entrepreneur 2011 03
TRANSCRIPT
ENTREPRENEUR.COMMaRCh 2011
what healthcare reform means for your business
everythingyou need to know
about mobile commerce
how tocreate a mobile
website
’trep stylethe ultimate
nerd makeover
a retail renaissance
Cyriac Roeding’s shopkick mobile app is getting customers back into stores
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S:10”
Available at and
ItÕs not from the future.
It just acts that way.
HTC ThunderBoltTM
htc.com
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S:10”
Available at and
ItÕs not from the future.
It just acts that way.
HTC ThunderBoltTM
htc.com
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Entrepreneur // March 20112
contents//03.2011
44 BUSINESS
IN MOTION
Rolling out a snazzy app isn’t the
only way to get your business
noticed by smartphone-obsessed
consumers. Why mobile-friendly
websites are critical to your strategy.
By Dan O'Shea
50 THE NEW
SMART MONEY
Can I get your number? Mobile
commerce makes purchasing as
simple as waving your smartphone at
the register or inputting your phone
number online.
By Jason Ankeny
75 REFORM SCHOOL
If you feel like the
new healthcare legislation is more
complicated than keeping Lindsay
Lohan in rehab, fear not—we’re
here to help you sort through what
you need to know.
By Craig Guillot
80 HAUTE HUB
DINING
Airport food gets upgraded to
first class.
By Bruce Schoenfeld
84 STYLE WISE
Justin Bieber’s got
nothing on him: Giantnerd’s
Randall Weidberg gets a style
makeover and goes from geek-in-
chief to head hottie.
By Erin Weinger
94 LET’S GET IT
STARTED
This crash course for would-be
entrepreneurs is more hard-core
than when you pledged your college
fraternity—and a lot more produc-
tive. Welcome to Startup Weekend.
By Regina Schrambling
100 THE CROSSOVER
From the corporate world to
franchise ownership—how business
owners make the transition.
By Jason Daley
106 HEALTHY
RETURNS
This is spinal tap. Actually, it’s
chiropractic services making its
debut at No. 1 on our Top New
Franchises list.
By Tracy Stapp
26 THE REBIRTH
OF RETAIL
Shopkick’s location-based mobile app addresses the biggest
challenge retailers face in the era of online shopping:
how to get more people into their stores.
By Jason Ankeny
ON THE COVER:SHOPKICK CEO CYRIAC ROEDING PHOTOGRAPHED
BY DAVID JOHNSON. STARTUP WEEKEND DIRECTOR
MARC NAGER PHOTOGRAPHED BY RICK DAHMS.
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NAD1122
When it comes to claims, no one likes pit stops.
That’s why, if someone’s sick or injured, we pay cash directly — faster than our top competitors.
Afl ac is like a safety net, helping pay costs that major medical doesn’t cover; and we pay claims in an
average of four days, speeding your benefi ts into victory lane. Because when it comes to your employees
and their families, second place isn’t good enough. Race over to aß ac.com/paysfast and get started.
ACCIDENT | CANCER AND CRITICAL ILLNESS | DENTAL | VISION | HOSPITAL INDEMNITY | LIFE | DISABILITY
Individual coverage underwritten and offered by American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus. In New York, coverage underwritten and offered by American Family Life Assurance Company of New York. Some policies may be available as group policies. Group coverage underwritten and offered by Continental American Insurance Company. Policies may not be available in all states. Afl ac pays cash benefi ts direct to the insured, unless assigned.
Afl ac processes most claims in an average of four days. For Continental American Insurance Company, the average is fi ve days.
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Entrepreneur // March 20114
contents//03.2011
40CAN’T LIVE WITH IT,CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT
Don’t be a Zucker. Facebook’s new e-mail messaging system might help you better manage your contacts—or waste your time.
14EDITOR’S NOTEYes, it’s temperamental,
but you shouldn’t smash your smart-phone. Mobility has the potential to transform your business. Embrace it.By Amy C. Cosper
16FEEDBACKOur Facebook fans re-
spond: How important is your staff to the success of your business?
20 YOU SHOULD KNOW Don’t call him a hippie:
Author Richard Florida was pushing for local and sustainable way before you started buying organic kale from the farmers market.
22 ASK A PRO Am I crazy to buy a
business instead of starting one?
24JARGON What is: that guy who
left Google for a younger company?
37TECH:SHINY OBJECT
Logitech’s new HD Pro Webcam C910 lets you see the good, the bad and the weird mole on your client’s face during online business chats.
38SHARPER IMAGESCapture every awkward
moment of your company’s holiday parties —with clarity and precision—with one of these cams.
42VOIP HITS THE ROADVoIP: It looks weird writ-
ten out, it’s fun to say and—if you do the math right—it can help you save money on your telecom costs.
42SIGN ON THE DOTTED PIXEL
Put your John Hancock, virtually.
19GOING FORWARD:
BUSINESS UNUSUAL
You want fries with that
soap? An eco-conscious
couple figures out a way
for restaurant patrons to
wash their hands with
used cooking oil.
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I’m mobile.
© 2011 Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. All rights reserved. Fujitsu and the Fujitsu logo are registered trademarks of Fujitsu Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
ScanSnap S1100 for Mac or PC
Process paperwork practically anywhere with the mobileScanSnap S1100 document scanner. On-the-road doesn’t mean out-of-
pocket when it comes to office resources like scanning paperwork for sharing or to file
electronically. Just plug-in USB power and scan business cards directly to contact lists.
Press one button to scan paperwork directly to email, searchable PDF, JPEG, or to
applications like Word and Excel®. You can even scan to Evernote® or Google Docs™ and
retrieve your paperwork from just about anywhere. The ScanSnap S1100 helps you spend less
time on paperwork so you can spend more time chasing down the next big thing.
Check out ScanSnap. While youÕre there, enter to win a Gift Card.
Visit http://us.fujitsu.com/entrepreneur
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©Disney
WE TAUGHT
A NEW WAY
TO THINK
the Arizona Cardinals
about business.
When the Arizona Cardinals wanted a fresh perspective on their
fan experience, they turned to our team at Disney Institute; and
they’ve been scoring touchdowns with their fans ever since. Disney
Institute delivers unique professional development programs, built
on the real life practices of Disney. A global leader in everything
from customer service to leadership excellence, our customizable
programs have re-inspired thousands of organizations. Now it’s your
turn. Give us a few days and we’ll have you seeing solutions where
you only saw problems and discovering opportunities where you
thought none existed. Are you ready to D’� ink?
Your place or ours, individuals or entire organizations,
one day or two weeks, anything is possible.
Visit DisneyInstitute.com/dthink
or call 407.566.2620.
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©Disney
WE TAUGHT
A NEW WAY
TO THINK
the Arizona Cardinals
about business.
When the Arizona Cardinals wanted a fresh perspective on their
fan experience, they turned to our team at Disney Institute; and
they’ve been scoring touchdowns with their fans ever since. Disney
Institute delivers unique professional development programs, built
on the real life practices of Disney. A global leader in everything
from customer service to leadership excellence, our customizable
programs have re-inspired thousands of organizations. Now it’s your
turn. Give us a few days and we’ll have you seeing solutions where
you only saw problems and discovering opportunities where you
thought none existed. Are you ready to D’� ink?
Your place or ours, individuals or entire organizations,
one day or two weeks, anything is possible.
Visit DisneyInstitute.com/dthink
or call 407.566.2620.
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Entrepreneur // March 20118
contents//03.2011
66LEAD GENHow one retailer gave
customers gas—and used a location-based app to drum up business.By Brian Quinton
68MONEYDaily Grommet
believes in angels. The online com-munity that promotes cool, unique products prefers angel investors over VC firms—for now.
69WHEN MONEY IS DUEBefore you OK an IOU,
make sure you have all the info about extending credit to your customers.
70 IS SUBLEASING A SOLUTION?
Being a landlord can be tricky. Our advice: Don’t rent to anyone named “The Situation.”
72YOUR MONEYGive credit where it’s
due, and be smart about using plastic.By J.D. Roth
88START IT UP:WACKY IDEA
If you love surprises, let this company plan an event for you. If you break out into a sweat reading Choose Your Own Adventure books … maybe don’t.
90 STARTUP FINANCEGetting a grant for your
SMB is a piece of cake, as long your niche is spasmodic dysphonia or focal cognitive deficits.By Kate Lister
57 ONLINE IDEAS:WEBSITE TO WATCH
Goodreads is a nerdy bookworm’s fantasy: Organize your library online, rate what you’ve read and share books with friends.
58 BUILD A WEBSITEHaving a wizard of a
webmaster is key for your site. Gan-dalf and Dumbledore are probably busy, though. By Mikal E. Belicove
62LINKEDWhat’s that? I wasn’t
listening. Be succinct if you want to hold your audience’s attention. By Chris Brogan
65DOING GOODShane O’Neill’s clothing
line is going to the dogs—literally. Roy-al Bitch Couture donates half its profits to support pet population control.
92 COLLEGE STARTUP Gemvara engages its
customers with jewelry options they can customize themselves.By Joel Holland
93 STROKES OF GENIUSSmall ingenuities that even
make working at Dunder Mifflin exciting.
122 FRANCHISE INKThis isn’t
Frogger: Michael Falgares earns the new high score with Gamin’ Ride, a mobile gaming theater in a trailer.
124 OPPORTUNITIESNancy Herrington is
the Ms. Fix It of her community—as the owner of a Mr. Handyman franchise.
136 BACK PAGELet’s learn from
Tiger and Favre, shall we? Take our mobile manners quiz to avoid a messy mishap.
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Sprint Customized Connection Savings: Offer ends 4/16/11. $10 monthly discount requires activation on select business plan and mobile broadband plan. Savings claim based on participation in eligible plans for 12 consecutive months. No more than one discounted connection offer allowed per line of service on select business plans. Voice/3G Data Usage Limitation: Sprint reserves the right, without notice, to limit throughput speeds, and to deny, terminate, modify, disconnect or suspend service if off-network usage in a month exceeds (1) voice: 800 minutes or a majority of minutes; or (2) data: 300 megabytes or a majority of kilobytes. Prohibited network use rules apply. See in-store materials or sprint.com/termsandconditions for specific prohibited uses. Mobile Broadband/Connection Plan: Includes 5 GB of data usage. Additional data usage is $0.05/MB. Connection Plan 3G Data Usage Limitation: Sprint reserves the right to limit throughput speeds or amount of data transferred; and to deny, terminate, modify, disconnect or suspend service if usage exceeds 300 MB/month while off-network roaming. 1,024 KB equal 1 MB. 1,024 MB equal 1 GB. Other Terms: Coverage is not available everywhere. The Sprint 4G Network reaches over 70 markets and counting, on select devices. The Sprint 3G Network reaches over 271 million people. See sprint.com for details. Offers and service plan features not available in all markets/retail locations or for all phones/networks. Pricing, offer terms, fees and features may vary for existing customers. Other restrictions apply. See store or sprint.com for details. ©2011 Sprint. Sprint and the logo are trademarks of Sprint. The HTC logo and HTC EVO are trademarks of HTC Corporation. Other marks are the property of their respective owners.
Unlimited 4G data for the unlimited ways you do business. Get unlimited 4G email, text and
Web on a wide range of 4G devices like the HTC EVO™ smartphone and
the new Dell™ Inspiron™ 11z notebook. No data caps. No worries. When
productivity meets mobility at blistering 4G speeds, it’s truly business
without limits. Only from Sprint. 1-800-573-8288 sprint.com/smallbiz
with Sprint Customized Connections when you combine a mobile broadband plan with a business plan.
SAVE
Existing customers can switch without a contract extension. New lines of activation require a two-year Agreement.
$120.00/ year per line
Dell™ Inspiron ™ 11z
Sprint ranks #1 in Small Business Wireless Value.— 2010 ATLANTIC-ACM Business Connectivity Report
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Entrepreneur // March 201110
VIDEO: COACHES CORNERIn this new series, business coaches offer theirbest advice to business owners on topics ranging from business planning to finding funding and prospecting customers.entrepreneur.com/coaches
THE SOCIAL MEDIA CHALLENGERead the blog tracking our social media ex-periment to jump-start the online marketing campaign of a small Denver business.blog.entrepreneur.com/socialmedia.php
RICHARD BRANSONThe celebrated entrepreneur and founder ofThe Virgin Group answers readers’ questions about running and growing a successful business. entrepreneur.com/columnists/richardbranson
FIVE TO FOLLOWFind out who vWorker’s Ian Ippolito and otherbusiness leaders are following on Twitter to stay on top of their fields.blog.entrepreneur.com
AIRPORT EATSSee a slideshow of the 10 best airport restau-rants in the U.S. for business travelers seeking alternatives to the usual fare. entrepreneur.com/slideshows
PUBLIC RELATIONS TIPSHelpaReporter.com founder Peter Shankmanoffers his tips for getting media coverage for your company. entrepreneur.com/video
FORMNETSave time and money with free, downloadableand customizable business documents, including performance evaluation forms and time sheets.entrepreneur.com/formnet/index.html
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER @ENTMAGAZINE
LIKE US ON FACEBOOK.COM
/ENTMAGAZINE
WANT TO KNOW WHAT OTHER EN-TREPRENEURS ARE THINKING? FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK TO JOIN THE CON-VERSATION, PARTICIPATE IN OUR LATEST POLLS AND SEE THE RESULTS.
MOM-PRENEUR CENTERRead about balancing busi-ness with family, women-led busi-nesses and more at Entrepreneur .com’s Mompre-neur Center. entrepreneur .com/mompreneur
contents//03.2011
Entrepreneur.comCheck out this month’s online exclusives
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The new logistics is technology that advances your business. In the hi-tech industry you have to be fast, efficient
and source globally. Not a problem: UPS technology plugs directly into your systems, streamlining everything.
You can prepare shipments in seconds rather than minutes. Simplify customs clearance with paperless solutions.
Keep customers updated automatically. Put the new logistics to work for you. thenewlogistics.com
Copyrig
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Entrepreneur // March 201112
Vol. 39, No. 3. Entrepreneur (ISSN 0163-3341) is published monthly by Entrepreneur Media Inc., 2445 McCabe Way, Ste. 400, Irvine, CA 92614. Periodical postage paid at Irvine, CA, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Entrepreneur, P.O. Box 8542, Red Oak, IA, 51591-1542. One year subscription rates in U.S.: $19.97; in Canada: $39.97; all other countries: $39.97; payable in U.S. funds only. Please mail all subscription orders and changes to Entrepreneur, Subscription Department, P.O. Box 8542, Red Oak, IA, 51591-1542, or call (800) 274-6229 or (515) 362-7461, or log on to entrepreneur.com. For change of address, please give both old and new addresses and include most recent mailing label. Entrepreneur considers its sources reliable and verifies as much data as possible, although reporting inaccuracies can occur; con se quent ly, readers using this information do so at their own risk. Each business opportunity and/or investment inherently contains certain risks, and it is suggested that the prospective investors consult their attorneys and/or financial professionals. Entrepreneur is sold with the un der stand ing that the publisher is not rendering legal services or financial advice. Although persons and companies men tioned herein are believed to be reputable, neither EntrepreneurMediaInc., nor any of its employees accept any responsibility whatsoever for their activities. Advertising Sales (949) 261-2325. Entrepreneur is printed in the USA and all rights are reserved. ©2011 by EntrepreneurMediaInc. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher. Unsolicited manuscripts and photographs will be returned only if ac com pa nied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. All letters sent to Entrepreneur will be treated as un con di tion al ly assigned for publication, copyright purposes and use in any publication or brochure, and are subject to Entrepreneur’s unrestricted right to edit and comment.
EdItorIalassocIatEEdItor Brenda Wong
staffwrItEr Jennifer WangspEcIalprojEctsEdItor Tracy Stapp
BUsINEsstraVElcorrEspoNdENtBruce SchoenfeldEdItorIalassIstaNtMichelle Juergen
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© 2010 Deluxe Enterprise Operations, Inc. All rights reserved. Fictional business example.
Deluxe Corp Safety: Live area 7.25"w x 10" h CD: Kerry Krepps ApprovalsLandscaper Ad Trim Size: 8" w 10.75" h AD: Jim Adler Client CD10DLX057 Bleed: 8.25" w x 11" h CW: Joel Anderson AE ADFull Page 4C Print, 4C AE: N. Cron/E. Cornell CWEntrepreneur Agency: Riley Hayes PM: Sue Griffin PM PARun Date: July 2010 KEYLINE PA: Sarah DeYoung
Now’s the time to grow your small business with easy and affordable marketing solutions from Deluxe. With 4 million small business customers, Deluxe has the products, services and expertise to help you drive traf c and boost sales. From logo design and promotional products, to domain names, websites and email marketing, Deluxe provides everything you need to get and keep customers. Plus, you can rely on our customer support team for assistance. Make your marketing Deluxe. Visit Deluxe.com/grow.
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Entrepreneur // March 201114
editor’s noteAggravating, unruly —and essential
My iPhone is the boss ofme. It’s a tough thing to admit, because no one likes being controlled by a
petulant child. But this beautiful, shiny, smart-mouthed device is in charge.
On most days I forgive the iPhone for its temper tantrums, because its power is awe-inspiring and its glorious apps make my life easier. The instant gratifi-cation it provides is unparalleled.
But on some days, the iPhone—well, it needs a good spanking.
The time it dropped a call during a critical discussion, proceeded to proudly take a picture of itself and shut down for a short nap? Forgiven. The embarrassing time its predictive spelling turned the name Topher into the word “toon”? Forgiven. Or the fateful day it erased itself and deleted all contacts, music and photos? Forgiven—but grudgingly, that time in particular.
In the end, we excuse transgressions like those because the iPhone—or any smartphone, for that matter—has transformed our lives, our culture and the way we do business.
The impact mobility has made on business is jaw-dropping. Virtually every sector of business—from food trucks to retail to pizza delivery to day trading—has been altered by mobile technol-ogy. The devices read barcodes, act as point-of-sale terminals, kill zombies, help capture leads and drive customers to you in ways never imagined.
In a flash, mobile phones have evolved into fully developed, sleek and accessible digital platforms that allow businesses and brands to become integrated into the customer experience. And that’s why no matter what business you’re in, a solid mobile strategy is critical.
The coverage in this issue is designed
to help navigate the confusing landscape of mobile and help you prioritize. Dan O’Shea cuts through the still-cloudy wa-ters of the nascent mobile web, explain-ing why developing an app to extend your business is just the starting point for full business mobilization.
Jason Ankeny, meanwhile, explores how mobile is rapidly becoming a pay-ment method, and how your business must prepare to capitalize on the tech-nologies that may finally herald a new era in mobile payments.
And in this month’s Innovator sec-tion, we look at how upstart mobile app developer shopkick is turning the location-based craze on its ear in the retail business—not only enhancing the utility of location technology, but also giving shoppers a reason to hit the bricks and mortar. That sound retail merchants are hearing is the revitalized cha-ching of their cash registers—or, more accurately, the ping of more and more mobile devices charging up more and more in-store sales.
The smartphone can be an obstinate companion—no doubt about that. But for business owners, it is not only a productivity tool and a communica-tions device, but also an enhancer of customer engagement, a streamliner of transactions and a booster of sales. And those are pretty good reasons to overlook the bad behavior.
Amy C. CosperEditor in chiefFollow me on Twitter @EntMagazineAmy
con-tribu-torS
“Let us know if you have any restrictions, like allergies, injuries or
phobias,” wrote Surprise Indus-tries co-founder Tania Luna (see Wacky Idea, Page 88). Entrepre-neur staff writer Jennifer Wang doesn’t—yet—so we shipped her off to be Surprised. Armed with a single clue (“wear snug, athletic clothing”), she made her way to a destination in Williamsburg, N.Y., to find … a circus school, where Agent S—aerial dancer Seanna Sharpe—was twirling away on a silk cloud swing, accompanied by an accordionist with a handlebar mustache. Agent S put Wang to work (go to entrepreneur.com for video proof). Good thing she does yoga.
New York City-based photographer David Lang has documented tsunami
relief efforts in Sri Lanka for the International Organization for Mi-gration and shot in the Maldives, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries. Lang—a regular con-tributor to Entrepreneur who shot this month’s story on executives making the jump to the franchise world (Page 100)—says taking a photo is not always about just being in the right place, but also about being open to the situation and the people around you.
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Entrepreneur // March 201116
People-poweredFEATURED DISCUSSION:When Richard Branson talks, we listen. So when he recently gushed aboutthe importance of building a stellar staff, we had to ask: How valuable are your employees to the overall success of your business? The response was tremendously positive. Here are a handful of opinions from our readers at facebook.com/EntMagazine.
KYLE JOHNSON Vital.
SYDNEY REO They’re the bricks that make up the building.
KIM YUHL Huge! I would question any business owner who answers otherwise.
MARK TORRE Critical. If you don’t think your team and the culture of yourcompany are the most important, then read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.
LEILANI MIRANDA They’re the arteries.
ROGER FOWLER I hate old sayings, but this one fits: A chain is only asstrong as its weakest link.
SENYA V. SANTA Ask yourself: How important are your arms?
DIVAMARIE HOLLENBACH Since I am my staff, I would say “extremely.”
JOE JOHNSON Without my staff I don’t eat.
’TREP SNACK OF THE MONTHFacebook fan and long-time reader Gregory Richardson sent us his “lonely nerd on the road” photo of how he sates his Entrepreneur appetite while traveling. Richard-son, founder of a computer network security consult-ing firm in the northeastern Caribbean, was catching up on his reading at Blue Chili, one of his favorite Thai restaurants off Times Square in New York City.
TELL US ABOUT ITThere’s a whole world of Entrepre-neur online, and our Facebook fans, Twitter followers and discussion groups are buzzing 24/7 about what matters to entrepreneurs most. Come join the conversation with our editors and readers: Become our fan on Facebook: facebook.com/EntMagazineFollow us on Twitter: @EntMagazine and @EntMagazineAmy Join our online community: econnect.entrepreneur.com
SHARE YOUR COMMENTS Write to Letters, Entrepreneur, 2445 McCabe Way, Ste. 400, Irvine, Calif. 92614; fax (949) 261-0234, or e-mail entmag@entrepreneur .com. Letters may be edited for brevity and clarity.
LETTERSBank on itI derive at least $10K worth of ideasfrom each Entrepreneur issue for my franchise company, The Growth Coach. I tear out pages and delegate them with instructions to my team for implementation. We share many of the profitable ideas with the several thousand small businesses we coach each year throughout North America. Thanks for all the lucrative ideas on marketing, social media, sales, trends and technology. This is the only magazine I know that truly puts money in the bank accounts of business owners. Keep up the fine work.
Daniel M. MurphyCincinnati
feedback
entmar11 016 feedback.indd 16 1/21/11 10:24 AM
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 19
going forwardbusiness unusual
Marshall Dostal grew up in a thrifty New Eng-land household in which “throw on a sweater” trumped “turn up the heat.” True to his roots, when he found work in the advertising industry
and he and his wife, Megan, moved to Pasadena, Calif., he drove a 1984 Mercedes 300D that he ran on biodiesel.
