Lee Johns went all the way to Australia to learn how Cafe2U International conducts business and makes coffee, said an article in BendBulletin.com.  With the information he gathered, he brought home with him the rights to set up Cafe2U franchises in the United States.  Johns envisions 1,000 Cafe2U vans across the nation in five years.  Cafe2U brews and serves coffee to customers in a van, going where many people take their breaks.

If Lee Johns has his way, in five years at least 1,000 Cafe2U vans will be delivering high-end coffee to consumers across the United States.

The nation’s first, sporting bright red paint, coffee bean graphics and the company logo, began making deliveries in Bend in September.

Johns, president of Cafe2U Inc., believes the company is the first in the country to employ a mobile coffee business model. The company’s drivers travel to customers, rather than wait for them to show up at a bricks-and-mortar café, and brew up fresh drinks from a machine in the van.

And it’s not just drip coffee the drivers peddle.

“It is a premium gourmet coffee, a darker, full-bodied, rich coffee,” Johns said, adding that it’s espresso-based. The price of a drink ranges from $2 to $4, depending on size and style.

Johns, 53, does not credit himself with coming up with the concept. He is no longtime coffee expert. For years he and his wife published real estate magazines in Bend.

Earlier this year, Johns and the company’s Portland-based CEO traveled to Australia to learn how Cafe2U International conducts business and makes coffee.

Read More

Business ideas spring from filling a need.  Successful start-up businesses start with a unique and sometimes quirky idea that addresses a need.  We could just smile and say, “I wish I had thought of that”.  Below are two such examples of startup business ideas, as reported in All Business, that visionaries had turned into million dollar businesses.

Passion and persistence are the key to entrepreneurial success. If you’ve got an outrageous business idea that everyone tells you is bound to fail, take inspiration from these true believers who flouted conventional wisdom to make their startup dreams come true.

1.  Rico Elmore is a big guy. At 6’3″ and 300 pounds, he could never find sunglasses wide enough for his head. He saw a market opportunity but others scoffed. “I knew I had an idea that would be something people would appreciate. I knew I wasn’t the only person who couldn’t find eyewear to fit,” Elmore says.

He spent his evenings tinkering with designs and materials in his living room. In 2005, after two years of work, he had his first pair of Fatheadz sunglasses ready to sell. Finding retailers willing to take a gamble and able to showcase his limited product line presented another challenge.

Fatheadz sold $2 million worth of eyewear in 2010 and, if you still think sunglasses for fat heads have limited appeal, try this on for size: Elmore just inked a deal with Walmart.

2.  In 1999, Jacob D’Aniello heard an interview with a professional pet poop remover and realized that the guy was making more money than he was. A year later, the management consultant founded DoodyCalls.

Read More

A few businesses have started installing charging stations for electric cars in their stores.  This is in anticipation of the future where electric cars will be more common as our dependence on oil decreases.  FoxNews.com reports that the McDonald’s franchisee in Huntington, West Virginia, has two such chargers installed last year.  Walgreens, too, has some in Texas and plans to add more in other cities.  About 13,000 charging stations will be available by 2012.

When McDonald’s franchisee Tom Wolf built his latest restaurant in Huntington, W.Va., late last year, he installed two chargers for all-electric cars so customers could juice their batteries while eating.

So far, the charging station has been used a few times.

“It’s for the future,” says Wolf, who spent $6,385 on chargers that are about the size and shape of a parking meter. He doesn’t know anyone in Huntington who owns a plug-in car but expects that will change once electric vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf become more widely available.

Across the US, such equipment is proliferating even though it is unclear whether plug-in cars will prove popular.

Walgreen Co. has chargers outside four Texas stores and plans to add more there and in San Francisco, Orlando, Fla., and Washington, D.C.

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc. expects to have chargers outside some Tennessee restaurants within months. Murphy Oil USA, a gas-station operator, is testing one in Chattanooga, Tenn., to gauge demand.

Read More

What do people do with their computers nowadays?

