In Cash Flow We Trust

I just finished reading Riches in Niches by Susan Friedman. The sub title is How to Make it Big in a Small Market. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book on Niches and highly recommend it. I’ve been an entrepreneur for thirty years and have met countless others. We have this tendency to try to be all things to all people-and fail miserably. The key is to mine all the riches available to you in niches!

Susan does a great job in honestly and thoroughly covering what it takes to be successful as a Nichepreneur! The word Nichepreneur is a word coined  by Susan and I believe she really hits the mark by encouraging entrepreneurs to focus on specific niches. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many successful Nichepreneurs and their singular focus always amazes me. Susan gives many examples of individuals who have focused on specific niches and the strategies they employ. Don’t be afraid to focus on your passion and expertise-Susan has provided you a road map in this book Riches In Niches!

I would recommend two things to all you entrepreneurs out there: buy a copy of Susan’s book. Read her book and really study the strategies. The second thing I would do is to watch The Big Idea every night with Donny Deutsch. The Big Idea and Donny Deutsch will affirm to you that there is plenty of money to be found by following your passion and mining the Riches in Niches!

I met Steve Shapiro, the business innovation speaker, last month when I was speaking at the Boston Chapter of NSA. As fate would have it Steve Spoke at our chapter here in Denver, Colorado on Friday. His presentation was great and the audience loved it! Steve normally speaks on Innovation and how to keep your business ahead of the curve. He did share some of those ideas with us but his main focus on Friday was: The costly mistakes he had made in his speaking career-and how we could avoid them!

One of my favorite take a ways was-Fail Cheaply! Steve encouraged all of us to test our brilliant ideas a little piece at a time before committing all of your time and dollars into a great idea that only you love Steve held the audience captive with his solid suggestions and great case studies.

After our program he held a bonus session on his infamous Personality Poker. What a great tool for discovering your innovation personality! It was great to see how we perceive ourselves and how other perceive us as well. Thanks for sharing this with us Steve.

Our program was a complete success and I highly recommend you bring in Steve Shapiro to speak to your assocaition or company on innovation.

Ovation credit is a company that can help you if your credit is in need of some repair. It’s easy to run into credit problems-it starts when you get that first credit card in the mail, before you have graduated high school. Credit problems start slowly and can snowball out of control in short order-credit repair from Ovation may be the answer.
Credit card debt is by far one of the biggest financial Read the rest of this entry »

It was good to see Thomas Hoenig, President of the Federal reserve Bank of Kansas City, in our state of Colorado. He went on a folksy tour of small businesses and ended up at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in Durango on Tuesday.
Rocky Mountain Chocolates makes great candy and Bryan Merryman, the CFO of the company told Hoenig:

“Commodities across the board have pressured us”. “There are a lot of pressures in our system that we haven’t seen before”.

It’s reassuring to see that the feds have recently discovered that they need to start raising interest rates. I hope Hoenig went to the grocery store and gas station with Merryman just to confirm his suspicions

Good News-for all of you who have been wondering about the Yellowstone Club, the Playground Spat Is Resolved according to the Wall Street Journal. Edra Blixseth, who started the club with her husband, Tim, was granted ownership of the club in the couples divorce decree !!
Membership at Yellowstone costs an initial $250,000 was $18,000 in annual dues and millions of dollars to buy or build a home there.

Members such as Bill Gates and Dan (potatoe) Quayle can now rest easier this evening
Edra, email me if you need me to see if the club is now up to your standards!

Have a great 4th of July! The year is flying by and hopefully you are having a productive and prosperous year. Thanks to all our troops around the world for all you do.

J.K. Rowling extolled the crucial importance of imagination during a speech Thursday at Harvard University’s spring commencement, saying, “We do not need magic to transform our world.”

The Harry Potter author also stressed the benefit of failure, recalling the humiliations of her time in poverty before her career took off with her string of novels about a bespectacled boy wizard.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation,” Rowling said. “In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity; it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

Great advice for all small business owners and would be entrepreneurs!

Read the entire USA Today article.

I would be a liar claiming that any of my portfolios are hedged-I have been long forever! However, on Friday I did buy 500 shares of SDS-Ultrashort S&P 500 Proshares. My cost was $58.91 and they closed the day at $59.80 for a gain of $1855.00.
Buying these shares did not hedge my portfolio but it’s interesting to note that instead of a loss for the day of $8065.00 my net loss turned out to be $6210.00

Obviously, every portfolio is different but having not lost an additional 20% was some small comfort in an otherwise ugly day. Take a look at what you might do to lessen the losses in your portfolio because…I don’t think it’s over.

Why do gas stations have a $75 limit on Visa or MasterCard transactions at the pump?
According to stations owners they say they are simply following the policies of Visa and MasterCard, who won’t reimburse them more than $75 per transaction at the pump if there’s a disputed charges or fraudulent card use!

What does MasterCard say:
“It’s the merchants’ decision to limit purchases,” says Visa spokesman Paul Wilke. He adds: “Customers always have the option of paying with the card at the cash register” where its policy differs from the pump.

The $75 limit “ensures merchants and customers are protected from fraud,” says MasterCard spokesman Tristan Jordan.

Visa and MasterCard have no immediate plans to go higher. “It’s something we always look at,” Wilke says.
Thanks to the USA Today for for this lesson-Happy Friday!!

Selling automatic watch winders online can be a great business venture. My fiends over at
Wind the Watch have become very proficient at selling watch winders around the world. Whether you have a collection of automatic watches or just one prized watch-Wind The Watch has the watch winder for you. Many people ask: will my watch incur damage if I don’t use an automatic watch winder? The answer is no, it’s just very convenient to have your prized watches wound and ready to go when you are dashing out the door.

Watch Winders can run in price from $200 to over $8000 -more than most watches! Wind The Watch specializes in very good looking automatic watch winders that come in a variety of woods including burl and cherry. If you are going to put that Rolex, Breitling or Piaget watch in a watch winder it may as well be a great looking watch winder.
Watch Winders has a great selection of automatic watch winders that have great pricing and great looks. The winders also come with a one year guarantee. Check my friends out and I’m sure you will be happy with their quality selection of winders for all your watches.