Entrepreneurship

By Bruce Watson
Daily Finance

Spring officially started in late March, but with rainstorms and cold spells making weather unpredictable, it's been hard to get excited about spring cleaning. Now, though, warm weather seems to be settling in for good, and with yard-sale season just around the corner, it's the perfect time to clear out those cluttered closets and basements, organize those overflowing kitchen drawers and maybe even tackle the attic and basement. After all, you never know what you might find.

When it comes to spring cleaning, fighting the mess is only half the battle; the other half of the struggle lies in overcoming sentimental attachment to possessions that are outgrown, old, broken or otherwise no longer useful. With that in mind, here are some tips for taking control of your mess -- and your feelings about it -- and putting a few bucks back in your pocket while doing so.

J.Crew is a fashion label known for making affordable designer-style ruffled tees, pencil skirts and "boyfriend" blouses accessible to the masses. It's created its own look -- a mix of feminine/masculine chic -- and in doing so, created its own devoted following. With constant online sales campaigns, drawing in fashion-conscious buyers who love a deal, plus smart marketing that promotes the brand as a glamorous yet laidback lifestyle, J.Crew fashion has become in demand at a time when many retailers are struggling to find an identity. Here are 10 things you might not have known behind J.Crew's success story:


RELATED LINKS:
10 Things You Didn't Know About Indigo
17 Things You Should Always Buy New
15 Things You Should Never Pay For

By Matt Brownell
Daily Finance

Are you such a big fan of "The Vampire Diaries" that you write your own stories about the denizens of Mystic Falls? Well, Amazon (AMZN) wants to publish your work -- and it wants to see you get paid for it. The company announced Wednesday that, for the first time, authors will be able to make money on their fan fiction under a new venture it's calling Kindle Worlds.

Fan fiction describes that under-appreciated genre of writing in which amateur authors make use of an already-established fictional universe, often from a TV or book series. At heart, it has always been a way for devoted fans to explore and share "what if" questions about their favorite characters -- sometimes filling in background, other times going far outside the established canon: What does Hermione do on summer vacation? What if Buffy got turned into a vampire? What if Admiral Adama and President Roslyn met The Doctor from "Doctor Who"?

By Caroline Bennett
Daily Finance

Women in the workplace -– it's a hot topic in the business universe right now. For that, you can thank Sheryl Sandberg's girl-power-infused book "Lean In," or the ever-increasing number of female executives taking charge of major corporations, like Yahoo's (YHOO) CEO Marissa Mayer or IBM's (IBM) Ginni Rometty.

Just recently, Warren Buffett weighed in on women in business in a column for "Fortune" magazine. In it, the beloved Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) chairman and 'Oracle of Omaha' detailed his faith in the power of women in business.

Behold the Woman Behind the Curtain

Buffett writes in his signature simple and eloquent way. But he didn't pull punches about the uneven playing field women have faced -- and still face -- as they make their way in the world. The deck is stacked against women starting at a very early age, Buffett says, going on to register his distaste for the "brainwashing" that many highly talented women are forced to experience: "The moment I emerged from my mother's womb," he writes, "my possibilities dwarfed those of my siblings, for I was a boy! ... at every turn my sisters would be told ... that success for them would be 'marrying well.' I was meanwhile hearing that the world's opportunities were there for me to seize."

Buffett equated the strange double standard being placed on women as a "fun-house mirror." He even saw its twisted side effects in the insecurities of his friend Katharine Graham, the powerful CEO of the Washington Post. Thankfully, however, he realizes this mirror is cracking, and that his daughter would "laugh and smash it" if one was put in front of her.

A key to equality could be found, Buffett says, if women realize men are equally insecurity-ridden, not unlike the Wizard of Oz. "Pull the curtain aside," he says, "and you'll often discover they are not supermen after all. (Just ask their wives!)"

It's the largest book retailer in Canada and some even blame the demise of the independent bookstore in our country on the book retailing giant. It's core business is books and - to a degree - music, but the store also has become known for selling lifestyle products, including toys and decorative home accessories. It's become a haven for people who want to take their time browsing magazines and fiction and who might want a Starbucks latte while they're at it. But despite the obvious, there might be a few things you didn't know about Indigo's story and the top people behind it. Have a look at 10 things you didn't know about Indigo:

As a general rule, the team at Kiplinger champions the art of getting rich slowly. "Don't go for the home run," Knight Kiplinger tells us in his classic column "8 Keys to Financial Security." "In investing, as in baseball, those who swing for the fences do hit the occasional home run. But they strike out a lot, too, and their lifetime batting average -- average annual total return -- suffers accordingly."

