the United States.
In addition to regularly calling on Baltimore and Norfolk, the Baltimore Steam Packet Company also provided freight, passenger and vehicle transport to Washington, D.C., Old Point Comfort, and Richmond, Virginia, at various times during its history. The Old Bay Line, as it came to be known by the 1860s, was acclaimed for its genteel service and fine dining, serving Chesapeake Bay specialties. Walter Lord, famed author of A Night to Remember (and whose grandfather had been the packet line’s president from 1893 to 1899), mused that its reputation for excellent service was attributable to “… some magical blending of the best in the North and the South, made possible by the Company’s unique role in ‘bridging’ the two sections … the North contributed its tradition of mechanical proficiency, making the ships so reliable; while the South contributed its gracious ease”.
