BizChicksBlogs.com (business, entrepreneurship)

REVIEWED BY: Marguerite Zelle

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: BizChicksBlogs.com

WEB ADDRESS: http://bizchickblogs.com/


BLOG DESCRIPTION: Business, health, technology, relationships and family, food, style, travel tips, opinion, reviews, and news for intelligent women everywhere.

MY REVIEW: This is an excellent blog for women who run businesses, although truth to tell all the bloggers seem to run solely businesses for women - clothing and such like, as opposed to high-powered businesses like accounting, banking, inventing, whatever.

There are plenty of tips on running business, as well as just life in general, so check it out.

Sample post:

Website Review: IndiCustom.com
Could you imagine your perfect pair of jeans? What color would they be? What leg style? Would they be high-waist or low? At Indicustom.com that’s all up to you. It’s an e-commerce site providing jeans just the way you like them.

Tons excited and a bit overwhelmed? No need to be, they make it super easy with their simple instructions and step-by-step style choices.

Visit the How it Works page, and you will see that your only four steps away from a custom pair of jeans. First, pick your fit. Choose from slim, relaxed, trouser, or plus size fit (all the major trends.) These fits vary in width of the thigh and leg area. Next, choose your wash. Choices are: light, medium, dark and rinse; if ever in doubt go with dark denim.

Third, design the style of your jeans. Now, this is where it gets fun! Here are some of the options you get to choose from: stretch, rise, leg, zipper, and pockets. They have a multitude of choices, some you probably weren’t even aware of. Last, is to type in your exact measurements of your inseam, height, waist, and other measurements. Then its up to Indi to make their magic.

Men can also benefit from this service. While currently women only get the option of custom jeans, men also get to create button-down shirts. And, when you’re ready for another pair, re-ordering is easy since they save your design and let you make changes as you wish.

All in all, I’m impressed by all the style choices you get to make. Prices start at $155 which is what you would normally pay for designer denim (that is not custom-made.) So start creating fledgling designers and, “Make it Work!”

RECENT POSTS:
--5 Reasons to Smile in 2011
2011 is here. Another year passed, and we're alive to experience another year ahead. Just take a …
--Upcoming Event: Parasol Creations World Domination Tour 2011 (Twitter)
--Biz Chicks! Check out @EngageMeTweets Twitter party, "Parasol Creations World Domination Tour …
--Website Review: IndiCustom.com
--Could you imagine your perfect pair of jeans? What color would they be? What leg style? Would they …
--Blog for Digs | My Childhood Bedroom Was…
This post is part of the Blog for Digs charity event, where interior design bloggers have come …
--New Diet? New Wardrobe!
Many of you New Year hopefuls have made a resolution to get into better shape. One of the main …

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Reviews published every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

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Check out the following blogs:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Organizing for the Next Chapter of Your Life (lifestyle, business)

REVIEWED BY: Marguerite Zelle

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: Organizing for the Next Chapter of Your Life, by Sue West, Certified Organizer Coach(R) & Certified Professional Organizer(R)

WEB ADDRESS: http://organizenh.com/wordpress/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: You're writing your next chapter because

* your children are out on their own.
* you're finally starting that new business you've had in mind…
* or it's growing so fast it's hard to keep up.
* maybe just discovered you have ADD, or some other brain-based challenged. It's a relief to finally know, but now what?
* you're suddenly single – widowed, separated, divorced.
* you're downsizing or simply want less stuff around you and less on your calendar. Life's too short.

As you move through this chapter of your life, your mindset is shifting.

You're thinking differently about your things, your surroundings, and how you use your time.

MY REVIEW: Why is it that so many people have problems getting organized? Whether it's in their professional or personal life, most people just can't get their act together.

And frankly, I think that's one of the main problems in the U.S. today. People can't keep track of their money, they can't keep track of their belongings and they can't keep track of their time. And it's not being able to keep track of your time that is the real killer, literally. It's "the unforgiving minute" as Kipling says. Lose a couple of dollars in your house? No problem, you can always get more. Lose a shirt or a book, you can always buy another one. But the time you have to spend re-doing things you've already done...that time is gone for good. It will never come back.

