The Carnival of Entrepreneurs #17

The Carnival of Entrepreneurs is back at Startup Spark for its 17th edition. Rolling along nicely - every week we get a few new people sending in submissions, which tells me the Carnival continues to extend its reach through the Web. Thank you to everyone that has supported it so far…

My Carnival Highlights

• Over at A Top Ten List Everyday we get Top 10 Surefire Ways To Come Up With A Million Dollar Idea. It’s an entertaining look at coming up with great ideas, with some worthwhile links out to other sites. I particularly like reasons #3, #6 and #10.
• CA provides 6 leadership mistakes made by small business owners. These ring very true, and I’ve seen them many times over. All 6 reasons are bang on. The last one, which CA sneaks in at the end, is particularly interesting because it’s about survival mode, something I’ve talked about previously and not everyone will be thinking about.
• Debra Moorhead offers up her 10 Simply Successful Secrets which are habits she employs on a regular basis. She includes 5 daily habits, and I particularly like #3 and #4 on her list, although I constantly fail to accomplish both at any useful frequency.
• Ririan has 20 ways to easily overcome your worries. I like a great deal of Ririan’s points; too many to list here. Go check it out.

Tips, Tricks and To-dos

• Sagar Satapathy presents Top 25 Gadgets and Gizmos Every Manager Needs. Sagar mentions a wireless mouse which I just purchased recently, although the one that’s offered at Mogo Mobility looks much cooler.
• Priya Jestin has 50 Tips to Retain Customers. Most interesting is the list of statistics presented at the beginning of the post about customer loss and the cost of acquiring new customers.
• Janet Green recommends leveraging your Chamber of Commerce for success. But Janet has a good warning: you have to work the opportunity once you’ve joined, you can’t just sit back and wait.
• Caroline is doing a Q&A with people about stress and brain fitness. She has some interesting resources available.
• Ryle presents Education and Time Management. Ryle is a strong proponent of combining better time management and continuing education, leading to faster personal and business development.
• Robert Alamos Moreno introduces us to factoring your accounts receivables which can help when your company has a hard time collecting money from clients (and who doesn’t have that problem?)

Business Insights and Ideas

• Murad Ali has a formula for credibility in the workplace. Take a pinch of trust, and time and honesty and you can start building worthwhile relationships between employees and bosses.
• Mike Buckley reminds us that it’s Spring time and that means tax time with some ideas and advice on how to handle taxes for small businesses.
• John Peter presents Joint Ventures - One of the fastest and most profitable ways to skyrocket your online sales! Joint ventures can add value for companies looking to sell online or offline. The goal in business is to always look for and find opportunity - joint ventures and partnerships are an excellent example of that.
• Erek Ostrowski presents Creating a Culture of Productivity and Success. Too many companies pay too little attention to building up a corporate culture, and it most definitely hurts them.
• Wayne Hulbert recommends that you think about recession management and personnel relations. Having suffered through the dot com crash of 2001, I can tell you that it’s critical to think about the things Wayne is talking about. Most importantly - you should be prepared. The good times don’t last forever.

Inspire Me!

• GP asks, “Have you ever experienced a time in your life when everything seems to be going wrong for you?” GP has some tips for you on how to get through the tough times.
• Karen Lynch presents No Matter What. It’s a healthy reminder that we need to follow our own passions to succeed. “Know Thyself” is something everyone just stick on their wall as a reminder.
• John Ingrisano suggests that you choose your personal board of directors carefully. He’s not talking about an official Board of Directors for your business, but more about the people that we surround ourselves with on a daily basis that are there to support and help us.
• Wanda Grindstaff suggests that the biggest enemy to success is your limiting beliefs.
• Donald Latuhamina presents Self-Check: Are You Doing What Matters to You? It’s a common theme - do what you love, find what you should be doing - but a lot of people struggle with this more than they should or need to.

Online Success

• Lifuchi Kalechi offers some basic advice on making money with blogs and AdSense. There’s a lot of advice floating around about how to make money with blogs, and AdSense is still the #1 way people do it. I don’t like it, but I’ve seen it work for others…
• Sundance takes things a bit further with a 25 step plan for creating, marketing and making money from your blog.
• Azmi Mufti recommends that you think like an entrepreneur if you want to make money online. There are certainly entrepreneurial traits and practices that will benefit people who want to make money online.
• Nenad Ristic presents 8 Reasons Why I Hate Internet Marketing Videos. Marketing products (Internet-based ones and otherwise) through video is growing in popularity. I don’t think this trend will stop but it’s always good to look at both sides of the coin when deciding whether you want to take an approach or not.

Conclusion

Thanks again to all the contributors! I hope everyone will link back to this post and help us promote the Carnival of Entrepreneurs.

Next week the Carnival stays at Startup Spark but I’ve got to organize a list of hosts after that. This Carnival is bursting at the seams and it needs fresh eyes and attention from new bloggers that want to host it. Don’t forget: You can host too! Just email me.