What Is an Entrepreneur?
The conventional definition of “entrepreneur” goes something like this: “A person who innovates while taking a risk in developing a product, service, or business.”  Another definition, a bit less precise but equally effective: “Someone who identifies an opportunity and creates a means to pursue it.”  Either way you look at it, the concept of entrepreneurship encompasses several traits.  Entrepreneurs want to create something of their own to bolster their feeling of personal achievement, and they do so with the knowledge that risk can sometimes equal failure.  For the new entrepreneur, he or she should concentrate on minimizing risk while maximizing opportunity.  How is this done?  The best way for new entrepreneurs to succeed is by following the life lessons laid out by those who have gone before.

Are You a New Business Entrepreneur?
Running your own business imparts great responsibility.  You will have employees who rely on you to provide a stable work environment.  You will have customers who expect you to deliver exactly as promised.  Suppliers want to be paid on time, and investors look to you as a source of profit for the money they have put into your company.  The successful entrepreneur takes calculated risks, not crazy ones.  By following the fifteen lessons below, you will have a leg up on the competition.

Fifteen Dynamic New Entrepreneur Ideas

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Let the Buyer (ALWAYS) Beware
As a proper thinking entrepreneur, you have decided that the pizza place that’s been on the corner of your street for 15 years - and is now for sale by its original owner - would be the perfect business to buy.  You have some cash on hand, you know that the owner is willing to provide a loan for the balance (at a below market rate), and you have worked your way up through the fast food jungle from counterperson to assistant manager. All the stars appear to be properly aligned, so what could possibly go wrong?  Well, let’s think about the asking price for a minute.  Pay too much and you may find that it will take a lot longer to reach profitability.  Pay too little and…well, that almost never happens, does it?  How do you value an existing business for sale?

How to Value a Business For Sale
Any existing business has some intrinsic value, even if it’s on its last legs.  Maybe the equipment can be pawned or resold, or perhaps the brand name still pulls in a few customers.  There are many ways to calculate the fair value of an existing business - successful or otherwise - but it rarely makes sense to take the owner’s word for it.  At the very least you will want to apply your own metrics to the process.  It usually makes good fiscal sense to get a business valuation done by a professional or, at the very least, by a trusted yet disinterested third party.  Sad to say, there are literally dozens of methods that people use to determine the value of existing businesses for sale.  Not all of them will apply to the company your eye is on, but there are some basic rules worth following.

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Is Owning a Business in Your Future?
At one time or another, nearly every employee dreams of owning a business.  Perhaps you’re tired of all your hard work ending up helping someone else achieve his or her entrepreneurial success, or you may fear for losing your job in a weakened economy.  Whatever your motivation, the compulsion to own a business is strong in many of us.  But the risk involved in turning that dream into reality has, all too often, acted to derail even the best-laid plans.

How to Own a Business
Every prospective business owner is forced to wrestle with many different kinds of questions.  Concerns about money certainly lead the pack, but knowing what kind of business best suits you is even more important.  The best place to start is by examining the reasons why you want to own a small business.  Here are some benefits to ponder:

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Look Out - Businesses For Sale!
Thanks to the Internet and its worldwide audience, information on anything imaginable (and hardly believable) is only a few clicks away.  If you are an entrepreneur on the lookout for a new business opportunity, scanning the Web can prove worthwhile.  It can also be an immense waste of time, since search engines tend to force you to look at as many as a thousand tangentially related pages before you find something of value.  There are better sources and more sensible ways to uncover new business opportunities, especially those that offer greater local appeal.

How to Find Business Opportunities in Your Locale
There are no fewer than six major sources of information for finding a new business opportunity that suits your interests, your particular financial situation and your location.  While it helps to have at least some glimmer of an idea as to the type of industry you’d like to explore - more on that below - it’s not a deal-killer if you’re just starting out and haven’t a clue.  Believe it or not, the more you read and the more you learn about a particular field, the easier it is to accept or reject operating in that area.  Here are those six broad categories:

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Are There Cheap Franchise Opportunities Out There?
There are three aspects to coming up with the kind of money it takes to buy a franchise - coughing up the initial franchise fee, finding a place from which to do business, and paying for supplies and inventory.  Cheap franchises are an especially hot commodity in a down economy.  But don’t be fooled by a low price tag.  The cost of entry for an inexpensive franchise is only one element of potential success.  There are definitely cheap franchises out there, so let’s do a little exploring.