Well, time for "Organizing the Next Chapter in your Life."

Time wasn't important to you when you were young...but now that you've moved on to the next chapter, it's all important. Either it's weighing heavy on your hands, or you don't have enough of it.

This blog will help you with that quandary.

Sample post:

“You just have to…”
August 18th, 2010
Recently, I read a life coach’s blog in which most paragraphs started with the phrase “You just have to.”

Like that’s so simple. The phrase really turned me off. I made myself continue to read on in case the tone changed. (No.) I suppose it’s possible this is a marketing approach, that if you can’t “just” do it yourself, you’d call on this person.

But it made me wary of how that relationship would work. I can see the finger shaking, as if I’ve failed already. I wanted to hide.

I can’t imagine speaking to my clients (or anyone in my life, really) in this manner.
You just have to … find a filing system that works for you.

You just have to realize your children will grow up and leave the nest and figure out what to do next with your life.

You just have to realize you won’t make as much selling your house as you would have a few years ago …

You just have to move on after your husband’s death.

You don’t have to do anything at someone else’s pace.
Do it at your own pace. Stand your ground.

If you aren’t ready to go through your adult children’s rooms to clear them out, wait. Wait until you know how else you’d like to use that space. Remember your hobbies and passions before you raised your children. Create your own space in one of their rooms. But in your own time.

Or do it in stages. If someone close to you has died, it will be easier to go through some of their belongings than others. Try the easier stuff first, whenever you’re ready. Wait some time until you’re ready to go through more.

Have patience with yourself.
Grief takes it own time we know, and going through someone’s belongings is a useful but difficult way to process and think through some of your feelings.

Same goes if you are moving. Where you live now is filled with memories. Intellectually, you know you’ll make new ones. But give yourself time to pack and take those memory lane strolls. This is the hardest part, that in between stage where you’re going to have to rest for awhile, even if you want to push ahead to make the new memories.

Notice why you are not moving on or making any change.
It may be emotions you need to work through. It may be procrastination, or worry about taking a risk, or not knowing where you want to head next.

Have you been through this before? How long do you think is reasonable? Are you there yet?

If you’re past that point, take stock of what’s going on. Journal, create, talk to a friend, meditate. Slow down enough to notice why you’re stuck. Much of this about “noticing,” because noticing leads you to understand what the single issue that’s preventing you from moving forward. Often we are in a cloud of reasons. Break it down. Talk it out. Write it down. Sort it out.

And even when you ARE ready
Even when you are ready to go through mom’s things, or make your child’s room into a new space for you, or tackle the paper piles you may want outside support or structure.

If you want to get from point A to point B quickly, that’s a reason to hire experience.

If you have tried on your own and the stuff keeps coming back, that’s a reason to hire experience.

If you need a deadline, some accountability — that could be a friend, or an organizer coach, depending on the other skills you need to support you.

We can all read, anywhere and everywhere it seems, about “how to” get more organized. Tips, tricks and products.

What’s difficult is applying what you read to your specific situation. And it’s often more about how you’re wired and knowing yourself well enough to figure out which of all those organizing systems will work, consistently, for you.

So it’s really not “just” that easy, is it.

RECENT POSTS:
--Easing into Fall
--“You just have to…”
--The Five Organizing Systems Your Home Needs
--Should: A Word I’d Like to Eradicate
--Organizing before Surgery: Winding Down at Work

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Check out the following blogs:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

Life Beyond Code (business, entrepreneurship)

REVIEWED BY: Marguerite Zelle

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: Life After Code, by Rajesh Setty

WEB ADDRESS: http://www.rajeshsetty.com/blog

BLOG DESCRIPTION: Thoughts on Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Creativity, Innovation and Living a Life Beyond Code

MY REVIEW: Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur who seeks to help other people with their entrepreneurship. But he's much more than that. He's a postive thinker, and a positive speaker, and attempts to spread happiness and positive thought to his readers.