He started making fuel from used vegetable oil he collected from restaurateurs. But all those gallons of glycerin, the byprod-uct of the refining process, bugged him. Such a waste.
Knowing glycerin is the main ingredient in most soaps, Marshall started experimenting with soap formulas and a new idea: What if, he wondered, the soap could be sold back to the restaurants that had provided the oil? Customers could wash their hands with the byproduct of their frites.
In 2008, the Dostals got serious. They sold a building they owned, and Marshall left his job. They brought in a fragrance expert and came up with a fresh, slightly earthy scent for their soap: a mix of olive, bergamot and grass. “Nothing flowery or powdery,” Megan says. “A guy had to be comfortable using it.”
They contracted with a Los Angeles lab to manufacture the soap and called their company Further Products, since they were taking the concept of re-use an extra step. Megan designed the parchment-colored labels to convey a homespun, DIY vibe.
Restaurants jumped at what Marshall calls “the opportunity to use their waste in an interesting way.” A sign in the restroom at L.A.’s trendy Pizzeria Mozza reads: “As you wash your hands, you are completing a perfect, sustainable circle.”
A few local and regional retailers that carry high-quality green products, including Fred Segal in L.A. and ABC Carpet and Home in New York, also signed on.
In 2009 the Dostals took on an investor, who now owns 30 percent of the company. They bought a bottle-filling ma-chine and a truck—fueled by biodiesel, of course—to pick up the oil, then cart the glycerin to the lab and the finished soap back home to be bottled and shipped. They also developed a moisturizer and a candle featuring the Further scent.
Further products aren’t cheap—$12.50 for eight ounces of soap or moisturizer, $24 for the candle—but, Marshall says, being a higher-end brand gives them entree to “progressive and forward-thinking retailers.” In December, Further appeared in its first national retailer, Williams Sonoma, after the chain’s president, Richard Harvey, found out about the line.
Further produces 10,000 units a month, with production expected to jump significantly in the next six months as new products hit the market. With no employees other than them-selves, the Dostals are supporting their family with the business.
“It’s kind of unbelievable,” Marshall says, “but we may need a warehouse.” —Maria russo
Out of the fryer and into the sink An eco-conscious couple turns restaurants’
cooking oil into soap—and sells it back to the establishments
Waste not: megan and marshall dostal at l.a.’s osteria mozza.
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Entrepreneur // March 201120
How to clean up your reputationSkweal takes complaints out of the public forum,giving businesses a chance to make good
Five-star reviews are great for business, but there’s no way to stop angryYelpers from publishing bad ones. Until now.
Skweal is a feedback platform designed to help brick-and-mortar retailers resolve issues privately, before a customer does any damage
online. The idea is to get people to visit skweal.com on their smartphones, locate the business from a list and submit a comment or complaint through Skweal’s feedback form. Skweal employees take it from there, passing the mes-sage as quickly as possible to the right person. Early Skwealers have benefited. One wrote, “The Internet isn’t working in my room, and I’m thinking about changing hotels.” That led to—true story—a fix within half an hour, plus a champagne-and-fruit-basket apology.
“It takes 30 seconds or less, and customers don’t need to register or sign up,” says Skweal founder Tyler Crowley, a former executive at Mahalo.com and a producer at Open Angel Forum. He’s campaigning to get more busi-ness owners to share their best contact information, and to encourage their customers to provide feedback through Skweal.
In fact, Crowley says the only reason people complain publicly about the lo-cal dry cleaner or café is because there’s no convenient alternative.
“Virtually all one-star reviewers I interviewed said they would have pre-ferred to speak directly to someone when the problem was happening,” he says. “But nobody has time to be stuck in a phone tree, dig for a customer service e-mail or fill out an impersonal comment card.”
If Skweal takes off—and plenty of investors think it will —business owners can get real-time feedback, win customer service points and nip complaints in the bud. And not a moment too soon, since asking for the manager is so 20th century. —Jennifer wang
You shouldknow
“Local” and “sustainable” are terms more likely to be associated with an organic
lettuce crop than with job creation and entrepreneurship. But richard florida, bestselling author of The Rise of the Creative Class, has long championed the idea that the best way government can kick-start the economy is by shelving federal pro-grams and going local, local, local.
Specifically, the University of To-ronto professor of business and cre-ativity argues that artists, intellectuals and entrepreneurs are the ultimate economic growth engine—and to build a thriving business community, city mayors and state governors must cultivate their talents. a prime example: Kirk watson, the former mayor of austin, Texas, who revital-ized the downtown area and helped establish the South by Southwest music and film festival as one of the city’s biggest economic windfalls. More recently, florida has become the darling of great Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, who plans to use “the grain that’s already there” to build up London’s tech sector.
a few counter-creativity groups call florida an elitist. But that hasn’t shaken his belief that suc-cess is directly related to how happy you keep the core popula-tion of creative professionals.
Memorable quote: “at critical moments, americans have always looked forward, not back, and sur-prised the world with our resilience. Can we do it again?”—J.w.
Hipster in cHiefRichaRd FloRida
Born 1957UrBan development theorist,
aUthor
going forward
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Entrepreneur // March 201122
going forward ASK A PRO
A:If you have fantasies of buying a faltering business for cheap and turning it around—
yes, that would be the way madness lies. The Small Business Administration puts the failure rate of startups between 50 percent and 60 percent; but it’s closer to 85 percent for those who buy in hopes of a turnaround, accord-ing to a Northeastern University study.
Buying a profitable business, on the other hand, is another matter entirely. You’ve got cash flow from Day One, an established reputation and, if you’re lucky, a seller who will help finance the deal, says Ted Leverette, president of “Partner” On-Call, a fran-chise based in North Palm Beach, Fla., that matches buyers with sellers of small and midsize businesses.
Leverette has several baseline requirements for a business purchase. First, no matter how glow-ing the sales talk, don’t buy anything that hasn’t been profitable for the last five years—and that includes the Great Recession. “Absolutely don’t buy anything that has an annual pretax net cash flow under $100,000,” he says. “That’s the small-est you want to go.”
Look for a competitive advantage. “The busi-ness has to have something that makes it unique.”
As for specific business opportunities, keep an open mind. “It’s a good idea to buy a top business in any industry, even if the industry overall is strug-gling,” he says. “When there’s a shakeout, those that survive are the winners.”
Once the deal is done, retain the seller as a consultant and hire a good manager, because even the best busi-nesses will fail if they are mismanaged. And, of course, be careful to retain the best employees. “You need someone really good in the product area, and someone who really understands the marketing,” he says, “and then you want to compensate them well.” —J.W.
Good buyQ:Am I crazy to acquire a business
instead of starting one?
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going forward
jar-gon
XoogleRdeFinition: Pronounced Zoog-ler and used to describe the swelling ranks of ex-google employees headed for younger, nimbler startups—or starting companies of their own.usage: kevin woke one sunny Monday morning to the real-ization that the magic of working for google was gone. two weeks later, he was a Xoogler taking the fruits of his “20 percent time” to his first vc pitch.
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What’s Most essentialFoR a successFul staRtup?The founders. We’ve learned in thesix years of doing Y Combinator to look at the founders—not the busi-ness ideas—because the earlier you in-vest, the more you’re investing in the people. When Bill Gates was starting Microsoft, the idea that he had then involved a small-time microcomputer called the Altair. That didn’t seem very promising, so you had to see that this 19-year-old kid was going places.
What do you look FoR?Determination. When we started, wethought we were looking for smart people, but it turned out that intel-ligence was not as important as we expected. If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student.
so hoW do you deteRMinedeteRMination?When we interview, we decide in 10minutes whether to fund people. We talk about their ideas, because that’s the best way to figure out what kind of people they are.
What iMpResses you?Knowing the business. If we ask abunch of questions and they have the answers at their fingertips because they understand the domain really well, that’s a good sign. Being concise is im-portant, too. If you really understand
something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about.
hoW do you spot a gReat idea?It often sounds like a bad idea. WhenFacebook first started, and it was just a social directory for undergrads at Harvard, it would have seemed like such a bad startup idea, like some student side project. Or when Google started, there were eight to 10 successful established search engines already, and search was so uncool that they were trying to get people to call them “portals.”
But return is always proportional to risk, so what that means is: The very best startup ideas, the ones that are the biggest successes, tend to be the ideas that you don’t know are even going to work.
and you can see WheRethat line is?Well, this is why we pick basedon founders.
Money manPaul Graham spills: Why some companies get his cash and others don’t
Loopt. Reddit. Xobni. Bump.Paul Graham—and the seed-stage venture firm he co-founded, Y Combinator—have been there at the
start of all of them. And now Y Combinator is growing, too. In the last two years, the Silicon Valley fund-ing group doubled its number of active startups to 40 and brought in a prominent new partner, Gmail’s
lead developer (and Xoogler) Paul Buchheit. We asked Graham to give up the goods: How exactly do you spot the next big thing? —j.w.
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innovator
CYRIAC ROEDING: KICK-STARTING SHOPPERS.
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 27
The idea first came to Cyriac Roeding in 1994. The German-born business and engineering graduate student was studying Japanese management
theory at Tokyo’s Sophia Univer-sity. “Everywhere I went, I saw people walking around with these clunky machines they called ‘mobile phones,’ ” Roeding says. “I said, ‘Wow, that’s the next big thing.’ ”
T
THE REBIRTH OF RETAIL
SHOPKICKis retooling the concept
of customer rewards with an app that
delivers promotions, prizes and discounts
to smartphone-toting consumers.
MEET CYRIAC ROEDING, the man reinventing
shopping for the mobile era.
BY JASON ANKENY
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
DAVID JOHNSON
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Lease or own? 36 or 60 months? It can all hinge on payment options, rates and much-needed fl exibility. Choose the best scenario according to not just your fl eet needs but also your overall business goals.
High-priced vehicles often correspond to higher fees and insurance. Work out insurance costs for each vehicle, factoring in coverage, drivers and vehicle types. Don’t discount the impact taxes and registration can have on the cost of operating certain vehicles.
For each vehicle, know whether your perspective is long-term or short—and whether resale value will hold up accordingly. Just keep in mind that business needs often change, and your selections will have to follow.
Are you covering long distances with passengers or hauling heavy equipment across short ones? What’s the daily/monthly/annual business mileage you expect? Calculate your needs across several fuel price points and vehicle options to determine the most cost-effective solutions.
A great deal off the lot that brings you back to the shop time and again is no bargain. Repairs aside, every vehicle requires routine services to stay in top shape for your business, but the costs can really run the gamut. Always consider the recommended maintenance frequency and basic cost levels of these services to fi nd the makes and models that outperform.
Money spent on purchasing and maintaining vehicles is money that could be invested elsewhere in your business. Likewise, investments made elsewhere when the fl eet responsible for day-to-day success doesn’t get the job done will only hold your business back. Here’s what you need to know to minimize opportunity costs and build a fl eet that keeps your business running strong and your costs low.
In the end, careful analysis will ensure you build a fl eet that works for your bottom line. Plus, streamlined research never hurts—especially when it’s been done for you by fl eet experts. The Vincentric Best Fleet Value in America awards evaluated vehicles across many of these same points—and determined 10 Toyota vehicles were winners.*
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innovatorThe seed was planted, but the true
form and scope of the idea remained elusive for more than a decade. In the meantime, Roeding pursued other suc-cesses. He founded a mobile marketing firm called 12snap. He served as ex-ecutive vice president of CBS Mobile, where his interactive entertainment concepts were strong enough to win an Emmy Award nomination.
Still, the big kahuna—the eureka mo-ment, the one that captured lightning in a bottle—refused to reveal itself.
“I have been looking for an idea that has the potential to become a really large company in mobile for 11 years,” Roeding says. “When I started 12snap in 1999, it was dur-ing the dark ages of mobile, when text messaging was still a geeky thing even in Europe. For years I’ve been trying out different mobile-use cases, looking for the one with a chance to become huge.”
Roeding left CBS Mobile in 2008 and traveled the world for nearly two months. Everywhere he went, from New Zealand to Nepal, he saw people on mobile phones. With each succes-sive stop, the idea took shape.
“I wanted to develop a service where mobile meets the real world,” Roeding says. “Your cell phone is the only interactive medium you carry with you in a noninteractive physi-cal environment, and that changes everything. It makes the offline world an interactive experience.”
The idea finally achieved critical mass in September 2008, when Roed-ing arrived at his new gig as entrepre-neur-in-residence with Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. After poring over thousands of business plans submit-ted to KPCB’s iFund (a $200 million investment initiative created to ignite software developer interest in Apple’s then-fledgling iPhone) and finding nothing that crystallized his vision, he shifted his perspective from identifying a solution to pinpointing a problem.
“The number-one challenge facing every retailer in America is getting people through the door,” Roeding says. “Conversion rates in the physical world are so much better than on-line—between 0.5 percent to 3 percent in the virtual world, and between 20 percent to 95 percent in the real
world. So if foot traffic is so impor-tant, then why hasn’t anyone rewarded people for visiting stores? The answer is simple: It’s because nobody knows you came through the door.”
So Roeding set to work on a smartphone-optimized rewards pro-gram offering customers discounts and promotions simply for entering retail stores—a model he describes as “the physical-world equivalent of an online click.” Meetings with big-box retailer executives followed. “They all loved the idea,” he recalls. “It was crazy. I still didn’t have a company, the tech-nology, a team or even any funding. I only had a PowerPoint presentation.”
The idea—or shopkick, as it’s now formally known—launched last Au-gust, buoyed by $20 million in funding
from KPCB, as well as venture firm Greylock Partners and Linked- In founder Reid Hoffman (also an investor in Facebook and Zynga). The startup’s eponymous mobile applica-tion delivers “kickbucks” rewards to all registered iPhone and Android us-ers who enter a participating retail lo-cation. Kickbucks can be collected and redeemed across any partner store and turned into gift cards, discounts, song downloads, movie tickets, Facebook Credits or even charitable donations. As of late last year, shopkick spanned 1,100 individual U.S. retail outlets and 100 shopping centers with partners such as Best Buy, Macy’s, Target, Sports Authority, Crate & Barrel and mall operator Simon Property Group.
“Shopkick transfers the online busi-
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Entrepreneur // March 201132
innovatorness model to the real world,” saysRoeding, CEO of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company. “We’re tackling a huge market with a big problem, and we’re offering them a solution that works.”
Roeding speaks about ideasin a deeply reverential, almost spiritual, tone. “I love building companies,” he says. “I’ve always said
that if the right people and the right idea pop up, I will drop everything to start a company. That’s why I came to the U.S. I wanted to build something.”
Roeding’s entrepreneurial aspira-tions took a left turn when he landed in the entertainment industry, taking the helm of CBS Corp.’s fledgling mo-bile entertainment unit in 2005.
“At that time Disney had 270 peo-ple in its mobile department and CBS had zero,” he recalls. “I met with [CBS executives] Nancy Tellem and Leslie Moonves and asked, ‘Why are you talking to me? I’m an entrepreneur. I’m not a big-company person,’ ” he says. “And Les said, ‘Because I want to turn this company into a company of entrepreneurs.’ ”
Roeding left CBS Mobile after three years at the top. Along the way, he pioneered a mobile video news-alert program, produced mobile games based on the network’s prime-time hits and masterminded original made-for-mobile content across the three largest U.S. wireless carrier networks. Roed-ing also inked an early location-based mobile advertising partnership with Loopt, a still-growing mobile social networking startup that predates up-and-comers like Foursquare and Gowalla by several years.
At first glance, it may appear shopkick is yet another variation on the location-specific check-in para-digm championed by those firms, but Roeding cautions that the app is not a social networking tool.
“Our vision is to transform shopping into a personal, rewarding and fun expe-rience for everyone,” he says. “Shopkick is an app that is built around the act of going out and shopping. It’s not about going out and letting your friends know where you are.”
And unlike other location-enabled applications, shopkick doesn’t rely on GPS triangulation. “If you want to
reward someone for walking in your store, you cannot use GPS,” Roeding says. “It’s way too inaccurate. There’s an error radius of about 500 yards, meaning I still don’t know if you’re inside the store, out in the parking lot or across the street at a competitor.”
Shopkick instead incorporates a patent-pending device located in each participating store. The box, which costs retailers less than $100 and is roughly the dimensions of a paperback novel, plugs into any power outlet, emitting an audio sig-nal that’s undetectable to the human ear but automatically picked up by a smartphone’s internal microphone. Because the signal’s range is limited to the perimeter of the store, users must physically enter the location to earn kickbucks. And as Roeding points out, because detection occurs
via the mobile device, consumers re-tain control over the privacy of their presence information.
Retailers determine how many kick-bucks a shopper receives for entering their business. Roeding says each walk-in can earn as many as 100 kickbucks, with 875 kickbucks earning a $25 restaurant gift certificate, for example. Retailers can leverage the shopkick app to deliver special offers, like a discount on specific merchandise.
The concept also extends beyond retail: In partnership with brands including Kraft Foods and Procter & Gamble, shopkick offers smaller re-wards for scanning product barcodes, which extends the network to about 230,000 additional stores nationwide.
Shopkick receives a small commis-sion fee for each kickbuck a customer earns. “It’s essentially a cost-per-click
WITH KICKBUCKS, RETAILERS DESIGN THEIR OWN REWARDS.
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 33
SHOP TALKShoppers on smartphones are nothing new, but there’s a grow-ing possibility they’re no longer simply talking or texting. An increasing number of consumers are relying on their mobile de-vices to check product availability, identify nearby bargains and read reviews, too. Fifty-nine percent of adult mobile subscribers in the U.S. said they planned to use their handsets for shopping and event organizing during the 2010 holiday season—up 25 percent from 2009—according to a consumer study pub-lished late last year by the Mobile Marketing Association and Luth Research. Respondents cited searching for local stores selling a desired gift item and comparing prices as their most common mobile behaviors.
“The fundamentals of commerce have not changed—I still want to buy the product I want at the price I want, it’s got to be in stock and I want fast checkout and fast delivery,” says Cathy Halligan, senior vice president of marketing and sales at PowerReviews, a San Francisco company that provides social commerce solutions (including customer reviews) to retailers and brands.
“What has changed is the access to information. We’ve seen a 500 percent year-over-year increase in consumers using mobile devices to access product information. They used to look for that information through the desktop, but that’s very limiting. After all, you don’t carry your PC with you to the supermarket,” she says.
Brands large and small are capitalizing on the trend, rolling out applications designed to enhance the mobile shopping ex-perience. Check these out:
• Price Check by Amazon. This free comparison shopping tool en-ables iPhone users to check in-store product prices against items available on the web. Price Check gives consumers the option to scan a product barcode, snap a photo of the merchandise or speak/type its brand name to instantly receive prices from Ama-zon and rival online merchants. The app sorts prices from lowest to highest, incorporating Amazon shipping discounts when available. Price Check encompasses millions of products across a variety of categories, as well as mobile access to shopping features like customer reviews and product information sharing via Twitter, Facebook, text message or e-mail link.
• Google Shopper. Available exclusively for smartphones run-ning Google’s own Android mobile operating system, Google Shopper lets consumers capture product information via their device camera. The application recognizes cover art on books, CDs, DVDs and video games, as well as most barcodes. In addition, users can speak the name of the product they’re looking to purchase. In response, Google Shopper supplies product recommendations, pricing comparisons and identifieslocal stores where the item is in stock, complete with contact information and driving directions. The app also saves each user’s search history, guaranteeing product and price informa-tion even when the Android device is out of network range.
• NexTag Mobile. Online shopping comparison site NexTag offers mobile solutions for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry smartphones, touting features like price comparisons span-ning thousands of merchants, image recognition-based search, seller ratings and a wish list that users can share with friends and family. NexTag Mobile also offers a full comple-ment of GPS-enabled tools, giving consumers the option of mapping the distance from their ZIP code or current location to a local merchant selling a scanned product. —J.A.
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34 Entrepreneur // March 2011
innovatorequivalent, only we charge cost-per-visit,” Roeding says. If a shopper makes a purchase after using the app, shopkick claims a percentage of that transaction as well.
Not only is the shopkick model dif-ferent from services like Foursquare, its users are different.
“Eighty percent of Foursquare users are male and 70 percent are between the ages of 19 and 35,” Roeding says. By contrast, he notes, “55 percent of our users are female. Forty-nine percent of all users are aged 25 to 39, and 13 percent are 40 or older. Only 6.5 percent are 13 to 17. It’s the perfect shopper demographic.”
Retailers credit shopkick with kick-ing their customer traffic into a differ-ent gear. Sporting goods chain Sports Authority has rolled it out to more than 100 of its U.S. locations. In late 2010 the chain doubled—and in some cases even tripled—kickbucks rewards to determine the potential effect on walk-ins. The promotion ultimately in-creased shopkick user walk-in growth 50 percent to 70 percent.
“You have to innovate in retail to be relevant,” says Jeff Schumacher, Sports Authority’s chief marketing offi-cer. “We looked at other applications, but we felt shopkick’s strategy was the best fit. Their focus is on driving frequency, and in retail, frequency is a powerful metric. Anything that incents the customer to come into the store more often is a win-win for us.”
Schumacher declines to reveal how many Sports Authority customers actively use the shopkick application, but says the company is “quite pleased” with it. “We’re trialing shopkick in our major markets, which is where we see the greatest density of smartphones,” he says. “Our customers love it. Some of them are even asking for it in markets where we don’t have it. Feedback has been very positive.”
Shopkick’s rapid growth corresponds with surging consumer interest in leverag-ing mobile technology to shop smarter (see sidebar on
Page 33). Shoppers relying on mobile solutions to search for price and prod-uct information, check merchandise availability, compare prices at nearby stores, browse product reviews and even purchase goods accounted for
$127 billion in consumer spending during the 2010 holiday season—which represents 28 percent of the $447 billion the National Retail Fed-eration forecasts U.S. consumers spent over the period—according to a survey conducted by research firm IDC.
“We’re seeing a fundamental shift in how consumers are accessing informa-tion at the point of purchase,” says Cathy Halligan, senior vice president of marketing and sales at PowerReviews, a company in San Francisco that provides social commerce solutions (includ-ing customer reviews) to retailers and brands. “Consumers now have access to product information while they’re stand-ing in the store. They’ve never had that before. It’s a game-changer.”
As of October, nearly 61 million U.S. consumers owned smartphones, up 14 percent from the preceding three-month period and translating to one out of every four American wireless subscribers in all, researcher comScore reports. And as smartphone penetration grows, the opportunity for startups like shopkick flourishes.
“We made the decision to focus only on smartphones—it makes the most sense,” Roeding says. “There will be 150 million smartphone users across the U.S. by the end of [2011], and consumers who can afford to shop are overrepresented in that group.”
His idea is growing, too. Shopkick is extending its platform into the small-
business sector: At press time, the firm was planning to launch its SMB retail trials in the first quarter of 2011.
