v.18 n. 45 – Released November 19, 2014
Fatburger: How One Burger Chain Profits From Turmoil Abroad | Businessweek
Political protests, disease outbreaks, terrorist campaigns—U.S. business owners considering expanding internationally would be forgiven for deciding to stay at home. But name a tumultuous spot abroad—Hong Kong, Iraq, Egypt—and Andy Wiederhorn has probably opened a burger shop there in the past seven years.
Wiederhorn has taken his Los Angeles-based franchise, Fatburger, from a struggling also-ran to a $125 million company by opening in 32 countries since 2007. He has 200 international locations now and an additional 350 in development, including in places rocked by unrest, such as Tunisia and Libya. Despite the advances of Islamic State, a second store in Iraq is also in the works.
10 Steps to Learning Your Customers’ Behaviors | Inc.com
In many endeavors, let alone product development, there’s a gap between knowing what’s best and actually doing it.
Gaining behavioral insights about your potential customers usually falls into one of these gaps. The reason? It can be awkward and exceedingly time-consuming observing and recording the behavior of people you’ve never met as they use or struggle to use your product.
“A conversation with a stranger can be a little, well, strange,” writes Jon Kolko, Vice President of Consumer Design at Blackboard and the Founder and Director of Austin Center for Design, in his new book.
But founders, even shy ones, should take heart. For one thing, there are ways to overcome the social challenge of ethnographic research. For another, the insights you’ll gain about your customers’ behaviors will drastically supercede anything you’d learn from focus groups or online surveys.
To Franchise or Not to Franchise | Lydia Mehit
So, you want to start a business and you’ve decided a franchise is for you. There are a number of advantages to selecting a franchise. Here are several of them.
- It is a proven business model.
- You have a pre-defined target market.
- You have brand recognition because the product or service is already known.
- The business methods and systems are already in place, all you have to do is follow them.
- Training is provided for you and your management team.
- Operations manual that details all of the job descriptions, processes, procedures, rules and requirements for operating the business is provided.
- You receive on-the-job training at a working franchise.
- The franchise team helps you open the business and gets you started on the right foot.
Continue reading “To Franchise or Not to Franchise | Lydia Mehit”
5 Intangibles Your Ecommerce Business Should Be Focusing On, But Isn’t | Getentrepreneurial.com
At any given time, there are thousands of small business entrepreneurs looking to create a meaningful presence on the web. As you read this, some traditional businesses are finding a new home online, some “purely online” ecommerce businesses are taking birth, and the mad rush for every website out there to go mobile is only intensifying.
If you are an entrepreneur just starting out, you’ll eventually face what is called “information paralysis” – the sheer weight of information that threatens to freeze you. You aren’t responsible for this information overload, but your best bet is to absorb what matters to you and stay committed to make your ecommerce business work.
Pulling out your new ecommerce site from the hidden corners of the web and taking to stupendous popularity and profits is sweat-inducing, scary hard work. Slap focus together with assiduousness and your ecommerce business will see new light.
Smartlation Smart Translation Services | Cool Business Ideas
Using a patent-pending algorithm that analyses translator data from a vast pool of registered translators, Smartlation promises to give users the freedom to select the translation services that best meet their requirements and budget.
What does this mean for users? Let’s say you need a legal document translated from English into Farsi and Portuguese. Smartlation lets you specify not only languages but also specific areas of expertise so you find translators who are experienced and knowledgeable. The platform also makes the procedure simple by managing both jobs i.e. Farsi and Portuguese in one place. Transactions also go through the platform simplifying the payment process.
How to improve your mailing list before everyone unsubscribes | Mashable
Reply-all disasters are so common, they have their own Wikipedia page.They’re so ubiquitous, even, that the bad manners of reply-all offenders overshadow the bad manners of those who make and distribute mailing lists in the first place. While the listservs that dominated the 2000s may not be as common anymore, mailing lists are still central to the operation and social functioning of companies, universities and other associations. For the record, “listserv” refers to a software used to send mass emails; “mailing list” is the colloquial term.
We’ve compiled 11 tips that will help you improve your mailing list etiquette — and maximize effectiveness, while you’re at it.
1. Repeat to yourself: Listservs are public.
Think about what you’re sending before you send it — if it belongs in a private email or makes more sense to send to an individual, you shouldn’t send it through a mailing list. Also check the recipient of the email before you send it. This year, the University of Virginia’s top-ranked law school sent admissions stats of more than 100 people who applied for clerkships to a listserv of all those applicants, and then sent another email with subject line “PLEAE DELETE IMMEDIATELY.” But we all know email doesn’t work like that.
Learn Better through Variation: A Case for Getting Away from Your Desk | Page19
You might really like your office, but getting away from it can help you learn better and remember more. Here’s why.
Routine can be very helpful when it comes to building a framework for creative work. But if you want to learn something new, shaking up the standard will serve you better.
According to How We Learn, varying your workspace is much better for your learning than sitting down in the same place to toil. Why? Because of how our brains store memories.
Imagine it’s Tuesday and you’re listening to your favorite jazz album while working through a few pages of notes on a seminar you just attended. A few days later, you’re at a friend’s house and she puts on the exact same jazz album. The areas of the brain that hold the memories of what you learned on Tuesday while listening to jazz will be activated, making it easier for you to retrieve that information.
Toyota Keeps Piling Into Fuel Cells As It Runs Away From EVs | Forbes
Toyota keeps on running toward hydrogen fuel cells and away from all-electric vehicles in what amounts to the most decisive strategy in the auto industry for the future of alternative power trains.
At the Los Angeles auto show, Toyota executives planned to elaborate on the company’s deepening investments in fuel-cell vehicles, after a weekend announcement that it would begin selling next year a model called “Mirai” — Japanese for “future” — that will travel 300 miles on a hydrogen tank and can be refilled in less than five minutes. The car, Toyota has said previously, will go on sale in Japan in April for about $60,000 and be introduced in the U.S. and Europe a few months later.
The company’s embrace of fuel cells reminds some observers of other significant moments of commitment for Toyota over the decades, including in 1989 when it launched the Lexus luxury brand in the United States and in 1997, when it started selling Prius gasoline-electric hybrids. Both moves redefined the American auto industry in different ways.
This Chinese Music Video Is Every Kind Of WTF
This is a batshit insane music video for the song “Chick Chick” by Chinese pop group Wang Rong Rollin. It makes stuff like “What Does The Fox Say?” seem absolutely tame. I don’t know what the hell I just watched but I’ll have whatever they’re having.
