Recently, I heard there is an Illinois business law that says you cannot have similar businesses within 4,000 feet of one another.

As with anything, there are always 2 sides this issue. One one hand, I see how the state of Illinois wants to provide business owners with some level of competitive protection. If a business owner can get a business license in the state of Illinois for, say a check cashing business, then no one within a mile can have a competing business. As a businessman, that sounds like a sweet deal. The business value must be great if the business owner wants to sell right? If no one else can get a business there, the value goes up. Location, Location, Location!

On the other hand, don’t we live in a capitalist society where free enterprise carries the day? How can customers in a one mile radius expect good service if the business has a monopoly? What incentive does the business owner have to provide good service and competitive prices if there is no other business holding them accountable?

While I’m not sure of the exact specifics of this law (for example, there must be an exception for food businesses), I know franchisors are frustrated with the state of Illinois law.

In talking to several franchisors, they won’t get registered in the state because it’s so hard to get a business license for a franchisee.

If anyone knows more information about this law, I’d love to hear about it.

So what attributes make up the perfect small business?

Some of us have a money tree we can draw from to create the “perfect small business.” Most of us, however, do not. We have to be wise with our money because we can quickly run out of it. Here are what I believe to be some very important attributes to the perfect small business:

1. Low or No accounts receivable – I like money in hand immediately.
2. Favorable competition environment – no competition is a yellow flag. A saturated market is no good either.
3. Residual or recurring income – Ask a successful insurance agent how nice recurring or ongoing business is.
4. Low start up costs – If we can get into a business for a low start up cost, we’ve got a shot…right?
5. Potential for passive income – Working hard is ok if at some point, we can step back and the business won’t die.
6. Flexibility – I want a life. I don’t want to be married to the job. I prefer normal business hours with free weekends.
7. Not seasonally or economy dependent – The business should do well regardless of the season or economic environment.
8. Manageable to Low inventory – tying up money in inventory is no fun.
9. Low Overhead – high fixed overhead costs will keep you up at night…trust me.
10. Reasonable labor issues – Ideally, the fewer employees the better. Fewer headaches. But, to create leverage where other people do the work, you’ll have to have some employees.
11. Market Potential – The business has to have a market for your products and/or services. Income potential has to be good.

There you have it. I realize there are plenty of very good small businesses that have high overhead, are seasonal, or have many employees. However,  if you can create a business with as many of these characteristics in mind as possible, you’ll be well on your way to having the perfect business. Good luck.

If you are a web site operator, you probably monitor your traffic on a daily basis.  Most web site operators tend to use Google Analytics due to the level of detail that is provided about a web site along with the fact that it is free and easy.

If you have experienced some wild traffic fluctuations over the past year (from February 24, 2011 – today) and are wondering what the cause could be, compare your statistics to the Google Panda updates timeline below.  I know that many site operators just exist and move forward with their business. There are hardcore SEO’s who worry about the search engine updates such as Panda and employing one to assist with your web strategy is often a must.

Barry Schwarz at www.seoroundtable.com does a terrific job keeping up with the changes and confirms his information as best he can. Confirmations from the search engines are a bit rare given their tight lipped nature with regard to their algorithm changes.

Past Panda Updates:

• Panda 3.4 on March 23rd, 2012
• Panda 3.3 on about February 26th, 2012
• Panda 3.2 on about January 15th, 2012
• Panda 3.1 on November 18th, 2011
• Panda 2.5.3 on October 19/20th, 2011
• Panda 2.5.2 on October 13th, 2011
• Panda 2.5.1 on October 9th, 2011
• Panda 2.5 on September 28th, 2011
• Panda 2.4 in August, 2011
• Panda 2.3 on around July 22nd, 2011
• Panda 2.2 on June 18th, 2011 or so.
• Panda 2.1 on May 9th or so.
• Panda 2.0 on April 11th or so.
• Panda 1.0 on February 24th

In my opinion, if you have a site that provides quality, unique content, you will eventually bubble up toward the top.  Keep growing your site with quality content and engage your community.  Put the blinders on and work.

