Markets are celebrating, hoping the good news will keep on coming.  But there is a smudge on the picture.  A surprisingly large number of money managers and economists are warning that, despite the hopeful signs, the economy is still deep in the woods, not strong enough to support a long-running stock and bond recovery.

To keep rising in the future, the market needs a sign of real economic recovery, and that requires a surge in consumer spending, business investment and home buying.  One word explains why: debt.  Despite an uptick in consumer saving, debt levels have only barely begun to come down.

1. Do you believe you have what it takes? We don’t mean personal characteristics- or not just personal characteristics, anyway.  Do you believe you have all the skills, energy, money, people and knowledge to start a business?  Founders who carefully identify and evaluate their resources in pursuit of a well-defined goal display “entrepreneurial self-efficacy,” a trait many academics believe to be the best predictor of success.
2. Are you able to let other people down? A founder may set out in a rowboat, but pretty soon, she is piloting a cabin cruiser with investors and employees on board and their families huddled below decks.  Risking your own fortunes is easy compared with risking the fortunes of those who believe in you.  These people may not completely understand the business or the level of risk, but they think they’ll be okay because you’re smart.  Breaking their dreams sometimes is very painful.
3. How do you handle setbacks? When you are smiling, the whole company smiles with you.  In their book, Resonant Leadership:  Renewing Yourself and Connecting With Others Through Mindfulness, Hope, and Compassion, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee explain that emotions are contagious:  Morale rises and falls with the mood of the leader.  Consequently, people who succumb to black moods or depression can fatally infect their own companies.
4. Are you really an inventor, rather than an entrepreneur? Raising a child is generally more challenging than creating a child, and the same is true of new products and services.  Some people mistake the act of invention for the tough part.  Too many times, these inventor types spend an inordinate amount of time on the patent making the prototype just so.  They think that once they’ve done that, the world will beat a path to their doorstep.
5. Can you accept that your company may outgrow you? Some entrepreneurs love to rag that they don’t need an exit strategy, because they are not going anywhere big anyway.  But at some point, your business may need you less than you need it.  That’s particularly true at fast-growth companies where entrepreneurs may not have enough time to develop the necessary leadership and business skills.
6. When you look in the mirror, does an entrepreneur look back? If so, and if that’s the reason you are starting a company, BEWARE.  Many traits- persistence, creativity, and risk tolerance among them- are commonly ascribed to entrepreneurs, but having those traits doesn’t much improve the odds that you will succeed.  Things like persistence and need for achievement explain only about 5 to 10 percent of the difference between people who start companies and those who don’t.

excerpted from July/August issue of Inc. Magazine.

1. Total conversion: Old familiar boundaries and categories are dissolving, blurring black and white into shades of gray- private with public, fact with fiction, news with entertainment, young with old, home wiht office, off-line with online.
2. Local is now global: Today, home is the safest yet most exotic destination of all.  You’re always just a click away from anywhere in the world, and just down the road, you can find people and cuisine from every continent.
3. Arm’s-length intimacy: Is going online like lying on the coach in the psychiatrist’s office, where the doctor sits out of sight?  We feel more comfortable opening up personally with people online than face-to-face.  Less familiar but more intimate is the new social, thanks to social-networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
4. Stretching and molding time: Everything happens faster now, so we’re living life in rapid bursts.  The ultimate luxury act is the slow dance, the slow meal, the slow seduction.
5. Value and values: What’s it really worth and how is it really important to me?  These are the questions that rein in our impulse purchases during times of recessionary living.  They’re followed by:  Which stores or brands will supply what I need?
6. Media is the great escape: When the mood is depressed, distraction is great.  Media is the true third place, where we can program our own relaxation and create a more perfect environment.
7. Looking back to learn: Check out the countless recent references to past events and people:  the 1930s, Lincoln, Darwin.  With so much history instantly available and the path ahead muddied with doubt and uncertainty, we’re looking to the past for reassurance that this, too, shall pass and for lessons about how that might happen.
8. Not without technology: Whatever else may disappear in the “creative destruction” of the current crisis, technology is here to stay.  Some may yearn for simpler times and the satisfaction of hand tools, but the plain truth is that the future lies in mastering new technologies.
9. Embracing maturity: It may be a while before companies and economies start growing again.  In the meantime, we’ll be squaring the urge to hold on to eternal youth with the need to grow up and sober up.
10. Wellness messaging: “Globesity” may be the death of companies associated with extra-large indulgences.  Watch for “h” themes:  health, holistic, hydrate.  Should water be free and accessible to all or still peddled as a gourmet side dish?  (The great debate on water will upstage oil in some circles.)

So, what lies within you?  Your knowledge.

It is unique, powerful, and exclusive only to your personal experiences.  Establish yourself as a subject expert because there are some people interested in every subject and every side of every subject. By establishing yourself as a subject expert, you will make yourself known to not only your current customers, but potential customers as well.  

When you are an expert, don’t be afraid to express your opinion. It’s better that some people follow you and some people refuse to follow you than no one knows who you are at all… the very definition of brand integrity.

“Greenplug is a new company working to alleviate the huge and unnecessary energy demands created by our increasing numbers of gadgets. There’s so much wrong with the current model of consumer electronics’ power supplies, it’s hard to know where to begin. Plugged in, they suck power even if the device itself is off; they’re often made of cheap, components that are very inefficient; they wear out and less than 13 percent are recycled—nearly 380 million external power supplies will likely end up in U.S. landfills this year.

