| Entrepreneurs: We Want Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizzas! Posted: 06 Apr 2012 03:42 PM PDT 
If there are two foods more quintessentially American than hot dogs and pizza, I don’t know what they are. But, darn it, the Brits have beat us to culinary nirvana! This hot dog stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut UK makes me want to stand up and sing God Save the Queen! Yo, entrepreneurs! When are you going to bring this delightful treat for the mouth to America?! It doesn’t matter if you’re a hot dog vendor or a pizzeria, get on this now! 
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| Making Generic Medicine Hip Posted: 06 Apr 2012 03:24 PM PDT 
Business Week: Help Remedies is fast becoming a case study in the triumph of branding. Co-founders Richard Fine and Nathan Frank are doing for generic drugs what American Apparel did for plain T-shirts: wrapping them in cool with every trick in the downtown branding playbook, from hip packaging to absurdist videos to youth targeting. Fine, who, like Frank, previously worked in branding and advertising in New York, is the son of two medical professors in England. “Medicine’s an entirely self-referential world filled with terrible communicators,” he says. “MDs love warnings and being very technical about things.” 
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| StearClear: The iPad App Franchise for Designated Drivers Posted: 06 Apr 2012 03:17 PM PDT 
SteerClear is a way to get you, and your car, home safely after a night out drinking. They’ve been up-and-running for just over a month in parts of New Jersey, but hope to expand nationally. Techcrunch reports: According to co-founder Craig Sher, the idea for providing a designated driver service is hardly new. "I found 50 or 60 companies across the country," he said. "But most of the companies that do designated driver services are mom-and-pop shops…and it's a very difficult business to make money on. Most people who embark on a designated driver service do it from a community service point of view – they're very focused on volunteer drivers." So the big idea with StearClear, then, is how do you make a service like this work to make it profitable for all involved? Their solution: local franchises. Instead of launching this as their own service from scratch, StearClear takes on a lot of the cost that goes along with creating a business, while leaving the day-to-day to others. The franchises don't have to process credit cards, handle paying employees or doing their tax reporting; they don't have to hire HR staff to ensure compliance with U.S. employment law, or worry with insurance and liability protections. StearClear also handles vetting the drivers, handling background checks, criminal and sexual predator checks, driving record checks, and even drug tests. But, says Sher, "our real magic is the software, and the fact that we have a real end-to-end solution." 
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| Have Mat Will Travel: Mobile Yoga Posted: 06 Apr 2012 12:54 PM PDT 
Loganville Patch: This month, local resident and yogini, Megan Kearney celebrates the launch of her new business MOBI yogi, a mobile yoga class that comes to residences, schools and businesses, even lakes. MOBI yogi travels to any location teaching yoga to anyone, any level and any age. MOBI yogi offers classes for prenatal, babies, children, seniors, cancer survivors, and of course, adults. MOBI yogi offers private classes on a standup paddleboard at local lakes. 
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| $5 via Paypal: The Future of Online Sales Posted: 06 Apr 2012 12:50 PM PDT 
The Next Web: My point is this: companies that do not take PayPal, and do not charge low, round amounts for their goods and services are missing out on a pile of revenue. Marginal profitability is usually not the worry with Internet firms, it's getting enough functioning customers. I'll pay $5 for about anything, if I want it, no questions asked. No hemming, or hawing. Everyone has PayPal. Everyone will pay $5. I'm calling this the new bottom-tier of Freemium. Go get some green, friends. Photo by Bragin Alexey/ShutterStock. 