They basically check email, surf the Internet, and post on Facebook.

With this in mind, why don’t you think about creating an online training course that imitates these actions?

Most e-learning courses have a typical structure, are centered on communicating data, and lack interactive features… sometimes this is OK; it is what’s needed and expected; however, you can always go a step beyond and communicate things in a creative way familiar to the learner.

How about if instead of clicking the ‘next’ button to access more data, the learner found himself inside an imitation of Outlook and had to click on an email to open a “message”, or in a Facebook page full of the data you want to share?

Much more interesting and fun, right? You can create a story to unify the information you are providing in a relevant and amusing way.

Here we show you 3 ways in which you can put your creativity to the test:

Imitate an instant messaging scenario

Everyone uses instant messaging, whether it is through Messenger, Skype, Yahoo, etc.; so, it would be interesting to make it look like two people are chatting.

How do you do this?

• Create two or three people that will be chatting. Each one of them will symbolize a specific part of the information.
• Create a reason why they are chatting. Maybe one of them is having a problem and is asking for help, or they are discussing the final details of a project.
• Adapt the information to a dialogue.
• Create a ‘forward’ button learners will click to advance the conversation.

Imitate an inbox

Most everyone checks email daily today. It would be a lot of fun to find yourself in someone’s inbox and having to open email messages to get to the information.

Read More

“It’s difficult to maintain enthusiasm for your leadership when you keep getting beat up by that old man.” – Alfanz, Fool’s Gold, Warner Brothers (2008)

You have to admire Google. They’re masters at giving stuff away free and making it up on the backend … selling your click, interest, movements to others. O.K., that’s about it.

Their other strategies have taken the gleam off their golden touch:
- Nexus was an empty mine
- So few folks download Android/Honeycomb apps that developers focus on the Apple mines that have action
- Google convinced a lot of companies to throw money into their wet, musty TV mine; they just forgot the content owners
- The Google music mine was empty at first and … yep, pretty much still is

Still, they have a few things going for them:
- Lots of your click information – stationary, mobile
- Lots of people buying that information
- Lots of money
- Lots of “friends” who don’t like Apple, don’t like Microsoft, don’t like each other
- Lots of money

Wait! There’s a mine that hasn’t been explored!

Netbooks – a good but underpowered notebook option – were overhyped a few years ago. Tess Finnegan looked at the idea and said, “Your uselessness is epic.” It was going to be great until those so-n-sos at One Infinity Circle came out with their iPad. Source – Forrester

2nd Time Around – While the mobile device segment was stable for a long time, innovations and updates, new wrinkles and new hopes in recent years have changed the market and usage dynamics. Netbooks were forecast to replace notebooks but tablets and smartphones got in the way so we renamed, reintroduced them and producers will try again. Source – Forrester

Read More

Forget what you heard about “being one of the boys,” “having it all,” and “going for the jugular.” Here is how real women get ahead.

Get In Line

According to Catalyst’s 2002 Census of Women Corporate Officers and Top Earners, women fill less than ten percent of line positions held by corporate officers and just 5.2% of top earners at Fortune 500 companies are women. Is there a correlation? Absolutely. Half of women executives and 68% of CEOs say that lack of significant line experience “holds women back” (Catalyst, Women in U.S. Corporate Leadership, 2003).

Knowing that line experience is critical, get prepared. Study financial management, become an expert in a functional area such as strategic planning, manufacturing, marketing or sales, serve on a nonprofit or advisory board and, the minute the opportunity arises, take a position with profit and loss responsibility.

Learning about the financials doesn’t happen overnight.  When Margaret Morford, 50, of
Brentwood, Tennessee, was Vice President of Human Resources for a large distribution company, she recalls, “I took the same finance for non-financial managers course three times until I got it. I used that financial knowledge to demonstrate Human Resources’ impact to the bottom line.  Once I started speaking in numbers, the senior managers in my peer group began to view Human Resources as a business partner rather than an administrative drain on revenues.”

