| Niche: Organic Salons Posted: 04 May 2012 04:40 AM PDT 
The Times of Northwest Indiana: Lake now uses only organic products in Artiste Organic Salon and Spa, her new salon on Main Street in Hobart. Organic hair care products are those made solely with natural plant ingredients. “I became allergic to everything I had been using,” Lake said. “I had bumps on my head, swollen fingers. Using bleach and color made my eyes water. It bothered my breathing and my skin. I’d choke and gasp on the fumes.” The salon’s all organic product lines have been a big hit, she said. “Some of my older clients have conditions like psoriasis and eczema,” Lake said. “The organic products don’t bother them as much. They love it because the products don’t cause health problems for them or for me. Everyone is into organics now days.” Lake has four independent contractors, two masseuses and two hair dresser/cosmetologists, working at her shop. The location has a kitchen and several rooms that allow Lake to host events, such as Ladies’ Days Out, beauty parties, plus holiday–themed and other special occasions. Many of the events help Lake Raise funds for charity.
Photo by AJ LEON 
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| Interview: By Gordon Wine Bottle Chandeliers Posted: 04 May 2012 04:14 AM PDT 
Ever wonder what happens when you’re done with the wine? By Gordon takes those bottles and turns them into a unique Chandelier. We recently asked Chad and Shannon Gordon a few questions about their company. What is By Gordon? By Gordon is a product development company that specializes in high quality, custom-crafted items for the home. The By Gordon company's committed and dedicated staff work tirelessly to ensure the success of the business and satisfaction of each of their clients. By Gordon welcomes inquiries for custom products. Whether your personal design style is Traditional, Contemporary, Mid-Century Modern or Country French, By Gordon can create one-of-a-kind custom masterpiece utilizing the latest in design trends, materials, finishes and fixtures on the market today.
Where’d the idea for the wine bottle chandelier come from? The idea of the wine bottle chandelier has been around for a long time in many different shapes and sizes. We have combined the history of the French riddling rack and the wine bottle lights to make a beautiful light that will transform any space. It provides an ambient light that creates a warm and inviting look.
How’d you get into this business? What’s your background? I guess you could say creating works of art with my hands is in my blood. I am a third generation creative craftsman and I have a passion for making artistic functional pieces that inspire and enhance both indoor and outdoor spaces. I grew up with an itch to tinker and create. If something was broken, I would fix it. I would help my grandfather and father work on projects around the house. I would spend hours on end gathering useless parts from things that were broken in order to transform them into something useful and unique. For the past 10 years, I have enjoyed creating and crafting one-of-a-kind items and products out of both new and reclaimed materials as a hobby with the desire to some day turn my passion for creative craftsmanship into a thriving career. I attended a California State University to earn a Business Degree and with my faith in Christ, and a little bit of passion, patience and perseverance I have cultivated the tools to turn my dream into a reality. That day has come. I am building my hobby into a thriving business and I couldn’t be happier. I always used to hear the saying ‘You’ll never work a day in your life, if you do what you love’ but never understood it until now. I am fulfilling my life long dream. I reside in beautiful Northern California with my amazing wife and two beautiful daughters. I couldn’t ask for anything more, I am one lucky guy.
What kind of success have you had? We have had a lot of success since our kickoff a couple of months ago. People from all over the country have found our products and fell in love with them. It is so much fun to meet people that are inspired by our creations and a joy to provide them with something that I love to do. Every piece is handled with care and with the utmost attention to detail. If you love what you do and do what you love, the sky is the limit.
Other than the wine bottle chandelier, do you have any other products? Yes, We are getting ready to launch our line of wine barrel furniture with many more ideas to come. This is just the beginning and we are keeping our creative minds open to what inspires us and our customers to produce quality products that everyone will love.
What’s the future of By Gordon? Our future is to create high quality customized products that inspire our customers. We encourage thoughts and ideas that will help us in creating artistic pieces that bring out the personality of our customers. We love what we do and look forward to making something that inspires any space.
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| Mothers’ Day Gifts for Crafty and Entrepreneurial Moms Posted: 03 May 2012 07:19 PM PDT 
Mothers’ Day is coming up. Looking for a gift for the crafty and entrepreneurial mom in your life? Epson can help expand their creative talents through with its portable EPSON LabelWorks LW-300 and LW-400. Both models deliver several features to help crafting and scrapbooking enthusiasts with all their labeling needs, including more than 40 tape cartridges for customized projects with a wide variety of colors, symbols and print styles. In addition, iron-on labels can quickly be applied to almost any fabric, giving crafty moms a simple way to label clothing, felt scrapbook pages and more. “Moms everywhere should be celebrated, but not with the usual chocolates and flowers. The LabelWorks offers them so much more by inspiring personalized projects or helping them organize a cluttered craft station,” said Anna Jen, director of new business development, Epson America, Inc. The EPSON LabelWorks LW-300 retails for $39.99 and and LabelWorks LW-400 goes for $49.99. 