But maybe you're willing to take some calculated risks in pursuit of the freedom that money (and lots of it) can give you to make choices that can bring satisfaction, whether that means buying your dream home, giving generously to charity or escaping the 9-to-5 grind. In that spirit, we focus on nine faster roads to riches, with varying levels of risk. The people we interviewed who have made it big didn't always get there on the first or second try. But they all share essential qualities for success: passion, persistence and patience.

In Driven: How to Succeed in Business and in Life, Shark Tank's Robert Herjavec recounted how he went from a Croatian immigrant at eight-years-old to the founder and CEO of The Herjavec Group -- now the country's largest IT security firm and consistently topping lists as Canada's fastest growing technology company.

"We started The Herjavec Group ten years ago with three guys and $400,000 in sales and we finished at $125 million last year and just today, we bought another one of our small competitors that does $30 million a year," he says.

With results like that, it's no wonder he was recently named Ernst & Young's 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year in the technology group and is always pushing the limits of his own success even further. He wants you to reach new heights of success this year too, which is why he wrote The Will to Win: Leading, Competing, Succeeding (HarperCollins Canada) a sequel of sorts to Driven.

While Driven urged readers to take risks, take control of their lives, and stay true to their own visions, The Will to Win pushes them to refuse to accept mediocrity, use their power at the right time and always be willing to adapt and change, with some special advice from Herjavec's celebrity friends like Oprah, Celine Dion and UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St. Pierre thrown in for good measure.

We caught up to this Ferrari racing, marathon running, cyber security expert just long enough for him to tell us whether he's truly afraid of anything, why it seems like sometimes his investment offers get passed over in favour of the bigger fish in the tank and whether The Millennial Generation needs to invent their own job.

By Muneeza Iqbal
Daily Finance


Bentley Christie runs a small farm in his suburban Canadian backyard. But unlike most backyard farmers, he doesn't raise chickens, nor does he plant fruits and vegetables. Instead, he harvests crops of wriggling red worms.

To hear Christie tell it, a worm farm is a pretty ideal small business. It doesn't require much space because a pound of worms -- about a thousand creepy-crawlies -- needs only a square foot of surface area. They live in bins that are easy to make at home, and they're relatively self-sufficient, too, since they eat food scraps and don't need to be cleaned up after.

Christie sells many of his worms for fishing bait, animal feed and natural fertilizer, but an increasing number are purchased by people who use them at home for composting kitchen garbage.quality bedding."

By Diane Bullock
Minyanville

The corporate acquisition is the end game for many a small company. When manufacturing a product of, by, and for the people, even the noblest startups have dollar signs in their eyes once the market value hits nine digits. So when the inevitable buyout commences, the starry-eyed dreamers are replaced with the pursed-lip marketers, and bottom lines start trumping top priorities. As a result, the topflight product -- once lovingly manufactured out of the inventor's own garage -- takes a dive in both quality and cachet when it hits the assembly line overseas.

Here are eight examples of businesses that lost their luster after being bought out.

By Matt Brownell
Daily Finance

Cable and satellite TV providers give you access to hundreds of channels, but all of them are clearly intended for human viewers. That's about to change.

Bloomberg reports that DirecTV will soon start showing DogTV, the world's first television channel whose target audience has four legs and a tail.

The network explains on its website that it features 24/7 programming "created to meet specific attributes of a dog's sense of vision and hearing and supports their natural behavior patterns."

It goes on to explain that the channel "helps prevent mental fatigue, depression and boredom." Clearly, the idea here is to keep your dog from getting anxious or restless while you're off at work. Some of the programming is meant to relax the dog by showing other dogs chilling by a pond or sleeping peacefully; some is meant to stimulate the dog by showing other dogs at play, as seen here:



We can't help but wonder if seeing those lucky dogs frolic and play might provoke feelings of canine jealousy in a housebound pooch. Another possible scenario is that your dog will get a little too excited and try to join in on the fun.

But the channel's animal behavior experts insist that the veterinary science underlying the approach is sound. If you want the channel for your pooch -- or you think you'd enjoy watching dogs play on your television all day -- you'll be able to get it in the third quarter for just $6 a month.

Matt Brownell is the consumer and retail reporter for DailyFinance. You can reach him at Matt.Brownell@teamaol.com, and follow him on Twitter at @Brownellorama.