Remember Who You Are

In 2005, The Center for Work/Life Policy asked women what they want in the workplace. Seventy-nine percent of women said “the freedom to be myself at work.” Ask a man if he desires to “be himself at work,” and you will probably get the same glassy stare I got when I asked my husband that question.

Read More

Gen X, Gen Y … Creating Havoc for Marketers

“Whatever you’ve got to tell me, I’ll find out through the natural course of time.” – Dr. Emmett Brown, Back to the Future (1985)

We hate kids…O.K., the word “hate” may be a little too strong. We’re jealous of ‘em!!! There, we said it…we’re glad…we’ve got two of our own!!! We’re part of the Baby Boomer Generation–(there are two parts – 1946 – 1964). Then, there are the Gen Xers (’65 – ’78). Then Gen Y (’79 – ’89). Now, it’s the  iGen (1990 – 2009).

No, that isn’t the “i” Jobs would like. It’s the “i” as in instant, immediate, individual. They’re creating havoc with business because we simply cannot figure out how to monetize tomorrow’s hardware, software, service solutions.

We loved the old CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) chart of technology adoption:
- PCs took 21 years for 50% household penetration
- Color TV took 13 years
- Cellphones took 12 years
- Cordless phones took 15 years

Notice anything? Yeah!  Mainstream adoption is taking less and less time. The younger groups start out with a clean slate.  They’ve never known a world without their toys and they’re a natural part of their lives. Or, as Marty McFly said, “Which… is what makes time travel possible.” Just look at what it took for our newer technologies to gain critical mass.

Read More

Everyone seems to be using Linked in at the moment. If you’re going to be on any social networking site, Linked in seems to be it. But, how do you use it to its maximum potential and get business from it? 

1.   Write your profile
Make sure you’ve set up your profile on Linked in. You need a bit about your business and what you do; a bit about you and who you are; your qualifications, background and education and finally a bit about your interests and hobbies. Social networking is about getting to know the person behind the business, so don’t be afraid to let your personality come across. A picture of you wouldn’t go amiss here too. 

2.   Get connected
Invite all your current contacts to join you on Linked in. You’ll be given the option to invite your contacts from your email package when you first start on Linked in, but if you’re already on there, just go to Add Connections at the top. You can also email people directly here and ask them to connect with you. 

3.   Connect to other people
Once you’ve started adding connections, Linked in will suggest other people that it thinks you might want to connect with too. You can see this on the right hand side of your home page under People you may know. Search through these regularly and keep connecting with new people. 

4.   Start communicating
Now you’re connected to people, start communicating with them and building that relationship. Contact people directly to find out more about them. It’s only when you communicate with them that you’ll find out whether there is anything you want to take further. 

5.   Tell people what you’re up to
Post an update (you can see this on your home page) on a regular basis – by regular once or more a day is best.

Read More

With an estimated $800+ billion in funding available for the entrepreneur annually (even in bad times), you may think that venture capital and R&D partnership firms would be falling over each other to fund the latest wave of scientific and technological proposals. Wrong.

Venture capital companies such as R&D Funding Corp., Early Stages Co., Mayfield Fund, Asset Management, and others receive an average of 100 of technology and service/support proposals each month, even when the economy is “less than desirable.”

Unfortunately, instead of paving the way for funding, the proposals are often more detrimental than helpful. The sad truth is that the majority of the business plans presented are not just badly written, they’re very badly written. That makes the evaluation – finding the winners – even more difficult.

Pyramid Your Plan
The business plan should be presented to potential investors in the same manner that products and services are presented to potential customers–quickly and effectively.  A simple way to accomplish this is with a pyramid-style presentation.  It starts with a tight, action oriented summary and expanded sections toward the base.

After you get through the legalities and disclaimers, themost important part of your plan is the executive summary.  This one- to two-page summary clearly states what the company is going to do, what the market potential is, how the company plans to achieve market penetration, the time period involved, the product/service plans, the amount of money needed and how that money will be used.