“We’re very excited about mov-ing into the small-business world,” Roeding says. “You could never join a national program as a local player before. It just didn’t work. But with kickbucks, the playing field is level.”
He also plans to expand the core capabilities of the shopkick model. In conjunction with the annual Black Friday shopping frenzy, the company recently unveiled The 12 Days of Kickmas, a sweepstakes giving walk-in users a shot at winning one of a dozen daily prize packages, including a grand prize of 4.25 million kickbucks. Other initiatives are in the pipeline, and as shopkick grows and improves, retailer offers should become more sophisti-cated as well, with kickbucks awards and promotions eventually targeting consumers according to age, gender, geography, shopping frequency or purchase history.
“Shopkick is about shopping, and not anything else,” Roeding says. “There are all kinds of things that shopping entails, and we want to improve all of them. It’s about making the in-store experience amazing. It’s not a tool. This is your world.”
JASON ANKENY IS A CHICAGO-BASED
WRITER AND EXECUTIVE EDITOR OF
FIERCEMOBILECONTENT.
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 37
technologyshiny object
You can see clearly nowLogitech’s new webcam can turn an office into a high-def videoconferencing studio
As hip as low-cost videoconferencing tools like Skype, Google Chat and Apple iChat have become,they pose a common problem for small businesses: poor image quality. Therefore, interactivity and meeting quality can be less than first rate.
Logitech aims to change that. Its new HD Pro Webcam C910 ($100) is a video camera that can bring near-professional video quality to even entry-level business videoconferencing. The unit boasts a high-quality, high-definition calling mode, an excellent video recording capability and a solid microphone. It even comes with basic video editing software that’s good enough to produce simple marketing materials and visual collateral.
Although it’s nowhere near as high-end as technologies like telepresence, the C910 offers a surprisingly rich and lifelike video experience. As with any videoconferencing system, the webcam’s quality will suffer if you have a wonky web connection. But with business-grade web access and a little tinkering, the C910 will deliver for even the tiniest of firms. —Jonathan Blum
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Entrepreneur // March 201138
technologySharper imagesA good camera can help you enhance everything from yoursocial media profile to your product spec sheets
Now that smartphones have powerful cameras and video systems built right in, makers of traditional camerashave had to adapt: Today’s nominally consumer-grade camera comes jammed with advanced features like video, global-positioning systems and rugged designs. If you know the tricks, seemingly basic cameras can be turned into business-ready multimedia imaging devices that can help your firm market, communicate—and
make more money. Here are our picks for low-cost, portable cameras with small-business game:
SONY NEX-5 ($800, PACKAGED WITH 16MM LENS)Remember the difference between single-lens reflex cameras and point-and-shoot units? SLRs were pricey but powerful and let you change lenses; point-and-shoots were cheaper but had limited fea-tures and only internal lens adjustments. Those days are over. The new Sony NEX-5 brings the interchangeable lenses of the SLR to a point-and-shoot-size camera, opening a level of professional-quality imaging to smaller firms. Not only can the NEX-5 shoot seven frames per second in continuous live-action stills mode, the unit also pro-duces fabulously high-quality, high-resolution video. If you are looking to add multimedia to your social media pages, take quality comps of your work for clients or otherwise create powerful marketing material, you will be surprised by how professional a tool the NEX-5 can be.
CASIO EX-H20G ($350)Most businesses are about being somewhere and doing something at a specific place and time. So most businesses should get to know the Casio EX-H20G. Not only does this unit have a traditional global-positioning system, but it also has so-called autonomic posi-tioning—basically, what a guided missile uses to stay on course. The tool allows this super-simple point-and-shoot camera to generate a remarkably accurate position for where and at what time photos are taken. Say you’re out doing an onsite for an upcoming job. Rather than pinging your location with your cell phone, jotting down an address and hoping that Google Maps gets it all right so you can find your way back, take a picture with your H20G and know your posi-tion is correct. Getting an accurate fix on where you need to be is a handy tool indeed.
KODAK PLAYSPORT/ZX3 ($150)The ruggedized Kodak Playsport/Zx3 is made to help adrenaline junkies record their latest base jump, cliff jump or ski jump. But this small, good-looking video and still camera has solid small-business skills lurking in-side. Sure, the Playsport pumps out reasonably high-quality video, good still images and has an easy-to-use USB output that lets all images feed directly into a PC. But what makes the Playsport unique is its tougher-than-nails case and lightning-fast turn-on time. So instead of having to baby your iPhone in an add-on case and wait forever to take a picture, you can grab the Playsport, shoot what needs to be shot and move on. If you doubt the business value of that, just ask any of the many iPhone owners out there whose camera doesn’t work at all. —J.B.
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Insurance underwritten by Farmers Insurance Exchange and other affiliated companies. Visit farmers.com for a complete listing of companies. Coverage not available in all states. ©2011 Farmers Group, Inc.
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Entrepreneur // March 201140
techFacebook gets the messageMany business owners have embraced its new messaging e-mail service as their primary mode for communicating with contacts. But many others are sticking to the tried and true. —ErIcka chIckowSkI
With developers to manage, clients to woo and time-lines to keep, Jesse Waites
is the typical overbooked business owner. He says that even with Face-book’s new messaging capabilities, it sucks away his valuable time.
“Being your own boss, you typi-cally sit down for the day with a list of 10 or more important things to do,” he says. “Being on Facebook is not the first thing on that list.”
Waites says he doesn’t want to
interrupt a project by pondering whether or not to accept a friend request from a long-lost classmate. Perhaps even more of a black mark against Facebook messaging, though, is the issue of security.
“As an entrepreneur, I don’t want Facebook reading my mail,” he says. “Facebook messaging may be a very brilliant plan for lower-level Internet users—you know, people that want to play FarmVille and all that—but I’ve got a business to worry about.”
jesse Waites, oWner, beacon hill apps, a mobile application development firm, boston
Live With itCan’t
Can’t Live WithOUt it
For the past decade, Shawn Hermanson has made it his business to collect as many
contacts as possible in his pursuit of generating buzz for his small-busi-ness clients. He’s somewhat a victim of his own success: Hermanson has so many unfiltered contacts in his long-standing web-based e-mail account that it is difficult for him to keep track of who’s who.
Lately, when he’s out of his office on business, he says he finds himself checking Facebook Messages on
his phone more than he checks his regular e-mail account.
“I can honestly see myself discon-tinuing my regular e-mail account that I started back in 1998,” he says.
Hermanson says Facebook mes-saging is easier to use than his regu-lar e-mail, and it offers better control over contact management and more context about his contacts.
“It’s kind of nice when you can actually see a photo of a person,” he says. “It gives your e-mail account a little more personal touch.”
shaWn hermanson, oWner, buzz revolution, a marketing firm, denver
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Entrepreneur // March 201142
technologyVoIP hits the roadIf you do the math right, you can save moneyusing the technology on your mobile device
For businesses looking to save money on telecom costs, Voice overInternet Protocol (VoIP) technology has been a go-to method for some time. But can it help you cut your mobile bills as well?
The answer isn’t as straightforward.For many tech watchers, the big
story in mobile VoIP was AT&T and Apple’s concession last summer, after months of stalling, to allow popular VoIP service Skype on the iPhone. Why the delay? AT&T didn’t want VoIP dialing to cut into its voice-service revenues, and Apple—well, it seems Apple was just being its usual controlling self.
Today, mobile users not only can use Skype apps on the iPhone, but also on Android, BlackBerry and Nokia devices. Skype even has a version of the app for Verizon users that sends the calls over its regular voice network. Skype isn’t alone in mobile VoIP, either. Rivals like Fring, Truphone, Nimbuzz and Vonage offer similar capabili-ties. Just download the app to your phone and go. Still toe-dipping in mobile VoIP is Google, which could change the voice game altogether when it finally takes the plunge.
Is mobile VoIP free? It depends on how you look at it. Most car-riers still require users to have a voice minutes plan. If that’s true in your case, go for the minimum. Then use your mobile VoIP app for free app-to-app calling. Your only cost for that is your data usage (technically free with an unlimited data plan; trickier if you pay by the byte). Want to call out to regu-lar phone numbers? No big deal. Most mobile VoIP services charge a pittance for the capability. Fring, for instance, was recently charging 0.9 cents (yep, less than a penny) per minute; Skype offers unlimited calls in the U.S. and Canada starting at just $2.99 per month. If you can master the math and don’t mind dialing-by-app rather than hard key, the savings can add up quickly. —rIch karPInSkI
You know the drill. You and a client agree on terms. You send out a contract and it
sits. You give a reminder call, and the client finally inks the contract—but the scanner is broken, so the con-tract sits some more. By the time it’s in hand, you’ve worked months with no legal umbrella.
there’s no reason to live with that scenario anymore. technology has made signing with electronic signa-tures (e-signatures) a real option.
the legal framework for ac-ceptance of e-signatures has been in place since the passage of the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and national commerce act in 2000. many larger busi-nesses have adopted the practice, but delivery models have been too cumbersome and expensive for most smaller outfits, until recently.
with the software-as-a-service model, a solution that integrates with PDF and word documents costs as little as $10 a month. In fact, with the release of adobe’s free beta for eSignatures, it may be possible to jump on the e-signature bandwagon for no upfront cost.
the adoption of e-signatures could help you reap dividends during the sales cycle. a study of 472 organizations by the aber-deen Group found that users of e-signatures were 50 percent more likely to show improved customer renewal rates. they were also 41 percent more likely to reduce proposal errors and 18 percent more likely to shorten their sales cycles.
“a key challenge facing busi-nesses is achieving cost-effective sales growth,” says Peter ostrow, aberdeen research director. “users of electronic signaturetechnology outperform non-users in areas that significantly impact sales growth.” —E.c.
sign on the dotted pixele-signatures streamline the contract process
hoW to get started With mobile voipas an example, let’s use skype on the iphone:
1 Download the Skype app from the iPhone store.
2 Sign up for Skype service for free calling over 3G or wi-Fi to
other Skype users on a mobile de-vice or connected Pc.
3 Buy Skype “credits” to call non-Skype users, paying just cents
per minute (depending on where you’re calling).
4 use Skype seamlessly on the iPhone: receive calls in the
background like a regular phone call, and while on a Skype call do other tasks—like check your e-mail or your calendar—without hanging up.
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Entrepreneur // March 201144
Mobile applications redefined the user experience but represent only a pit stop in the continuing evolution of the Mobile platforM. the true endgaMe for business owners is the Mobile web.
have worms, will travel: mike hodgdon in a house truck.
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 45
By Dan O’Shea
phOtOgraphy By
jOhn jOhnStOn
To land the bigfishes, you need to be able to find
them. But like the fishes themselves, data about where and when the big ones are biting don’t stay fresh for long.
The 100,000 or so user forum members of Bigfishtackle.com like to share just that kind of information, but by the time they get back home or to their Wi-Fi enabled cabins to log on to tell their friends the best places to drop a line (or maybe just to gloat), it could be old news. It would be a lot better if they could log onto their mobile phones the in-stant they set the hook, right from the boat.
Business in moTion
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Entrepreneur // March 201146
“Fishing reports can get a littledated,” says Mike Hodgdon, COO of Colorado Springs, Colo.-based First Light Net, which runs Bigfishtackle .com and other websites for outdoor enthusiasts. “There is a big advantage for the angler to do this while they’re actually on a fishing spot. That’s why we started to see some demand to post to the forum from mobile phones.”
The website became an early adopter of new technology enabling a mobile-optimized web browsing ex-perience. In 2007, it started reformat-ting its site for smaller mobile device screens. But the business soon found dotMobi, a Dublin, Ireland, firm that’s among a handful of companies that sells .mobi domain names, as well as tools for creating a mobile-optimized web experience. Now, Bigfishtackle.mobi gives forum members viewing, browsing and posting functions that are just like the desktop web experi-ence, but rendered just right for a 3- or 4-inch mobile phone screen.
The site and others like it represent a growing trend among entrepre-neurial businesses to achieve a more mobile-friendly web presence.
The .mobi designation isn’t for a separate website—it’s just a mobile-optimized extension. Bigfishtackle.com didn’t have to change its URL. “You can post to the .mobi site, and it integrates with the regular website in real time,” Hodgdon says.
Pinky Brand, director of global sales at dotMobi, estimates that businesses could realize a bump in traffic of 10 percent to 15 percent by mobile-optimizing their websites. That could be the amount of traffic they are losing if customers try to visit their regular websites from mo-bile phones and find them unfit for viewing on their device screens.
“Mobile is what a lot of consumers use to look for businesses right now,” Brand says. “In truth, every business already has a mobile website because your website can be seen on mobile phones. It’s just that the businesses may not know how bad it looks on a mobile phone.”
Bigfishtackle.mobi was among the first sites launched with dotMobi’s help. Though the site does see some unique visitors, Hodgdon says the crossover from the regular website has
been especially notable, with about 40 percent of website visitors crossing over to the mobile-optimized version. That’s a lot of impact for a project that cost its website proprietor little more than $8,000.
“If you think about it, this makes sense for a lot of different types of businesses because the mobile phone market is so big,” Hodgdon says. “The opportunity is bigger than just building for computers.”
The nascent mobile websitemovement could be the next step for mobile-savvy busi-nesses that have joined the
mobile app explosion, or even for those who have missed out on apps. However,
in the long run mobile websites could prove to have broader implications and greater business benefits.
It can be expensive and labor inten-sive to develop a mobile app to repre-sent your business. Developers of the earliest mobile data apps often had to write different versions for every mo-bile device on which they wanted the apps to play, says Mitch Lazar, CEO of Taptu, a social media and technol-ogy company with headquarters in Denver and Cambridge, England.
Lazar himself was an early entrant into mobile Internet endeavors, having created the CNN Mobile service after starting CNN.com in the 1990s.
“There were huge cost and distribu-tion challenges because you had to cus-tomize the service for every phone that was out there,” Lazar says. “We had to create about 500 different SKUs for CNN Mobile for different distributors.”
A pair of philosophically opposite technology evolutions in recent years made the development process easier. First, Apple created its own tightly controlled app ecosystem with the highly desirable iPhone at the center of it. Next, the emergence of the Android operating system created an open en-vironment for developers to create an app once, and with a few tweaks, get it on a much broader list of devices.
The success of the iPhone and the rise of the Android army created a fast-growing market for mobile apps, but with that success came new chal-lenges for any business seeking to make its mark with its own mobile app. For starters, it has to deal with an app store, such as Apple’s iPhone store, that will want a piece of the revenue. Also, the app undergoes lengthy, rigorous testing and certifica-tion procedures before it gets a spot on the virtual store shelf.
But the biggest challenge may be getting the app noticed once it does become available. At the Apple store, for example, an app now has to fight for attention against more than 300,000 others—and that’s just one app store. And if consumers do find it, will they use it? As mobile phone users download an increasing number of apps, concerns are growing about the potential for app overload.
“It’s filter failure, the problem of not being able to filter out what’s
Where To go for moreResources to help you mobilize your web presence
dotMobi (dotmobi.com): Resources and information on buying a .mobi domain.
mobiThinking (mobithinking.com): A spinoff of dotMobi that offers educa-tion about mobile web marketing. The Webkit Open Source Project (webkit.org): Information on the browser technology supporting HTML 5’s mobile functionality. mobiForge (mobiforge.com): A community of independent mobile web developers. The Web Hypertext Application Technical Working Group (whatwg.org): Industry body started by folks from Apple, Opera Software and Mozilla Foundation to speed HTML 5 development. HTML5.org (html5.org): More details on HTML 5 and comparisons to previ-ous versions. Taptu blog (blog.taptu.com): Re-sources and information on mobile app trends and app streams.
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core to you,” Taptu’s Lazar says. “It’s a problem that has spanned years as we’ve had an Internet fire hose pointing at us.”
Taptu’s MyTaptu social news ag-gregation app allows users to build a personalized visual experience on the mobile phone that lets them avoid “app-hopping,” Lazar says. That could make it easier for individual business apps to be found in the rap-idly growing mobile app universe.
though tools like Taptu help, many small-business owners believe that the mobile app environment still can be
an abyss, and that they could better use their time and money enhancing their core websites, rather than try-ing to get a homespun app onto their customers’ phones.
Nitin Bhandari, co-founder and chief product officer of Skyfire, a company in Mountain View, Calif., whose mobile browser technology converts web pages for viewing on mobile devices, says having a greater mobile web focus makes more sense for businesses now because mobile network bandwidth advancements and browser innovations have caught up with device capabilities.
“You’ve got better devices, better networks and better browsers,” he says. Yet how and when to pursue the mobile web remains a challenge.
“There’s a great deal of confusion about the mobile web,” says Joshua Bixby, president of website optimiza-tion firm Strangeloop, in Vancouver, B.C. “Businesses haven’t known what to do about it, and the larg-est companies have been focused on coming out with their own apps for individual phones.
“What’s getting the mobile web more attention is executives checking out their competitors’ websites from their iPhones and finding out [those sites] work better on mobile than their own,” Bixby says. “Then they force their IT departments to change direc-tion and prioritize the mobile web.”
DotMobi’s Brand says businesses should keep in mind three factors when developing a mobile website: the site needs to be able to detect when mobile users are accessing it; it needs a way to adapt content to a mobile
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 49
format; and it needs a way to present that mobile-ready content.
One of the main technology tools is HTML 5, the first version of the well-known Internet development language to accommodate mobile. It allows the creation of mobile-optimized web-sites, as well as “web apps”—essen-tially website-based apps and widgets that can be accessed through a web browser such as Google Chrome or Apple Safari that uses the Webkit open source web page rendering system that is part of the HTML 5 standard.
“Web apps are basically HTML wrapped in an app,” says Mark Britten, senior product manager of NewBay Software, which has offices in Seattle and Dublin. “It is something that is much more lightweight and much quicker to use than XML.”
But the best part for small business-es that lack an IT department is that no knowledge of HTML 5 is required. Solutions such as dotMobi’s goMobi service platform can do the grunt work for you. With goMobi, busi-ness owners use simple drag-and-drop methods to turn their desktop site into a mobile one. And, Brand says, the conversion process takes just minutes. With dotMobi’s free mobiReady.com service, owners can test their existing site to see how it will look from the perspective of different devices.
many advocates of HTML 5 argue that mobile- optimized websites and emerging web apps based
on the platform can help businesses avoid the mobile app store glut by sending users right to their websites—which, in turn, can help dig users out of the piles of mobile apps that may be suffocating their overall mobile Internet usage.
“Mobile apps actually have a high churn rate. All of these apps you have downloaded are digital weight you carry around,” says Skyfire’s Bhandari. “But web browsing only continues to increase.”
Bixby says a revolution in mobile-optimized websites could eventually de-emphasize app stores for both app creators and users—though he acknowledges that’s hard to imagine right now, during the height of the mobile app market.
“Apps as we know them now are a phase in the maturity of the mobile Internet,” he says. “The browser is what will define that experience in the future.”
Taptu’s Lazar thinks otherwise: that apps will continue to be important, and that technology like HTML 5 will just make it easier for entrepreneurial businesses to negotiate all aspects of the mobile web, whether in site devel-opment or app development.
“HTML 5 lets Taptu create a smart browser solution without having to rewrite a lot of code, but you will still have apps. Like your website, they will just be written in HTML 5,” he says.
The increasing ease with which en-trepreneurial businesses can leverage the mobile web could make it a simple decision for companies to get onboard. In addition, it’s a relatively inexpensive move, and it might even make sense for some new businesses to make their Internet debut as a mobile website.
Still, dotMobi’s Brand says the decision to mobile-optimize a site or to go further and support m-com-merce is something that has to come down to a business’s understanding of its audience.
Bigfishtackle.com was so certain of its users’ interest in mobile that it snapped up about 30 .mobi URLs from dotMobi, Hodgdon says. He sees the potential for m-commerce activ-ity, such as the ability to buy a fishing license from your phone and to display it on your phone screen.
“The .mobi site is an extension of what we have been doing from the very beginning,” Hodgdon says.
Brand says the progress of mo-bile websites “reminds me of the desktop Internet growth of 15 years ago. It’s driven by advances in device horsepower and connectivity. But desktop was a slower evolution, and the mobile Internet adoption rate is blindingly fast. The way this will take root is that entrepreneurs will talk to one another and say, ‘I did this and it worked for me, so maybe it will work for you.’ ”
Dan o’shea is a writer in chicago
who has been covering teLecoM,
MobiLe anD other high-tech toP-
ics For nearLy 20 years.
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 51
You know the clunky, unsightly cash register occupying all that real estate in your place of business? Say goodbye. It’s now a paperweight—a fossil, a relic of a bygone era where cash and plastic reigned supreme. The future of point-of-sale transaction processing lies in the mobile phone, the one thing your customers carry with them wherever they go—the one thing they absolutely never leave home without.
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Merchants have heard this prog-nostication before, of course. Pundits have forecasted the emergence of mobile wallets for roughly a decade. The tech sector has promised—but failed to deliver—a secure, alternative payment system that would acceler-ate the transaction process, increase customer spending and streamline operations. The kind of system that would be a godsend for verticals like quick-service restaurants and conve-nience stores. But mobile commerce always failed to take off.
This time, though, things look different. (Really.) For starters, con-sumers are showing far more inter-est in making purchases using their mobile devices. Close to half of U.S. smartphone owners have either used their devices for mobile shopping or plan to do so in the imminent future, according to a survey conducted by ABI Research. Americans spent more than $3.4 billion on mobile shopping in 2010, up from $1.9 billion the previous year, the report says—and it predicts that online shopping will yield $163 billion in worldwide sales by 2015, representing 12 percent of total global e-commerce turnover.
Credit the growth in part to explod-ing smartphone penetration. More subscribers than ever now carry the kind of cutting-edge devices necessary to make payments on the go.
Sales of smartphones like Apple’s iPhone and handsets running Google’s Android mobile operating system represented 45 percent of all new U.S. mobile device purchases in November 2010, according to The Nielsen Com-pany. Smartphone users now make up 31 percent of the total American wire-less subscriber segment.
The companies that provide mobile service are going all in on mobile com-merce, too. Three of the four largest U.S. mobile operators are joining forc-es to launch Isis, a nationwide mobile transaction network rolling out with support from the likes of Discover Financial Services and Barclaycard US that promises to dramatically stream-line the way businesses accept mobile payments. And a wave of other mobile payment options is emerging that will further simplify and secure shopping across the digital sphere.
But consumer demand for mobile
commerce and investment by the mobile industry mean nothing if re-tailers, restaurateurs and other small business owners don’t also commit to a mobile payment environment. And those businesses are poised to reap the greatest rewards. Beyond boosting transaction speed, security and convenience, mobile commerce also can create new opportunities for customer interaction—like coupons, promotional offers, appointment reminders and other incentives.
Read on to learn about the innova-tion that will usher your business into the m-commerce era.
THE FORMATION OF ISISHERALDS A NEW AGE OF PAYMENT OPTIONS FOR MERCHANTS AND CONSUMERS
In a sense, Isis is itself astartup that is helping make mobile commerce a reality for small busi-
MOBILIZER: MICHAEL ABBOTT’S ISIS PUTS MONEY IN MOTION.