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| The 21st Century Single Person Sawmill Posted: 06 Apr 2012 12:45 PM PDT 
TimberLine: If you had asked Gary McInturf a few years ago if he would ever take up sawing lumber for side income, he would have called you crazy. However, when an unusually strong windstorm hit his Kentucky property, he discovered a new source of income that started from a new hobby. With several oak trees laying on the ground after the storm passed, Gary's wife had the idea that they might be able to make a table out of the wood, instead of just cutting them up for firewood. At the time, Gary admits that he didn't have a clue about how to turn his trees into lumber. He called up his local forestry department and asked them what he could do. They gave him the name of a Wood-Mizer sawmill owner in Gary's area. "When I saw him cut my lumber up, I thought it was the neatest thing I had ever seen, and 30 days later I owned one," Gary recalls. It didn't take him long to begin converting buildings to lumber drying areas—places where local hobbyists could come and select their boards. Video below. 
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| Book Store Goes to the Dogs Posted: 06 Apr 2012 12:36 PM PDT 
The Wenatchee World: It was in 1986 when Charlene Woodward saw the need for a retailer in Seattle that catered to customers looking for unusual books. The budding entrepreneur founded Direct Book Service. Little did Woodward know then that her new business would eventually go to the dogs. Woodward soon discovered it was very difficult to find high-quality books for clients looking for specific information about dogs. Seeing a potential niche market, she decided to start selling dog books at dog shows across the region. It didn't take long for customers to begin asking how they could buy dog books between scheduled dog shows, so Woodward designed a simple catalog and orders soon started rolling in. The business gradually began a new chapter as a mail order company, and changed its name to Dogwise. Charlene's husband, Larry, joined the growing company and serves as its president. Photo by WilleeCole/ShutterStock. 
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| New Book: Small Town Rules Posted: 06 Apr 2012 12:32 PM PDT 
In their new book Small Town Rules, Barry Moltz and Becky McCray reveal the seven “rural-style” solutions that have become invaluable to even the largest companies, most dominant brands, and most cosmopolitan businesses. Between the chapters, powerhouse small town brands are profiled, including L.L. Bean, Walmart, Winnebago Industries, and Viking Range. Small Town Rules profiles more than 20 different business ideas that businesses of any size can use for expansion, innovation, or to change the game. While Barry Moltz lives in Chicago (population about 2.7 million) and Becky McCray lives in Hopeton, Oklahoma, (population about 30), they do share some common characteristics. Both are entrepreneurs. Barry has had three businesses of his own. Becky started her first business in junior high school, and she currently owns a liquor store and a cattle ranch, along with her husband. Becky also runs a number of smaller businesses. Both authors talk openly about success and failure. Both have been fired. Both have gone out of business. Barry has been kicked out of business by his own partners, and he sold his last business during the Internet bubble of 1999. Becky has run for public office and lost, started businesses that went nowhere, and she has succeeded in building stable businesses in times of intense economic turmoil. 
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| $6.5K Per Day To Teach Kids About Bullying Posted: 06 Apr 2012 10:53 AM PDT 
CNN: Schools worldwide book him to put a stop to bullying. One Minnesota community promised him $20,000 to get him to come to town for two weeks last fall. He calls himself The Scary Guy, and his price tag can run as much as $6,500 a day. The Scary Guy is his legal name — we checked. It’s safe to say his presentation is unlike anything most students have ever seen. The kids love him, and many school officials sing his praises. But CNN learned not every past customer believes he offers a real solution to the difficult problem of bullying in America’s schools. Beyond the strange name and the four-figure daily rate, what’s most eye-opening is how this in-demand bully prevention guru defies the squeaky clean image expected of educators. He’s no Mr. Rogers leading sweet sing-alongs in a sweater vest and tie — far from it. He’s a tough-talking former tattoo artist covered in ink. 
