Small Business Trends

Welcome to the March 12, 2007 edition of Carnival of the Capitalists, a weekly roundup of links to blog writings by independent thinkers on business and economics topics. I am this week’s host.

Please show your support of the writers in this week’s Carnival by visiting their blogs and by pointing out this post to your readers. In the words of the Black Eyed Peas, let’s get it started:

Managing and Hiring - Some of the most intriguing posts in this week’s roundup, as a group, were about the people in our businesses — managing, hiring and promoting:

• The Merely Good and the Really Great — Wilson Ng writes an excellent essay on understanding the difference between merely knowing a subject and mastering it, noting that some things are “easy to learn, difficult to master.” And as he explains, the rewards in life for mastering something and merely learning it are vastly different.

• 8 Common Mistakes Recruiters Make - Clint James, a senior at Oklahoma State University, explains what your poor employment interviewing skills feel like to job candidates. Yes, he’s talking about you, oh HR managers and hiring managers. Lots of great insights in this one about how NOT to represent your company.

• Becoming a Manager: Top 3 Issues — Pawel Brodzinski points out the three challenges that can make or break newly promoted managers.

• Spider Sense — Big Picture Guy writes, “It’s a year and a half after the transfer and the new R&D director is clearly not working out. Thing is, the HR people think that if we let him go, he should pay back the cost of the move.” The Big Picture Small Office blog provides fascinating insight into the inner workings of a corporation — don’t miss this one.

Marketing and Sales - The largest group of posts in this week’s entries were roughly related to marketing and sales, an always popular category:

• Blog Field Trip: Limited Floor Space — This post by Gracie offers an important lesson for bloggers and website owners alike: all that blog bling is preventing you from earning enough to buy real bling.

• (Red) Campaign Uncove(red) - David Aron dissects why the Red social-giving campaign championed by Bono, costing $100 Million, has raised only … $18 Million. He thinks he knows the reasons.

• 5 lessons I have learned from John Chow - This is quite an interesting post by Henrik Edberg about blogging and business learned from a successful entrepreneur.

• There aren’t many ways to reach a suspect — Jim Logan writes about B2B marketing and the pros and cons of various lead generation techniques. See his surprising comments about email marketing, in particular.

• Your Right Hand Holds a Credit Card — Nina at QueerCents provides a study in how marketing can get us consumers to buy just about anything, as illustrated by the diamond right-hand ring.

• Marketing strategy: Doing the two step - Part 1 — Wayne Hurlbert says guess what? Customers don’t care about you or your business — so instead of talking about yourself, why not talk about something that actually matters to them?

• Why Analytics Deserves Our Undivided Attention - Shirley Frazier says it’s no longer about measuring just visitors to a website. Find out what you really should be measuring.

• Business Card Etiquette for Entrepreneurs - It’s not just in Asia that you should pay attention to etiquette in exchanging business cards. Michelle Cramer explains the right way.

Starting and Running a Business - Operating a business is fraught with challenges each day, and these posts touch on some of those challenges:

• Should You Quit School Because You’re Brilliant? - The Silicon Valley Blogger lists the pros and cons of dropping out of school to start a technology startup and make your fame and fortune — or not.

• Trust Amongst the Investment Bankers — Despite the title of the post, this is really a lesson in trust by any kind of outside service provider and the companies they sell to — or for that matter in your personal relationships — by author Charles H. Green.

• “You’ve Got Something I’m Interested In, But I Don’t Want to Pay You” — Dan Melson provides a valuable lesson about NOT cutting out the middleman — and why it may be in your interests not to even try.

• Competition - Amish Parashar notes several important truths about competition and startups, including the fact that your competition is not always who you think it is.

• Commercial Real Estate Loan Myth Debunked! - Craig Higdon says don’t even think about a no-money-down loan on commercial real estate — and explains why.

Economics and Markets – Take a look at the big picture of the economy, the stock market, various other markets, and the topic of economics:

• Financial Roadmap March 12 to 17, 2007 — Tom Hanna offers us a helpful chart showing all the reports and indices being announced this week that affect the market (and the big picture outlook), by day of the week. And Friday is Quadruple Witching Day.

• Is the world really about to end? or… — If the recent drop in the U. S. stock market has you worried, Ed at Daily Dose of Optimism presents a fascinating chart showing that 2% declines on the S&P 500 are regular occurrences. Nevertheless, fear is a good thing — read why.

• Woodrow Wilson Pleads the Fifth - SophistPundit gives us a book review of “What Has government Done With Our Money.” For those who are into economics and currency markets, this is an interesting read.

• Cable Companies Monopoly Equals Lower Service and Higher Prices — David at Worldwide Success points to the frustration we feel when service providers are big on price increases and low on service. Competition is good.

• Handicapping the Carr-Benkler Wager — If you’re like me, you have never heard of the Carr Benkler wager. But I guarantee you will find this economics discussion by Mike Dewitt fascinating about the the gift economy and the future of sites like Digg and YouTube.

• A society of “has beens” : A perspective by Bill Gates – In a post sure to be viewed as controversial by some, Murad Ali says we are splitting into a two-class society.

• Florida: the Next Biotech Hub? - H.S. Ayoub argues that Florida has the potential to be a biotech hub in this well-reasoned, detailed post.

• The Eye of the Storm — Insurance companies are abandoning places like Florida that are susceptible to hurricanes. InsureBlog’s Henry Stern has the story of a new carrier that’s just itchin’ to do business in one such state. But there’s a catch.

• High Positive Externalities from LoJack– Starling David Hunter at The Business of America is Business, explains that Lojack, the car security system, has an important side benefit for society.

Honorable Mention for Most Interesting Blog Concept — It never ceases to amaze me what creative themes people develop entire blogs around. Honorable mention goes to two blog posts from uniquely-themed blogs, including our first one, which is a blog dedicated to tracking down investment opportunities in spam emails, and our second one, dedicated to starting and running laundromats:

• Polar Thaw Unlocks Frozen Treasure — Travis Johnson tracks down the investment being teased in email spam.

• How Much Capital Will I Need to Start a Laundromat? - This post and in fact the entire blog is actually an interesting study in the nuts and bolts of running a retail establishment today.

Thank you for joining us today. And for all those who submitted entries, thank you for participating. Out of 50 submissions, I included 26 posts plus 2 Honorable Mentions. It was difficult to make decisions and sometimes small things were the determinants. For instance, if it appeared that your post had been included in another Carnival, such as Carnival of Entrepreneurship, I tended not to include the entry. So if your entry was not included today try again with another post next week.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS:

Submit your entry to future Carnival of the Capitalists here. The deadline is Sundays at 3:00 PM to be included in the following Monday’s roundup.

Sign up to host Carnival of the Capitalists at this page (keep in mind, it is about 5 to 6 hours of work to be the host).

Add a link to the Carnival of the Capitalists home page in your blogroll. Please also remember to write a short post linking to the weekly roundup posts. Spreading the word about Carnival of the Capitalists is half the battle of exposing blogs to new audiences.

 Email This Post |  Print This Post |