AND CELL
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nesses everywhere. It happens to have some heavyweight help behind it—which is why Isis has such a tremen-dous chance at succeeding.
Isis is a nationwide mobile commerce network spawned in late 2010 that has the potential to connect 200 million wireless subscribers across the country with merchants equipped to accept mobile payments from their customers. It can do that because Isis is backed by Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile USA—three of the four largest U.S. mobile operators in the U.S.
“There have been a lot of science experiments in this space, but you need scale and commitment to truly ignite innovation,” says Isis CEO Michael Abbott, a financial services veteran who was chief marketing officer of GE Capital before he signed on to helm Isis. Abbott calls his company “kind of a startup, but with three huge partners.”
“Merchants need to know that mobile payments are here,” he says. “We’re giving them the scale and com-mitment necessary to move forward.”
The service Isis offers is simple: It will allow consumers to make purchases by swiping their microchip-equipped smartphones at corresponding reader units located at participating retailers. The process relies on something called near field communications, or NFC, which enables secure communications between two electronic devices in close proximity (about 4 inches apart).
Isis also is building out its contact-less payment platform in collabora-tion with Discover Financial Services, whose payment network is accepted at more than 7 million merchant loca-tions nationwide. Few startups get a better start than that.
The future of Isis hinges on building out NFC’s retail footprint and mind-share. Abbott welcomes the challenge.
“I like to take raw materials to mold and create new things,” says the one-time electrical engineering student at Columbia University, who dedicates his free time to woodworking. “The idea is to bring [Isis] to every phone, and to give something to consumers that simplifies their lives. For that to happen, we have to be open to all merchants, all wireless carriers and all banks. That means we need a standard everyone can use. NFC technology is nothing new—there’s nothing that needs to be reinvented. [Point-of-sale] terminals
and readers are already in stores.”Isis isn’t the only entity backing near
field communications to connect mer-chants and customers. Handset maker Nokia has pledged to support NFC in all new smartphone models introduced this year. And Google announced late last year that NFC integration is includ-ed in the updated version of its Android mobile operating system.
Research firm iSuppli anticipates worldwide shipments of mobile devices with built-in NFC capabilities will increase to 220.1 million units in 2014, up from 52.6 million in 2010. Perhaps most significant, contactless readers are already deployed in more than 100,000 U.S. merchant locations across the U.S.
“The consensus in all markets is that contactless payments are go-ing to evolve over NFC,” says James Anderson, vice president of mobile for MasterCard. “People believe that’s the right technology.”
Isis is slated to roll out consumer trials in key geographic markets this year and into 2012. Barclaycard US is expected to be the first issuer on the network, offering multiple mo-bile payment products.
But Abbott is already thinking far past mobile payments. In his mind, Isis will not only render cash, credit and debit cards obsolete, but also allow mer-chants to replace loyalty cards, coupons, event tickets and transit passes.
“Isis is not just about putting mo-bile payment services on your phone, but delivering one simple, integrated solution that brings all your paper and plastic together,” he says. “We can create value in a lot of ways. For example, when you leave a store, a merchant can send a promotional offer to your phone, and it’s sitting there the next time you come back. It’s going to be a lot of hard work, but we have the scale and the support to finally catalyze the market.”
THE ADVANCE OF MICROPAYMENTS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO TRANSFORM HOW MERCHANTS COLLECT MONEY
Don’t be fooled. Just because they’re called micropayments doesn’t mean the revenue opportunity is insignificant.
Perhaps no company has made more real money selling virtual goods than social gaming giant Zynga, which reports that in-game digital transactions—for example, crops and livestock purchased by FarmVille players—account for roughly 90 percent of its annual revenues, a windfall of about $450 million in 2010.
Zynga’s breakout success is all the more remarkable given the struggles that have long faced traditional publishers and media providers looking to monetize their content on the web. It’s been a different story on mobile phones, however. The days when subscribers routinely forked over a few bucks for a 15-second monophonic ringtone are over. In the current smartphone era, half of all iPhone owners download a premium application to their device each month. Mobile sub-scribers consistently exhibit their willingness to make small, impulse purchases on the go—a trend buoyed by the simplicity and efficiency of charging the transaction to their monthly wireless bill.
New payment options that create viable alternatives to traditional cash and credit transactions will make mobile micropayments even easier. In late October, AT&T launched a mobile payment trial enabling its 93 million U.S. subscribers to charge music, movies and virtual goods directly to their monthly bill by entering their mobile number instead of their credit card or PayPal account information. AT&T rolled out the program in partnership with no fewer than three rival mobile payment solutions startups: BilltoMobile, Boku and Zong.
FOR SMALLMOVESPAYMENTS
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“Mobile payments enable you to reach a segment you can’t reach with credit cards and PayPal,” says Ron Hirson, Boku co-founder and senior vice president of marketing and business development. “Customers don’t always know their credit card information, but with Boku, you only have to enter your 10-digit mobile number. Mobile also allows you to reach people who can’t pay any other way, especially in emerging markets. Now merchants can sell to people they couldn’t before.”
How many more people? Consider that there are roughly 177 million credit card holders in the U.S., com-pared with about 293 million wireless subscribers nationwide, or roughly 93 percent of the total American population. With international wireless subscribers surpassing the 5 billion milestone in late 2010, it’s no surprise that the global mobile payments market—including purchases of digital and physical goods as well as money transfers and point-of-sale transactions—is expected to explode from $170 billion in 2010 to almost $630 billion in 2014, according to Juniper Research.
That growth depends on a solu-tion that makes sense for consumers, mobile providers and merchants alike. Although the AT&T trial will go far in separating the contenders from the pre-tenders, on paper BilltoMobile, Boku and Zong offer similar solutions.
BilltoMobile inked a deal with Verizon Wireless last March (between that and the AT&T partnership, the startup now has access to 65 percent of U.S. wireless subscribers). BilltoMobile’s Direct Mobile Billing service offers a secure two-step payment process requiring only seconds to complete: To make an online buy, con-sumers select BilltoMobile as their pay-ment option, choose their wireless carrier and enter their mobile number and ZIP code. BilltoMobile transmits a pass code via text message, and once the code is successfully entered in the transaction window, the purchase is complete.
“We provide a financial-grade system to the carrier, leveraging their existing billing model,” says Jim Greenwell, BilltoMobile president and CEO. “We’re not going to displace credit cards. Our model is about offering digital merchants greater incremental revenue.”
Zong’s international operator partners include T-Mobile, Vodafone, Orange and O2. The firm is also the mobile payments provider for Face-
book Credits and other social gaming and digital platforms. Like BilltoMo-bile, its solution incorporates a PIN code to authenticate a transaction.
“The most important thing to a consumer is convenience,” says David Marcus, Zong founder and CEO. “That’s why we’re focused on mobile—there’s an enormous opportunity to increase convenience.”
Boku—which boasts partnerships with 220 mobile providers in more than 60 countries—tweaks the formula: Instead of a code, consumers reply with a “Y” for “Yes” in response to its text-based purchase authorization. “What we’re doing doesn’t require consumers to upgrade their phone,” Hirson says. “We reach everyone on the web.”
AT&T’s commitment to nurturing mobile micropayment options extends beyond marketing the BilltoMobile, Boku and Zong services. In conjunction with the partnership, the operator also agreed to reduce its cut of transaction revenues. In the past, carriers often claimed be-tween 40 percent and 50 percent of digi-
tal media sales billed on their networks; terms of the AT&T deal are unknown (the company declined an interview request) but are said to be substantially more favorable to its technology partners and merchants. (BilltoMobile, Boku and Zong all take a small transaction fee on each purchase as well.)
The growth of mobile micropay-ments depends on everyone in the value chain continuing to work together, BilltoMobile’s Greenwell says. After all, everyone stands to gain.
“For now the focus is on digital goods, and from there it will move to nondigital goods. Eventually, mobile will evolve as a second-nature payment mechanism for all transactions under $100,” he says. “There’s nothing magical about this. It’s a simple model that benefits everyone. It’s beautiful in its simplicity.”
chicago-Based writer Jason
ankeny is the executive editor
of fiercemoBilecontent, a daily
e-newsletter dedicated to moBile
media, aPPlications and marketing.
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online ideasWEBSITE
TO WATCH
Reading goes socialBy tapping into the collective popularity of books, Goodreads quickly built a devoted following in
the multiple millions—and a captive audience of book buyers for advertisers —MICHELLE JUERGEN
WHAT’S NEXTGoodreads’ Book Genome
Project will offer Pandora-
like recommendations
and collect detailed
information from books
to enhance the browsing
experience. “If you search
for science fiction books,”
Chandler says, “you may
be able to drill down
into paranormal vampire
books that are set in
Transylvania and deal
with orphans.”
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WHY IT TOOK OFFChandler and his wife, co-founder Elizabeth Chandler, got the link out to about 800 people themselves, and it took off from there. Goodreads has a Facebook app, widgets for blogs and websites and an option to post reviews on Twitter—but Chandler says the best market-ing strategy is still word of mouth. “Reading may be a solitary activity, but what you’re reading and what you think of what you’re reading are ideas,” Chandler says. “And ideas are much better if they’re shared.”
GOODREADS.COM• Founder and CEO Otis Chan-
dler previously built a social
networking and dating site for
Tickle.com, which was acquired
by Monster Worldwide in 2004
• 7 million monthly unique visitors
• 55 million monthly page views
• 100,000 new users a month
• 11 employees
• Based in Santa Monica, Calif.
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In the web’s early days, knowl-edge of HTML and an eye for graphics were all a webmaster needed to succeed. Now, a top-
notch webmaster must be a jack-of-all-trades, excelling in server and application programming, graphics design, e-mail marketing, media de-velopment, site security, social media integration and more.
Here’s what you should be looking for in an outstanding webmaster:
A diverse portfolio demonstrating knowledge and skills in visual design, web graphics and programming.
Knowledge of standards, technolo-gies and tools. The ideal webmaster knows what is possible and required to implement certain features, but also knows that the latest and great-est craze may not be suitable for a specific company or client.
Efficiency. Webmasters who really know their trade build sites more effi-ciently. They may cost more per hour or charge a higher retainer, but if they accomplish more per hour and deliver on schedule, you save money.
Project management expertise. Rarely does a single individual pos-sess all the knowledge and skills required. On large, complex sites, a webmaster is primarily a project man-ager who works closely with design-ers, programmers, writers, editors, artists and others.
Social media savvy. Your website is just a start. Establishing a strong brand presence online requires a blog and a following on social networking venues. Since webmasters today surely will be involved with the technical require-ments of these once ancillary areas, they must possess a working knowledge and proficiency in these areas.
Comfort and confidence in serv-ing as a vendor. Assuming you know
The master of your domainHow to size up and select a webmaster who can keep your site one step ahead
Mikal e. Belicove (MikalBelicove.coM) iS a BuSineSS STraTegiST SPecializ-
ing in MarkeT analySiS, MeSSaging and PoSiTioning, and conTenT devel-
oPMenT for a SelecT grouP of high-Profile BuSineSSeS and individualS.
he iS co-auThor of The CompleTe IdIoT’s GuIde To FaCebook.
online ideas build a
website
does your webmaster have the right stuff? When considering candidates to manage your website, check for the following:
Positive references or testimonials from previous clients.
diverse portfolio that proves an ability to build an attractive site and imple-ment the features you need, such as secure e-commerce, user registration, automated technical support.
Seo results of existing sites. how do other sites managed by the webmas-ter rank in comparison with competing sites?
Performance of existing sites. check other sites the webmaster has designed using tools like Page Speed or ySlow for the Mozilla firefox browser.
Total cost. hourly rates are a poor comparison. compare cost per page or total cost of a project or engagement comparable to yours.
what you want to do from a market-ing perspective, your webmaster’s job is to execute the plan, not spend the bulk of their time trying to persuade you otherwise. You or your market-ing or corporate communications department should have the final say in decisions related to branding, site design and copy.
Expertise in developing non-web templates, such as those for e-news-letters and e-mail marketing materials using third-party marketing platforms such as iContact, MailChimp and Constant Contact.
Ability to configure servers and to host sites, unless you have your own IT department for managing the servers.
Responsiveness. At the very least, your webmaster must acknowledge all of your requests in a timely man-ner or have a help desk environment that captures, organizes, schedules and reports on request submissions. —Mikal e. Belicove
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online ideasIs Groupon a good deal?
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For Grey Sky Films, social mediaoffers the ideal promotional platform. The Rockaway, N.J., video production firm uses sites
like MySpace and YouTube to show off its work, and co-founders Chris Vaglio and Mark Serao encourage their staff of six to help spread the word.
“Our policy is pretty simple: Keep it fun. Keep it interesting. But do not post anything negative or inappropri-ate,” Vaglio says. “I know that the more people a company has, the more of a problem it could be ‘controlling’ posts, but this policy works well for us and everyone respects it.”
Darren S. Cahr, a partner with law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath in Chicago, says such a practice can be risky. Employees can divulge sensitive company information, use inconsistent branding messages or
The risks of oversharingShould your employees be using social media to promote your business?
simply post company informationin an inappropriate environment, he says. But, if done well, employees’ tweeting, posting on Facebook and otherwise talking up of your compa-ny can boost awareness and attract viral attention. Here are Cahr’s tips for success:
Establish communication expecta-tions. Tell your employees to keep it clean and use proper branding mes-sages. If employees are writing blog posts or other longer-form material, you might want to have an approval process, Cahr says.
Be clear about confidential infor-mation. If you’re just about to land a big account or if you have a hot product that hasn’t been released, emphasize that this type of news is not for public disclosure. “The Inter-net is about the end of forgetting. It’s
about permanence,” Cahr says. “If you post something on the Internet, it doesn’t just vanish into the ether like it does when you just mention something to a friend.”
Get the clients’ OKs. Some custom-ers may not appreciate your employees disclosing what your firm does for them. Get the nod before you go public with news about the businesses.
Copyright can also be an issue, Cahr says, so be sure employees have the rights to the material they post. If they share copyrighted videos, mu-sic or text without permission, they could be in hot water.
“The chances of your employees not being on social media are zero,” he says. “You need to think about how they will represent you, even if you’re not doing anything formal yourself.” —gWen Moran
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When Tracy True Dis-mukes, owner of a Birmingham, Ala., consignment shop, par-
ticipated in a promotion with fast-growing deal-of-the-day-site Grou-pon, she was thrilled. After just one day, with no cash outlay, her website traffic spiked to 10 times its normal level and she sold 157 of the “spend $25 for $50 worth of merchandise” promotion. Plus, many of the buyers were people who don’t usually fre-quent her shop, she says.
But there was a darker side to the experience, too. Dismukes had prob-lems with the copy, which arrived at the last minute and presented her brand as a “secondhand” shop—a term she steadfastly avoids. The financials were also tough for her to stomach. Dis-mukes received approximately 25 percent of each transaction after the split with Groupon, and the credit card transaction fee for each customer’s purchase was deducted from her share—Groupon does not split that cost, she says. In addition, she says she felt pressured to accept the $25 for $50 promotion when she would have preferred a lower price point.
“A good portion of the items in our store are $10 to $20, but it just fell on deaf ears,” she says.
A recent study by Utpal Dholakia, an associate marketing professor at Rice University in Houston, found that Groupon promotions were prof-itable for 66 percent of participating businesses, but 32 percent lost money. Forty percent of businesses surveyed said they would not participate in such a promotion again.
The study also found that newer businesses might benefit more than es-tablished businesses. “Groupon promo-tions offer the most benefit when they don’t cannibalize an existing customer
Power passwordsYou know you shouldn’t use
sequential numbers, your birthdate or your child’s name.
But how do you come up with hack-resistant passwords that you can eas-ily remember?
Raj Goel, founder of Brainlink In-ternational, an information technology security firm in New York City, has a series of tricks he uses to train execu-tives in creating great passwords:
Pick a line from a song or a book title. Something you’ll remember, but not something people immediately associate with you. For example, you might choose The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale.
Select the second, third or fourth letter from each word. Choosing the second letter would yield HOFOH. The third would be EWSI. Those are your base passwords. It’s a good idea to have a few of them, he says.
Then, add numbers and special characters such as !, @, # in between the letters of the base password. Integrating the symbols for 1 through 6 into the base password would yield !H@O#F$O%H^. You could also use the symbols for a number that is meaningful to you, such as a former ZIP code backwards or a date that is not your birthday or anniversary. For websites, you can customize the pass-word by integrating the name of or an identifying detail about the website, !H@O#eBayF$O%H^. Mixed-case passwords are stronger.
By having a variety of base pass-words customized in ways that are easy for you to remember, you elimi-nate the need to keep a written list of passwords, which can be risky. Goel also suggests that you use different base passwords for different areas of your life. For example, one for work, another for banking and financial activities, still another for personal websites, such as shopping sites. —g.M.
Is Groupon a good deal?The daily promotion site can help boost business, but there are some downsides for merchants
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base,” Dholakia says. If the Grouponpromotion is helping you attract new customers, you’ll have greater success than if the promotion is just giving a discount to existing customers.
Among service businesses (restau-rants, educational services, tourism and salons/spas), restaurants fared the worst and salons and spas were the most successful. Businesses with
unprofitable promotions found that Groupon users spent little beyond the face value of the promotion and had low rates of customer return.
Offering the right promotion might make a difference. Dholakia says pushing for repeat promotions—a dollar-off value for several visits, for example—would be more effective in encouraging customers to return.
“These social promotions are mov-ing targets,” he says. “They’ll refine themselves to give better value to customers, so even if you can’t get the deal you want right now, hold out for it from one of the many competitors that are out there.” —g.M.
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linked//with Chris Brogan
Brevity rulesIn a world of distractions, how do you stand out? Here’s some advice for getting in front of your intended audience.
We live in a world where screens dominate our time. Lots of us sleep with our phones by the bed. (Some will admit to keeping them right under the pillow.) We check e-mail while we’re still yawning. Our web browser usually has more than four tabs open. Notifica-
tions and distractions ding us all day long. We have hundreds of TV channels, content backed up on our DVRs, a sub-
scription to Netflix and a few multiplex theaters nearby. We also have YouTube, where every minute another 24 hours of content is uploaded. In other words, we are facing an all-out war on our attention.
Here are some ways you can win it. They all involve brevity.
In wrItIngKeep your sentences compact. People don’t have time to dissect your flowery prose, especially in business. Need help? Read E. Annie Proulx’s novel The Shipping News and absorb that style. Short, punchy sentences help people stay on target with you.
On twItterMake your stuff easier to retweet. Twit-ter has a 140-character limit. If you use only 110 or so, you’ll give people room to retweet you and, thus, spread your message even further.
VIa e-maIlWith the Gen Y crowd living on Face-book, e-mail messages need to fit into a smaller package. Two hundred words should be the max. If you need more, then it’s a document, not an e-mail—or it’s a phone call or even a face-to-face visit. Oh, and put the actionable part at the top once, and at the bottom a second time. We’re all scanning.
On YOutubeNo matter which video platform you use, make your videos two minutes or less, on average. Yes, if it’s a speech—say, a TED talk—it should be longer. But if it’s something you want people to consume, stay under two minutes.
bY phOneShould you still use a telephone, keep the call brief. Start with an agenda, even if you don’t state it out loud. Write it down beforehand so you don’t ramble. Be polite, but don’t waste five minutes on small talk. And if you get voice mail? Leave your full name, phone number and the subject of the call, then say your number once more before hanging up.
I’m not saying we have to abandon civility. On the contrary, be as polite as possible. But realize the importance of brevity. It’s the best way to stand out, get answered and improve your visibility in a crowded world.
Chris Brogan is president of human Business Works, a small-Business eduCation and groWth Com-
pany, Co-author of The New York Times Bestselling TrusT AgeNTs and author of sociAl mediA 101. he
Blogs at ChrisBrogan.Com.
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doing goodNumber of independent animal shelters in the U.S.: About 5,000Average number of litters a fertile dog produces: One per year Average percentage of shelter animals that are spayed or neutered: 10
Going to the dogsA restaurateur develops a line of clothingto help control the pet population
You can hear in Shane O’Neill’s voice how much he loves dogs when he talksabout the eight he has owned—especially the 10-year-old American bulldog he has now, who has cancer. So he was bothered by a statistic about the massive numbers of pets euthanized each year: between 3 million and 4 mil-
lion, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.O’Neill, a partner in the Saddle Ranch Chop House (an 18,000-square-foot
restaurant complete with mechanical bulls) at Universal Studios in Universal City, Calif., decided to use his entre-preneurial expertise to do something about it. In November, he launched Royal Bitch Couture, a clothing com-pany based in Brentwood, Calif., to help homeless dogs by donating 50 percent of its profits to organiza-tions around the country that spay and neuter animals.
Philanthropy was in O’Neill’s blood. He had helped expand his family’s Columbus, Ohio, market and catering company, Shane’s Gourmet Catering, which he says is one of the largest donors to Nationwide Chil-dren’s Hospital in Columbus.
Although he had never launched a clothing line, O’Neill envisioned creat-ing a soft, casual collection of women’s clothing that was flattering and easy to wear. He worked with friends who are professional stylists to design the line of form-fitting cotton T-shirts, French loop terry hoodies, short shorts, low-rise sweat pants and casual dresses.
Each piece is manufactured in the United States (specifically, Los Ange-les) and has a tag that reads, “Helping P.E.T.S,” an acronym for “Prevent Euthanasia Through Spaying,” to promote the cause.
According to O’Neill, two Brent-wood boutiques snapped up the clothes within weeks, and there has been steady demand from other retailers who want to see the line. Royal Bitch also launched a website in December.
Those stylist friends who helped de-sign the line have plans to get the cloth-ing onto celebrity bodies—a great form of promo for any brand. Emma Baker, Miss California Teen 2010, did a photo shoot to promote the line last year.
Based on initial sales and his projections, O’Neill expects that he will donate nearly $50,000 to various shelters and spay and neuter organi-zations this year.
“That will depend on how well the line rolls out, but we’ve got everything in place and are working hard to make a difference,” he says. “People are at-tracted to the clothing line and to the cause. It’s a great combination.”
MAN AND BEST FRIEND: SHANE O’NEILL AND TUGNUTT.
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PEOPLE ARE ATTRACTED TO THE CLOTHING LINE AND TO THE CAUSE.
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Entrepreneur // March 201166
lead genCheck out
check-inI’m not ready to say that this past
holiday season was the tipping point for mobile, but I know I found myself doing a lot more
with my mobile phone in December. Primarily I checked in to retail stores and locations. And I wasn’t just ad-vertising to my Facebook friends and Twittering to relations about how much I was spending on their gifts (“Look! I’m in Tiffany’s!”). Mostly I wanted to see what merchants were willing to offer me for simply walking through their doors.
When the right offer came along, I bit—whether on 10 percent off at Ra-dio Shack or a free eggnog latte at a coffee shop in the mall. Then I posted the find to my social graph.