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| Ditch the Business Card and Write a Book Posted: 03 May 2012 03:04 PM PDT 
The following is a guest post by Marsha Friedman. Nearly every day, someone asks my advice on the best way to promote their business or themselves. I get the question at speaking engagements, at the office and, yes, sometimes at home. I don’t mind at all, because I’ve always got a good answer: Write a book. “A book?” some say — with obvious horror. “I’ve never written a book!” Precisely my point. But let me back up a bit. When I started EMSI 22 years ago, I soon realized the clients who got the attention of the media most quickly were those who’d written a book. Not just any book, mind you, but one that aligned with what they were promoting. The apple salesmen who wrote about apples were far more successful getting media coverage than those who wrote about oranges – and those who hadn’t written anything at all. Why? Because yesterday’s business cards are today’s books. They give their authors immediate credibility, establishing them as experts in their fields. Credibility opens the door to journalists, talk show hosts, bloggers and anyone else creating content for hungry audiences. Who will they turn to as an expert source of information when a mysterious apple worm is destroying orchards? Johnny Appleseed, author of Red All Over – The Core of the Apple Industry. There are some caveats. A poorly conceived, poorly designed, poorly written or poorly promoted book is worse than no book at all. Your book must capably and professionally represent your unique message – and you. Not a writer? Not a problem. There are thousands of talented freelance writers and editors out there – especially in the wake of all the newspaper layoffs in recent years – who can help. So don’t worry about that just yet. The first step is planning, and that’s up to you whether or not you will actually do the writing. Decide on your book’s main idea. The central focus will be what drives the entire project, so it must match the message you want to convey and it must excite you. If you’re bored from the get-go, you’ll likely never see your project through to the end. A great way to test ideas is by running them through these five questions: - What message am I enthusiastic about that I want to convey?
- Who can benefit from it?
- How will it help them?
- Why am I the one bringing this idea to them?
- How can I make my points unique and different from what has already been said on the topic?
Pay attention to your own reactions as you test-drive your ideas. Which idea makes you smile? Which excites you creatively? Which hits the essence of what you’re about – what you enjoy, think about and create every day? It may be an idea you never even realized inspired such passion in you. Consider what you really want to achieve by promoting yourself or your business. Business owners obviously want to grow their business and see it flourish; some people want to build careers as speakers. But often, there’s something deeper driving us and we may not even be aware of it. Taking the time to do some soul-searching to identify your real motivation can help you clarify your message and find your book’s focus. 
A real-life example: When I sat down to write Celebritize Yourself, I planned a how-to book on commonly asked publicity questions. But, when I ran that idea through the five-question test, I had trouble with No. 5. So, I asked myself, “What do I most enjoy about my professional life?” The answer was easy: helping people identify and value what’s unique about them and their message. In writing a book about how to get publicity, I realized I needed to explain why everyone has an expertise that should be shared. It’s never too late to write your book. I know it seems daunting, but remember, the first time you do anything, it’s often a challenge. Remember how hard it was wobbling down the sidewalk on your first bicycle? You may have crashed a few times, skinned your knees and bumped your head, but you got back on and kept trying. Call on that brave 6-year-old you and start planning your book! Marsha Friedman is a 22-year veteran of the public relations industry. She is the CEO of EMSI Public Relations, a national firm that provides PR strategy and publicity services to corporations, entertainers, authors and professional firms. She also co-hosts “The News and Experts Radio Show with Alex and Marsha” on Sirius/XM Channel 131 on Saturdays at 5:00 PM EST. Photo based on one by Maitree Laipitaksin/ShutterStock. 
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| A Health Spa for Toddlers? Posted: 03 May 2012 11:05 AM PDT 
DailyMail: Worries about money, jobs and the recession have become a part of everyday life for many of us. But the strain has become too much to bear for youngsters in Germany, resulting in the first kindergarten for stressed-out under-fives. Toddlers as young as three chill out with massages, foot baths and by walking through wet grass without shoes and socks. Photo by Arve Bettum/ShutterStock. 
