Archive - Business Start-Up RSS Feed

Washing machine rental – Is your idea this good?

November 30, 2011 in Business Start-Up with 16 Comments

In September of last year I made a small loan to a lady in Columbia.  Although I don’t know Yaneris Canate Rios personally, she made an application for $1,125 through Kiva.org.  In Yaneris’ tiny community of El Milagro the ladies still all washed their clothes by hand.  She wanted to purchase 5 washing machines to rent to her neighbors.  I provided the last $50 to complete her loan.  Each month I would see tiny payments come on – averaging about $3.84 as a repayment on that loan.

This morning I received a note from Kiva:  Success!! The loan was 100% repaid.  Yaneris was set up on an 18
month repayment schedule but completed it in 13.

This is an actual picture of this lady with her washing machines.  I find this totally exciting – to see a lady in poverty create a plan to improve her own life and that of her neighbors.  Read more »

Burn those “self-help” books

November 22, 2011 in Business Start-Up, Finding Passion with 18 Comments

A podcast listener recently asked:

“Dan, You mentioned Wattles’ book, The Science of Getting Rich.  I have heard strong negative reaction to such books (Think and Grow Rich, specifically) among believers.  (And my wife is among them, unfortunately.)  What is your response to Christians who are antagonistic towards those books?  How can I persuade my wife to consider their message?”

**********************************

The question is how much initiative do we take in our own lives as opposed to just letting God direct our every move.  Now personally, I’ve never seen God show up at the bank to make my mortgage payment or to pay the lawn guys for mowing my grass.  Just this morning I was driving Joanne’s car and noticed it was low on gas.  It was raining like crazy – I pulled into the gas station – man, I would have loved it if God just showed up and pumped gas in for me.  But no, like always, I had to get out in the rain, pump the gas myself and pull money out of my pocket to pay for it.  Read more »

Faster and Cheaper – Good News or Bad?

October 12, 2011 in Business Start-Up, Marketing with 10 Comments

In June of 2009 I wrote that we had started looking at the possibility of a 48 Days iPhone app.  At that time we were told it would be a $20-30,000 process of development.  While we were in discussions we had a couple other companies tell us that because they were doing similar applications they could do our project for $8-10,000.  Then our social media consultant began pointing us to websites like Mobile Roadie where for $499 we could build our own app and be ready to go.  About six weeks ago a 48 Days reader showed us a complete 48 Days App he had built.  It had nearly all the features we had even imagined.  At our request Dan Waller added a few more tweaks and readily agreed to run our promos regularly.  Our cost – zero.  Read more »

Talent is Never Enough

October 10, 2011 in Business Start-Up, Finding Passion with 34 Comments

I have been dumbfounded recently by running into several long-time acquaintances who are down on their luck.  These are guys who were used to first class all the way – restaurants, cars, private flights, yachts and houses.  And now they have been dealing with selling clothes on eBay to pay the apartment rent, parking the car because gas is too expensive, and eating at McDonalds.

My assumption has always been that if someone has never gotten off the ground they may not know how.  But once someone is “up” they can bounce back again quickly even if a real estate swing or bad investment strategy caught them unprepared.

But why would a guy that like get trapped in a “down” position and seem to stay there?  Read more »

Can you do that a little faster?

October 4, 2011 in Business Start-Up, Just a Job with 28 Comments

This morning the local electric company showed up to dig the hole for a new pole on our property.  They had already determined the hole would be going through rock so they brought in the right truck to do the job.  As an old farm boy I was fascinated so I picked their brains for some interesting information. There are only 8 of these trucks in the world.  They cost $500,000 each.  But one guy drilled the hole through solid rock in less than 20 minutes.  The old way would have taken 3 men 4 days.  They calculate a monetary payback of $1,000,000 within 3 years in saved labor and equipment time.

However, faster is not always better.  When wells are drilled in Africa it sometimes destroys the camaraderie of the village women who walked together each day for fresh water.  I grew up in Amish farming community where they still plow with horses and quilt by hand, even though tractors and quilting machines are available.  Walking to the mailbox at the end our long lane provides benefits that cannot be measured by time or gasoline savings.  Read more »

Page 5 of 22« First...«34567»1020...Last »

Switch to our mobile site

Close
Remind Me Later
Remove Ad Permanently