But don’t worry, I’ll be carrying on his good work covering everything from world wide business news and new business startups to up-and-coming entrepreneurs, business tips and important dates for the diary. So please check back for updates in the near future.

If you’ve got any thoughts on something you’d like to see, either email me, or contact me on Twitter.

Charlotte Clark

charlotteelizabethclark@gmail.com
@charlotteclark
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/charlotteclarkislinkedin

Kissame, a life-long Auburn resident, thought about the local video rental store that had closed its doors.

“I saw a void in town that wasn’t currently being filled,” he said. Kissame decided to recreate the video rental store and theorized it would bring in traffic that would, in turn, flow into his massage practice.

From there, his business ventures continued to grow. In addition to his 22-year-old mobile disc jockey service New Horizons, Kissane expanded the video store, Superstar Video, to include an Alltel mobile phone dealership and changed the name to Superstar Video and Wireless. His massage practice has grown into a full salon called Absolute Harmony.

The tight economy has meant fewer holiday season gigs for his disc jockeying, but one of his businesses has been affected more than any of the others.

“It seems like massage therapy takes the most hit when the economy takes a downturn,” he said.

Kissane partly attributes the thump to health insurance companies. Therapeutic massage is an alternative to chiropractic services, he said, but most health insurance companies cover little to none of the expenses, while chiropractic visits may be covered up to 100 percent.

Superstar Video and Wireless has found its own niche within the Auburn community, and isn’t affected by larger video rental stores and wireless providers, he said.

“There’s only one in town, so there is no direct competition,” he said.

Kissane prices his videos and games competitively, as well as his late fees. The store carries Blu-ray discs as well. With gas prices steeply rising, Kissane also said more people come to his store so they don’t have to travel as far.

The wireless phone business has all the benefits of an Alltel corporate store, including functionality, phones and accessories, but with two additional advantages: Kissane can offer better pricing than corporate stores on phones and accessories, he claimed, and the store provides a loaner phone for customers to use while they wait for a permanent replacement to their broken or lost cell.

Future plans for the cluster of businesses vary, but Kissane foresees his DVDs eventually being replaced by Blu-ray disks, and as the use of cell phones continues to grow, he hopes to add more room for those to his store. He is looking for an additional stylist for the salon and a woman massage therapist to join him in his practice. He also is contemplating the addition of indoor tanning to Absolute Harmony.

Kissane appreciates all his business ventures for separate reasons, but said he especially prefers massage therapy.

“I enjoy helping people feel better and to help relieve their problems,” he said.

Brandon Pollet was kind enough to speak to me about his project, Embought. Embought is a shopping comparison site that allows users to find coupons and prices for a wide range of products. What really caught my attention about this project in particular was that 50% of the profits from each sale go to one of five charities.

Brandon took some time to tell us about his project, and some lessons he has learned as an entrepreneur. Here is what he had to say.

Embought

Embought is a shopping search engine that finds users great deals on products and donates 50% of all profits to charity.

Embought currently searches dozens of online stores to find great prices and coupons for thousands of different products. What makes us different from other search engines is that if a user purchases a product through us we then donate 50% of our profits from that sale to charity. We currently support 5 great charities ( info can be found here http://www.embought.com/info/charity ) and we are working on ways to allow users to choose which charity will benefit from their purchases. We’re also working hard to expand the number of products we offer so our users can save money and help people in need with everything they buy online.

The idea for Embought came to me after seeing the way my wife shops online, she is great at comparing prices and finding the best deal, especially in her use of coupons. After seeing how much money she was able to save I decided to try and turn her shopping process into a product that everyone could benefit from. The charity aspect of Embought started after I read an article about the Product(RED) campaign to fight Aids in Africa. People have been really excited about that program and they really seem to love the idea of helping out people while buying products. The problem with Product(RED), in my opinion, is that many of the products are marked up to cover the cost of the charitable donation. With Embought I wanted to make it easy for people to not only save money but also donate part of their purchase to help those in need.

Lessons

I’ve learned so much as an entrepreneur that it’s hard to narrow it down to just a few things. I think the most important thing is just to do it. There is never going to be a better time than right now, so stop thinking and take some action. If you have an idea for a project start working on it in your spare time and see if it turns into something that will make you happy.

Happiness is important in a startup, both the founder’s happiness and the happiness of your users. If working on your project doesn’t excite you then you should look into a different project. There will always be hard times in a startup but if you really enjoy your project then you’ll be better able to make things work. If your project is something that excites you and makes your users happy, you can’t fail. You’re either going to have a successful business or you’re going to have great experience for your next opportunity.

Finally I would say that, contrary to popular opinion, you’re not likely to have overnight success. Startups are not a get rich quick scheme, most of the successes are the result of years of hard work. So don’t set unrealistic goals of making millions in a few months, because it won’t happen. Just try to get users, if you can get a few then talk to them and see how you can improve your product to get more. Focus on making your users happy and you’ll be successful.

There are lots of sites popping up at the moment for people to share ideas for good business ideas (and i am not for them). Take LoveMyIdea and Idea Volcano for example, people can post their brilliant business ideas on here and watch other people steal them!

I know its not the idea, its the execution, and i put a post on LoveMyIdea some time ago now about an idea i had for a digital camera rental business idea (click here for full details).

This was a business idea i obviously wasn’t interested in but still, i have had a few comments and the latest comment is that somebody is launching a business for this very soon!

Now i have seen this website that is taking these idea sites one step further, Fellowforce.com is trying to tap into the business smarts of strangers. 

On August 1, the Amsterdam-based startup launched its consumer-facing site where people can sign up as “fellows” and answer challenges posed by companies large and small.  There are only about 20 challenges so far.  Some have been posted directly to the site itself, like one startup’s plea for a “blockbuster TV-format for a new website“. While others are links to existing crowdsourcing efforts elsewhere on the Web, such as Nokia’s invitation to consumers to help design an N76 phone, or the Motion Pictures Laboratories quest to  “develop a theatrical projection screen” that can handle both 2-D and 3-D movies. 

So don’t just give away your ideas, ask people to build them, design them and then sell them!

As some of you will see in my blog, my ‘grama’ and ‘spelin’ are terrible …. that’s grammar and spelling, i know …

Well here is a website that can assist you in your writing ways. DailyWritingTips.com sends daily writing tips to your inbox FREE.

I have read:

“One of the things that all bloggers should avoid is, the grammatical errors on the blog (including misused words, word that mean something else). Typos are understandable, but grammatical errors make your blog look unprofessional…”

Well my blogs not a professional blog, its  a hobby so I’m an exception ….