10 Lessons College Won’t Teach You — But Entrepreneurship Will | Entrepreneur.com

College is a step toward adulthood for many, but the transition from bachelor’s degree to entrepreneur can feel a bit jarring. Keeping your chin up, a stiff upper-lip and other empty clichés everyone says to you can’t really prepare you for one really important truth: There isn’t a curriculum for adulthood. Knowing this, here are a few changes to expect when you take your first steps away from college and into starting you own business.

1. Attendance is always mandatory.

In college, you may have ditched class or ducked out early and still managed to pass. This isn’t going to fly in the startup world.  Rain or shine, young treps need to show up and do so in a punctual fashion. Not only will it keep you in the loop of the day-to-day activities but will also set a good example for employees.

2. Scheduling isn’t set in stone.

Your Friday morning biology lab is finally over. What a relief. While you may be thanking your lucky stars you don’t have to roll out of bed after a crazy night to go and dissect a frog, don’t get too excited. Adult life and entrepreneurship means you’re beholden to a schedule of necessity rather than attendance sheets. As a young trep, you are the harbinger of your own success, meaning you sometimes will need to ask yourself to come in on a Saturday.

3. Free time isn’t free.

Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as “free time” in the world of startups. During college you may have had huge breaks between class or long holidays but startup reality is quite different. While most of your friends are working at finding a nine-to-five job and attending happy hour, you are slaving away at your business plan or putting out fires at your company. And that’s just the reality of being an entrepreneur — sacrificing free time in exchange for freedom.

via 10 Lessons College Won’t Teach You — But Entrepreneurship Will | Entrepreneur.com.

Fake It Until You Make It | Entrepreneur.com

Do you ever feel like you don’t quite deserve your success or aren’t fully qualified to do what you do? That common feeling is what psychologists call the “impostor syndrome,” a phenomenon where successful people feel like frauds waiting for someone to realize that they’re unfit for their leadership roles.

“Millions of people, from entrepreneurs to celebrities, have a hard time internalizing their accomplishments,” says Valerie Young, an expert on impostor syndrome and, author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women (Crown Business, 2011).

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

The impostor syndrome is especially common among people who become successful quickly or early, and among outsiders, such as women in male-dominated industries. “They explain away their success as luck or timing,” Young says. “They feel this sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

That fear is stressful, and often leads people to hold back instead of pushing for bigger clients or more challenging opportunities.

Most of the people who feel like impostors are actually exceptionally capable. It’s their self-image that’s off. “Feeling like an impostor is different than being an impostor,” Young says. “Feelings aren’t facts.”

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Rebranding Helps Nudge Clothing Lines to a New Level | Apparel News.net

Last year, iconic fashion house Yves Saint Laurent renamed itself Saint Laurent Paris, and just recently, its parent company, PPR, one of fashion’s most esteemed companies, announced its own name change. It will be called Kering, according to Chief Executive and Chairman Francois-Henri Pinault.

DENISE’S NEW LOOK: Alpinestars by Denise Focil changed its name to AS by DF and debuted a more contemporary look.

The new name demonstrates growth and new focus, Pinault said. “In a few months’ time we will have completely transitioned from a holding company with an unfocused portfolio into a cohesive, integrated, international group focused on apparel and accessories,” he said.

Some veteran Los Angeles–area fashion lines are in the process of renaming, or “rebranding,” themselves, too. The process is risky, but rebranding can make the difference between sagging sales and stellar business.

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Bhutan to Go 100% Organic by 2020 – GreenPacks.org

Bhutan, the tiny remote kingdom nestling in the Himalayas, is already a largely organic nation. The kingdom however wants to do more on that front. Bhutan has now announced plans to go 100% organic.

And, when that gets done, Bhutan will become the first country in the world to follow fully organic agricultural practices. Thus it will ensure food safety and security to its population of around 700,000. They are planning to attain 100% organic in its food production by 2020.This decision by the state was announced by Bhutanese minister for agriculture and forest Pema Gyamtsho at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2013 as a part of their decision to live in harmony with nature.

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Wet Seal Agrees to $7.5 Million Settlment for Employee Discrimination | Apparel News.net

To settle a class-action lawsuit alleging racial discrimination against African-Americans, The Wet Seal Inc. agreed to pay $7.5 million, including $5.58 million in relief and damages, to its African-American staff that was fired in its King of Prussia, Penn., store in 2009.

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Sleeping Bag Coat For The Homeless Draws Fashion Industry Attention | Huffington Post.com

A coat developed by a social entrepreneur and designed for homeless people is now a somewhat hot item in the high-end fashion world.

Earlier this month, 23-year-old Veronika Scott told PBS News Hour that she had plans to add a for-profit arm to her non-profit company, The Empowerment Plan, which has donated over 1,000 coats to the homeless since launching in late 2010.

Scott’s foray into the private market comes after she debuted the coats at last year’s Aspen Fashion Week to much fanfare, helping her land a $100,000 investment from the billionaire founder of Spanx, Sara Blakely.

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Co-marketing is a powerful lead generation tactic|ducttapemarketing

One of the greatest lead generation tactics around is the trusted referral. I mean, I know you know that, but what are you actually doing to take advantage of it?

photo credit: Wicked LIttle Cake Company via photopin cc

What are you doing to make certain that every single day dozens of unpaid sales calls are being made on your behalf?Sound intriguing? Co-marketing, or getting others to actively market your business, isn’t a new concept, but surprisingly few do it actively.

The basic idea behind it is to form a small network of “best of class” providers who can act as an additional arm of marketing for each other. I’ve seen this done with remarkable results – sometimes tripling and quintupling the number of leads an organization creates -  particularly for businesses that operate on a the local level.