Read More

What would your business look like if you made even minor changes to how you think and do business so that you can grow your business? It’s not how much you do in your day, it’s what you do in that day that can make or break your business.

Growing your business can be broken down into easy, doable, bite-sized activities. It’s simply about focusing on what matters. Start by asking yourself…

What Would My Business Look Like If …

I Had A Plan for Each Day?
Instead of waking up wondering what you had to do that day, how would it feel to wake up energized and empowered because you had clarity and confidence in knowing what the most important tasks for that day were and how they fit into your overall business strategy? By having a plan, uncertainty, procrastination and overwhelm are eliminated, enabling you to reach goals faster.

I Had Only Three Hours a Day to Work?
Nothing helps you prioritize better than knowing you have a limited time in which to accomplish tasks. Will cleaning your desk–again–generate revenue or visibility for your business, or will developing new products or pitching media do that? As the saying goes, “Time is a related thing. The more you have, the more your tasks expand.” The key is not to fill up the time you have, but to maximize it. Chunk out the hours (by tasks) and use a timer to keep you mindful of time spent on those tasks.

My To Do List Consisted of Only 3 Items a Day?
“Not possible!” you say? Look through your To Do list now and cross off everything on that list that will not generate revenue, visibility or credibility for your business. This newsletter, for instance, is aimed at doing all three. Cleaning my house will not accomplish any of that. It’s going to have to wait until the weekend.

Read More

Success is a Journey – Not a destination.
A well repeated phrase that ones reads, nods in approval and then moves on to other matters. But what does it really mean?  Taking a moment to interpret the meaning can provide a strong foundation for business and personal planning of a small business owner or entrepreneur.

Consider these 3 Scenarios of “Success”:

1. Just consider all the investors in the late 1990′s that made millions in the stock market Dot-Com boom.
Buy low, sell high, make millions- you are a success.  Three months later the Dow loses 600 points in one day, the market continues to fall,  those millions are lost and investors are left with no gains or worse – are you still a success?

2. Fast forward to the Real Estate Collapse that we are now experiencing.
Buy an entry level house, “flip it” make some good money- Are you a success?  Now take those gains, leverage those monies, buy a bigger house, “flip it” make a lot more money. -Are you a success?  Things are good, this real estate thing seems almost automatic, so you take all those monies, buy a $1,000,000 property with plans to fix and flip it for $1.5M, but the market turns south and all the real estate gains have gone away and you cant find a buyer for your house at $740,000- are you a success?

3. Now Consider the Entrepreneur / Small Business Owner.
You successfully start your own business. You reach break-even.  Are you a success?  You reach $1,000,0000 in annual sales, then $2M, then $3M – Are you a success? You sell your business for several million dollars – Are you a success?  I say you have reached certain successes, but the journey continues.

Read More

Creating Your Dream Business
Behind every successful company is a founder who had a dream that eventually became a reality.  Examine any of today’s prominent entrepreneurs and you will discover a shared thread of traits.  These are talent, vision, and perseverance in the face of all obstacles.  If you possess an idea that you believe would make a great business, there’s no time like the present to make that move.  Innovative business ideas are spun off into new enterprises all the time – both in good financial times and bad – so don’t abandon the fight due to a perceived weak economy.

Read More

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

Read More

The Crux of an Idea
There is an old saying that goes, “The world will beat a pathway to your door to buy a better mousetrap.”  The opportunity to cash in on an invention is one of the top dreams an entrepreneur can have.  All it takes is thinking up something useful that no one else has built.  But having an idea is a far cry from earning big bucks from its sale.  There are a number of steps one must follow to reach that goal.

What is a Patent?
A patent is defined as the exclusive right to control an invention.  Once a patent has been issued, the owner can prevent anyone else from using it, manufacturing it, or copying it without permission.  There are three basic patent types – utility patent, design patent, and plant patent – with each covering different methods and lasting for different lengths of time.  A utility patent is usually good for 20 years and covers machinery and processes.  A design patent is usually good for 14 years and covers a particular design that does not fall under the previous description.  A plant patent is usually good for 17 years and refers specifically to an inventor who has developed a new type of vegetation.  Generally speaking, once the period of a patent has expired, the item becomes public property.