Loyalty programs or lead genera-tion? You make the call. But I know I wasn’t headed in that direction until I checked in to Foursquare, Gowalla, shopkick, Loopt or one of the other geo-location services.
Could location-based mobile apps possibly have a beneficial business purpose? Survey says … yes.
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I’m not ready to say that this past holiday season was the tipping point for mobile, but I know I found myself doing a lot more
with my mobile phone in December. Primarily I checked in to retail stores and locations. And I wasn’t just ad-vertising to my Facebook friends and Twittering to relations about how much I was spending on their gifts (“Look! I’m in Tiffany’s!”). Mostly I wanted to see what merchants were willing to offer me for simply walking through their doors.
When the right offer came along, I bit—whether on 10 percent off at Ra-dio Shack or a free eggnog latte at a coffee shop in the mall. Then I posted the find to my social graph.
Loyalty programs or lead genera-tion? You make the call. But I know I wasn’t headed in that direction until I checked in to Foursquare, Gowalla, shopkick, Loopt or one of the other geo-location services.
Critics have been quick to point out defects in the location-based strategy. Yes, the incentive to check in is pretty thin when your only reward is a badge or some other sort of honorific. (How hot are you to become “mayor” of your local dry cleaner, anyway?)
And, yes, the number of people who have downloaded the apps to their phones is relatively small. Foursquare, the category leader, has about 5 million downloads worldwide. That’s a sliver of the 60 million smartphone users in the U.S. alone—and doesn’t even take in the much larger U.S. audience (170 million or so) who are still using regular feature phones and can’t access the app.
The question is, are those objections true for your business? If you had customers who would respond to a lo-cation-based game and you could find a way to give them something valuable as a reward, would they check in?
They have for Murphy USA, a gas retailer based in El Dorado, Ark., that operates more than 1,000 kiosk-style gas outlets, most located next to or near Wal-Mart’s big boxes. Buying gas is not exactly the kind of activity you’d expect to tweet to your pals, or even enjoy. And frugal Wal-Mart shoppers might not seem a target audi-ence for a campaign that requires a smartphone and some mobile savvy.
Nevertheless, the company ran a promotion last July on the Whrrl location-based social network. Users who downloaded the app could check in at the pump and win instant prizes, from free beverages and discounts to a daily $50 gas giveaway.
Murphy, already active in creat-ing loyalty among brand fans, publi-cized the campaign on Facebook and Twitter. It also put up a point-of-sale message at the pumps, with instruc-tions on how new users could get engaged with the Murphy community on Whrrl—or “society,” as the groups are known on the platform—and what they stood to win.
The results compiled from the three-month pilot were impressive, says Casey Petersen, senior Internet business specialist for Murphy. For example, the
industry average for pump visits is two a month. Customers who checked into the Murphy Whrrl society visited four times a month on average, and almost half of those checking in bellied up to the pump an average of six times a month. What’s more, the average fill-up ticket per visit by Whrrl users was $30—twice the industry average.
But the most amazing result was that the check-in drove new customer acquisi-tion at an astounding rate. During the pilot period, 44 percent of those checking in to the brand’s society on Whrrl had never been to a Murphy station before.
“We’re a low-cost, high-volume chain, and we’ve been careful in everything we do online not just to do something because it’s a fad,” Petersen says. “We really want to provide value for our customers, not just a badge.” In fact, 85 percent of the check-ins said they chose Murphy over a nearby competitor specifically because of the Whrrl promotion.
Going with a location-based strat-
egy was perhaps counter-intuitive. Murphy USA tracks Wal-Mart de-mographically and geographically, so the average customer is going to be female with a family. According to a Pew Internet survey in November, only 3 percent of women have used check-in services on mobile, com-pared with 6 percent of men.
On the other hand, an earlier survey by game maker PopCap found that 55 percent of the player base for social games—like FarmVille and Mafia Wars—are women, and their average age is 43. So maybe the best approach is to ignore the polls and the wisdom about edgy tactics and simply go out, see what your target prospects respond to and build a mobile promotion around that. —BrIaN QuINTON
BrIaN QuINTON IS exeCuTIve edI-
TOr Of CHIef MarKeTer (CHIef
MarKeTer.COM). GOT a TIP aBOuT
lead GeN? e-MaIl QuINTON aT eN-
Where y’at?
FOURSQUARE: about 5 million members worldwide check foursquare regularly to locate friends and to find tips and offers in places they’ve never been before.
LOOPT: With more than 4 million users, loopt recently announced plans to migrate loopt Star, its standalone rewards-only app, to the main platform.
GOWALLA: an admitted underdog, the 600,000-user app has made itself compatible with both foursquare and facebook Places (which claims 30,000 users.)
WHRRL: allows members and brands to set up “societies” based on shared interests; brands can offer real-world rewards for digital actions such as check-ins.
SCVNGR: really a game layer built on the facebook social grid, SCvNGr stresses interesting scavenger challenges that brands (such as aT&T re-tail, Coke and american eagle) can design and offer rewards for.
Location-based mobiLe services are becoming easier both for consumers to find and marketers to use. facebook and googLe have Launched services in the category, but here are the independent hot spots.
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Looking to angelsTo expand its community and grow at a more patient pace,Daily Grommet decides to steer clear of VC firms—for now
With an education in industrial design, a Harvard MBA and an execu-tive stint in strategic development for brands like Stride Rite, Keds and Playskool, Jules Pieri has the savvy to spot a consumer trend.
So when she noticed that upstart manufacturers were having trouble getting shelf space in an increasingly consolidated retail market—despite the unprecedented flood of new products fueled by access to design and manufacturing capabilities—she sensed an opportunity. Pieri also knew that many consumers want innovative products that emphasize “something good in the world, whether it’s tech-nology or green enterprise,” she says. Add the power of social media, giving people the ability to share information about their favorite finds, and you have the recipe for Daily Grommet, a Lexington, Mass.-based website that champions independent entrepreneurs creating cool products by building a large online community.
Two business-minded friends loved the idea and became Pieri’s first angel inves-tors. With that initial $150,000, she launched the site in October 2008—a week
before the stock market crashed. During the early days of the financial crisis, ven-ture capital investment also plummeted. Pieri needed money to grow the site, but she also knew she was not likely to see eye to eye with VCs who typically want fast growth. Her business vision required slower, thoughtful growth to build a community and find innovative products.
At the same time, her access to angels was yielding the investment she needed, including a $3.4 million infu-sion by Race Point Capital Fund and Gerry Laybourne, founder of Nickel-odeon and Oxygen Media, and other angel investors, which closed in April.
“Jules is a superstar,” says Christo-pher Mirabile, director of Race Point Capital. “The market she’s going after—this curated content or community-meets-content-meets-community—is just a huge, huge opportunity.”
Daily Grommet is using the money to invest in new customer acqusition methods, overhaul the site, add more community tools and expand its reach through media exposure, Pieri says.
Mirabile says angels are going “up-market,” working in groups and in more coordinated fashion. There is some blurring between angel funds and seed or early-stage VC funds, he says, but angels invest their own money rather than act as fiduciaries, so they typically can be more patient about growth. “The reach, sophisti-cation and coordination of the angel community is much greater than it ever was,” he says.
Pieri agrees, but she also believes Daily Grommet will reach a point where it will need the bigger cash infusions that are more common from VC firms, and she is positioning the company to court them eventually.
“There’s going to be a limit where they can’t carry the business forward at the level it needs to be supported,” Pieri says. “That’s the downside of angels.”
Mirabile looks for companies that can “go angel all the way,” but knows entrepreneurs must do what’s best for business. Still, he says, “the idea that you need a deep-pocketed VC to change the world and build a Google or Face-book is misguided.” —GWEN MORAN
JULES PIERI HAS A VISION FOR MORE GRADUAL GROWTH.
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When money is dueKnow the risks and whatto ask before extending credit to your customers
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Before banks extend credit,they verify the prospective borrower’s credit history and ability to repay, among
other things. That’s not as common in the $2 trillion unsecured, or trade, credit market, says Alex Coté, vice president of marketing for Cortera, a credit-risk monitoring service in Boca Raton, Fla.
“I recently spoke with a woman whose business was running into trouble because she wasn’t monitoring her customers’ payments,” he says. “Everything was very late—60 days or more. She didn’t realize it. They were looking at layoffs and, really, the prob-lem was that they weren’t collecting.”
To keep an eye on your customers and their ability to pay what they owe, Coté gives this advice:
REQUIRE A CREDIT APPLICATION.Every business requesting credit should complete a credit application that includes basic information like address, contact information and tax ID number, as well as references from other businesses that have extended credit to them. It’s unlikely a business will list a contact that will say some-thing negative, but if the company has trouble coming up with three or four good references, it could be a red flag. Be sure to check the applica-tions, too, Coté says. Too many small companies collect the data and then fail to verify it, he says.
CHECK PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION. The company’s social me-dia streams, the news release section on its website and information available through simple search engine exploration can help you determine whether the company is having problems that may affect its ability to pay. Publicly traded companies also must regularly file fact-filled reports about the state of the busi-ness with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These are usually available on the company’s website or through sec.gov, using the site’s EDGAR service.
USE CREDIT EVALUATION TOOLS. Business credit evaluation tools providedifferent information at varying costs. Cortera and On Deck Capital, a busi-ness lender based in New York City, both offer free tools. The biggest name in the space is information services giant Dun & Bradstreet, which offers DNBi CreditAdvisor products that include credit reporting and monitoring. Fees range from $179 for one company to $1,499 for 15 companies. Cortera offers a credit monitoring tool for small businesses, which includes information on privately held companies and a community-based approach to intelligence gathering, for $99 per month. Consumer credit giants Equifax and Experian also provide credit monitoring tools for small and midsize businesses.
Gathering information about customers’ cash flow isn’t just something you do at the outset of a relationship, Coté says. Watching out for problems that could affect your customers’ ability to pay you can help you avoid getting burned. —G.M.
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money
Food, bever-age and hospitality
businesses have an unexpected place to turn for a little cash. the Brewing the American Dream program was created by the Boston Beer Co., makers of Samuel Adams brews, and AC-CIoN USA, a nonprofit specializing in micro-lending to low- and moderate-income entrepreneurs. the fund, launched in 2008, has granted 59 loans, averaging $7,000 each. Loan sizes range from $500 to $25,000 and, to date, every loan that has come due has been paid.
to qualify, businesses should contact ACCIoN (accion.org) and speak with one of its loan consul-tants. they evaluate entrepreneurs according to criteria like length of time in business, cash flow and how much the business owner has invested or can invest in the opera-tion. ACCIoN checks the business owner’s credit history to ensure the owner can handle additional debt, and the organization requires a minimum credit score of 575. the evaluation also includes some intan-gibles, such as the applicant’s per-sonal character and passion for the business. Interest rates range from 8.99 to 15.99 percent, and terms vary from three to 48 months, de-pending on the loan. ACCIoN also has programs for business owners in other industries. —G.M.
Beer and Bucks
Is subleasing a solution? Those offices you’re paying for and not using can bringin some extra cash. But being a landlord can be tricky business, if it’s allowed at all.
For companies that have downsized or find themselves with more space than they immediately need, subleasing that extra square footage might make sense. But subleasing isn’t as simple as finding a tenant and collect-ing a check, says Todd Anderson, senior managing director at CB Ellis, a
commercial real estate firm in Los Angeles. Keep these cautions in mind:Check what rights you have in your lease. If you don’t own your building, your
landlord may not allow subleasing, may limit the types of businesses to which you can sublease or may stipulate the rent at which you can sublease, because the build-ing doesn’t want to compete with its own tenants for new occupants, he says. Those conditions may also change depending on the occupancy levels of the building.
Make sure the space is suitable. Anderson suggests checking that the space, once divided, meets fire and exiting codes. If the space does not, you may not be able to sublease it.
Check with your neighbors. If your lease and space allow you to sublease, check whether tenants in your building need more space. They’re often more motivated to choose adjoining or nearby space and may be able to move in sooner, especially if they’re in too-tight quarters, Anderson says.
Look for suitable tenants. Cast a wider net if no neighbors can take your space. However, be sure that the businesses you consider won’t be excessively noisy or engage in practices that are against your building’s rules. Checking their financial stability is also critical, he says. Ask for audited financial statements, credit references and a bank reference.
If you rent your space from someone else, it’s likely that the landlord will require final approval once you find a prospective tenant, so be prepared for that extra step. —G.M.
how i saved AShLI NortoN, Co-FoUNDEr, SIMPLELEAP SoFtwArE, AtLANtA
We’re a small software firm thatdevelops apps for the Mac and iPhone. We’re constantly
looking at expenses to find new things to cut. By converting all of our dozen domains to one shared deluxe, com-bined plan through our domain host, we cut our annual costs from $718.56 to $83.88. We also found that we weren’t using our phone lines as much as we used to, so we eliminated our 800 number and all of our landline phones.
We chose to simply redirect our phone calls to our mobile phones using Google Voice, which announces the caller to us and allows us to make free outbound calls on the web and on our iPhones. That cut $119.88. Finally, we cut our online newsletter costs by breaking down our mailing lists into smaller mail-ing lists and using a service that offers free mailings to lists of 1,000 or fewer subscribers. Our average savings is $540 per year. —AS toLD to GwEN MorAN
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your money
Credit careHow to use credit cards to their fullest advantage—without getting buried in interest and debt
When people learn that I write about personal finance, they naturallyassume I’m opposed to credit cards. That’s not quite true. I’m op-posed to credit card debt.
According to the Federal Reserve’s most recent survey of consumer finances, roughly 46 percent of American families carry a credit card balance, and nearly one in four owe more than $3,000 on their plastic.
Because of this, some folks believe credit cards are evil. But credit cards are no more evil than a chain saw. Sure, my chain saw can be dangerous, but only if I use it like an idiot. Used wisely, credit cards can be valuable tools, especially for small-business owners who can earn reward points and manage their cash flow while paying the monthly bills.
Jim Wang, for instance, loves his credit cards. The entrepreneur from Colum-bia, Md., writes about personal finance at Bargaineering.com. He controls his credit cards instead of letting them control him.
“I carry three cards,” he says. “They’re all cash-back or rewards cards. One card’s for business; one offers rewards at restaurants, movie theaters and book-stores; and one offers cash back on everything else.”
Another bonus? Credit cards make money management easier. “I like that all my spending records are in one place,” Wang says.
If you choose to use credit, be smart. This isn’t free money. Live by three basic rules, and you can safely use credit without getting burned.
• Read the fine print. You should read every contract you agree to, and a credit card is no different. Reading the paperwork alerts you to the card’s hidden benefits—and its hidden pitfalls.
• Review your statement every month. Watch for fraudulent transactions, but also keep an eye out for changing due dates, fees and interest rates. And don’t be afraid to speak up. If something seems strange (or you want a rate reduction), call customer service.
• Don’t buy anything with your credit card unless you already have cash in the bank to pay for it. Don’t let your having a credit card influence your shopping
decisions. A credit card isn’t a license to spend—it’s just a different way to pay.
“The idea is to spend within yourmeans,” Wang says. “Don’t charge more than you’re able to pay back in a month. If you carry a balance, you negate most of the benefits.”
Not all credit cards are created equally, of course. Some carry high fees and onerous interest rates. In 2009, Congress passed the Credit Card Act, designed to protect con-sumers from some of the worst credit-card company tricks, but it can still be tough to sort the wheat from the chaff. To find a credit card that best suits your needs, consult Consumer Reports or visit card comparison websites such as IndexCreditCards .com or CardRatings.com.
Small-business owners should be careful, though.
“Business credit cards aren’t regu-lated by the Credit Card Act,” notes Curtis Arnold, founder of CardRat-ings.com. “In fact, some companies are issuing ‘professional’ cards to get around consumer regulations.”
Arnold, author of How You Can Profit from Credit Cards, says that banks are targeting entrepreneurs ag-gressively with these cards.
“Some small-business owners have switched from business cards to con-sumer cards to get protection,” he says. “To get the same protection, consider applying for a personal card in your business’s name. As long as you’re not actually mixing your business and personal accounts, you’re fine.”
Credit cards aren’t evil, but they can be dangerous. Just as you handle a chain saw with care, you need to be equally cautious with credit to avoid hurting yourself (and your business). Used wisely, credit cards can actually give you a financial edge. —J.D. Roth
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 75
RE-FORMSCHOOL
BY CRAIG GUILLOT
Healthcare reform isn’t a done deal, but you still need to prep for upcoming changes
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Healthcare reform is likely driving you crazy. Besides the thousands of pages in the bill, the countless
changes and the newly sworn-in Re-publicans’ promise to repeal the whole thing, it’s hard to keep track of what is headed your business’ way.
“There’s a lot of confusion out there and many people just aren’t clear on the new changes,” says Mark Kellenbeck, a founding principal and COO of Cascade Management, a real estate management services company in Wilsonville, Ore.
A midyear National Small Business Association survey found that 79 percent of small businesses had little or no idea how the new laws would affect them.
Though change may come (again), several provisions of the Affordable Care Act took hold in 2010 and more will roll out this year. For some small-business owners, they feature significant changes in the way employees’ health-care will be provided. But there are possible benefits as well.
Employers will be required to report on each employee’s W-2 the value of the health insurance they provide, although the IRS will defer reporting requirements for 2011. The act also calls for new group health plan requirements as well as changes to flexible spending arrange-ments, including the requirement for a prescription for over-the-counter drugs. And business owners who give clients a nice glow have a special provision: an excise tax on indoor tanning services.
How much the new law bumps into (or benefits) your business will, for the most part, come down to size, says Molly Brogan of the Na-tional Small Business Association in Washington, D.C.
Small employers that pay at least half of the cost of single coverage for their employees will gain the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit. “If you are providing health insurance or you start providing it, you can get this helpful tax credit. It’s geared toward businesses with low-wage earners that typically have a much more difficult time providing health insurance,” Brogan says.
The credit—which can be claimed
BURIED IN REFORMThe law’s provisions go beyond healthcare. One that goes into effect in 2012 was buried deep within the bill’s pages. Businesses will have to send 1099 forms to vendors they purchase more than $600 in goods or services from during the year. This could create a tremendous amount of paperwork for small businesses come tax time. A typical small-business owner files an average of 10 1099s, says Molly Brogan of the National Small Business Association, citing its surveys. With the new legislation, businesses could be sending an average of 86 forms.
“Some small businesses are going to find it a huge burden and will likely start consolidating their purchases to minimize the 1099s they have to file. I think that will ultimately take away business from some small businesses,” Brogan says.
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Entrepreneur // March 201178
on Form 8941—is for employerswith fewer than 25 full-time em-ployees or 50 part-time employees with an average annual wage below $50,000. The credit is worth as much as 35 percent of a business’s premium costs in 2010, and in 2014, it will increase to 50 percent.
The bulk of the reforms related to the legislation will not go into effect until 2014. By then, states will have to set up Small Business Health Options Programs in which small businesses can bond together and buy group-style insurance. The exchanges will be open to businesses with no more than 100 employees. By 2014, companies with more than 50 employees that don’t offer quali-fied coverage to their employees, and that have at least one employee who receives the premium tax credit, will be required to pay fines of $2,000 per full-time employee, excluding the first 30 employees.
THE PULSE ON HEALTHCARE REFORMEntrepreneurs are happy and frus-trated about the legislation. Susie Morrissey, president and CEO of Bell Janitorial in Dallas, says she’ll do everything she can to keep her employee count below 50. Much of her competition hires independent contractors who are not subject to the new rules, but Bell Janitorial classifies its workers as employees. To grow the company and maximize profits without pushing her employee count past 50, Morrissey says she’ll have to plan the right customer and employee mix. That will likely result in raising prices—or firing some customers.
“When I am at the 50 mark, I will look at my options and whatever is the best for my company is what I’m go-ing to do. If it’s better to pay the fine, then that’s what I’ll do,” she says.
Indeed, many small-business owners may very well opt to pay a fine. The $2,000-per-employee penalty sounds like a lot of money but it pales in com-parison to the average cost of $5,000 in premiums for an individual or $12,000 for a family—with employers paying as much as half. Many small businesses take pride in providing health insurance for their employees, Brogan says, but some may see the fine
as the only affordable solution.“I think they’d rather put that
[fine] toward health insurance, but I think there are going to be a lot of people who just opt to take the pen-alty,” she says.
Cascade’s Kellenbeck says the ef-fect on his business will be relatively minor until 2014. His company has approximately 350 employees and already provides healthcare coverage for its full-time workers. With premi-ums increasing 100 percent during the past seven years, he says healthcare has been Cascade’s fastest-rising cost. Kellenbeck believes the legislation will reduce premiums in the long term and predicts just who will be affected.
“It is the businesses that have pro-vided no coverage or limited coverage that felt they couldn’t afford it or just chose to operate without it,” he says.
STAY AHEAD OF CHANGE
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ healthcare.gov site includes a section that highlights changes and requirements for small-business owners through 2014.
The NSBA also has launched a healthcare reform information site at healthreformtoday.org.
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“They are the ones who are reallygoing to be impacted.”
CRAIG GUILLOT IS A WRITER IN
NEW ORLEANS.
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By Bruce Schoenfeld | PhotograPhy By natalie BraSington
The terminal case of sorry sandwiches that travelers must suffer through in most airports may finally be sent packing
futuristic foodie: chef Jason denton at bar brace cafe in new York’s Jfk.
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The knives give it away. Constructed from TSA-mandated plastic, not steakhouse steel, they dispel the illusion that
my New York strip is being served at a top-tier Manhattan restaurant and remind me that we’re just past security at LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal D.
Everything else here at Michael Lo-monaco’s Prime Tavern, from the so-licitous service and extensive wine list to the quality of the beef, would pass muster at Lomonaco’s Porter House, the critically acclaimed carnivorium in Manhattan’s glittery Time Warner Center. And why shouldn’t it? The celebrity chef helped create the Prime Tavern concept, train the staff and write the menu. I’m told he even turns up occasionally to cook the food.
As a frequent business traveler, I’m accustomed to suffering through airport meals from bland national chains that all seem to offer the same
four appetizers and entrees. So the idea of getting housemade condiments and nightly specials, never mind a shot at finding a famous face actually working in the kitchen, is a pulse-quickening thrill.
“But this isn’t an airport restaurant, it’s a restaurant that happens to be in an airport,” says Rick Blatstein, the CEO and guiding spirit of OTG Management, the restaurant company responsible for Prime Tavern and the other concessions at Delta Airlines’ Terminal D. “Michael is using the same meat here that he uses at Porter House. We have a full menu and spe-cials every night. And we charge street prices, not airport prices.”
At Terminal D, OTG has partnered with well-known chefs and restaura-teurs on the most ambitious selec-tion of restaurants at any American airport. Bisoux, a Provençal bistro by the team behind New York’s renowned Balthazar, began serving its
duck confits and niçoise salads late last year, the same time that Prime Tavern opened. Coming soon are concepts from, among others, Andrew Carmellini of Locanda Verde, Jamison Blankenship of Morimoto, Chris Can-non of Alto and L’Impero and Jason Denton of ’inoteca and Corsino. These aren’t the typical national names, the Wolfgangs and Emerils, that usually show up as project headliners. Termi-nal D features successful New York restaurateurs who want to give their LaGuardia projects the attention they deserve. “It’s just like opening a new restaurant in another part of town,” Blatstein says.
