Seven is just an appealing number, isn’t it? There is so much significance to the number seven – the Biblical number of completion – seven days of creation, seven days in a week, seven seals of Revelation, march around Jericho seven times, wash in the Jordan river seven times, etc. The jersey number of John Elway and Mickey Mantle. Seven deadly sins, Seven notes in the musical scale, Seven Natural Wonders, Seven colors in the rainbow, 
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, etc. In fact a quick search on Amazon shows 401,272 books where “seven” has been used in the title.
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Rule of Seven
Simple Ways to Protect Your Intellectual Property
This is a guest post by Ali Brown. Entrepreneur mentor Ali Brown teaches women around the world how to start and grow a profitable business that make a positive impact. Get her FREE CD “Top 10 Secrets for Entrepreneurial Women” at www.AliBrown.com. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
With the online masses crying out against the PIPA/SOPA bills this week (check out my recent blog post on the 
debate here), it couldn’t be a better time to do an assessment of your business, and make sure you are protecting your intellectual property, and not infringing on anyone else’s!
Let’s define the legal ways that you may protect your creativity:
1. Copyright. According to the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO), a copyright “protects works of authorship, such as writings, music, and works of art that have been tangibly expressed.” In the United States, copyright is secured automatically when the work is created. Use © on your website, your articles, and elsewhere. Some use the free product Copyscape to help ward off plagiarists who might “borrow” your website content.
Should I get a business loan?
Here’s a podcast listener question this week:
“Dan, Thank you for all that you do. I would like to know what your opinion is on getting small business loans. It takes me a while to put money to the side from my regular job to invest in my businesses. I have tried buying wholesale collectibles on ebay to resell and also affiliate websites but found the long hours and no return on investment in the beginning hard to overcome. I could not get any traction going and would quit before I felt I ever got started. Would you recommend a business loan to get things going faster?”
Not with what you’ve described here. If you have to have a loan to make the business work I think you’re in trouble. Don’t be like the farmer who lost money on every watermelon he sold – so he went out and bought a bigger truck. No, if you aren’t making money on a small scale there is nothing to leverage for bigger profits.
Want a $16/hr job?
For several years we’ve heard the horror stories – about how American companies are moving all their operations to other countries to save money on labor costs. Why would a company continue to pay $14/hr when you can find people willing to work for $4hr? And all the American jobs are being lost overseas?
Guess what? The world really is flat and we really are in a global economy. People in those “poor” countries want the same things Americans want. They are now shopping at the same stores, eating at the same restaurants and going on the same vacations. The disparity has all been wiped out. In the last 6 years, labor costs in China have been rising at 30% annually. That means that someone making $4.00 in 2006 can now expect to make $14.86 – essentially $15/hr. And shipping costs have also risen over 30%. Combining those two factors makes the 
explosion of jobs in the $16-18/hr more than just a hope.
03/08/12 | Workshop
The Sanctuary, Franklin, TN
The Sanctuary, Franklin, TN
