Jul 19

Full Circle: A Mac Story

Entrepreneur, Small Business, Startups, Tips, ideas, software No Comments »

Today we have a guest blog post by Lena Lapper. Enjoy her Mac business entrepreneurial story.

Full Circle: A Mac Story

by Lena Ludwig Lapper

The quote and subsequent belief that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” has probably always been a fundamental building block of the entrepreneurial community. As an entrepreneur, I recently had a full- circle experience with this notion.

I have been using a Mac since the late 1980′s but when I entered the professional marketplace in the 1990′s, I found myself employed by PC-using, Windows-loving Corporate America. My life was split between diligent PC use by day and a secret Mac life by night. The differences in performance between the computers were so vast to me that after years of this double life, I simply could not continue to work prolonged hours from a PC any longer. Fortunately, I found the courage to break away from the corporate institutions and in 1999 started my first business, free from the infested PC world.

Although I have enjoyed the freedom of using a Mac to run my business, I have had some obstacles. The main hurdle was finding affordable, Mac-friendly business planning solutions and software. While there are some nice software packages out there, none really provided me with exactly what I was needing. My profession over the past ten years, ironically, has been offering strategic business consulting to small companies.

Then, it happened.

If I am looking for this, hundreds of other Mac users are probably looking for this too! This may be a good business opportunity. I would create a business planning tool specifically for Mac. I already had all of the information required to assemble a package from my decade-long career of building business plans. My product would be a downloadable kit that works with an existing Mac application (iWork), allowing Mac users to build a professional business plan. I did it. And I setup a website and starting getting the word out – and the response was very encouraging. The message was loud and clear:

Mac users want to start businesses and they do not want to give up their Macs to do it.

The activity surrounding this new business has taken precedence over my consulting studio. Other people do want and need this product. I always knew that the Mac would play a big part in my overall business success and happiness, but I would have never guessed that developing a business built from my Mac, because I needed something for my Mac would come together like some perfect storm.

We sometimes feel desperate and anxious when we cannot find something we need. Perhaps we could take advantage of those inner signals and instead think of it as a calling; a summoning of all of the others in need of the same thing, and our job is to help find the solution.

For more information about this business planning solution for Mac, visit: ION FreshStart

****** About Lena Ludwig Lapper: Formerly an engineer and programmer, Lena started her consulting services in 1999, offering strategic and analytical business solutions to her clients. Lena is the Managing Principal at Oyster Park, LLC, ( http://www.oysterpark.com ) a business advisory studio focused on green technology, alternative energy, and sustainable product development. You can also find Lena at ION FreshStart where she helps Mac business owners by providing business planning tools. For more information visit http:// www.ionfreshstart.com or email: lena@ionfreshstart.com.

Jun 07

A prerelease review of “How to Start a Business: Mac Version”

Book, Hardware, Mac, Small Business, Startups, Writing, software No Comments »

I got my first review back of my book, here it is:

“Oh My Goodness! Kevin Cullis has written the most information rich, spell-binding business book I have ever read! Kevin’s business-entrepreneurial advice is sound and meshing the Mac (tool) and starting a business (process) into one concept is brilliant. It’s detailed with informative lists and how to use them but not at the cost of boredom. The example stories are inspirational.  How to Start a Business: Mac Version covers every aspect of running a business A to Z regardless of its type. This one will definitely be in my highly recommended and ‘review many times’ library.”  Chris Lott – VP of Sales DataTel Communications

Coming soon to book seller near you (online, of course)

Kevin

Apr 03

iWork templates: reworking MS Office ones

8 Operations, Business, Small Business, Tips, software No Comments »

When you become an entrepreneur and startup you are always looking for ways of saving your money for more important things, like food and a place to live and most important, marketing. So to save money and time, I look for things that are either completely done for me or that with some minor modifications I can accomplish what I need.

One of the more common places is companies such as Avery labels that provides a number of predesigned templates for Word that fit their blank labels. But here’s the key: If Avery has created templates for MS Word, it does not take much to make them fit what you’re doing using iWork Pages or Numbers. If they have done 90 percent of the work, that saves you time and money.

Who do you visit to find templates that work for you?

Here’s some that I have found besides Avery:

Agreeably not all templates will work as the more complex templates may have more issues when they are converted, but it may beat starting from scratch.

So, go forth and find MS Office templates and see if they have not done most of the work for you.

Happy saving money, entrepreneurs and startups!!

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Mar 21

Working smarter is MUCH better than working harder

8 Operations, Information, Planning, Small Business, Startups, Tips No Comments »

After having read the book “Drive” by Dan Pink here’s more information that says that working smarter at your job, not longer hours, makes for a more productive worker. See the article “How to work less and do better.”

Now go do it and make more money.

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Mar 12

“How To Start A Business: Mac Version” Launch Mar 31st!