I really enjoyed his blog, he's got some fascinating things to say. Check it out - I think you'll enjoy it.

Sample post:

Why MOST smart people are better at solving other people’s problems…

By Rajesh Setty on Tue 10 Aug 2010, 12:25 PM - 4 Comments and 247 Reactions

And, not their own problems.

I am sure you have seen them and may be you are one of them. Smart people who can solve other people’s problems very easily but they can’t solve their own problems. As my friend Stuart Scott would say, most people have brilliant “outsight” and all they lack is some “insight.”

What is it that makes it hard to solve one’s own problems. It is one thing if they don’t have capacity to solve those problems – we are not talking about that category of people. We are talking about people who have demonstrated that they can solve those problems when they are presented by other people. The mystery is what happens when these problems show up in their own lives.

The dilemma above was the quest of my ongoing mini-research. Finally I think I have some findings that might shed some light on the topic.

First some background information:

Problems are part of life. In fact, in some way, they are life. It is how you look at those problems that makes a difference. Sometimes not getting that first sale is a problem. The same problem can be looked at as a challenge or even an opportunity to grow and learn. Whatever way you look at it, to overcome what you are faced with, you need a few things. To start with you need the skillsets to handle it, you need to resources like time to handle it and sometimes you need a lot of people who are willing to help you overcome it.

What is also common is that every problem comes with constraints that put some boundaries on how you can handle the problem.

Now, let us look at the two scenarios:

1. Smart person solving other’s problems

When a problem gets presented, not all the constraints associated with that problem get presented. May be the person having the problem has a confidence or a self-esteem problem. May be he has a family member that’s not doing that well. May be he has a knee pain. But when he presents the problem at hand, he may not list out all the constraints that surround him or the problem. So the smart person listening to this problem has a larger canvas to paint a solution. The smart person operates sees less number of constraints than the person who is facing the problem – makes the problem look a bit easier.

2. Smart person solving his or her own problem

When a problem shows up in the life of a smart person, he does not see just that problem but a problem and himself/herself surrounded by all the constraints that he or she is operating with. The problem looks way more complicated when presented with all the constraints than as a standalone problem. The smart person has the same canvas to paint a solution but the canvas is torn in places ( constraints ) and is dirty in a few other places (more constraints) – suddenly making the problem way more complicated to handle.

So, now comes to some solutions for this dilemma.

If you are a smart person who is facing this problem, what can you do?

Here are some places to start:

1. Stop over-analyzing your constraints: Most constraints grow bigger than natural in your mind. Your confidence problem may not be as big as you think and your public speaking skills may not be as bad as you think.

2. Get help: Yes, you know that if you think long and hard, you can solve the problem yourself but if you can be humble and go to someone that you trust, they will see the problems without all the baggage that you are carrying. Even if it means paying that expert, it is well worth it to get that solved.

3. Change your relationship with failure: Smart people rarely want to fail. If you have a chronic fear of failure, you may end up not taking ANY action. Excellence sometimes requires you to be on the edge and edges are not very safe.

RECENT POSTS:
--Why MOST smart people are better at solving other people’s problems…
--Gatecrashing into someone’s heart…
--Mini Saga Workshop and Mini Saga #58 – Karma
--Ways to Distinguish Yourself #211 – Beware of Drama
--Beating the odds

_______________________
Check out the following blogs:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Volcano Seven: Treasure and Treasure Hunters
Rush Limbaugh Report

The Mogul Mom Blog (entrepreneurship)

REVIEWED BY: Ms. Cairo

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: The Mogul Mom Blog

WEB ADDRESS: http://www.themogulmom.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: Written by a seasoned mom entrepreneur, The Mogul Mom blog offers free coaching, camaraderie, ideas, information, resources & recommendations for mom entrepreneurs.

MY REVIEW: In these tough economic times, mom's have to bring in an income, as well as their husbands. (Or partners, or if they are single moms or divorced moms). This blog will help women with small kids learn how to run their own businesses.

The info here is important if you want to bring home your own income. Subscribe to it.

Sample post:

How To Clear Your Website Clutter In 3 Key Areas by Reese Spykermanby Heather Allard on July 21, 2010

You know that feeling when you walk out into the living room, and all the stuff is put in place, and your amazing bookcase looks orderly, and there’s a clear line of sight out to the porch to check out the yard in the summer? Yeah. That. That’s what we’re going for here, but on your website.

There’s peace in de-cluttering. Calm. A sense of empowerment. Order in the midst of chaos.

So imagine what it would be like if your site or blog felt like this. Not just for you, but for your visitors, too. Imagine them coming to your site and thinking, even if subconsciously, “ahhh” because it’s an oasis of clarity among millions of sites overloaded with too much stuff.

It’s possible. You, too, can have a website that Martha Stewart would envy. (if you’re into that sort of thing). When you declutter your website, your audience appreciates it. They’re more likely to read. To buy. To stay a while, soak up your goodness, and engage.

Here are three ways you can start:

1. Your sidebar: it’s like the space under the kitchen sink
Send your sidebar to Goodwill. This place is notorious for collecting unneeded junk. 10 badges for all the networks you’re in? (Never mind that 80% of them either no longer exist or aren’t doing a thing to help bolster your brand’s perception). That specialty search bar you hope will bring in a few coins a month? Or how about 80 different ways to navigate through your blog (archives. categories. tags. fruit of the month club).

Here’s all that you really need on the sidebar:

Your email sign up list (and if you deliver posts by email, roll this into the same newsletter as whatever other newsletter you offer. Less for you to manage, and easier for readers to understand).Make this your topmost sidebar item, and see your sign up rates improve. (It doesn’t hurt to have a fun, non-smarmy call to action or small “treat” you give for free to entice sign ups)
A small RSS icon (seriously, this doesn’t need to be massive)
Neat and clean social networking links (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin). Don’t include 80 of them here. just 2-4 of the ones most people visit.
Category links (to allow people to browse archives by category)
A search box (just the factory default one that came with your content management system or blogging software, please. Or powered by Google works, too, in a pinch. Generally you look more professional when you aren’t pimping out other company’s things in a sponsored search bar).
An additional call to action (This serves as a small graphical promo or something you want people to see/know about. Completely optional but use it to promote one or two of your best things (product, service, etc))
2. Clean up your home (page)
If you have a blog on your home page, don’t put the entirety of each entry on there. Yes, some people do like to read the whole shebang of each entry down the home page, but cutting your excerpts to small blurbs helps:

1. keep reader’s attention
2. improve search engine happiness
3. showcase more of your awesomeness on the home page
3. Navigate your way to happier readers
Recently I had to live in someone else’s home for 4 months. I couldn’t find a damn thing. Tongs? Knives? Paper towel? All up in the air. Now we’ll forgive this home because I’m sure she knew just where everything is. But if this home had been a website, I would have left.

Your people need to know where to go in a matter of a nanosecond. You can make this easy for them by having a strong, easy-to-read navigation placed high and prominent on the site.

Avoid things like mystery meat (I know. The kitchen analogies are getting old). Mystery meat is when you don’t use words for your navigation, but just images that are all clever and goofy and leave people wondering if they’ll get dancing chickens if they click on one of them. Avoid uber-fancy fonts (script faces are hard to read) and drop-down menus. (Yes, I use them at times, but only when the client really begs). Make the verbiage concise, like our own dear Heather does here on her site. (It’s both attractive and clear).

Do these things as best you can, and you’ll be well on your way to a clutter-free website that gives you a sigh of relief, and makes your readers more endeared to you.

Question for you, lovely reader:

What things do you find most helpful on a website, and what cluttered stuff annoys you the most?