He takes a bite of his salmon, broiled to a perfect carnation pink. “Why hasn’t this been done before? I have no idea. We’re doing something really wonder-ful, the traveling public is embracing it, and it seems so obvious to me. But it took me 10 years to convince airports and airlines. Finally, they’re getting it.”
haute hub dining
By Bruce Schoenfeld | PhotograPhy By natalie BraSington
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Entrepreneur // March 201182
It might be hard for today’sfrequent traveler to believe, but some of America’s best res-taurants were once located in
airports. New Yorkers who weren’t even planning to fly would travel to Idlewild, the precursor to John F. Ken-nedy International Airport, for dinner at the Golden Door. The circular Seven Continents served Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport from 1963 into the 1990s. At the Theme Room in Los Angeles in the 1960s, a waitstaff wearing sarongs or lederhosen served authentic dishes from around the world. (Later, it evolved into a high-end French restaurant serving escargot and lobster fricassee.)
Air travel was luxurious then, and the linen tablecloths and multicourse meals that passengers enjoyed before and after flights provided a fitting counterpart to in-flight service of the same standard. But as deregulation brought exponentially more pas-sengers to airports, those distinctive eateries eventually gave way to na-tional brands selling high-volume food out of minimal kitchen space, much like those at a typical big-city sports arena. Ticket-holders who would have been happy to spend liberally on an expense-account dinner wandered around with money in their pockets, straining to find anything more entic-ing than an $8 roast beef sandwich and a glass of generic Chardonnay.
Denver International Airport, the most recent major aviation facility to open in the United States, debuted in 1995 without a single full-service dining venue, after someone had evidently concluded that fast food was all that passengers wanted. Since then, the situation has improved around the U.S. with the prolif-eration of Wolfgang Puck Cafes, which sell edible pizzas and salads, and outposts of popular regional chains—such as Legal Sea Foods in Boston and beyond, Philips on the mid-Atlantic seaboard, Anthony’s in the Pacific Northwest—that operate with greatly reduced versions of their usual menus. Still, there’s rarely any-thing satisfying to eat, and almost never anything truly interesting.
Blatstein, a former restaurant and nightclub owner, started in concessions in 1996 with Jet Rock, a bar and grill
in the Philadelphia airport. “My head-line acts,” he says, “became Boeings and Airbuses, delivering customers directly to my door.”
He expanded into other markets but wasn’t able to implement his grand vision until OTG won the right to create a dramatic, multiconcept dining hall at JFK’s Terminal 5, which is run by jetBlue. That opened in 2008, just as the stock market was cratering. Dining options include Piquillo, an au-thentic Spanish tapas bar, sushi from Buddakan’s Michael Schulson, pasta from Del Posto’s Mark Ladner and 29 other concepts (including a few na-tional chains such as Jamba Juice and Dunkin’ Donuts). Its $8 per-passenger “spend,” according to Blatstein, ranks as the highest in the industry.
Terminal D constitutes the next step. The project is more ambitious than JFK’s Terminal 5 because the pas-sengers who step off Delta’s planes are more likely to be businesspeople than those who’ve flown jetBlue.
“You see a lot more suits,” Blat-
stein says. And LaGuardia is about 20 minutes closer to Manhattan by car, so it’s the airport of choice for execu-tives headed out of or into the city. The combination means at least a theoretical customer base of frequent travelers who don’t balk at $40 restaurant entrees.
Few domestic routes offer compli-mentary meals anymore, so Terminal D also has a fast-food court for grab-and-go options. But these options will satisfy even the most finicky of NYC’s self-proclaimed foodies. There are hamburgers from cult-favorite butcher Pat LaFrieda and pizza from Brook-lyn’s Dominick DeMarco.
“Imagine, this is our McDonald’s,” says OTG head chef Michael Coury as he bites into a chubby LaFrieda cheese-burger. “And this,” he says, walking over to the World Bean coffee stand to show off its hand-built Slayer espresso machine, a gleaming piece of machinery with the lines of a Lamborghini, “is what we have instead of Starbucks.”
The grand plan isn’t to put Lomo-naco and Denton in cities across the
at the helm: rick blatstein, ceo of otG manaGement.
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country, but to find similarly accom-plished chefs and restaurateurs in every city. So Blatstein puts Coury in the air for 120,000 miles a year, letting him eat his way through North Amer-ica while amassing concepts for OTG to pitch to airport authorities and other governing bodies as opportuni-ties arise. “The concessions contracts at 90 percent of U.S. airports expire in the next 10 years,” Blatstein says. “We strongly believe that customers will demand this change, and the industry will recognize it and respond.”
Atasty ripple effect hasalready started. In Los Angeles, the British-based catering firm SSP presented
the City Council with a proposal that would bring Patina Group’s Joachim Splichal, Border Grill’s Too Hot Tama-les, Nancy Silverton of La Brea Bakery and Mozza, and other big-name Southern California chefs to four terminals at Los Angeles International Airport. Late last year, O’Hare de-buted a full-service sushi and seafood bar in Terminal 2; $100 tabs for two are already commonplace.
“It doesn’t have a celebrity chef,” says Rosemarie S. Andolino, commis-sioner of the Chicago Department of Aviation, “but it does have a master sushi chef. It’s authentic, fresh and ap-pealing. That’s what we’re looking for.”
HMS Host also has contracted with Chicago’s Rick Bayless (Topolobampo, Frontera Grill) to open fast-food and sit-down concepts elsewhere at O’Hare, and discussions with res-taurateur Art Smith, formerly Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef, are continu-ing. “People are spending much more time in airports now,” Andolino says. “You want to be able to offer them a variety of options.”
But Blatstein is the one pushing the envelope. These days, he only wants contracts with entire terminals so that OTG can control the overall dining atmosphere. Denton’s Bar Brace is the centerpiece of Blatstein’s most daring idea: converting a gate in Kennedy’s Terminal 3 into a futuristic Italian café—without giving up the space’s original function.
“It’s the single largest piece of real estate at airports around the world and the most desirable location for a
customer to be. Before this? It was do-ing absolutely nothing,” he says.
The prototype opened at a single Delta gate just after Thanksgiving, and it is compelling. Rather than the usual spectator-style seating outfitted with rows of metal-and-plastic chairs, the gate has café tables and banquettes with electrical outlets, and touch-screen computers offering Internet access (to a range of preset websites). The café—with orders entered by iPad—serves small dishes and panini, as well as wines by the glass and cocktails. That means sipping your Negroni, scrolling through up-to-the-minute news stories and watching the game on DirecTV right up until the moment your row is called.
A slightly different prototype with a restaurant just outside the gate is in JFK’s Terminal 2, and LaGuardia is scheduled to get one of each later this year. “Our view is that it’s a game-changer in customer experience,” says Wayne Aaron, Delta’s vice president of marketing. “We’ve been very, very pleased by the initial reaction.”
Kennedy was the perfect place for the experiment because Delta operates and owns the terminal. When OTG suggested blurring the line between con-cessions and gate space, the airline was able to give the all-clear. Replicating it elsewhere will be more challenging—the airline’s relationship with each airport authority is different—but if consumers remain enthusiastic about the experi-ence, similar concepts are likely to start appearing around the country.
And Blatstein’s creative thinking ex-
tends beyond food and drink. As I was leaving Prime Tavern, I ran into Mar-celo Surerus, who formerly ran the concierge program at Starwood’s W Hotels. Blatstein hired him to install a concierge service for Delta VIPs at Terminal D. The black-clad staff will be available to make hotel reservations on the fly, meet late-arriving custom-ers with ordered food and solve other problems travelers encounter along the way. If you’re a top Delta customer with a tight connection or a special desire, you can call ahead, but Surerus stresses that anyone with a need will be taken care of. “Just like I’d do in the lobby of a hotel,” he says, “except it’s in an airport.”
If facilities managers across the country can get beyond constraints in budget and space and adopt some of these innovations, the result would seem to be an enormous change for the better in how passengers experi-ence air travel. As Blatstein describes it, flying sounds almost civilized again.
“Everyone has to go through security, there’s nothing we can do about that,” he says. “But once you get through, we’re determined to make you forget that you’re at the airport.”
Plastic knives aside, he’s off to an admirable start.
Bruce Schoenfeld iS the wine
and SPiritS editor of Travel +leisure and an award-winning
author and televiSion writer.
hiS writing haS aPPeared in PuB-
licationS Such aS GourmeT and
Food & Wine.
at the helm: rick blatstein, ceo of otG manaGement.
bar brace: redefininG the pre-fliGht experience.
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Style wiSe Pack up the wrinkled khakis and sad, old graphic tees. Your business deserves better.By Erin WEingEr | PhotograPhy By nataliE Brasington
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If, while watching The SocialNetwork, you were either not horrified by or—shudder—gave a thumbs up to Mark Zucker-berg’s shower sandals style, this article is for you. (If you wore
shower sandals to the movie theater, this article is really for you.)
Flipping through back issues of Entrepreneur, we noticed that budding business moguls consistently make some prominent fashion faux pas.
What did we see? Open dress shirts over graphic-emblazoned T-shirts.
Wrinkled slacks paired with hiking boots. Dirty sneakers that Goodwill workers would reject. And, sigh, a continuing love affair with really thick early-’90s neckties and Matrix-ready all-black ensembles.
To give you an idea of how to amp up your own style (and business), we asked Los Angeles celebrity stylist Monica Schweiger to put her taste to work for one up-and-coming entre-preneur. Schweiger has had a hand in dressing style icons including Ander-son Cooper, P. Diddy and musician Mayer Hawthorne.
Schweiger’s challenge: turn Randall Weidberg, founder and CEO of Boulder, Colo.-based social shopping website Giantnerd.com, from chief nerd to something far (far) hipper—without pushing his personality out of the picture. This, in spite of the fact that Weidberg didn’t think a makeover was a must for his life or business.
“At the end of the day, you’re think-ing about your company and what you need to do to make it grow,” he says. “It isn’t really about what you’re wearing.”
True. But lack of attention to your
duds can detract from your business message. Would you rather potential investors pay attention to your wrinkled tee or to your bold idea? An entre-preneur is also the public face of the company. Since launching his outdoor enthusiast-focused e-commerce com-pany last year, Weidberg has attended countless meetings, spoken on plenty of industry and tech panels and, yes, he has even appeared on Entrepreneur.com.
We sent Weidberg to meet Sch-weiger at Ever, a decidedly cool L.A. shop. There, the stylist kicked off the
entrepreneur’s education on the art of modern business-casual style.
“When it comes to a business outfit, it really depends on the occasion,” she says. Case in point: You don’t want to wear the same thing you’d sport to a coffeehouse get-together with your graphic designer to a formal boardroom meeting with a venture capitalist.
But if you insist on pushing the boundaries of business dress, we beg of you: Learn how to iron (or, better yet, find a good dry cleaner).
Schweiger suggests buying structured jeans in a natural to dark wash. A good pair of jeans is a versatile friend. Combine them with sneakers and a polo shirt for casual days or desert boots and a sport coat for meetings.
Schweiger replaced Weidberg’s khakis with a pair of Ever’s coated black Maywood jeans ($198), which, she says, can easily be dressed up or down.
“I love these,” Weidberg says, admiring the pants. “They definitely look different than what my programmers would wear.”
Of course, there are times when something dressier is in order. “It doesn’t hurt to invest in at least one tailored suit
that actually fits,” Schweiger says. If you’re living on a startup king’s
budget, she suggests going to a vintage store or resale shop where gently used designer suiting can usually be found for a lot less than retail. “Also, H&M is great for inexpensive and shock-ingly well-fitting men’s suits,” she says. Then, have that suit tailored.
Piece by piece, Schweiger fixed some of our entrepreneur’s most glaring crimes of fashion. Then she took him to Gavert Atelier salon in Beverly Hills for a quick cleanup. Stylist Mika Fowler,
who counts Glee cast members as clients, didn’t even bust out her scissors for Weidberg’s shaggy mane. She says a full-on cut is unnecessary if the goal is a polished look for meetings and speak-ing engagements. “Product is the most important thing,” she says.
For Weidberg’s longish hair, Fowler used liberal amounts of Joico’s Design Collection Flexible Shaping Spray and Humidity Blocker to achieve a shiny, natural, stay-put look. Total time for the coiffing process? Five minutes. “You don’t have to spend a lot of time to look put together,” Schweiger says.
Really, she adds, style is just about “paying attention to the details.” Swap the boring businessman leather shoes for retro sneakers. Trade out the graphic T-shirt under your open button-down for a solid color. Make sure things match. But don’t take your outfit too seriously.
“And look in a mirror before you leave the house,” Schweiger says. “That’s usually the biggest help of all.”
See our makeover reSultS on page 87. >>>>>>>>>>>
Style wiSe Pack up the wrinkled khakis and sad, old graphic tees. Your business deserves better.By Erin WEingEr | PhotograPhy By nataliE Brasington
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GLASSES: Nerd glasses are all the rage, as evidenced by Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake. But when worn with the wrong ensemble, they’re just that—nerdy—and not in a good way. “You don’t want them to look like a parody,” celebrity stylist Mon-ica Schweiger says. Randall Weidberg’s clear frames work perfectly for his Giantnerd persona. But for real-world dressing, the CEO leaves his whimsical glasses at home. Find a pair that fits your face and comple-ments your style.
WATCH: Weidberg’s own watch infuses a touch of personality into both ensembles, something stylist Schweiger says is a good thing. And once his outfit is gussied up, that personal touch keeps things decid-edly Randall. Use small accessories to add your flair to an outfit.
BEFORE
AHAIR: A makeover with no haircut? Why, yes we can. Weidberg told us that his girlfriend would have killed him had he returned to Boulder with less hair than when he left. Luckily, hairstylist-to-the-stars Mika Fowler assured Weidberg that a new, polished look was completely possible sans scissors. “Product is the most important thing,” she says. For Weidberg’s straight, shaggy mane, Fowler used Joico’s Design Collection Flexible Shap-ing Spray ($15) and Humidity Blocker ($20) to keep stray strands in check. Don’t be afraid to mix and match your prod-ucts, too. Just make sure you read—and follow—the directions on the bottle.
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 87
SHOES: “Shoes are so important,” Schweiger says. “They speak volumes about a person.” Save your old gym shoes for walking your dog. A pair of retro sneakers is appropriate for casual busi-ness encounters. “Get a pair of plain old Converse,” she says. “They look classy and new.” And be careful with dress shoes. The wrong pair can feel very Night at the Roxbury. For deal closings, Schweiger suggests chan-neling the Beatles in a pair of vintage Chelsea boots.
ERIN WEINGER IS A FREELANCE WRIT-
ER IN LOS ANGELES AND PUBLISHER
OF THE WEBSITE STYLE SECTION L.A.
SHIRT: Dress shirts are, as the name says, for dress-ier occasions. Unless you’re wearing a suit, leave yours at home. Schweiger put Weid-berg in Ever’s Biggs cotton button-down ($148), which works better in today’s laid-back, geek-chic busi-ness atmosphere. One to avoid at all costs: “White short-sleeve dress shirts read IT guy,” our stylist says.
E
AFTERPANTS:In today’s casually dressed culture, it might be tempting to throw on the jeans crum-pled next to your hamper. Step away from the laundry. “You don’t want to come across as sloppy, no matter what situation you’re in,” Schweiger says. If you insist on khakis, make sure they’re ironed. Otherwise a good pair of dark, structured jeans (that are clean, natch) go a long way. Pair them with sneakers and a polo shirt for casual days or, for meetings, desert boots and a sport coat.
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start it upHOW IT WORKS: The clients themselves can be the surprisees, or they can hire the company to surprise someone they know. Surprisees have no idea what they’re paying for, aside from some hints, a location and an arrival time. They’re asked what kind of experience they want (adrenaline-spiked, romantic,
mysterious) and what the occasion is. Then, Surprise Industries’ team, including 13 part-time “agents of surprise” on call for emergency brainstorming sessions, makes it happen by contacting the right people and putting together the surprise.
Surprise!A trio of New Yorkers delivers
fabulous fetes made to order
ENTREPRENEURS: Tania Luna, Kat Dudina and
Maya Gilbert, founders of Surprise Industries, a New York
company that plans surprise events for individuals and busi-
nesses. Think trapeze lessons, private beer tastings and a
zombie birthday party complete with actors in costume and
a terrifying alleyway ambush—the possibilities are endless.
WHAT’S NEXT: Building up business clients and focus-ing on large-scale private surprises, as well as planning more public holiday surprises for multiple groups. (Last year’s Valentine’s Day involved couples samurai fighting, a Moroc-can cooking class and Thai massage.) Gilbert says they’re constantly expanding, too: “Our database of surprises is the largest in New York, but we’re going after interesting people in all interesting cities.” —JENNIFER WANG
SUCCESS: Revenue doubled in 2010, andSurprise Industries now receives approximately two private orders a day (averaging about $300 to $500) and one corporate order a week (as much as $10,000). Clients include Christian Dior, L’Oreal and marketing agency Mr. Youth—and this all came about without any active marketing efforts.
WHAT POSSESSED THEM: Gilbert stumbled upona website called somethingstore.com that sold “surprise” objects. After trying it out, she real-ized the awesome power of buying a mystery. Now, Dudina says, “We want to spread the surprise bug and encourage risk-taking and adventure-seeking.”
STARTUP: Within minutes, they boughtthe domain name golearnsomething.com and got to work on a business plan. They entered their idea into a competition and won $10,000 to get started. By the time the first order came in January 2009, the concept had morphed into Surprise Industries, covering all types of experiences, not just classes.
CUSTOMERS: Most clients are in their20s and 30s, but the trio has planned sur-prises for family reunions and vacations, as well as corporate team-building activities and company events. “It’s like a concierge service, a little personalized luxury experience that’s accessible to anyone,” Luna says.
“AHA” MOMENT: One night in June
2008, the three were chatting about cool
business ideas and hit on a concept that com-
bined somethingstore.com with the excite-
ment of learning something new and unex-
pected in a class. “The idea just appeared on
the table. We thought we should do it, and
that night, we did it,” Luna says.
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TANIA LUNA, MAYA GILBERT AND KAT DUDINA DELIVER THE UNEXPECTED.
WACKY
IDEA
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Guidant is proud to support these franchisors and others with fast and easy fi nancing for prospective franchisees.
What are your options
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I beg
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Entrepreneur // March 201190
start it up
“Free money, just for the ask-ing. Hundreds of grants available right now!”
Sound familiar? If you have a TV, it probably does. And sadly, many people believe it.
Are there grants for small busi-nesses? Yes. Are you likely to find one to help start yours? Probably not.
Here’s the reality: The largest source of grants available to private businesses is the government. The good news, at least at the federal level, is that they’re easy to find. Simply go to grants.gov, the federal government’s database, and search
by category, agency and eligibility criteria. At recent count, about half of the 1,300 open grants are available to small businesses.
The bad news is that many of them are so obscure that most entrepreneurs would be hard-pressed to pronounce them, much less qualify for one.
Here’s a sample of what was on offer in December:
• Research opportunities on Spasmodic Dysphonia • Focal cognitive deficits in CNS disorders • National Gene Vector Biorepository and Coordinating Center
A check of other open grants leaves little room for hope for the local pizza shop or video game developer, but the list is worth a gander if you’re in a busi-ness that addresses one of Uncle Sam’s targeted causes. At the end of last year, that included job training, education, pollution reduction, serving disad-vantaged populations, military needs, alternative energies and breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture and energy.
Then there are charity, corporate and foundation grants. These organi-zations have millions on offer at any given time, but most are restricted to nonprofit and educational applicants.
Too good to be true?Many government grants are available for small businesses, but research carefully—most of them are aimed at specific industries and efforts
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Looking for a franchise that’s more
than just a business? Welcome
to the world of Kumon. A Kumon
Math and Reading franchise gives
you the opportunity to pursue your
life’s passion — helping children
succeed — while enjoying the work-
life balance you’ve always wanted.
With Kumon’s proven track record
and global presence, you can count
on getting all the help you need to
start, establish and grow your
very own Kumon.
Find out if a Kumon franchise is right for you.
Visit kumonfranchise.com or call 866.633.0740.
Requirements: $50K investment capital and net worth of $150K
You can nd work-life balance if you look in the right places.
We recommend Kumon.
• Ten consecutive years as the top tutoring franchise in Entrepreneur magazine’s top 500 franchises of 2011
• Consistently recognized as the most effective academic enrichment program
• Proven business model
• Ongoing support for franchisees
• Positive impact on the lives of youth and your local community
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 91
Still, if your project pertains to the arts, education, science or a similar cause, you might be able to tap this pool either directly or in cooperation with a nonprofit organization.
Keep in mind that even if you do qualify for a grant, responsible organiza-tions and government agencies expect something of value for their beneficence, such as useful research or job creation.
Many require matching funds from your organization or other sources.
This may sound pessimistic, but unfortunately, it’s true. The “free money” myth has persisted for too long because unscrupulous peddlers find entrepreneurs—desperate to fund their dreams—easy to trap in their snares.
Don’t believe me? Here’s the open-ing sentence on the U.S. Small Business
Administration’s web page on grants: We’ve all seen the headlines: “Millions in free government money for your business.” Late-night infomercials and Internet advertisements promise grants to start or expand a business. Sound too good to be true? It is.
The best advice for most entrepre-neurs is to forget about relying on grants. Concentrate instead on starting a business that’s financially feasible without grants—or, for that matter, loans or investments—and the money will follow. —Kate LiSter
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Kate LiSter iS a former BanKer,
SmaLL-BuSineSS inVeStor anD Vet-
eran entrePreneur. her BooKS
anD WeBSiteS inCLuDe Finding Money: The SMall BuSineSS guide To Financing anD undreSS For SucceSS: The naked TruTh aBouT Making Money aT hoMe.
entmar11 088-093 startitup.indd 91 1/18/11 9:05 AM01182011090856
Looking for a franchise that’s more
than just a business? Welcome
to the world of Kumon. A Kumon
Math and Reading franchise gives
you the opportunity to pursue your
life’s passion — helping children
succeed — while enjoying the work-
life balance you’ve always wanted.
With Kumon’s proven track record
and global presence, you can count
on getting all the help you need to
start, establish and grow your
very own Kumon.
Find out if a Kumon franchise is right for you.
Visit kumonfranchise.com or call 866.633.0740.
Requirements: $50K investment capital and net worth of $150K
You can nd work-life balance if you look in the right places.
We recommend Kumon.