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| iPhone As Transformative for the Blind As Braille Posted: 03 May 2012 10:45 AM PDT 
The Atlantic: For the visually impaired community, the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 seemed at first like a disaster — the standard-bearer of a new generation of smartphones was based on touch screens that had no physical differentiation. It was a flat piece of glass. But soon enough, word started to spread: The iPhone came with a built-in accessibility feature. Still, members of the community were hesitant. But no more. For its fans and advocates in the visually-impaired community, the iPhone has turned out to be one of the most revolutionary developments since the invention of Braille. That the iPhone and its world of apps have transformed the lives of its visually impaired users may seem counter-intuitive — but their impact is striking. Watching Rios and Tatum navigate the world with the aid of their iPhones is a lesson in the transformative and often unpredictable impacts that technology has on our lives. After getting dressed, they strap on their backpacks, canes in hand, and walk out the door. They can’t see the sign someone hung in the elevator, informing them the building is switching to FIOS, but the minute they’re outside the fact they can’t see is a minor detail. They use Sendero — “an app made for the blind, by the blind,” says Tatum — an accessible GPS that announces the user’s current street, city, cross street, and nearby points of interest. What it’s missing, adds Tatum, is a feature that tells you which bus is arriving and what its next stop is. In the meantime they walk a couple of blocks south to catch the M1 downtown. Rios pulls out coins from her purse and pays the driver. She tells the coins apart by their size and the ridges. Bills are another story — but there’s an app for that. It’s called the LookTel Money Reader and with it you can scan the bill you’re being handed, instead of depending on the kindness of strangers. 
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| Guaranteed $10,000 For New Blackberry Apps Posted: 03 May 2012 09:33 AM PDT 
Want to try your hand at writing a new app for the Blackberry 10? If you can write an app that makes $1000 in the first year on it's own, RIM will GIVE you up to an extra $9,000! They're guaranteeing that good apps can be worth up to $10,000 for new developers. Here are the details… Alec Saunders, RIM's VP of Developer Relations, revealed at BlackBerry World that RIM will guarantee developers of quality apps a minimum of $10,000 in annual earnings — if developers come in under the $10K mark during their first year, RIM will actually pay them the difference. Ah, but there's a catch (isn't there always?). In order to qualify for RIM's generous offer, the apps in question must meet a strict new quality certification program whose standards have yet to be laid concretely laid out. One thing is known for sure though — once an app has been officially approved for sale in the App World and nabs that new certification, it has to generate at least $1,000 on its own before RIM swoops in and cuts the developer a check. 
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| Travelers Haven: The Furnished Apartment Biz Posted: 03 May 2012 09:27 AM PDT 
My father-in-law has been working fifteen hundred miles away from home for the last seven months in Denver, Colorado. Although he flies home for the weekend once a month or so, he spends every evening after getting off of work starring at the same boring hotel room walls, the boring hotel television, and the same boring hotel coffee pot. Every time he leaves the room, the emergency escape plan and the hotel’s maximum daily rate sign on the back of his door stares him in the face, reminding him constantly that he’s not at home. Well what if he could feel at home? What if he could actually live in a home? A company called Travelers Haven know’s the difference between coming home to a boring hotel room and stepping into the comfort of a home that a business traveller can call their own — even if only temporarily. They offer furnished apartments and homes in Denver, Colorado and in hundreds of cities around the country for rates that are typically less expensive than a hotel room. The ability to rent a home rather than a hotel room isn’t all that’s on offer from Traveler’s Haven. Helping with everything from turning on the power and TV to setting up the furniture, guests have little to do apart from turning up and enjoying the space. The company can also help you profit from that unsold house you’ve had sitting on the real estate market for the past eighteen months. They can help you generate revenue from your unsold real estate by turning it into temporary business housing. I’d imagine that something like this would also be useful for vacations. Photo by Sue Smith/ShutterStock. 
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| EV Station Owners Becoming Entrepreneurs Posted: 03 May 2012 06:43 AM PDT 
Wired: It's an easy way for EV owners to make some cash off their home charging setup, or for businesses to install public charging stations in their parking lots. Apps like PlugShare and Recargo already let anyone with a free electrical outlet publicize their charging station, and software like WattStation Connect can turn it into a business. Like a convenience store owner who puts an ATM next to the coffee maker and collects the transaction fees, a charging station may soon become yet another source of revenue for anyone with a parking space and an electrical connection. Using the WattStation Connect software, owners can decide whether the station is public or private, then choose when it's open and how much a charge should cost. Owners can charge for electricity by the hour, by the kilowatt hour or require a flat rate upfront. It's also possible to set up dynamic pricing by time, or allow separate users to pay different rates. For instance, a business owner could let his or her own employees charge for free but ask the general public to chip in for electricity.
