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Posted Wed, May 21, 2008 by Tim Knox
This week continues my series on opening a brick and mortar retail store from scratch. So far we’ve talked about startup plans, market research, and scouting for locations. If you need to catch up go to TimKnox.com and click the “Columns” tab.
This week we discuss how to find a capable building contractor to build out the location.
And as this series has been thus far, this segment is based on my personal experience and offered to you warts and all. As with all of my columns only the names have been changed to protect the innocent, the ignorant, and the overly litigious.
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Posted Mon, May 19, 2008 by Tim Knox
I’ve written many times about my vast experience in the fast food industry, not as a worker, but as an often mistreated customer. Each story typically involved bad food, apathetic employees, horrible customer service, and a vow never to return.
That vow usually ended up in the dumpster when my craving for a chicken burrito got the better of my logic and principles.
This time I’m talking about fast food for a different reason. There are lessons to be learned from those who toil behind the counters of America’s fast food joints.
Working in the fast food industry is not easy, it doesn’t pay very well, and it’s often a thankless job with long hours and little rewards.
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Posted Fri, May 16, 2008 by Tim Knox
I’ve noticed an interesting trend lately. Usually the e-mail I receive in response to this column comes from rookie entrepreneurs or established business owners seeking my input on startup matters, financing, employee relations, general management and leadership issues, policy matters, etc.
Lately, however, many of the messages are coming from employees of medium-size and large companies who are growing frustrated at working in an environment that they deem (to quote one e-mail) “Intellectually stifling and (that) offers few challenges of one’s creativity and innovation.”
These folks are asking how best to move from being someone else’s bored employee to coming into their own as an excited entrepreneur.
These people are called “intrapreneurs,” and their ranks are growing, which should be of great concern to the employers who have either been unaware that they existed or have chosen to ignore them in the past.
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Posted Wed, Apr 30, 2008 by Tim Knox
Well, my friends, like the Terminator, politicians named Bush and Clinton, the ghosts from the movie Poltergeist, and that corn on the side of your big toe: I’m back. There are just some things that won’t go away. Sorry.
So where have I been lo these many months? The simple truth is this: I’ve been busy getting what I wished for, end of story.
OK, maybe that’s not the end of the story because that would make for a very short column and my illustrious comeback as a revered small business advice guru would be short-lived.
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Posted Tue, May 1, 2007 by Tim Knox
Before becoming a full time entrepreneur (or ontamanure, as my daughter calls me) I worked my share of jobs and had my share of bosses. Some of the jobs I enjoyed, some I did not. The same is true for the bosses.
Some were decent folks who treated me with the same respect I gave them while others would have been better suited running a concentration camp. I shouldn’t complain, though, because it was the worst boss I ever had who ultimately motivated me to start my own business as a way of escaping the shackles of employment.
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Posted Tue, Apr 3, 2007 by Tim Knox
I ran across an interesting article in Wired magazine this week that told the tale of Kolo Soro, an elementary school teacher in the tiny village of Tomono in the northern Ivory Coast of Africa.
This is an area so remote and void of technology that for generations communication between villages has been done by tying notes to rocks and having passing trucks toss them out the window at pre-described locations.
Kolo Soro changed all that when he purchased a cellphone during a visit to a larger city and found that if he held the phone seven feet off the floor in a corner of his bedroom he could get a decent signal. Being an enterprising young man he hung the phone on the wall, hooked up an earbud, and started charging his fellow villagers 80 cents per minute to make calls. He earned $200 the first month.
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