Read More

One question I get asked a lot goes something like “I’ve got an idea for a business. I need to get finance from the bank, buy stationery and equipment and do some research. I’m not sure how to plan everything that I need to do.” Do you feel like this? Do you have a business idea and so much to do to get it up and running, that you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start?  If so, you’re not alone. Thousands of new business owners feel like this and that’s why it’s vital to put down on paper what you need to do. Here’s how: 

Take a big piece of paper and then write down everything that comes into your head that you’ll need to do to set up your business. Don’t worry if it sounds silly – just get it down. You might want to carry this piece of paper round with you for a couple of days just in case you think of anything else you need to do. Once you’ve got down the vast majority of all the things you’ll need to do, now is the time to start organising them. The first thing to do is group them. For example, anything to do with finance, group them all together (you could do this using a highlighter pen or writing them in groups on a separate sheet of paper); anything to do with getting a loan, group this too. Keep grouping the categories until you have five or six main headings to do. With grouping, what you’re trying to do is firstly realise that a lot of the tasks you need to do are related and can be done together and secondly reduce the number of things you need to do into five or six areas. As such, if when you do this exercise, you find that some things don’t quite fit into a category, that’s fine – feel free to break them out into another heading. 

When you’ve got your groups, take a good long look at them. Is there a logical order in which they need to be done?

Read More

Business Knowledge Test

What does UPS do?

1. Delivers Packages
2. Provides Logistics Services
3. Drives fashionistas crazy with the never-trendy brown
4. Repairs laptops for Toshiba
5. All of the Above

In order to reduce costs and speed up repairs, Toshiba handed over its laptop repairs in North America to UPS.  Now when a Toshiba laptop malfunctions, a UPS truck picks it up and delivers it to the computer repair depot at the nearest UPS hub that same day.  The computer is repaired the next day and returned the following.  Faster and cheaper.

What does CGI do?

1. Provides computing services for large corporations
2. Charges lots of money for consulting
3. Provides insurance adjustment and evaluation services
4. All of the above

CGI started life off creating and managing large computer systems for large companies.  As they grew and expanded they started managing the data entry for these companies.  At that point they realized that in fact they could also handle the data collection for their clients.

If you answered all of the above to both questions then you know that Insourcing exists.

Now the next big questions:

1. What is insourcing
2. Why are companies doing this
3. How can I participate

Insourcing Defined

Insourcing is when Company B entirely takes over a complete process in Company A and fully integrates its staff and processes into that of Company A so that no one knows the difference.

Why Insourcing

Read More

One of the things that new business owners tend to be very scared of is someone else stealing their business idea. After all, they’ve spent a lot of time, effort, energy and money developing the idea and the last thing they want is someone stealing the business idea and developing it instead.

I’ve even known a new business owner who completely abandoned his idea when he found out that a competitor had started more or less the same idea as him a couple of months before – what a shame!

Let’s break this down a bit and look at some facts and then I’ll explain how to protect your business idea, but also why you shouldn’t be too afraid of other people finding out what it is.

Right now, at this moment, about 60% of the working population are sat in businesses all around the country dreaming about starting your own business. However, only about 3% of people actually will start their own business. Why is this?

Well the most common reason that people don’t start their own business is risk and fear of failure. It’s hard work and risky to develop a business idea and have the confidence to actually start up. And, I believe it takes a special type of person to actually have the courage to go for it.

So, don’t worry too much about other people finding out. Even if they think your idea is fantastic and the best thing since sliced bread, it would take someone in the 3% of the population to actually go for it. Chances are that the people who find out are in the 60% of people who dream about starting their own business, but never will or in the 37% of people who don’t have any aspirations at all to start their own business.