Image from GE Reports 
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| Today in Entrepreneurial History: May 3 Posted: 03 May 2012 06:41 AM PDT 
On this day in 1935, Ron Popeil was born. Popeil is an American inventor and marketing personality, best known for his direct response marketing company Ronco. He is well known for his appearances in infomercials for the Showtime Rotisserie (“Set it, and forget it!”) and for using the phrase, “But wait, there’s more!” on television as early as the mid-1950s. If you’re interested in reading more about Popeil, I recommend Malcolm Gladwell’s book What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures. In it Ron Popeil is interviewed and many of his products, most notably the Veg-O-Matic and Showtime Rotisserie, are discussed. After the jump, you’ll find some of his products and their original sales pitches:
- Chop-O-Matic hand food processor. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to show you the greatest kitchen appliance ever made … All your onions chopped to perfection without shedding a single tear.”
- Dial-O-Matic, successor to the Veg-O-Matic (and very similar to a mandolin slicer). “Slice a tomato so thin it only has one side.”
- Popeil Pocket Fisherman. “The biggest fishing invention since the hook … and still only $19.95!” (According to the program Biography, the original product was the invention of Popeil’s father and only marketed by Ronco, but as of 2006, Popeil had introduced a redesigned version of the product.)[4]
- Mr. Microphone: a short-range hand-held radio transmitter that broadcast over FM radios. A convertible rolls up to a curb and an enthusiastic young man shouts out “Hey, good looking, I’ll be back to pick you up later!” followed by the pitch “Broadcast your voice on any FM radio!!!”
- Inside-The-Shell Egg Scrambler. “Gets rid of those slimy egg whites in your scrambled eggs.” Popeil has said the inspiration for this product was his lifelong revulsion toward incompletely blended scrambled eggs.[4]
- Six Star 20-Piece Cutlery Set
- Showtime Rotisserie, a small rotisserie oven designed for cooking smaller sized portions of meat such as whole chicken and lamb. “Set it, and forget it!”
- Solid Flavor Injector. This product accompanied the Showtime Rotisserie and was used to inject solid ingredients into meat or other foods. A similar product, called the Liquid Flavor Injector, allowed for the injecting of liquid ingredients into meat, e.g., lime juice into chicken.
- GLH-9 Hair in a Can Spray (Great Looking Hair Formula #9)
- Drain Buster
- Smokeless Ashtray: “Does cigar and cigarette smoke irritate your eyes?” Commercials showed this device drawing smoke from burning cigarettes back into the ashtray itself.
- Electric Food Dehydrator: “Instead of giving kids candy, give them apple snacks or banana chips. And it’s great if you’re a hunter, fisherman, backpacker, or camper. Makes beef jerky for around $3 a pound, and you know what went in it, because you made it yourself!”
- Ronco Popeil Automatic Pasta Maker
- The Cap Snaffler: “Snaffles caps off any size jug, bottle, or jar … and it really, really works.”
- The Showtime Six Star Plus 25 Knife Set and the Solid Flavor Injector: “Three easy payments of $13.33!”
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| The Baked Goods Shop That Went Sandwiches Posted: 03 May 2012 05:30 AM PDT 
Mansfield News Journal: The chalkboard menu features burgers, melts and hot dogs — served on homemade breads and buns — and potato chips kettle-fried on the premises in two flavors, regular and sweet onion. The unexpected twist in Mudrinich’s business plan started with an experiment on her menu. She offered, for $1, a shredded chicken sandwich on a slider-sized home-baked roll, with a mini-cupcake on the side. “I was just going to do it for a week. Instead the sandwich menu just grew and grew,” the Shelby resident said. Cupcakes are still available, and specialty cake orders can be placed at least 72 hours in advance
Photo by Bing Ramos 
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| Start An App Biz Posted: 03 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT 
The business of making and selling apps has grown considerably since the release of the first smart phone. So, how do you get on board? Fox Small Business has some ideas. Olsson’s co-founder at Ebbex, Nicolas Acuña, advises those looking to launch their own app to first share their idea with friends and family. “Find out of if they would use it or find it intriguing,” Acuña said. “It is hard for (the one with the idea) to have a true verdict on it, because they are already in love with it.” Researching the competition is another crucial step, and can determine what other apps in the space are doing right and wrong, app developer Mike Rundle said. He encourages those wanting to launch their own app to spend time writing down the specific features they feel they want it to have. “Having a one-paragraph description of an app is not enough,” Rundle said. “It should be a few pages of bullet points going over what the app offers, why it’s different than others and what it will do to delight users and stand out from the crowd.”
Photo by Incase 
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