Category Free Ways to Market

Feb 8 2011

How to get rich in America

A dozen entrepreneurs, a dozen success stories: proof that you don’t need a lot of money to make a go of it, but you do have to be smart about how you invest your energy.

Smoothie operators
Kyle and Aaron Campos, 27 and 33
Buckeye, Ariz.
Lesson: If you must borrow from your friends and family, keep it formal

The downside of mixing business with blood should be obvious – or at least it will be when you start getting late-night calls from Aunt Tillie asking about your schedule for an IPO. But hitting up relatives is how a lot of businesses get going. It’s what Kyle Campos and his older brother Aaron had to do.

In 2004 the brothers, both software engineers, quit their jobs in Santa Barbara and decamped to Buckeye, Ariz. After visiting relatives there earlier that year, Kyle had become convinced that the town was “filled with wide-open opportunities,” especially compared with the software biz. “The tech sector was getting hit hard,” says Aaron. “I didn’t have a good feeling.”
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Feb 8 2011

Teen Venture Capitalist Tells His Story of Going from Public Assistance to Millionaire by Age 14

Farrah Gray went from being on public assistance to becoming a millionaire by the time he was 14 years old. In “Reallionaire: Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out,” Gray and his co-author, Fran Harris, recount the remarkable journey that began when Gray was 6 years old, and his mother became seriously ill, prompting his decision to provide for his family from then on.

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Feb 8 2011

Becoming Wealthy One Bite at a Time

Saving Money

By Ric Edelman

From Inside Personal Finance.

A lot of people think rich people become rich because they either make a lot of money or they inherit a lot. But that’s not true for the vast majority of Americans. In fact, most of the wealth accumulated in this country was accumulated over a lifetime of saving. You see, the reason rich people get richer and poor people get poorer is that rich people keep doing the things that got them rich in the first place, while poor people keep doing the things that keep them poor. So, let’s examine how rich people became, well, rich.

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Feb 7 2011

The 7 Top Ways Millionaires Become Wealthy

There are 7 common factors to those who build net fortunes of one million dollars or more. In America, there has never been more personal wealth than there is today; yet most American’s are not wealthy. Amazingly, a mere 3.5% of our households own almost one-half of the wealth in the United States! Although we may be hard working, educated, moderate to high-income earners, why are so few of us affluent?

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Feb 7 2011

Retire Rich

Entrepreneurs are good at growing businesses, but when it comes to personal portfolios, many all too often fall short. Experts share tips, strategies and secrets for the best ways you can accumulate wealth and retire rich.

Retirement is not a word that often rolls off an entrepreneur’s lips. Whether starting a new business or enjoying the benefits of an established one, few entrepreneurs care to think about their golden years-or anything else that might separate them from their companies.

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Feb 7 2011

Sniffing Out a Good Business Opportunity

How to tell whether that opportunity is really too good to be true

We are all a little vulnerable right after the holidays. After so much good cheer, our defenses may be down a little, especially if we have been unemployed for a while. All of a sudden, some of those spam e-mails offering “The Greatest Homebased Business…Ever” or “Raise Chinchillas in Your Backyard for Big $$$$” start to look just a wee bit attractive.

Many of these “come on” offers are actually quite legal. They are known to lawyers as “Business Opportunities” (note the capital letters). A Business Opportunity is like a franchise, except that you don’t operate under someone else’s registered trademark that has a recognized value in the marketplace. Common examples of Business Opportunities are:

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Feb 7 2011

How to Get Off the Hamster Wheel

To be truly successful, you have to take time off.

Starting a business is a little like having a baby: at the beginning, your life revolves around figuring out how to help it survive. Everything else–family, friends, health, hobbies, even sleep–takes second place. For first-timeentrepreneurs with no previous practice in raising a business to maturity, the experience can be even more overwhelming. They can be so passionate about the company that they can’t bear to step away for a moment–or so terrified about financial doom that they don’t dare to. And that’s where they get in trouble.

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Feb 7 2011

Weird Companies That Work

Marketing advice from four pioneering entrepreneurs

By Pattie Simone

Starting and running a typical small venture is challenging under the best of circumstances. If you’re starting a mainstream company, there are plenty of support mechanisms and resources you can rely on for help. But what do entrepreneurs do when they are in unusual or niche businesses? We decided to query the owners of several avant-garde businesses — from a startup to a fledgling global firm — to find out how they go about marketing their unique products and services, the challenges they faced and the lessons learned from their diverse journeys.

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Feb 7 2011

10 Marketing Trends for 2011

From geotargeting to mobile apps and social media, here’s what you need to consider now.

By Susan Gunelius

As the global economy struggles to correct itself, and social-media marketing becomes a strategic imperative, small businesses will have exciting opportunities to expand in new directions this year.

The need for trust, value and brand transparency, among other trends from last year, are just as important today. But the current shift to geotargeting, mobile marketing and online reputation management require that small businesses modify their plans to surpass competitors.

Here are 10 marketing trends that small businesses should incorporate now to be positioned for success from the start.

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