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Brands and marketers are rapidly leaving the orbit of “paid media” dominance and entering the gravitational pull of the age of “earned” and “social media.” But, first, a definition, compliments of Wikipedia:
Earned media (free media) refers to favorable publicity garnered via efforts other than advertising, as opposed to paid media, which refers to publicity gained through advertising. Earned media often refers specifically to publicity gained through editorial influence, whereas social media refers to publicity gained through grassroots action, particularly on the Internet.

Brands that want to generate “coverage” in a world where professional and consumer-generated media live side-by-side, they either must “earn” it (PR) or stimulate a conversation (social) based on action, in-action or mis-actions (mistakes). Traditionally, earned media coverage was largely facilitated through public relations campaigns - professional editors assigned stories to journalists who wrote about something “newsworthy.”

While that process is still at work in an ever-expanding media universe, today products and (customer) services that delight consumers by exceeding, or failing, to exceed their expectations earn voluminous word-of-mouth (social media) coverage from armies of bloggers, tweeters, and Facebookers, who magnify the brand message virally.

While earned media has been around since the first campfires, the Internet and social media networks make it much easier to earn media for a brand, product, or oneself. But earning digital media doesn’t mean it’s free. Instead of paying for media placements (advertising), marketers pay for the time and resources of people who will investigate what’s being said about your brand and then engage on your behalf. These can be employees, contractors, agencies, etc.

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“Hey, come take a look at this storm system. It’s enormous.” – Hideki, Japanese astronaut, The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Lots of people missed the big news of the Beijing Olympics.  It wasn’t that Mark Phelps won 8 gold medals.  It wasn’t that the U.S. edged out China on the total number of medals.  It wasn’t the hundreds of personal tragedies and triumphs.  Some of the competitors undoubtedly felt like Laura Chapman … “I know you always thought I took the competition too seriously … you were right. It was all for nothing.”  The big news was that nothing happened.  Sure The Chinese government and China’s CCTV was afraid.  NBC was afraid.  AT&T was afraid.  BBC was afraid.  Microsoft was afraid (they had a lot riding on Silverlight’s success).  Limelight and Akamai were afraid.  Afraid the video pipes of the world would collapse. 

Didn’t happen!

The estimated 1.3 billion worldwide Internet users were more than four times the number of potential users that tried to access Mark Cuban’s broadcast.com “airing” of Victoria’s Secret show a decade ago. 

The Games Begin

This online video challenge streamed more than 2200 hours of live competition in 25 sports.  More than 112 video streams were often available at one time.  All told 336 streams could have been sent out simultaneously.  The content was available to 77 countries.  The great thing was online viewers around the globe didn’t have to watch NBC’s version of the Olympics.  Use your search engine, type in Beijing (or 2008) Olympics + country name and BAM!

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“Well, that’s right, Professor Frederickson, and that all matter is made up of not only density but of empty space, and if we can proportionally reduce the amount of empty space in any given object, we can, thereby, shrink the object.” – Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis), Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1989)

We always enjoy the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) because 98 percent of the time the demos work.  When they don’t work, you’re pretty sure no one will get sent to the Bering Seas to work on The Deadliest Catch series.  No sweat this year!  Craig Barrett, Intel’s chairman, wanted everyone to know that the company was just flush with fresh ideas (see photo) so he waved around and talked an itty-bitty something you couldn’t really see.  Heck could have been one of his new fishing lures … who’d know?  Of course Paul Otellini, Intel Prez, had to show off their huge silicon platters with a gazillion chips on it.  To hear him talk you’d think that everything we use everyday would be useless without his chips.  Look around … he may be right.  For him it was all about performance, raw speed.  Obviously if you need an excuse to upgrade your devices every six months it is all about speed, performance!  Glad the wife wasn’t there.  She would have been so ticked about her new, barely used, now outdated Dell notebook.

Notebooks Still Cool

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