• Ten consecutive years as the top tutoring franchise in Entrepreneur magazine’s top 500 franchises of 2011
• Consistently recognized as the most effective academic enrichment program
• Proven business model
• Ongoing support for franchisees
• Positive impact on the lives of youth and your local community
ENT_0311_0625_RH.indd 1/19/11 2:40 PM PAGE 1ENT_0311_0625_RH.indd 1/19/11 2:40 PM PAGE 1ENT_0311_0625_RH.indd 1/19/11 2:40 PM PAGE 1ENT_0311_0625_RH.indd 1/19/11 2:40 PM PAGE 1
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Entrepreneur // March 201192
start it up
Matt Lauzon has made it possible for consumers to design customjewelry without having to visit a jewelry store. His online company, Gemvara, launched last February and has experienced double-digit monthly revenue growth, received more than 1 million page views
per month and enjoyed an average order price of approximately $1,000.Some might say that creating a game-changing business plan while attending
to hectic senior-year studies at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., was overly ambitious. But Lauzon had identified a pool of faculty members and like-minded entrepreneurs at Babson with whom he could exchange ideas.
Add his courses in early-stage financing and marketing, and it’s clear why Lauzon was able to move the company into its office space in Lexington, Mass., a day before his 2007 graduation—and to secure $10.5 million in funding.
“One of the big pros of starting as a young person is that so many people are willing to help, and college is such a safe place to fail,” says Lauzon, 26. “I’m a big believer in this thing called the ‘1 percent rule,’ which is to give yourself the 1 percent possibility in any situation that you’re not right. It opens up just enough room for you to get an alternative opinion.”
To find varied opinions about his business, Lauzon signed 50 brick-and-mortar jewelers to a network that let their clients customize items both in the store and online. He discovered that customers were much more excit-ed about the experience of customizing from home, which gave them more control over the design process.
Lauzon reworked his business plan to focus exclusively on online custom-ization, intent on updating the concept of e-commerce for “Generation Me.”
“I’d go so far as to say that e-com-merce as we know it is dying and there’s this new thing called ‘me’ commerce, which says buying online doesn’t need to just be about the transaction, but about an experience that really integrates the consumer and lets them get exactly what they want,” he says.
And what each consumer wants is as varied as the consumers themselves.
“We’re featuring some subset of a few thousand designs that we have, and any individual design typically has hundreds of thousands of pos-sibilities,” Lauzon says. “If you look at our top-selling design, it’s a ring. The ring gets ordered every day, but 90 percent of the time a customer is buying it in a way that no customer had ever bought it before.”
The power to create has turned Gemvara’s 1,500 products into more than 1 billion variations—each made to order by marrying the customer’s vision with gemstones, metals and pro-cesses. In doing so, Lauzon has created a new way to shop—and a billion new items to shop for. —JoeL hoLLanD
The bling kingOnline retailer Gemvara changes the way people shop forjewelry by encouraging customers to have it their way
JoeL hoLLanD, 26, iS founDer
anD Ceo of footage firm in
reSton, Va. he Can Be reaCheD at
MaTT Lauzon’s GeMvara puTs The “Me” in e-coMMerce.
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Strokes of geniusLOCK CUPGOMMEH.COM
Sharing is overrated. So mark your drinking territory around the of-fice with the Lock Cup, a mug with a specially designed hole that can be plugged only by the rightful owner’s round “key.” Israeli product designer Efrat Gommeh is still working on bring-ing the cup to market, but expect it to cost in the neighborhood of $10—a small price to pay for peace of mind.
GAPINGVOIDGAPINGVOID.COM
In his gapingvoid blog, cartoonist Hugh Ma-cleod, author of offbeat business books Evil Plans and Ignore Everybody, is all about the cube grenade: art that you can “toss” into a work envi-ronment to start a conver-sation. In one recent post, a purple monster with a bow tie and a deadpan expression admits, “I tried being a corporate drone once. Fortunately it didn’t suit me.”
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BUCKYBALLSGETBUCKYBALLS.COM
Eliminate idle fidgeting with Buckyballs, an addicting desktop toy composed of 216 small bead-shaped magnets made from rare earth metals. Once you get the hang of it, you can mold and sculpt them into an endless number of creative geometric patterns and 3-D structures. Getting a set ($29.95) could prevent you from finish-ing your work, but it beats your co-worker going psycho on your pen-clicking, finger-drumming, toe-tapping ass. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. —J.W.
A Division of The Home Depot
Request your FREEBusiness Opportunity Packet at
www.chemdryfranchise.comor call 1-877-307-8233
Clint started his own Chem-Dry Franchise in 2008: About $10k to get started.
Available Business Tools: 24/7 Support, Online Training,and Business Coaches.
Hours spent with my kids: More than the past five or six years combined.
Quality of life: Fantastico! (I learned that on my recent family trip to Italy)
Jesse started his own carpet cleaning company in 2008: About $82k to get started.
Available Business Tools: Duct tape, dial-up internet, and Frank the bartender.
Hours spent with my kids: Does a quick video chat during my work-lunch count?
Quality of life: Just moved in with the mother-in-law ... you tell me.
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out to launch: startup weekend’s clint nelsen, marc nager and Franck nouyrigat (on screen).
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let’sget itstarted
Would-be entrepreneurs have 54 hours to pitch, hone and—if they’re
lucky—sell their genius business ideas. Welcome to startup Weekend.
It’s Sunday evening in a huge loft in New York City’s Chinatown, and leaders of nine motley teams are presenting their ideas for startup busi-
nesses to investors, advisors and other wannabe
Mark Zuckerbergs. by regina schrambling photography by rick dahms
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A small, bubbly, self-assured youngwoman energetically pitches an app to give travelers stranded in airports advice on how to fill the time (Amster-dam has a library! Central London is closer than you think!)
A middle-aged suburbanite talks up a should-you-go? app designed to determine how crowded a bar or con-cert is. A hipster with a shaved head touts a program that would showcase emerging artists. A fast-talking woman in her 20s speeds through an app for jumping the line in restrooms. There’s a Craigslist for musicians only, and an app to project digital art onto public buildings. The ideas just keep coming.
Each presenter has five minutes to make the sale, then the audience has five minutes to grill: What’s the de-mographic? Who is the competition? What is the social element? What is the revenue generator?
During a break for a vote on the most promising plan, participants indulge in sodas, socializing and steamed buns from a nearby Chinese restaurant.
The winning team this weekend turns out to be the most practical. The three men conducted field research, visiting a park to ask young mothers if they would have rented maternity wear while they were pregnant, rather than buying it.
They also created an online landing page to gauge interest. In 18 hours they had 37 Facebook “likes,” 80 visits to the site and 13 invitations requested. And Belliella.com was on its way, complete with the promise by a fashion industry insider serving as a judge that she would “open up my Rolodex” to help it make more connections.
This was the culmination of yet an-other Startup Weekend, a phenomenon that has spread around the world since a Boulder, Colo., entrepreneur in 2007 came up with the idea of gathering and motivating people who have business ideas but no clear idea how to proceed.
Participants meet on a Friday night and have 60 seconds to pitch their ge-nius notions; they vote on which have the most promise, then split into teams
matching their talents to projects and spend Saturday and Sunday honing their proposals. In 54 hours, a busi-ness can be born. To participate, all they need is $50 to $99 (fees vary city to city) and a dream. Meals—seven of them, plus snacks—are even included.
“It’s a crash course in startups,” says Shane Reiser, the New York or-ganizer who is also chief operating of-ficer of Seattle-based Startup Weekend.
Participants listen to experienced entrepreneurs and investors, make con-nections, consult experts and, in some cases, even find investors. Two to three speakers and four to six mentors, who are community leaders or well-known people who volunteer, judge the startup ideas. In June, the founders of Score.ly, an online and social achievement ag-gregation site, came away with $10,000 from AOL Ventures.
Marc Nager, Startup Weekend’s CEO, says, “We pry the ideas out of them and help them take the next step, which is not paying lawyers thousands of dollars. We teach them how to
ground control: the startup weekend team at seattle hQ.
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Entrepreneur // March 201198
roll up their sleeves if they have a good idea.” (Not all teams stick together after the three days are over, but the experience teaches them the value of working together, and that does last beyond the weekend.)
Since he and Clint Nelsen took over Startup Weekend from founder Andrew Hyde in May 2009 and converted it into a 501(C)3 non-profit, they have staged 210 events in 35 countries. Twenty-five thousand aspiring entrepreneurs have taken part. This year, 130 events are planned in the U.S. and in cities as varied as Nice, France; Oslo, Norway; and New Delhi. The organi-zation counts 800 startup ventures, of which 30 percent are still active three months later and 10 percent have gone into incubation or mentoring.
“Our mission is education, inspira-tion, empowering,” Nager says. “It’s really amazing to be in a position to really change people’s lives. People come in with ideas but don’t have the skills and meet people who do. Or they bond and get inspiration.
“We get a lot of ‘what if someone steals my idea?’ But a million-dollar idea is worth nothing if you’re on your own. It’s about the team, about the people. Startup Weekend draws people from all different backgrounds.”
“There’s a lot of value in testing an idea,” Reiser says. “You get to talk about it with people and get feedback. You could find out it’s a terrible idea and move on.”
Startup Weekend has had its biggest success helping to launch cyberbusi-nesses, whether apps for phones or actual websites. “If you’re building a prototype over a weekend, you go for tech,” Reiser says, because you don’t need an office, supplies or other tangibles, only digital assets.
One notable Startup Weekend alum-nus is Foodspotting (“the best foods
and where to find them”), which Time magazine named one of the top 50 websites of 2010. (It’s also an app.) Users click on cities and request foods they’re hankering for, and recom-mendations supplied by other users pop
up. Founder Alexa Andrzejewski says it was born at a Women 2.0 Startup Weekend in September 2009, where she met her first angel investor, who offered her $5,000 on the spot.
Just as important, she says, she could “soak in feedback, advice and input” from the crowd and also learn legal basics from lawyers on hand. “Startup Weekend is a place where someone like me, who had limited connections in the startup world, can meet a few people who could introduce me to a few more people who could eventually make my startup real.”
But Startup Weekend encourages alternatives as well. “In Malaysia we asked: ‘What are you passionate about and how can you harness that?’ ” Nager says. “One girl said she was passionate about cooking, really serious about busi-ness, and by the end of the day she was taking orders for cakes.”
As Startup Weekend has expanded, it has begun a global competition. One weekend, 30 events occurred, and the winner of each submitted a video for a vote online. The winner—Mimix in Beirut, a web and mobile app that translates speech into sign language—received donated prizes such as cash, electronics, legal services and a custom-designed website and video.
Reiser says 50 percent of par-ticipants go on to attend a second weekend, often in another city, to make additional connections. What’s essential, he says, is “a diverse group, with a good mix of software develop-ers and designers and others.”
Sponsors, including American
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Express, Microsoft and IBM, un-derwrite the organization. A recent grant from the entrepreneur-nurturing Kauffman Foundation allowed Startup Weekend to expand and hire more staff, bringing the total to eight. It also has 150 volunteers in cities around the world who recruit local sponsors.
Word of mouth, especially digital word of mouth, has helped growth: Ninety-nine percent of attendees come through Twitter, Facebook and online user groups.
When Startup Weekend enters a new city, a staff member flies in to organize an event, which needs at least 40 to 50 participants. The median age is 30, but 19- and 20-year-olds also attend, as do people in their 60s and 70s, says Reiser, who got his own start with Startup Weekend as a frustrated entrepreneur in Des Moines, Iowa.
“I met aspiring entrepreneurs who were always pitching ideas but no one was doing anything,” he says. “They didn’t know how to get started, didn’t know people; they were fearful. I read about a Startup Weekend in Kansas City and thought I’d try it in Des Moines.
“Marc and Clint helped me build an event. I got that warm, fuzzy feel-ing when people were so grateful, said they’d made so much progress. I felt really good about what I’d done. I think I’d done 10 events before Clint and Marc asked if I wanted a full-time job.”
Nager and Nelsen have their own understanding of startups, having essentially taken over the weekend concept and made it their own. “We went from 32 events to over 100 cities in nine months,” Nager says. “It was a roller coaster ride, a startup ride all on our own. We didn’t pay ourselves for well over a year. This was a quintes-sential eating-pasta startup. But we truly believed that we were needed, and here we are. No one is getting rich doing this. But it’s an amazing thing to be part of.”
“Our economy needs something like this,” says Reiser, citing a Kauff-man study that found 10 percent of new jobs created today are with companies that started in the last three years. “We need more innovation—more people are thinking of entrepre-neurship as a choice.”
regina schrambling is a Writer
in neW york city.
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Is it possible to make a smooth transition from the corporate world into franchise ownership?Take a page from these franchisees, who traded ties and titles for informality and independence.
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On the frOnt lines: steve wheat, OppOsite, and bObby pancake, belOw.
crossoverBy Jason Daley | PhotograPhy By DaviD lang
Opening a franchise for the first time is a daunting business for anyone. Add a move halfway across the country, a 70- to 80-hour work schedule with little or no pay, the death
of a partner and you have a recipe for franchise disaster.
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But Steve Wheat and Bobby Pan-cake took these challenges in stride when they began opening their Buffalo Wild Wings franchises in Delaware in 2004. In fact, the franchise novices handled their first business like pros, going on to open six successful Buffalo Wild Wings in five years.
That’s because Wheat and Pancake aren’t your ordinary franchisees.
Both had spent years punching the clock at Buffalo Wild Wings’ corpo-rate headquarters in Minneapolis—Pancake in company operations and Wheat in the marketing department. After years of watching—and help-ing—people realize their dreams of business ownership, they decided to take the plunge themselves. “We saw the organization growing,” Pancake says. “It was on the upswing and the path to success. We wanted to get in on the ground-floor opportunity.”
But taking advantage of that op-portunity meant both of them had to uproot their families and move to Delaware. When their partner and financial backer, Thom Kreusch, passed away six weeks after they opened the doors of their first restaurant, they had to scramble to come up with financ-ing to continue their company. It was a struggle, but they did it.
“Our huge advantage came from our confidence level,” Wheat says. “We watched dozens of people grow their restaurants and be successful.”
Pancake and Wheat are not alone. No organization keeps track of cor-porate franchise employees who have dropped their 9-to-5 gigs to become franchisees themselves, but it seems as if every company has an adventurous character or two who has caught the entrepreneur bug while on the job.
Their advantages are enviable—hav-ing watched dozens or even hundreds of individuals learn the ropes of franchis-ing, they have a mental Rolodex of mis-takes and pitfalls to avoid. They’ve been privy to the corporate decision-making processes that the average franchisee considers back-room voodoo. And most important, they go into their businesses confident that if they stick with the right plan, they will succeed. For Wheat and Pancake, that led to the Small Business Administration’s 2010 National Entre-preneurial Success Award and an Oval Office meeting with the president.
We spoke with franchisees who swapped their ties for a manager’s pin to find out what they know about run-ning a franchise that you don’t—and what they’ve learned from their time in the trenches.
Mine the experience of existing franchiseesRob Parsons worked as the franchisedevelopment director for Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen for six years after stints at Denny’s and casual-dining chain Ground Round. But in 2009, he was ready to set off on his own.
“Something a franchisee said to me kept ringing in my head,” Par-sons says. “He said, ‘You did all the work. Why are you letting me reap all the benefits?’ ”
When Parsons noticed that the company was having trouble finding a developer to build units in Boston, his hometown, he asked whether he and an equity partner could take a shot.
“To advance my career and to be VP of development wasn’t my ulti-mate desire,” he says. “I wanted more control of my destiny. My endgame for this was to be a franchisee, I knew
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that going in. I’m transaction oriented.I like seeing units go from the ground up. There are certain feelings of ac-complishment you just can’t get from positions in corporate life.”
Parsons was able to parlay his expertise in site selection into build-ing three stores in just 12 months. He attributes most of that success to the time he spent with the 36 franchisees he was responsible for in his corporate life. He saw what worked (putting a heavy focus on training) and what didn’t (trying to cut corners on build-ing expenses). But he says people new
to franchising can get the same benefit with a little legwork.
“I would encourage new franchisees to speak to multiple other franchisees at length,” he says. “They’re usually happy to share their opinions, and getting information out of them is not hard to do. The FDD has a list of all the franchisees in a system—that’s a huge resource. Why reinvent the wheel when you can make a phone call and get the plans to success?”
follow the guidelines established by the guys in suitsIn the late 1980sand early 1990s, Brent Burger ran a chain of TCBY yogurt shops in Virginia and Florida before becoming vice president of West Coast operations
for the company. In August 1999 he and his family moved to Maine to buy into three True Value Co. co-ops. By 2007, he had been elected to the com-pany’s board of directors. His moving back and forth across the franchisor/franchisee line has given him insight into how the two sides can get along.
“Entrepreneurs are a very indepen-dent and pretty skeptical bunch—we believe we know a lot more than people who aren’t working in the trenches,” he says. When Burger joined the corporate side of TCBY, he was amazed to find how many franchisees weren’t follow-
ing the company template. Some units were even selling competing brands of yogurt because they were cheaper. “I was shocked to see how many franchi-sees viewed themselves as independent entrepreneurs who could do whatever they wanted with the brand.”
Although True Value’s co-op model gives its owners more independence than some other franchises allow their franchisees, Burger’s stint on the board has convinced him that corporate knows what it’s doing and deserves a fair hearing. “It’s easy for members to assume that these are just a bunch of corporate people with ‘bright ideas,’ but that’s not my reality,” he says. “My being closer to corporate and not being so steadfast in my way have opened my eyes to a larger pool of thinking going on.
“What’s being gathered and rec-ommended by people at True Value makes sense. You don’t have to be a slave to it, or drink the Kool-Aid. Just open yourself up to it, and reflect for a minute. From the field team to distribution, these people spend their lives thinking about this business. There’s got to be some value in participating.”
express yourself if you canTim League’s venture into franchis-ing was a little different. In 1997, he founded the Alamo Drafthouse—a movie-theater chain that serves food and drinks and hosts film festivals and various other events. The Aus-tin, Texas-area business grew rapidly, and a new COO who was prepar-ing to franchise the concept wanted League to stay on as CEO of the franchise organization.
But League felt that he wasn’t ready. After opening the first franchise, he decided to step back and maintain his own store, and in 2004, he let another team franchise the company outside of Austin. For about six years, the two groups grew independently, until they merged last year, with League as CEO of the 10-store chain.
“We’ve benefited from the stronger training and accounting infrastructure the franchising group developed while we were apart,” he says. “I maintained a much larger entertainment, market-ing, advertising staff. I think I had a hang-up initially just with the idea and
stick with the fran-chise’s plan to succeed, franchi-sees advise. “You don’t have to be a slave to it, or drink the kool-aid. Just open Yourself up to it.”
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term ‘franchise.’ One of the reasons I stepped away was I wasn’t sure that the growth model would work for us because we had such unique, non-cookie-cutter aspects.
“In that time, I realized you could use the franchise model to expand, and each store could be the same in quality of offering, but we would give them a certain level of freedom. Offer-ing that level of freedom is an inherent part of the company.”
League estimates that about 80 percent of the Alamo Drafthouse experience comes from the corporate brand book, but the remaining 20 percent of the ideas and initiatives in his stores are created by franchisees, who use local ingredients in their menus and cater their movies to local tastes. That, he contends, is what gives his company its strength.
But it took that time away from the corporate structure for League to find the soul of his company and appreci-ate the value franchisees can bring to a brand when given the freedom. “Strangely enough, I think it’s worked out perfectly,” he says. “It’s a really odd path. It’s that unique element that has come forth from running my stores as a mom-and-pop operation.”
focus on self-relianceFran Lubbs’ mother used to claim that Fran had talked about running a nursery school since the age of 9. Fran doubts the story, but in 1996, she joined the corporate side of the Goddard School, an early-education franchise with about 360 units in 37 states. She worked a va-riety of jobs, from helping to interview directors and establishing school stan-dards to dealing with state regulations.
But by 2001, after two bouts of cancer and after her children left home, Lubbs reassessed her priorities. “The higher you move up the corporate ladder and the larger the corporation becomes, you lose touch with what happens in the business everyday,” she says. “I wanted to get back in the schools. I missed the kids—they’re a constant reminder of what’s good and beautiful in the world.”
When an ailing Goddard franchise went up for sale in Strafford, Penn., just 3 miles from her home, Lubbs decided to become a franchisee. “One of the advantages in stepping over to the other side is that I had a good understanding of the franchisee/fran-
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chisor relationship,” she says. “I reallyunderstood that the business was mine to run. Goddard was there to help me and provide multiple wonderful resources and a proven system, but it was up to me to take all those things and to make or break my business.”
Still, her broad experience on the corporate side didn’t prepare her for some of the challenges the average franchisee faces. Finding the right staff for her nursery school was particularly difficult, and financial matters like ne-gotiating a lease and choosing a health plan were new to her.
At the same time, she didn’t require the hand-holding that other new fran-chisees often do, and she always knew whom to call for advice and support.
“I knew the challenges franchisees faced, I just didn’t know the depth of them,” Lubbs says. “I do think for many people one of the most difficult chal-lenges going from a corporate office to a franchise is that when you walk in the door, you become CEO of the company. You don’t have the person in the office next door who is COO or treasurer. You don’t have the ability to say, ‘Can I bounce an idea off you?’ It’s a hard transition to make.”
put yourself in the other guy’s shoesBob McQuillan and his wife, Denise,were preparing to open a Hand and Stone Massage and Facial Spa when a recruiter called. It turns out Hand
and Stone was looking for a vice president for franchise sales—a posi-tion Bob had held elsewhere—so he entered the corporate and franchisee worlds simultaneously.
While Denise heads up their fran-chise in Cherry Hill, N.J., Bob has gained a deeper understanding of what the franchisees he’s working with are going through.
“Owning a store has been a huge benefit with dealing with prospective franchises,” he says. “I’ve gone through what they’ve gone through. I can’t say how many people have told me that it makes a difference to them that I’ve invested in the same thing. They love that, and it tells them that I’ve put my money where my mouth is.”
In the end, corporate franchisees might be more confident about the path they’re taking, but their day-to-day struggle is the same as any entrepreneur’s.
“Our journey was not easier than other people’s,” says Pancake of Buffalo Wild Wings. “Where some people may struggle with not understanding the brand, our struggle was reversed. We knew the brand, but not the territory we were entering.”
Even insiders succeed or fail based on their hard work and ingenuity. No special access or experience can substitute for passion. “All you really have is a dream when you start out,” Pancake says. “But it’s been absolutely worth it.”
Jason Daley is a freelance
writer in MaDison, wis.
what i know nowBrent Burger: lay down your arms and work with corporate as a true retail partner. there are many resources available if you do. if you don’t believe in the value of the brand, you shouldn’t buy into the company.
fran luBBs: success or failure is up to you. when i was working on the cor-porate side, talking to people who bought a school, i’d tell them, ‘follow the system, it’s one of the reasons you bought the franchise. Don’t try to change it, break it or fix it.’ understand the franchisor’s role—my school is successful be-cause of me, not because of some person sitting in an office in King of Prussia.