OK, I hear you cry – but what if I tell someone and they happen to be in the 3% of people who really want to start their own business and they steal my idea?

Well, yes there is a small possibility.

Read More

Over the past several decades, the marketing function has undergone evolutionary change.    During the 1950′s and 1960′s, marketing was fairly simple.  There were fewer product categories and fewer products.  There were few media vehicles: television was just coming of age, there were only a few major weekly magazines, and FM radio had yet to be heard. In the 1970′s, alternative radio, UHF television, special interest magazines, and the growing sophistication of direct mail brought greater diversity to the marketing mix.  Marketers began to focus on niche markets.  Successful products spawned product extensions.  New categories developed almost overnight as consumers demanding social change also sought more diversity and uniqueness in their lives. The 1980′s saw the conglomeration of the marketing industry with the advent of mega-agencies such as McCann Worldwide and Saachi & Saachi.  As a result, many skilled executives who were “downsized” formed “boutique” agencies and began specializing in their particular promotional forte.  Niche marketing became more focused.

The 1990′s offered an even more perplexing set of marketing and promotional options:  hundreds of cable television channels; radio stations featuring shock jocks and Christian Coalitions; magazines for every pursuit, profession, or perversion.  And most startling of all, the Internet!

The 21st Century has proven to be even more perplexing.  Today, the challenge to advertisers is: 

“How do you go from interrupting people because you want to, to interrupting people because they want to be interrupted?”

This represents a fundamental shift in the way marketers must look at their customers.  And it represents a fundamental shift in the way the media reaches their readers, listeners, or viewers.

Read More

If you are considering starting a new business in the near future then you either have aspirations to be your own boss or you have viable small business ideas. It may be that you have both. However, without good business ideas that have the potential to fulfill a need your business will struggle to take off. To avoid failure, it is essential that you learn how to evaluate your business ideas honestly and effectively.

Have You Done Your Homework?

In order to evaluate your small business ideas effectively then you will need to put in a lot of time and effort. Research is the key to ensuring that you get off on the best possible foot. However, many individuals fail to do enough research when starting their own business. In an ideal world all business owners would research their business idea fully. They would evaluate them when they have a list of a few possible products or services. However, many wait until they have decided what they want to do before completing cursory research.

In order to evaluate your small business ideas effectively, you need to primarily research the competition in the local area. If there is a lot of competition to an idea and the businesses are well established, then it may be best to move onto another idea. However, if there is only one company to compete with and you have factored improvements upon their service into your business plan then you may decide to continue. You need to create or satisfy a market need so your small business ideas need to pass this stage of the evaluation.

Read More

Making money from your ideas requires a combination of disciplined actions and “good luck.” The disciplined actions include taking advantage of legal protections and using good business practices. “Good luck” has a way of finding those who pursue opportunities with preparation and persistence.

(1) Recognize the market potential for your idea.

Observation and experience can provide insight for a new solution to an old problem. For example, Ann Moore created the “rough draft” first Snugli for her own newborn after a stint in the Peace Corps. She based her approach on her observation of the quiet, contented babies carried in cloth carriers by their African moms. She recognized that she had a potential product with a large market (parents who want comfortable ways for transporting children).

Tip: To evaluate the market potential of your idea, ask yourself, who will buy it? What problem does it solve? Who are the competitors?

(2) Take steps to legally protect your idea.

There was no financial reward for the creator of the smiley face, Harvey Ball, because he did not take steps to legally protect his idea and it fell into the public domain for all of us to enjoy. Similarly, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, reaped no direct financial reward from his invention, although he has been awarded a knighthood for his pioneering work.

To maximize the revenue from a “hit” character, SpongeBob SquarePants, a multi-pronged strategy was used to protect the intellectual property. Copyright protection for the show and registering the trademark in multiple categories covers a broad spectrum of potential spin-off products. You can check online at www.uspto.gov and see that parent company Viacom registered the trademark in numerous categories, protecting its rights to the clothing, toys, games, etc.

Read More