Kids and Money: The Teenage Years
August 21, 2008 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Entrepreneurship and Business, Kids and Money, Spending and Saving
This week we’ve been talking about kids and money. Don’t gloss over these articles, even if you don’t have kids, because you most likely will someday. Lack of financial education is the number one reason why we have so much credit card debt and outrageous foreclosure statistics as a nation. We don’t receive financial education as young children, as teenagers, or as college students. Schools figure that parents will teach their kids how to handle money, but the the problem is that many parents don’t know how to handle their own money. Parents figure that schools will teach kids how to handle money. So, there’s an obvious deficiet of financial education in our country, and the only organizations that do give out free financial education are credit card companies. Can you guess how they teach how to handle money? It starts and ends with a lot of plastic.
Coca-Cola: The Ultimate Brand
May 15, 2008 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Entrepreneurship and Business
This is a Coke. If you share my love of Coke, then you’re looking at it right now wishing you had a fountain Coke from Mcdonald’s. It’s Coca-Cola, but we all know it as a Coke. When you sit down at a restaurant, you say, “I’ll have a coke, please.” You don’t say, I’ll have a Pepsi. Even if you’re a Pepsi lover (May God have mercy on you), you don’t request a Pepsi. You ask for a Coke. And don’t tell me that you ask for a Cola. And for those of you in the North, asking for a “pop” is too generic. That could mean any kind of soft drink. What’s my point? My point is that Coke’s brand has become a word in the English dictionary. There are many brands out there that have infused themselves as a routine word, rather than just a brand. Q-Tip, Kleenex, Google (i.e. someone says to you, “just google it”), and pretty much every prescription and over-the-counter medicine you can think of. No one ever calls Tylenol by it’s generic name, Acetaminophin. This is your goal when starting a company. Whether it’s a product or a service that you are selling, you want your brand to become mainstream. You want it to be synonymous with the type of product or service you are offering.
Five Real Ways To Make More Money This Year
January 16, 2008 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Careers, Entrepreneurship and Business, Real Estate
Is there anyone that doesn’t want to make more moneyw this year? I didn’t think so. I made $9,000 more income in 2007 than I did in 2006. This was due to a job promotion and income from a side business with very little expenses. I will propose five ways to make more money this year without having to sell your body on the street.
Questions To Ask When Setting Up A Small Business
November 6, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Entrepreneurship and Business
You want to start up a small business, but you don’t know where to start. Join the club with the millions of other Americans who start up small businesses, but don’t set them up properly. Too many people are incorporating when they don’t need to, or vice versa. Here are three major questions you need to ask yourself when starting up a small business.
The Top 25 Young Entrepreneurs in America
October 29, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Entrepreneurship and Business
Business Week Online put together their list of top 25 young entrepreneurs in America.
Reading this article and looking at the types of businesses started by young twentysomethings will either inspire you or frustrate you. I think it does a little bit of both for me. On one hand, I say to myself, “If they can do it, I can do it”. And on the other hand, I say, “Dang, why didn’t I think of that?”. The reason I shared this list with you is to inspire you. Instead of us mourning over the fact that we didn’t think of such a great idea, we should read about these stories of young people starting businesses and use it as inspiration to start our own businesses. You know my philosophy about easily starting your own business. Treat yourself as a business. Focus on the talents and skills that you possess, and use it to build a business around yourself. No, you might not ever go public or have a house in the Hamptons, but you’ll be doing something fulfilling, and your income potential will be limitless.
Five Tips For Effectively Flipping A House
October 11, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Entrepreneurship and Business, Real Estate
I’ve been watching a lot of the house flipping shows on TLC and HGTV lately. I’ve also been doing some reading about house flipping and how to do it the right way. It seems like everyone has their own opinion about house flipping, but I am still intrigued by it. I am intrigued, because you really can be just an average joe and make some decent cash from it, no matter what the housing market is like. I mean, if some of the idiots on these TV shows can make money doing it, surely we can too, right? Well, I don’t think it’s as easy as the TV shows make it look, but I think you can be successful with it if you use wise judgment and don’t get too greedy. Here are five tips that I have observed to be very important if you want to make a profit off of house flipping instead of going bankrupt.
Four Tips For Starting A Business With Low Risk and Big Success
September 26, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Careers, Entrepreneurship and Business
I was reading this post on Career Ramblings, and it made me think about how our educational system has slowly taken away the importance of entrepreneurship and the ability to create jobs for others. Do you realize that when you launch a new business, you are adding value to your community and to the job market. The narrow-minded idea of going to GET a job riight out of college has diminished the value and importance of thinking like that of an entrepreneur. What about starting a business while you are in college? The main argument for having the mentality of going to work for someone else is that it’s easier to get a job rather than start a business, and it’s more risky to start a business than go and get a job. I don’t think that is always true if you are wise about the way you start a business. Here are four tips for launching a business at the start of your working life.
Write A Successful Business Plan On Your Own
September 20, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Entrepreneurship and Business
Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be such a daunting task if you know what to include and what not to include in it. Some businesses don’t need a business plan. However, writing one out can be a good way to figure out if you really want to go through with the business. A business plan should include three major sections:
- The BUSINESS CONCEPT section
- The MARKTING PLAN section
- The FINANCIAL section
Weekend Update: Some Great Articles to Read Over the Weekend
September 8, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Entrepreneurship and Business, Financial Links, Random, Spending and Saving
My colleague over at Lifespy wrote these two articles:
How To Make Money. A comprehensive tutorial about the most common ways to make money. My favorite parts were his insights about saving money with other monthly bills rather than cutting out life’s little luxuries and knowing when taking a second job is financially worth the extra income.
Protect Your Money After a Break-Up. Everyone needs to know how to protect themselves from the bitter ex-girlfriend or boyfriend!
Consumerist gives hope to those facing foreclosure
Lazy Man gives us Financial lessons from the NFL
Small Business: Do You Have a Blog?
August 29, 2007 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Entrepreneurship and Business
If you’re currently running a small business or a home-based business, but you are not writing or managing a blog for your business, there is a problem. Blogs are probably the easiest self-publishing tool to create on the internet. If you already have a website for your smalll business, then you’re already paying for a domain name and a web hosting package to house the domain and its content.
How to Set it Up:
