Your Next Choice

Since it has been a long two weeks at work, I thought that I deserved a break.  We were working on a project that has been the sole focus of everyone at work and most of us were putting in twelve hour days.  But with all that hard work, we did get it done on time, and it was decided that we could all have an extra two days off.

So, I thought that I would sit down in my recliner and enjoy a movie.  It has been nearly two months since I bought my new plasma television, and I don’t think that I have even turned it on once.  But I now finally have the chance, so I am not going to let it pass me by.

But, my wife has decided that she wants to watch a movie too, so I guess we will be watching Confessions of a Shopaholic.  I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow to watch the movie I really wanted to see, but that is ok  - I haven’t spent much time with my wife either lately.

Well, I should go get my hearing aid so that we can turn the movie on.  It sure will be nice to relax for a change.

Technorati Tags: hearing aid

Graduation is a huge industry in the United States.  The ceremony is a big production, plus there are plenty of things surround it such as portraits, invitations, gifts, parties, etc. that people tend to spend a lot of money on.

As a result, there are a lot of graduation-related businesses that an entrepreneur could capitzalize on.  Here are a few ideas.

• Photography and portraiture: Whether you are taking senior pictures of high school students, photographing graduation events, or being hired by individuals to take college graduation portraits, there are many opportunities for photographers in the graduation industry.
•  Diploma framing: It’s not uncommon for someone who has had to work hard to earn their college degree to want to honor it with a university diploma frame.  As a framing shop, you could sell fine frames and do custom framing for graduates and their families.
• Event planner: Many people like to throw a party to celebrate their success with friends and family.  An event planner can specialize in planning certain kinds of events, such as graduation parties.
• Graduation gift website: If you are more interested in online businesses, you might consider running a business that specializes in selling graduation gifts.
• Graduation invitations and thank-you cards: Want a business that’s a bit more creative?  Design and print your own graduation invitations and thank-you cards, or work with individual graduates to create custom stationery for all their graduation needs.

As you can see, there are many options available if you want to start a business in the graduation industry.  Can you think of any graduation-related business ideas I’ve left out?

Technorati Tags: diploma framing, university diploma frame, university frames

When I grabbed the mail today there was a catalogue for my teenaged son that grabbed my attention. It was a martial arts catalogue. Now that in and of itself is not a rarity. He has been taking Karate for years. In fact the Dojo is one of his favorite places. So he has all of the sparring gear like pads and wooden or bamboo martial arts weapons.

This catalogue had all kinds of cool martial weapons. They did have all of the typical stuff. They had nunchucks. They had bokens. They had sais. Of course my son already has these things though. This catalogue had some other cool stuff that I would not have thought of though.

These guys sell nine or ten varieties of throwing stars. For some reason I could just picture my little guy decimating the drywall in his room with these things! After all, that’s what I would have done with those things at his age. Then they had probably fifteen different varieties of throwing knives. Again visions of drywall resembling Swiss cheese came to mind. So when he got home from school I had a short chat with him. I told him I saw the catalogue and thought there were some really cool things in it. But I also told him that he couldn’t have any of the projectile type weapons in our house.

Technorati Tags: Martial arts weapons, martial weapons, weapons

Search engine optimization is difficult to explain to beginners because there’s so much involved.  Many videos do a good job of explaining advanced techniques, but this video does an excellent job of providing a basic answer to the question: how does search engine optimization work?

Technorati Tags: seo

The best piece of advice that I could give anyone that is running a business is that you should be listening to your customers and provide them with what they are looking for. Not only does it increase customer loyalty, but it also increases your bottom line as well.

In fact, that little change has helped our salon become one of the most popular in the city. We recently ran a survey for three months to get feedback from our customers to what services we should provide, what products we should be carrying and how we could make their experience at our establishment better.

After going through the survey results, we learned that our customers wanted us to carry only the best suntan lotion, increase the number of tanning beds, and create a customer loyalty program. We decided that it would be a smart idea to follow their suggestions and we implemented them immediately.

Not only have we seen an increase in sales, but we are getting nearly ten percent more walk-ins. We are also going to make more room for the tanning lotion that we carry since the sales of that product have tripled since we took our customers recommendations.

I think that we are going to survey our customers at regular intervals now and make our salon the place to get any hair or tanning services in our city.

Technorati Tags: Best Suntan Lotion, Tanning Lotion