Post by Reese Spykerman
Reese Spykerman is a designer and quasi world explorer. She lives part time in SE Asia, where she sometimes succeeds at keeping her home clutter free. Reese recently created a course called “The Great Name Claim” that teaches you how to claim your name through various online profiles and look awesome in places like Yelp, LinkedIn, and Facebook. As a special gift to The Mogul Mom readers, she’s giving 15% off the course until July 31, 2010, when you use the coupon code mogulmom to check out.

RECENT POSTS:
--How To Clear Your Website Clutter In 3 Key Areas by Reese
--Trade Shows
--Marketing To Retailers
--Video: 3 Ways To Find Out Who’s Talking About You On Twitter
--Bring The Spa Home With Infused
--

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Ms. Cairo writes several blogs including:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Topical Murder and Dated Death

5 Business and Investing Blogs

Five Business and Investing blogs - Entrepreneurship sub-category

1. Biz Plan Hacks NO
2. The Franchise King YES
3. Information Arbitrage YES
4. Springwise YES
5. Under 30 CEO YES

Biz Plan Hacks BizPlanHack's mission is to provide practical planning tips for busy business owners. Every weekday you will find a fresh 'Hack' direct from the trenches to help you with organization and planning. Publisher: Creative Weblogging
I subscribed to Biz Plan Hacks, and the latest entry I received was January 28, 2010.

So I checked out the blog at its website and found that the last update to the blog was made on February 9! So, like Mysterious Issues, a blog I reviewed a few days ago, even though the actual blog is being updated on a regular basis, for some reason the feed isn’t making it to the Kindle!

The website also doesn’t give an option to subscribe via the Kindle, so one wonders if they’ve just decided to forego using the Kindle interface altogether.

Having said that, http://BizPlanHacks.com has some very good information. If you’re thinking of starting up a business, you need a business plan, and you need one that grows as you grow. There are four separate authors at this site who give you advice you need. It’s just too bad you can’t get it delivered conveniently to your Kindle! (I’m reluctant to try the Hard Restart of the Kindle solution that worked a few days ago when my own mystery review blog, The Friends of Mr. Cairo, wasn’t updating. Since then I’ve subscribed to dozens of blogs (temporarily) and never had a problem – but I have found two – this one and Mysterious Issues, that have some problems that can’t be Kindle related…they must be on the other end.

The Franchise King Blog Cleveland, Ohio franchise guru provides franchise investment tips,discusses upcoming trends,and reports on small business activity.

The Franchise King Blog is another one of those blogs that, at its website, gives you a paragraph, then a link that says “Read more here.” But, their blog interface is sophisticated enough so that on the Kindle, you get the entire article seamlessly, no need to click on a Read More button! I don’t know why more bloggers don’t have their feed set up that way.. perhaps they don’t realize that it’s possible to do that.

Anyway, The Franchise King is another fascinating business blog. The author talks about the various types of franchises out there (and there are more than just fast food restaurants).

Well-written, informative, and if you're thinking of opening a franchise, worth your time and money.

Here’s the last four entries:

--This low-investment business opportunity is now a member of the #100 club (Speaking Roses)
--Franchises for Sale! Huge Savings! Franchise Prices Slashed! Huge rebates!
--My Franchise Business Advice for the week of Feb 8, 2010
--Constant Contact Announces the Recipients of the Franchise Excellence in Email Awards

Information Arbitrage A 17-year Wall Street veteran's perspectives on investment, hedge funds, and ways to harness the power of the internet for Institutional Investors.. Publisher: Information Arbitrage. Costs 99 cents a month.