5 Marketing, 7 Sales, 8 Operations, 9 Finance, Book, Business, Entrepreneur, Small Business, Startups, Thoughts, Tips, Writing 1 Comment »

Buy Now Here:

How to Start a Business: Mac Version

Well, the time has come to launch my book “How To Start A Business: Mac Version” and I’ll be giving a talk at the Colorado Springs Entrepreneur Meetup.com group on March 31st at the East library in Colorado Springs. I’ll be talking about:

  • What started me with my book idea
  • Researching the book
  • Writing the book
  • Producing the book via Print On Demand (POD) publishing
  • What’s in the future.

Hope to see you there, but I’ll have more after March 31st, so stay tuned.

Kevin

Update: 03/29/2010

I’ll still be giving my presentation to the CSE but my book has been delayed because of technical issues for a few more weeks.

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Feb 02

Tell your Mac and Startup story here.

Business, Motivation, Small Business, Startups No Comments »

Hi all,

I’m not going to post today but I thought I’d give you a chance to tell your story about using a Mac in your startup. Tell the truth and keep it clean, ’cause we all want to hear how you’re doing.

Kevin

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Dec 19

Where is the potential business growth?

Business, Entrepreneur, Information, Small Business, Startups, Tips No Comments »

You can get the answer here: Professional and Business Services!

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Nov 05

Want someone to write an iPhone app for you? Beware….

5 Marketing, Business, Small Business, Startups, iPhone No Comments »

… of rogue programmers/marketers that say they have developed an iPhone application when in fact they have not, just to get work or just to get a foot into the door with iPhone development. This Ars Technical article “Developers stealing from developers” discloses how “marketing” really takes credit for things the company has not done. So  beware of companies contacting you to write that iPhone app for you.

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Aug 31

15 No Cost Ways to Use your Mac + Social Media to Promote your business

5 Marketing, Business, Mac, Planning, Small Business, Tips, software 1 Comment »

As always there are a number of ways of getting your marketing message out to others and social media one one route. I’d like to thank Mark Hayward for his take as I’ve translated his info into Mac specific ideas and areas. Hey, my ideal customers are Mac users or potential Switchers that want to use Macs for their startup.

  1. Customer Feedback: Tell your customers “Thank You” that sing the praises of your business on web sites and respond professionally to those that did not like what you offer and see if you can make amends to their situation.
  2. Vendor/Helpful Feedback: if you have been helped by someone and it did not cost you anything, thank them publicly for their help via your blog, Facebook, or some other means. You don’t have to mention that it was free to you, but extolling their experience to others builds up them and your credibility with others.
  3. Register with HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and respond to those requests that fit your profile of your business.
  4. If you’re a Mac person, search for Mac, mac, or #mac and connect with other Mac users or someone in your field and RT their Mac or specific industry comments to others by promoting their efforts and good comments. Nothing like seeing your name by others who think you send out good info.
  5. Find Mac specific forums, which number fewer than the Windows world, and begin making positive and helpful comments to get some credibility.
  6. Create a Flickr account (a Yahoo account is needed first) and tag a number of of your business photos and upload them via iPhoto to your account. This creates a “separate” account in iPhoto and shows which ones you have uploaded to your account.
  7. Create a “Customer Fan Blog” and use iPhoto to get and manage all of your customer’s pictures and their business and post a story about each of them.
  8. Set up Twitter Search and Google Alerts to track the response (hey, can’t change this part, it’s already good enough). However, if you use TweetDeck for the Mac or iPhone it makes it easy to automatically track comments about certain subjects.
  9. Educate your customers about your business via a blog.
  10. Create a Facebook fan page, but there are some limitations as to using this.
  11. Rewrite your “About” page (Oh man, do I need to do this). As Mark points out, here’s a good link to good info by Skelliewag. Interesting, she does not take her own advice on her “About” page. Maybe not enough time like all of us.
  12. Write a guest blog and post back to your blog.
  13. Think creatively about how your blog and web site  stacks up among the search engines.
  14. Think about who your “Ideal” customers are, not “everyone” that could buy from you. Concentrate and write for them, not everyone. Create our marketing toward them and them only.
  15. Using either Photo Booth using iSight, iSight using iMovie, or a video camera and import into iMovie a video of you and your business and upload to YouTube. Check out YouTube’s copyright Terms of Service (TOS) as what you upload may be lost to them earning tons of money from it.
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Aug 17

Big Corporate America is losing, small business is gaining

Business, Enterprise, Entrepreneur, Small Business No Comments »

According to this article by Harvard Business, Big Business is losing, it is creating a “Brain Drain” on it’s intellectual capital, it’s business continuity, and small business is the recipient of this brain drain. Why?

Because people want more fulfillment in their lives than big business is able to give them. Much like big government, big business is costly in human capital. That’s why I recommend “Small Giants” as the way to go for nearly all businesses today.

So, if you want a family like environment and to contribute more, find a small business to work for.

Or better yet, start your own. Whereas a large business you’ll be really be narrowly specialized, a small business you’ll wear lots of hats.

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