Category: Tools and Information

This Brooklyn Company Just Introduced a Way Cool Folding Chair (Yes, That’s Possible) | Inc.com

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Jessica Banks designs magic tricks. The thing is, Banks’s magic tricks are disguised as furniture.

She’s the founder of RockPaperRobot, a robotics furniture maker in Brooklyn. Her newest offering, the Ollie chair, is her company’s first attempt to appeal to a mass-market audience and to make her sleight of hand more accessible to the not-ultra-rich — without breaking the bank herself. To fund, manufacture, and sell the chairs, RockPaperRobot turned to Kickstarter. The campaign has raised $220,000 so far, well beyond its initial goal of $80,000, and will end on March 29 at 9 a.m. ET.

Read More

How To Prioritize Your Ecommerce Startup | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Electronic commerce, or ecommerce, can do almost everything that a brick-and-mortar store can do. Moreover, it’s cheaper to set up, easier to attract buyer traffic, easier to process orders, and easier to distribute electronic or physical goods. And your store is open 24/7 and can reach customers all over the world.

Since ecommerce is so flexible, many entrepreneurs launch their startups as ecommerce ventures. Instead of spending 6 figures to build a full scale business that may or may not work, it’s possible to build one with 5 figures to see how things work out. If the business happens to be as successful as envisioned, it can then be scaled up.

Read More

Reality Television isn’t Reality: My Journey to Startup Success | The Startup Magazine

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

While popular TV shows like ‘Shark Tank’ may make it look like it’s easy for startups to secure funding, the reality isn’t always so kind. The harsh truth is that ‘Shark Tank’ scenarios do not exist in the real world: as an entrepreneur, it is highly unlikely that you are going to find yourself in a situation where four millionaires are sitting in front of you, attentive, and ready to enter into a bidding war over investment in your company. Reality is much more complicated and, unfortunately, an entrepreneur’s road to success isn’t as cut and dry as TV might make it seem.

Luckily, there are strategies that help increase your odds of success. I’m here to share those strategies and let you in on how my team and I earned the holy grail of the startup world: a funding win from an angel investment competition.

Read More

5 Effective Signage Tips To Promote Your Business | Getentrepreneurial.com

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In this fast-paced tech-oriented world, more and more people are focusing their advertising efforts towards online and mobile marketing practices. This is perfectly understandable; as more than half of all internet traffic is now coming from a mobile device. However, when it comes to grabbing the people attention, it may be sometimes better to use an old-fashioned, well-thought-out graphic sign. And the design that goes into making a sign can have a substantial influence on the number of new customers your company could potentially acquire. That said, here are 5 signage tips you can use to help better promote your business.

Read More

Create a Referral Engine That Works Every Day in Your Business | Duct Tape Marketing

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I’ve written about this topic many times, but it just never get’s old! (Check out the referral marketing archive on Duct Tape Marketing) The fact is, although I’ve been writing about the idea of referral generation for years, it always remains relevant, no matter what marketing trends and technologies come and go.

Getting referrals can often seem like a daunting task for marketers, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve put together a list of recommendations you can use to teach your clients how to build referrals (not to mention teach yourself a thing or two).

Read More

Should you install solar panels on your roof? Ask Google | Mashable

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In 2015, Google launched Project Sunroof, a map that shows which houses have enough sun exposure for solar panels to be a viable energy source. However, the original map was very limited, covering only the San Francisco Bay Area, Fresno, California and Boston.

Now, Google has greatly expanded the project to cover all 50 U.S. states, with a total of 60 million buildings in the database.

Read More

What If There Was A Way To Change How You Looked On Google? | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Negative perception from consumers often results in poorer sales and margins just because of negative search results. The role of online reputation management in today’s business and media landscape is of paramount importance in today’s digital age. Finally there is a cool business that has solved the issue of unfair and biased search results from “Fake News” and the media. The Reputation Management Company has developed programs that can delete unfavorable results and replace them with relevant and real results.

Despite how huge your company is, be it a small medium sized company or a large multi-national company, customers, prospects and potentially everyone are talking about you. They will tweet how much they like about your product or how undesirable your service is on Facebook. Customer experiences are always shared through word of mouth and increasingly on the social media.

This is why it’s crucial for brands to have a professional team of search engine reputation management experts who can identify negative results and get them removed from the web before they cause any damage.

Read More

To Persuade People, The Key Is To Make Them Feel Good | Life Hack

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever felt it hard to get someone to believe you, or do something that you want them to do? Whether in selling something or just winning friendships, we all need to have skills to persuade another person. You could use it in little things, such as in getting a discount from the market, or landing a major business deal. Follow the three tips below and you will surely be more persuasive.

Read More

How a German-Jewish Mystic Created an American Soap Company Determined to Clean Up the Planet | Adweek

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Read the label on most soaps and you’ll find a few words about freshness and lather. But pick up a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s and you’ll read this: “Whatever unites us is greater than whatever divides us! … Only if constructive-selfish work, perfecting first me, like every arctic owl-penguin-pilot-cat-swallow-beaver-bee, can I teach the Moral ABC.”

It goes on. And on. Hundreds of these tiny, preachy, semi-coherent phrases cover every inch of the bottle. All of them are the work of late visionary Emanuel Bronner, a German-Jewish soap maker who escaped Hitler, then came to America to preach his vision of a unified mankind. Bronner’s mystical rantings landed him in a mental institution (he escaped that, too), after which the good doctor (who wasn’t really a doctor) started selling his family-recipe peppermint soap to finance his itinerant sermonizing—only to begin printing his sermons on the label once he realized people were more into his soap than his teachings.

Read More