BoBBy PancaKe: People think they can put a hot concept anywhere and it will be successful, but that’s not true. you have to do your homework and understand your trade areas and financial structures. i’ve seen people lose thousands (of dol-lars) per week because of a bad location. Know the trade area inside and out, and be comfortable with your rent and financials before signing on the dotted line.
steve wheat: you might think you’re a great leader, but it’s about the people you put around you. you need to put systems in place to measure productivity and hold folks accountable. fortunately, i was able to make my mistakes in this business while collecting a paycheck. —J.D.
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franchise
The No. 1 business on this month’s rankingof new franchise entrants is shaking things up in the chiropractic world
When people think of businesses that are perfect forfranchising, a few tried-and-true categories come to mind: fast food, automotive repair, hotels…. Chiropractic services? Not so much. Typically, chi-
ropractors are “lone wolves,” says Dr. Chris Tomshack, founder of HealthSource Chiropractic and Progressive Rehab. But a lot of those lone wolves are struggling, especially in the current economy. And Tomshack believes franchising is the solution.
He may be right. Since HealthSource began franchising in 2006, it has exploded to nearly 300 franchises in 43 states. That impressive growth vaulted HealthSource into the No. 1 spot on our Top New Franchises list, and a ranking of #111 overall in this year’s Franchise 500®.
Chiropractors might not seem like obvious franchisee candi-dates, but Tomshack isn’t surprised by the success of his sys-tem. In fact, it’s exactly what he had in mind when he turned to franchising. As former owner of four clinics in Ohio, he believed the business and treatment models he had devel-oped since 1998 could and should go global.
“Quite frankly, a lot of practitioners remain stuck in the ’70s and ’80s, and my team felt that we need to help chiropractic continue to evolve,” Tomshack says. “New advances in healthcare did not stop in the ’80s. They’re being made every day.”
Spinal decompression, cold laser therapy and a holistic weight-loss program are just a few of the services offered in addition to traditional chiroprac-tic care at HealthSource clinics. And they won’t stop there. “We’re always looking for what’s new and what’s best,” Tomshack says.
Those extra services aren’t the only way HealthSource gives its franchisees a leg up on the competition.
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franchise“We actually help teach them how to think more like
businesspeople, like true entrepreneurs, in addition to being a clinician,” he says, “because that’s what it takes today to survive.” At HealthSource University, doctors and their staff are taught everything they need to know about the day-to-day operations of their business, from answering the phone to marketing. “It’s Business 101 through 401 in the chiropractic niche,” Tomshack says, “something that’s never been taught before.”
At the heart of the training, the key to success for HealthSource franchisees as both doctors and busi-nesspeople, is a simple lesson for all entrepreneurs: The customer always comes first. “Our guiding vision is to always focus on what’s best for our patient, which is our consumer,” he says.
That may not sound groundbreaking—until it’s compared with the typical doctor’s office experience. “Something’s gone awry in healthcare,” Tomshack says, adding that HealthSource’s goal is to do away with the impersonal, uncomfortable settings so often associated with the industry. HealthSource patients are greeted as soon as they walk through the door and guided through the process of signing forms and learn-ing about the services available. They can even enjoy a gourmet coffee bar while they wait—though they shouldn’t have much time to linger.
“We don’t tolerate wait times,” Tomshack says. And the personal touch offered in the reception area is only the beginning. “The doctor’s not going to treat you as a number. The doctor’s going to treat you as a family member.”
This philosophy—and the business and treatment systems Tomshack and his team have developed to uphold it—is influencing a new generation of chiro-practors. He is a frequent guest lecturer at chiropractic colleges across the country, and some schools have even invited the HealthSource team to design and implement a business curriculum.
“Now we’re always in front of the students and we can offer them a better way to get into practice,” Tomshack says. Because of that, although most HealthSource franchises are existing clinics that converted, Tomshack anticipates welcoming more startups over the next year as graduating chiroprac-tic students decide that franchising is better than going it alone.
He expects to add at least 100 clinics, startups as well as conversions, in 2011. And he also plans to move beyond the United States, having just received ap-proval to begin franchising HealthSource in Canada (he has his sights set on Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand as well).
HEALTHY RETURNS
OUR GUIDING VISION IS TO ALWAYS FOCUS ON WHAT’S BEST FOR OUR PATIENT.
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As more “lone wolves” join the HealthSource system, Tom-shack seems well on his way to revolutionizing his industry. Someday he might even make chiropractic services as synony-mous with franchising as fast food, auto repair and hotels are today. —TRACY STAPP
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Entrepreneur // March 2011110
franchise
1. HealthSource Chiropractic and Progressive Rehab2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 111Chiropractic, nutrition & weight-loss servicesTotal cost: $52.95K-249.8KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 298/0healthsourcechiro.com(440) 967-5458
2. Oreck Clean Home Center2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 119Vacuum cleaners, air purifiers & related home-care productsTotal cost: $84.6K-221KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 327/98ownanoreckstore.com(888) 769-6673
THe RiSe Of THe
newcomersNew business opportunities are poised to make their mark, with 58 franchises joining our ranking
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2011 could be called the year of the young franchise—the year when more than 10 percent of the top fran-chises in the nation, as determined in
Entrepreneur’s Franchise 500®, were less than 5 years old. And you’ll find them all here in our Top New Franchises list. The list isn’t intended to endorse any particular franchise—only your own research can determine whether a franchise, new or old, is right for you. Al-ways investigate opportunities thoroughly by talking to franchisees, reading the company’s legal documents and consulting with attorneys and accountants before investing.
The franchises in this list, all of which started since 2006, are listed in order of their Franchise 500® ranking. They’re a varied lot, offering everything from chiropractic services to frozen yogurt, pet care to flip-flops. But they’ve all weathered in their formative years one of the toughest periods franchising has ever faced and proved that they can compete with the big boys. —tRACy StAPP
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 111
THe RiSe Of THe
newcomers
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3. Oxi fresh franchising Co.2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 126Carpet cleaningTotal cost: $33.5K-55.95KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 197/4oxifresh.com(877) 694-3737
4. Always Best Care Senior Services2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 174In-home care & assisted living placementTotal cost: $50.1K-90.7KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 110/0alwaysbestcare.com(888) 430-2273
5. The Senior’s Choice inc.2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 195Nonmedical in-home senior careTotal cost: $54K-72KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 187/0theseniorschoice.com(888) 725-3655
6. Accessible Home Health Care2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 196Medical & nonmedical home care & staffingTotal cost: $107K-124KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 92/1accessiblehhc.com(954) 341-5600
7. Caring Transitions2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 210Sales of estates & household goodsTotal cost: $38.3K-66.6KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 82/0caringtransitions.net(866) 708-9420
8. Yogurtland franchising inc.2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 216Self-serve frozen yogurtTotal cost: $228.9K-521.5KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 106/8yogurt-land.com(714) 939-7737
9. Murphy Business & financial Corp.2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 219Business & franchise brokerage /commercial real estate
entmar11 106-117 fran list.indd 111 1/17/11 3:29 PM01172011154239
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Entrepreneur // March 2011112
Total cost: $61.6K-128.7KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 134/0murphybusiness.com(727) 725-7090
10. Retro fitness LLC2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 236Health clubTotal cost: $641.8K-1.5MTotal franchises/co.-owned: 60/0retrofitness.net(732) 431-0062
11. The Utility Company2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 241IT servicesTotal cost: $36.3K-61.99KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 71/1theutilitycompany.com(613) 591-9800
12. Mister Sparky2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 243Residential electrical services
Total cost: $25K-496.7KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 82/9thankyoumistersparky.com(866) 847-1113
13. Nrgize Lifestyle Cafe2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 248Smoothies, meal-replacement shakes, protein barsTotal cost: $113.4K-339.8KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 90/4kahalamgmt.com(480) 362-4800
14. Plan Ahead events2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 250Event planningTotal cost: $38.2K-60.7KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 61/0planaheadevents.com(877) 866-1750
15. Home Video Studio2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 273
Video production & postproduction servicesTotal cost: $69.1K-97.3KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 55/2myhomevideostudio.com(317) 577-8220
16. AdvantaClean2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 291Environmental servicesTotal cost: $73.6K-104.3KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 35/0advantaclean.com(704) 391-3330
17. American Prosperity Group (APG)2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 300Retirement & estate planning products/servicesTotal cost: $76K-118.3KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 14/1apgfranchise.com(877) 885-1274
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Entrepreneur // March 2011 113
18. Dryer Vent Wizard2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 302Dryer vent cleaning/replacementTotal cost: $67.7K-89.9KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 52/0dryerventwizard.com(586) 619-2160
19. SeekingSitters franchise System inc.2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 303Baby-sitting referral serviceTotal cost: $44.2K-70KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 45/6seekingsitters.com(918) 749-3588
20. fRSTeam2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 307Restoration dry cleaningTotal cost: $32K-380.5KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 40/7frsteam.com(510) 723-1000
21. TGA Premier Junior Golf2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 319Youth golf programsTotal cost: $13.2K-62.2KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 41/3golftga.com(310) 333-0622
22. ShelfGenie franchise Systems LLC2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 325Custom shelving & accessories for cabinets/pantriesTotal cost: $70.1K-125.3KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 85/19shelfgenie.com(877) 814-3643
23. VooDoo BBQ & Grill2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 326Fast-casual barbecue restaurantTotal cost: $450K-799.5KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 12/3
voodoobbq.com(877) 902-4227
24. Hurricane Grill & Wings2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 336Chicken wings, sandwiches, saladsTotal cost: $246.5K-687KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 32/1hurricanewings.com(561) 932-1075
25. Hungry Heart franchise LLC2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 344Nutritional counseling & hypnotherapyTotal cost: $43.2K-58KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 10/1hungryheart.org(877) 486-4797
26. Preppy Pet2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 349Pet boarding, day care & groomingTotal cost: $127.8K-261KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 12/1
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Entrepreneur // March 2011114
preppypet.com(407) 420-1060
27. Medi-Weightloss franchising USA LLC2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 356Physician-supervised weight-loss programTotal cost: $224.5K-468.5KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 66/0mediweightlossclinics.com(813) 228-6334
28. Signal 88 Security2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 357Private security guard & patrol servicesTotal cost: $86.9K-106.7KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 53/1signal88.com(877) 498-8494
29. Games2U franchising LLC2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 362Mobile video game theatersTotal cost: $107.7K-214.4KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 53/0
franchiseg2u.com(512) 266-0086
30. Preferred Care at Home2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 373Senior home careTotal cost: $57.5K-79.5KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 47/1preferhome.com(866) 690-7733
31. Complete Nutrition2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 377Weight-loss & nutrition productsTotal cost: $164.1K-364.2KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 41/5completenutrition.com(402) 333-5155
32. RimTyme2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 391Rent-to-own custom wheels & tiresTotal cost: $503K-870.8KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 14/9
rimtyme.com(972) 403-4905
33. Get A Grip franchising LLC2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 393Countertop, bathtub & tile resurfacingTotal cost: $25K-70KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 15/1getagripinc.com(800) 290-6004
34. The Glass Guru2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 400Window restoration & replacementsTotal cost: $24.95K-95.4KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 42/1theglassguru.com(916) 786-4878
35. Get in Shape for Women2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 401Small-group personal training for womenTotal cost: $26.96K-178.9KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 58/1
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Call Today for a Free Opportunity Kit
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getinshapeforwomen.com(781) 444-1913
36. CPR-Cell Phone Repair2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 403Cellular, iPod & electronics repairsTotal cost: $59.4K-144KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 33/8cpr-franchise.com(706) 413-1552
37. Acti-Kare inc.2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 407Nonmedical in-home senior careTotal cost: $25.7K-41.6KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 21/0actikare.com(888) 451-5273
38. Clothes Mentor2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 409Women’s clothing & accessories resaleTotal cost: $140K-229KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 32/1
clothesmentor.com(866) 261-2030
39. Touching Hearts At Home2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 410Nonmedical home care for seniors & disabled peopleTotal cost: $41.8K-62.4KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 31/0touchinghearts.com(877) 870-8750
40. eagle Tax2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 413Tax preparation servicesTotal cost: $58.1K-102.4KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 25/0eagletaxusa.com(215) 238-0300
41. flip flop Shops2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 415Flip-flops & sandalsTotal cost: $167.3K-272.5K
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Entrepreneur // March 2011116
franchiseTotal franchises/co.-owned: 22/1flipflopshops.com(770) 424-0027
42. CeO focus2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 416Peer groups for small-business ownersTotal cost: $41.5K-63KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 20/6ceofocus.com(317) 805-4924
43. Roni Deutch Tax Center2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 418Tax preparation & business servicesTotal cost: $30.6K-119.9KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 72/0rdtcfranchise.com(866) 738-2289
44. franchiseMart2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 419Franchise consulting servicesTotal cost: $52.2K-97.2KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 24/0franchisemart.com(877) 757-6550
45. elements Therapeutic Massage inc.2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 422Therapeutic massage studioTotal cost: $159.1K-288KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 73/0touchofelements.com(877) 663-0880
46. MixStirs2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 424Smoothies, protein shakes, wraps, saladsTotal cost: $88.1K-197.5KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 22/1mixstirs.com(877) 999-2410
47. freshBerry Natural frozen Yogurt2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 426Natural frozen yogurt, smoothies, yogurt popsiclesTotal cost: $165.8K-386.2KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 25/0freshberry.net(918) 488-9727
48. CKO Kickboxing2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 428Kickboxing fitness classes
Total cost: $97.9K-306.9KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 13/7ckokickboxing.com(201) 963-7774
49. Sir Grout franchising LLC2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 430Grout & tile cleaning & restorationTotal cost: $73.5K-120.6KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 14/5sirgrout.com(866) 476-8863
50. USA insulation2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 432Home insulation & air sealing servicesTotal cost: $154.2K-218.8KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 15/0usainsulation.net/franchise(877) 903-6800
51. Assisting Hands Home Care LLC2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 436Nonmedical in-home careTotal cost: $66.5K-135KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 29/0assistinghands.com(208) 442-7426
52. Pizza fusion2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 454Organic pizza, sandwiches, salads
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Strong roots. Secure future.Express offers a local professional business opportunity with the support of an international network.
• 25 years franchising with more than 550 locations.
• Established, 115-year-old, $61 billion industry.
• Help businesses find good people and help people find good jobs.
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• Excellent training, 99% franchisee satisfaction rating.
• Nearly 600 marketing awards.
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Invest in a future with Express. Visit expressfranchising.com/learnmore or call (877) 652-6400.
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Total cost: $328K-571KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 17/1pizzafusion.com(954) 202-1919
53. Zips Dry Cleaners2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 455Dry cleaningTotal cost: $600.7K-769.5KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 24/0321zips.com(301) 313-0389
54. Kidville2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 457Child-enrichment classes, birthday parties & productsTotal cost: $230.2K-898.4KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 28/7kidville.com(212) 772-8435
55. PortraitefX Photography franchise2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 462PhotographyTotal cost: $17K-30KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 65/0portraitefx.com(800) 765-7561
56. fiesta insurance franchise Corp.2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 464Insurance & tax preparation servicesTotal cost: $3.4K-79.4KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 66/2fiestafranchise.com(714) 842-5420
57. Mountain Mudd espresso2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 470Specialty coffeeTotal cost: $22.5K-266KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 9/12mountainmudd.com(800) 218-6833
58. Hoodz2011 Franchise 500 ranking: 490Commercial kitchen exhaust cleaningTotal cost: $80.8K-141.4KTotal franchises/co.-owned: 67/13hoodz.us.com(734) 864-9799
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To adverTise in This secTion, please call 800-864-6864.To adverTise in This secTion, please call 800-864-6864.
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franchise ink
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Michael Falgares’ idea came to him during a trip to Amsterdam:Why not make video games portable? In 2008, he traveled with his father, Phil, to the Netherlands to check out the latest in video game technology, a dance pad called iDance that lets up to 32
players participate at once. The Falgareses signed up to become U.S. resellers.But the younger Falgares, of Asbury Park, N.J.—who has taught first grade,
fifth grade and special education, owned a preschool and worked as a DJ— wasn’t interested in just selling the pads. So he had a trailer outfitted with 16 vibrating gaming seats and flat-screen TVs, installed a rockin’ sound system and plugged in gaming systems with a huge assortment of the latest games. Add to that the iDance pads, laser tag and a ball cannon, and Gamin’ Ride was born.
A little more than a year after the first trailer started pulling up at parties (two-hour packages start at $299), Gamin’ Ride has 18 mobile gaming theaters in seven
The roll playerMichael Falgares scored big and launched a portablefranchise when he put video games on a custom trailer
states and has sold master franchiserights in Mexico and India. The theaters also are a hit at store openings, game launches and corporate events.
Falgares hit pause to tell us about his mobile success. —JASON DALEy
Where do you get your trailers?A company in Indiana makes them for us, and it puts up the aluminum walls and all the finishing touches, like security alarm systems, big lights, awnings and storage.
What’s the response been?I had three people coming in for a pros-pect day to see if they were interested in buying a franchise. They came to a party in Jersey City. Cars kept stopping to find out what we were all about, and we needed all three prospects to hand out cards and tell people about Gamin’ Ride. It was the best situation—I couldn’t have orchestrated it myself.
What happens on weekdays?We have something called Earn and Burn—we earn money for schools and kids burn calories. Franchisees go into schools with the iDance and set it up so 150 kids can play the dance game. The kids exercise, raise money and win prizes like time in the Gamin’ Ride trailer or laser tag. The schools do very well, and we do a 30/70 split.
Are girls into this, too?In our first year, it’s been about 20 per-cent girls, 80 percent boys. So in April, we’re launching four units of Glamour Ride. It pulls up to a house, and the girls get “before” photos. Then on the trailer they all get ready for the “big show”: getting their hair done, mani-pedis and glitter at stations in the the-ater. At the end of the party, the side of the trailer folds down and becomes a stage, and parents can watch the girls put on their show. There are also arts and crafts, karaoke; and they can stuff their own animals.
What’s your favorite video game?I actually don’t like video games. I’ve never had an interest. I just wantpeople to have good time.
fun on wheels: Gamin’ ride’s miChael falGares.
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opportunities
A fix-it shopwith a twistNancy Herrington saves the day for customers ofher Mr. Handyman franchise—and her community
Nancy Herrington was exhausted. After a bout of cancer and 15 yearsas a software consultant, she was ready for a challenge that would keep her near her Phoenix-area home.
A good friend in Dallas had bought a Mr. Handyman franchise and kept badgering Herrington to look into the business. When she finally did and studied her local demographics, she knew it would be a great fit.
“I keep telling people I am my customer—my business does the types of proj-ects I can’t do or don’t know how to do,” she says. “Now I’m using the talents of the guys that work for me.”
But it takes a special kind of handyman to work for Herrington. Not only does she look for employees with exceptional customer service skills, she also looks for staff who share her major passion in life—volunteerism.
Since opening her franchise in 2008, Herrington and her staff have run home maintenance workshops at a local women’s shelter and for Habitat for Humani-ty; they’ve spearheaded river cleanups; done repair work for local Boys and Girls Clubs; and organized the annual Let’s Make a Difference Day, during which local small businesses come together to rehab homes for disabled veterans.
All this won her a Heart of Volunteerism award from a local volunteer net-work, and Herrington has remained committed to the community even when her company’s survival was in doubt.
“In 2009, we were wondering how we were going to make it through 2010,” she says. Nevertheless, business last year was up 85 percent from 2009, she says. “I was supported by family and by employees who stuck with me and made a lot of sacrifices themselves.” —Jason Daley
What got you into volunteerism?Having cancer definitely influenced my decision. I lived my whole life doing what was right for me, then when I found out I had Stage 4 colon cancer, I thought, “OK, God, I’m not making the best plans. What do you want me to do?” Volunteerism is a mission for me. We can make lives better by offering great service and donating time.
How do your employees feel about volunteering?During our downtime, for every two volunteer hours they work, I pay them for one hour. But they like volunteering on their own, too. Through the inter-view process I can see if an employee will be a good match, and we usu-ally know within two or three weeks whether they will be a great cultural fit.
Why mix volunteerism with business?I like to buy from businesses that give back, and I think my customers do, too. We send out an e-newsletter about our volunteerism and get great feedback. I try to do as much as I can without be-ing judged for tooting my own horn. I like to think we’re not just giving back, we’re also helping people to help them-selves. For instance, our classes at the domestic shelter give people basic skills.
Do you have plans to expand your volunteer efforts?There are three projects I want to focus on. First, I want to develop a once-a-month program to highlight an outstanding community volunteer and recognize them with free Mr. Handyman services. Then I want to expand Make a Difference Day and get 10 other small businesses to help us identify projects and to donate money. In 2009, we refurbished the homes of two disabled vets. We want to do 10 homes per year. I also want to do something with literacy. I think having a literate community is a strong base for everything else.
Are you a handyman now?I’ve actually gotten smarter. Yesterday, I put on a new shower head. That would have taken me all day before I started this business.
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BOOKED: NaNcy hErriNgtON will targEt litEracy.
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Entrepreneur // March 2011136
back page
1. You are meeting an important client for din-ner when your mobile handset rings. You
a. Send the call to voicemail
b. Step away from the table to take the call
c. Say, “Hang on, my bookie’s on the phone”
2. You are driving to the airport when an em-ployee calls. You
a. Accept the call using a hands-free headset
b. Pull the car over and take the call
c. Keep one hand on the wheel while typing a text message that reads, “Can’t talk—driving”
3. You are sitting down with a prospective cli-ent when your phone’s Jimi Hendrix ringtone interrupts the conver-sation. You
a. Apologizeb. Make light of the
situationc. Seize the moment
to show off your air guitar skills
4. You agree to meet with a longtime client using the iPhone’s FaceTime video chat service. You open the call by saying:
a. “You’re right—this is much better than voice calling!”
b. “Isn’t technology amazing?”
c. “Wow—you’ve gained a ton of weight!”
5. You buy a smartphone expressly to show off
a. Your startup’s new mobile app
b. Your company’s new
mobile websitec. Video clips of your cat,
Mr. Snugglesworth
6. You use your phone to check in at a new restaurant via Four- square, constantly update your location on Facebook and tweet details of your meal on Twitter. You are
a. A product of the social media generation
b. Deeply connected to the virtual world
c. Self-absorbed
Test your mobile mannersReckless mobile device use is a growing epidemic that threatens the very fabric ofAmerican life (just ask Tiger Woods or Brett Favre). Since you need to pass a written test to drive a car, operate heavy machinery and perform other everyday tasks, we decided there should be one to encourage more responsible mobile phone usage. Will you pass or fail? —JASon AnKenY
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entmar11 136 backpage.indd 136 1/17/11 12:22 PM01172011123445
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I’m Melanie. Together, my brother and I brought Dad’s restaurant into this century. With Excel 2010 I recorded Dad’s receipts from my home, uploaded the spreadsheet online, and using the Excel web app, my brother and I worked on them together. Dad was thrilled. Though I think he hides the abacus when we visit.
See how you can make working togethergreat with Office 2010 at makeitgreat.com
>
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