“To illustrate this madness, Green Plug launched a “What’s under your desk?” contest that drew some startling submissions. You can view the “winner” on their site.

“All kidding aside, this San Ramon, California-based startup has made some headway in working to remedy this gross inefficiency that’s a pointless waste of energy.

“Developers are working with consumer electronics manufacturers to embrace this technology that will allow multiple devices—laptops, mobile phones, PDAs—to draw current from a single, more efficient AC/DC converter, eliminating the need to replace power supplies with every new purchase. The device also shuts down the converters when individual devices are fully charged or idle.”

From Coolhunting.com  Cool Hunting is a daily update on ideas and products in the intersection of art, design, culture and technology, and features weekly videos that get an inside look at the people who create them. Money can buy you a lot of things, but it can’t buy you coverage on Cool Hunting. All of our content is editorially based using the standard of “stuff we like.”

Are you a garage inventor with a great new gadget that you would love to see grace the shelves of stores worldwide?  Everybody has a great idea that could change the way we work, the way we play, or the way we live. 

Check out people who are following through on their ideas.  Everyday Edisons… Welcome to a new TV show on PBS highlighting ordinary people with simple solutions for the everyday problems we all face.  Their ingenious inventions ease life’s complexities, make everyday processes more efficient and make our lives more enjoyable.   Here is a promo snippet for the show!

The average person is unaware of the multi-step process by which a raw concept is transformed into a tangible product.  The goal of Everyday Edisons is to introduce viewers to the process of invention and help them understand how to take their own ideas to the next level.  Genius!

Back in the mid 1980s, whenever Mike Pratt hit his Salt Lake City health club, he started his workout by wrestling a too-big gym bag into a too-small locker. One day Pratt — a high school graduate working as a car salesman — pried out his bag, drove home, and headed for the drafting table he had acquired to support his design hobby.

Using cardboard, scissors, and tape, the 24-year-old athlete created the model for his dream duffel. He shaped the rectangular bag not only so that it would slide into a standard gym storage unit — measurements he’d obtained that same day by calling several manufacturers — but so that it would easily hold shoes, a water bottle, and toiletries. And unlike most soft-sided bags, Pratt’s prototype surrounded a durable rigid frame that made it easier to access the bag’s contents.

That wasn’t Pratt’s first invention. At 19 he’d designed a cup holder for use in cars and, thanks to a tip from a local businessman, arranged to have it manufactured in Macao. Five years later Pratt again looked to Asia and, based on a recommendation from another entrepreneur, contracted with a factory in Taiwan that he still uses to manufacture his bags.

Back in the States, many retailers were skeptical about Pratt’s Original Locker Bag. “Who’s going to want to carry around a box?” one asked. But Foot Locker agreed to take a batch on consignment; after selling 50 bags in a single weekend, the sporting-goods chain ordered more. Sales soared as Nordstrom and other retailers followed suit. In 1987, Pratt officially launched his company, Ogio International. (The name, pronounced OH-gee-oh, sounds catchy but, Pratt says, means absolutely nothing.) The following year, Pratt recalls, “we had $8.5 million in sales for one bag in three colors.”

These days Ogio employs almost 100 people at a 90,000-square-foot distribution center about 25 miles south of downtown Salt Lake City, plus an international sales force. The company, which had 2001 revenues of more than $47 million, still makes gym bags but now manufactures backpacks and golf bags as well. Pratt, now 41 and the father of four, still works out and, like many of his employees, sky dives, hang glides, and rides snowmobiles. “We’re kind of an extreme company,” he says.

57 ^% of the Inc 500 CEOs surveyed got the original idea for their business by spotting an opportunity in the industry they worked in. 

I found this gem of a post from Danny Evans, author of Dad Gone Mad who expressed his joy at realizing his dream of writing books. Excerpt:

One night, about a year ago, I decided to quit dreaming.

Every day, every night, for 20 years, the dream was exactly the same – same props, same characters, same outcome. I could picture all of it with vivid clarity, but the fantasy never survived the transition from sleep to the real here and now. It burned up on re-entry. It lived only in the ether of my mind.

In the dream, I was an author. I wrote books. I spent my days on safari in my own imagination. I was satisfied. I was doing what I loved for a living, and that contentment permeated every hard, dark corner of my existence. Then suddenly I was awake again, and the reality that I was NOT the person in my dream washed over me like rain cloud.

So one night, about a year ago, I decided to quit dreaming. I sat down at my keyboard and began to write. I began to create the trappings of my dream in real life.

It has been the hardest year of my writing life. Rejection has reigned. Every small victory has been countered by enormous disappointment and despair. I have neglected friendships, responsibilities, family obligations. Phone calls and emails have gone unreturned. I have opened my soul to criticism, and I have convinced myself that this is my last best chance to accomplish something for myself – to escape the rut of cubicle jobs, financial desperation and career aimlessness.

Thursday morning, my agent called from New York. “You have a book deal,” she said.
And, just like that, the dream became real.

Whether it’s authoring books or founding the next big technology “thing,” behold the beauty of your entrepreneurial dream. Weather the storm; Take the beating; STAND. Your vision is worth it and your journey will become a legend.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone…

From http://headrush.typepad.com/about.html

Most of us want to practice the things we’re already good at, and avoid the things we suck at. We stay average or intermediate amateurs forever. Jump in to new waters… what are you waiting for?