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| The Rise of Casual Video Games Posted: 06 Apr 2012 10:47 AM PDT 
If you’ve heard of Angry Birds, but don’t understand the appeal, perhaps this NY Times article:
will help: In 2009, 25 years after the invention of Tetris, a nearly bankrupt Finnish company called Rovio hit upon a similarly perfect fusion of game and device: Angry Birds. The game involves launching peevish birds at green pigs hiding inside flimsy structures. Its basic mechanism — using your index finger to pull back a slingshot, over and over and over and over and over and over and over — was the perfect use of the new technology of the touch screen: simple enough to lure a suddenly immense new market of casual gamers, satisfying enough to hook them. Within months, Angry Birds became the most popular game on the iPhone, then spread across every other available platform. Today it has been downloaded, in its various forms, more than 700 million times. It has also inspired a disturbingly robust merchandising empire: films, T-shirts, novelty slippers, even plans for Angry Birds "activity parks" featuring play equipment for kids. For months, a sign outside my local auto-repair shop promised, "Free Angry Birds pen with service." The game's latest iteration, Angry Birds Space, appeared a couple weeks ago with a promotional push from Wal-Mart, T-Mobile, National Geographic Books, MTV and NASA. (There was an announcement on the International Space Station.) Angry Birds, it seems, is our Tetris: the string of digital prayer beads that our entire culture can twiddle in moments of rapture or anxiety — economic, political or existential. Even if you’re not interested in the story, be sure to click over to the article and play asteroids within the article itself. You can shoot almost anything on the page, including the ads, comments and navigation elements. 
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| Today in Entrepreneurial History: April 6 Posted: 06 Apr 2012 09:51 AM PDT |
| Niche: Facebook Insurance Posted: 06 Apr 2012 09:40 AM PDT 
WorldCrunch: First it was Swiss Life, now AXA has joined the party. Insurers have started selling e-reputation insurance products to protect your family’s image on the internet. Called "Protection Famille Intégr@le", AXA's new product will protect you against identity theft, credit-card fraud, harm to your online reputation and e-commerce disputes. Both insurers use a dedicated e-reputation agency called the "Reputation Squad", which will remove all problematic content, while providing psychological support and dealing with legal and administrative issues. Photo by Pan Xunbin/ShutterStock. 
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| Make The Best Of Bad Customers Posted: 06 Apr 2012 05:00 AM PDT 
No one enjoys a bad customer, but there are lessons you can even learn from them. Here is some advice USA Today recently shared on the topic. Problem: Give them an inch. With this type of customer, no matter how much you give them, they want more. They may have come from a daily-deal site and expect constant discounts. Or perhaps they’re clients who, inch by inch, ask for more than your agreed-upon contract — without offering to increase the fee. Solution: Whenever you give a client something free or at a discount, let them know the normal dollar value. Problem: Micro managing. Nothing is as frustrating as clients who want to stand over your shoulder, second guessing your every move. But you know what you’re doing, or they wouldn’t have hired you. Solution: Keep perspective.
Photo by Alan Cleaver 
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| Strap-N-Go: New Way To Carry Your Cell Posted: 06 Apr 2012 04:30 AM PDT 
Anniston Star: Tim Crowe has dreamed up a new way to carry a cell phone — a device he calls Strap-N-Go. He made the prototype from strips of cloth fasteners, elastic, pins, needles and thread, all purchased at the Oxford Walmart. The elastic runs beneath one's armpit and holds a cell phone on the shoulder, where the user can speak and hear without using hands. During an interview recently, Crowe demonstrated how he could jump up and down without losing his cell phone, how he could quickly check it for incoming calls, and how a woman could wrap it around her purse strap.
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| Small Idea Has Big Possibilities Posted: 06 Apr 2012 04:00 AM PDT 
MercuryNews.com: Klein’s idea for reusable connecting plastic bottles came to him four years ago in a dream. His plastic bottles look like ordinary water bottles, but they have additional threads in the bottom so they can be screwed together like Tinkertoys. Add connectors, and the bottles can be built into anything from soccer goals to forts to letters of the alphabet. “Essentially, for something that was trash, I’ve repurposed it into something that can continue to be used. It’s a very simple invention with a big vision.” His patent for the bottles went through in 2010. Klein hopes his invention will keep plastic bottles out of landfills and also inspire creativity in children. “Once you connect the bottles at an angle, creativity becomes unlimited.”
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