Some text from his latest blog entry:

IA Venture Strategies - Working to Build a Better Venture Mouse-trap
As was ably covered by Dan Primack in PEHub, I am starting a new venture fund. However, as my friends and venture colleagues know, I am extremely down on what the venture industry has become. To be clear, it is less an issue of structure (management + incentive fees in a GP/LP structure) and more an issue of size. It is clear to understand how motivations get skewed when venture firms effectively become asset managers, where the management fees alone are sufficient to make the partners rich and investments must become increasingly large and non-venture like. Growth capital is not venture capital in my parlance. Venture capital means funding "ventures" - taking on early-stage risk - and actively helping companies execute their plans and achieve their potential. I have a theory that the largest a true venture fund can be, which means, having a seed-stage investment charter together with a "life cycle" approach to investing (leaning into winners, deploying larger amounts of capital in Series A and B rounds, if necessary) is around $300 million. But I digress...

I decided to start my fund after determining that many of the deals I was seeing were both strategic and thematic, strategic to my trading company and thematic in that they all had a common thread - helping to manage and extract value from massive, often real-time data sets - "big data" in jargon. Rather than prosecute them as an angel, I felt a fund structure would better enable me to "size up" in particular deals and to cast a wider net across the big data domain. I wanted the fund to be small ($25 million stated goal, but with the ability to go a little higher) and I wanted it to be different than most venture funds I know, who have raised money largely from pension funds and endowments. I really wanted the fund to be an extension of my activities as an angel, where I frequently build syndicates of value-added angels and select venture firms to help de-risk the portfolio companies and create a network effect across a particular domain.

Talking about the blogs of investors who can start $25 million funds is just a leetle bit outside my area of expertise. All I can say is he certainly sounds like he knows what he’s talking about!

The author, Roger Ehrenberg, updates this blog on an irregular basis. When he’s “on” he does it every four days or so, but sometimes there’s a month in between. It is with this kind of blog that subscribing via the Kindle is most necessary. It only costs 99 cents a month – the cost of a cup of coffee, and when he does make a post you get it immediately without having to constantly check his website. And should he never update it (which I doubt will happen, but of course, anything’s possible) you’re only out $12 for the year. I’d say that’s a better investment risk than many out there!

Reading such a blog gives the average investor an insight into the rarified air of these fund managers, shows how their minds think, and so on. It’s a fascinating read.

Springwise Springwise scans the globe for the most promising business ventures, ideas and concepts ready for regional or international adaptation, expansion, partnering, investments or cooperation. Ferociously tracking more than 400 global offline and online business resources, as well as taking to the streets of world cities, digital cameras at hand. Publisher: Springwise

I give this blog a 100% thumbs up. Very enjoyable reads! It's a blog that will spur you to come up with your own ideas, intrigue your desire to check these businesses out, or just generally read because they sound like fun businesses.

The last five entries of Springwise:

--Chocolate with a conservation commitment: San Francisco based Original Beans plants a tree in a rainforest for every chocolate bar it sells.
--More decorative, designer barcodes – whimsical barcode designs from Vanity Barcodes
--Wifi Scale tracks its users weight onlin- from a French company called Withings
--Stock portfolio unites 20 best-loved brands
--Global directory lets medical tourists find and review clinics (RevaHealth)
--Business books served in bite sizes for e-readers. FT Press Delivers.
--Cookbook Only Store with Test Kitchen and Café. 25% Celsius is the store, Tryvertising is the advertising method.
--Eco-habitats for cats that can be decorated by kids, Caboodle Habitat for Cats

Under30CEO Leading young entrepreneurs to success in business and lifestyle. Daily articles covering being successful in business and also how to live it up in life. Interviews, expert Q&A and business reviews are done on a regular basis. Life has unlimited options, we are here to show you those options! Live the Dream.

This blog presents interviews with CEOs, as well as tips and information on starting and running a business. Well written, informative, everything you could want in an entrepreneurship blog.

The last five entries:

--Little Ducks Organic is moving forward with organic baby foods
--5 reasons why you should start dreaming now
--Pro football player turned LinkedIn Expert with Lewis Howes
--Biz Book a Day Giveaway + Limitless VC Contest
--Increasing Revenue Through Search Visibility: Part 2 of 5
--Dude, where’s my time?