Read on for how to set it up.

What the Rolling Stones Can Teach You About Business | Inc.com

In December, my wife, Elaine, and I attended a 50th-anniversary concert of the Rolling Stones at Brooklyn, New York’s new Barclays Center. They’re often referred to as the Strolling Bones these days, and with good reason. They’re old. You can’t help noticing how weathered their faces look. So it’s all the more amazing to watch Mick Jagger, at 69, strutting around the stage just like he did half a century ago. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He and I are about the same age. “Why is he doing this?” I asked myself. “He doesn’t need the money. What is it?”

Then it hit me. I dropped down into my seat and started to laugh. “Why are you laughing?” Elaine shouted over the din. “I just figured out what’s been driving me all these years,” I shouted back.

As I told her later, I’d had an epiphany. I’d suddenly understood the meaning of the word passion. Mick Jagger, I realized, keeps doing what he does for the same reason that I keep doing what I do: because he has to. Performing defines him. He has to do it in order to feel alive–which is also why I start and build businesses.

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Yahoo Buys Coolness From Teenager for $30M | Wired.com

There’s no logical explanation for Yahoo’s reported $30 million acquisition of Summly, an app created by a 17-year-old Brit that launched five months ago. The team and technology are unexceptional and the app itself will be shut down. What Yahoo really gets for its big check is momentum and buzz.

In other words, Yahoo bought Summly to appear cool again.

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eBay: We Tested Google Advertising & It Didn’t Pay | MarketingVOX

eBay has been one of the largest advertisers on Google, but that might not be the case for much longer. It decided to do an A-B split test to determine how many of those clicks they would have eventually seen even without those paid placements; even going so far as to go dark in 30 market areas to provide a control. In a study conducted with eBay Labs along including fancy degree holders from Berkeley and U. Chicago, it showed that it only made back about 25 cents on the dollar spent.

The study shows that brand ads – and by that they mean ads that focus on the brand names of the products to be theoretically purchased, rather than “branding” ads – can be efficiently effective for potential new users to the retailer, but tend to be unnecessary for those who are already familiar with the retailer. eBay, more than most, would suffer from a high familiarity ratio, thus making its relative efficiency low.

One thing the full version of the study appears to miss, however, is that very high clickthrough rate experienced by an ad due to a specific brand reference that is common to the search term may have another financial benefit to the advertiser: increasing the “quality score” of the ad campaign, and thus reducing the expense of other clicks in the campaign.

eBay bids on a universe of more than 170 million keywords. It spends more than $50 million a year on online advertising.

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The Real Cost of Self-Publishing: Beyond Vanity | Bloomberg

Beyond Vanity

Stephen King rocked the publishing world when he began distributing books online in 2000. J.K. Rowling roiled the industry again in 2011 when she decided to self-publish her Harry Potter series through her own platform, Pottermore. Such big names join thousands of others who are self-publishing books — though many do so because it’s their only option.

More than 235,000 books and e-books were self-published in 2011 in the U.S., four times the number in 2006, according to Bowker, an agency that assigns books unique identification codes.

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Kitchen Appliance Garage | IKEA Hackers.net

Materials: Varde glass door wall cabinet, standard Ikea base cabinets & Ekby Bjarnum wall shelves

Description: We were looking for a built in storage unit/appliance garage to store all of our small counter-top appliances. The problems we were facing were:

1) Cost…highly expensive to have custom built

2) Availability…we could find roller door cabinetry but most was too shallow to house our large kitchen aid mixer and Magimix…so

IKEA to the rescue. We wanted all of the clutter HIDDEN and we wanted something that looked custom built to fit the space.

See Instructions.

Broccoli and Banana Smoothie | rawfoodrecipes.com

You may be thinking, “broccoli and banana?!” Yes we know its an unlikely pair, however, this smoothie works out very nicely. The sweet creaminess of frozen bananas helps to smooth over any overly green flavor of broccoli. The spinach and spirulina are hardly even detectable, however they do contribute to the creaminess of texture. Maca and lucuma add a subtle maltiness that is quite delicious. The result is a thick, creamy smoothie packed to the brim with green nutrition! Top with bee pollen for an immune system boost as well as extra protein and B vitamins.

See Recipe.

The Next Step After a Mistake | The Simple Dollar

I’ve messed up many, many times along my financial journey. I’m willing to bet you’ve messed up a time or two as well.

I’ll spend too much. I’ll forget a bill and have to face the consequences of the lateness. I’ll try to adopt a new positive habit and then find myself slipping in my diligence with that habit.

Whenever I find myself making a big financial mistake, I feel a ton of regret. I’ll usually find myself wondering whether or not I’m a failure and whether or not I’m actually going to be able to continue on a better path.

Can I do this? Can I really do this?

This is a thought process that I’m far from alone in going through. Almost everyone I’ve ever talked to who has challenged themselves to make a life change has made mistakes along the way, mistakes that left them second-guessing the whole process. They’re left with guilt and doubt and a sense that this whole thing might just be a failure.

It’s not a failure.

Mistakes are a normal part of anything new that we take on. We are not perfect. We make mistakes because we’re trying something different than what we’re used to.

The real challenge is to learn how to handle those mistakes and turn them from being setbacks into being tools for success.

For me, there are three powerful tactics for moving on from a mistake.

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10 Perks Your Small Business Can Afford | Inc.com

Perks that make your employees happy don’t have to cost an arm and a leg– really.

A happy, engaged workforce is a high performing workforce. When you hear of companies like SAP that offers onsite putting greens or Google, which offers onsite everything, you probably think, “We have 25 employees and cannot compete on that level. And where would we put a putting green anyway?”

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