The 11th Carnival of Entrepreneurs Is Here

After 2 very successful sojourns into the blogosphere the Carnival of Entrepreneurs is back home for a quick stopover with its 11th edition.

As always we’ve got a great list of entrepreneurial posts for you and I hope you take a look and enjoy.

Spread the word, link back, tell your friends and keep the Carnival of Entrepreneurs going strong! It helps everyone involved…

My Carnival Highlights

• Silicon Valley Blogger presents Top 20 Dumbest Business Ideas That Made Millions…Or Not! The key take away point is that even if an idea seems totally nuts to you, it just might fly. There’s some great, hysterical and absurd ideas that have succeeded (and failed). For pure entertainment value (and you’ll probably say a few times, “I should have thought of that!”) this post is worth reading.
• Paul helps explain the ups and downs of the economy and what is called “Creative Destruction.” I found this sentence particularly worthwhile, “Our economic system continues to outperform the rest of the world because of the radical innovation that our entrepreneurial culture produces.”
• Debra Moorhead presents How to Set Clear, Definite Goals. I particularly like suggestion #2 - keep a goals book. I may just start doing that…
• Matt Everson has 8 Ways To Improve Your Business With Gratitude. First, I love the post title. Second, the information is well worth reading. Matt wants you to create a gratitude system that you can apply regularly, that becomes habit. I think that’s a great idea.

Give Me The Practical Stuff

• Alex Shalman presents Money Management for Beginners. It’s a good intro to some money management issues, and a good reminder that you should start managing your money as soon as you have $1.
• Collis Ta’eed is working on a multi-part series on What it Takes to Start a Business Online. He’s talking about time first - time management, and more. A good element of this is managing cash flow, which is a time-related issue.
• Charles Green argues that freedom of choice is not always a good thing. At the end of the day, with too many choices, we look for someone to trust, and it’s harder to find trust with more choice. Go read the article, he’ll explain it better than me.
• Bonny Albo presents Get Free Mailing Lists: Work With Other Entrepreneurs To Find and Use Free Mailing Lists. Bonny isn’t suggesting that you trade email lists with others (which could result in you sending things to people without their opt-in.) But she does recommend that you find other entrepreneurs in your areas of expertise and work together to exchange content and ideas to maximize each other’s mailing lists - which could prove very effective.
• John Ingrisano has some tips for how husbands and wives can survive working together. I’d venture to say that “keeping business out of the bedroom” and “getting away from each other” are going to be the 2 suggestions people agree with very, very quickly.
• Urban Gyrl has a basic and practical guide on what you’ll need to setup a home office. For anyone just getting started with a home office this is a worthwhile article to check out.

A Heavy Dose of Inspiration

• Dennis has 20 Questions to Change Your Life. There are some very interesting questions in there, including some that you wouldn’t immediately know the “right” answer to get the “score” you want. That’s a good thing. But, the one problem is that there’s no real way to evaluate your answers after, so it’s not as great a reference tool as it could be.
• Wayne Hurlbert presents Entrepreneurship: Overcoming your fears. Wayne points out that the same factors that drive entrepreneurship can be equally frightening for many potential, self-employed people. Overcoming your fear is key to making the leap and being successful.
• Stephanie West Allen suggests that you make some promises to yourself and improve your week.
• Michael Cavano reminds us to follow our purpose. First, you need to understand your purpose - why you’re doing what you’re doing, where you’re going in life, etc. Figure that out and you’ll be much better off in the short and long term.
• Praveen presents Business Lessons From Goldman Sachs. I particularly like, “Long-Term Greedy.” That just sounds so interesting…
• Walt reminds us that it’s our actions not our words that really measure our success.

Other Great Submissions

• Matthew Paulson suggests that you Stay Away From Store Credit Cards. Given how inundated we all are with various credit card offers, it’s good to get some advice on this. How many credit cards do you have?
• Robert McIntosh presents Entrepreneurial tools you will surely love. If there’s a way to save a bit of time or money using a more efficient, simpler and better tool, I’d suggest you take a look. Of course, it’s easy to get sucked into using too many tools, so don’t go crazy! Find what works for you, and leverage that.
• Michelle has 4 tips to decrease how often you’re checking your email. We’re all obsessed with email, there’s no shame in admitting it, but how we manage email and stay productive through it is critical.
• Slade presents Martha Stewart Style Blog Marketing. Slade’s point is this, “Rather than trying to sell the perfect cookie to everyone in America, Martha decided to make a buck selling information about how to make a great cookie. Transforming her expertise into a career lies more in her ability to communicate.”
• Jack Yoest presents Mothers Working At Home which reminds us that reforms are still needed by the IRS and governments to help support the growing number of women that choose to work at home and take care of their children.
• Kumiko Suzuki presents How To Make Money Online Uploading Videos - The Ultimate Guide. Online video is set to explode online (even more than it has) and entire businesses are going to emerge from it. Monetizing video is still hard, but here’s a list of sites that can help.
• Tatum Manny asks whether you want to be rich or wealth and has an interesting way of separating the two. Which would you prefer?

Thank you to everyone that submitted for this week’s Carnival of Entrepreneurs. As always we have a broad assortment of content and information that can help entrepreneurs in all stages of their lives.

Next week the Carnival will be hitting the road again - with Emmanuel Olawutosin. You can go to the Blog Carnival profile page and submit your content there!