If you build it, properly, they will come.

Tilted Kilt

The Tilted Kilt Girl

What’s your opinion of this picture? Seriously. Here’s mine…

I’m married with 4 kids. Yes I’d be lying if I said I don’t notice beautiful women. Let’s just say there are attributes to the female body I find hard to ignore. God made women to be works of art. Just like Elaine said in the show Seinfeld, “a women’s body is like a work of art.” These “attributes” are hard to ignore under the best of circumstances. The Tilted Kilt has decided to make it harder on me, obviously (see above) and cut to the chase…literally.

While I’ve never been to a Tilted Kilt, and won’t based on the picture above, I can obviously imagine what the featured “attractions” are. The bottom line is this…the picture/ad is pathetic. It really is. Yes, men are simple creatures. We are weak. But, they’ve cut the head off the model because I guess they’re looking to focus in on what’s most important to them. Beer and Boobs right? Can I get an AMEN from the horny guys?! How about a whistle instead? Do they serve food? Not sure. Do they serve skin? Most definitely.

While I’m not the moral standard for this country, we can do better can’t we? Let’s start with the entire models face. Can we at least recognize that boobs have a face? Can we add a chicken finger or something so we know there’s food available? My gosh, it’s gotten so ridiculous that our basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter are now cropped out to eliminate all the fluff (ya know…humanity, clothing, faces, food, etc.). Now, it’s just about flesh and foam…beer foam.

I’m attempting to use a little humor to address what’s become the path of least resistance. Look at GoDaddy.com. They’ve completely ignored any efforts to focus on the business and play the exposure game. Get it? The Exposure Game. Using women in little to no clothing to sell domain names is a real stretch. The founder is a couple times divorced (wonder why) and we glorify him as a business and marketing genius. If that’s genius, then count me as a failure. I’m fine with that term. If not finding the kind of financial and public success is the price I pay for trying to keep it above some level of human decency, then I’m a failure.

I’m also tired of having to work so hard to avoid or reject this kind of stuff. Can we all make a little more of an effort to not engage or promote the lowest common denominator of human lust and gluttony so every time a commercial comes on tv, we have to ask our kids to plug their ears and cover their eyes? Please? Pretty Please?

It’s not about becoming being to “goody-to-shoes” or having no fun. The Tilted Kilt can do much better. So can most of us…including me. I’d just like some help.

March Newsstand Issue of Fortune Magazine – Catherine Hooper

Did you happen to read the March 19th, newsstand issue of Fortune magazine?? Fortune always has great articles. I really enjoy the magazine. One of my hobbies is small business and they seem to have a steady dose of small business type articles (Is it me or are they morphing into a Entrepreneur type magazine?).  Anyway, there are plenty of good articles in the March including an article on Facebook. But the “featured story” that caught my attention was the story on Catherine Hooper entitled “Stand By Your Madoff.” Ms. Hooper is the woman who moved in with Bernie Madoff’s son, Andrew, just days before Bernie was arrested for his ponzi scheme.

I have nothing bad to say about Catherine Hooper or Andrew Madoff. I believe Andrew was caught in something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I also believe its completely possible that he didn’t know anything about what was going on with his father. I only say “completely possible” because I haven’t followed the story close enough and cannot get inside the brain of Andrew Madoff. At this point, maybe only he knows for sure. Until he is proven guilty, we do live in a society where you are presumed innocent until proven guilty…right?? I’m not even sure he’s been accused of anything.

Opinions aside, more than anything else, I’d love to know how a small business of close to $500,000 in annual revenue gets a featured story in Fortune magazine for crying out loud. The story mentions a business her and Andrew Madoff have started. It involves disaster preparedness products and services. Do you know how many businesses would KILL to get this kind of FREE publicity?!  Yes I realize the press is trying to use the Madoff name to lure people to read the magazine. Yes, I realize the people at Fortune know that using a title like “Stand By Your Madoff” is intended to bring all those people in who might think it’s more connected to Bernie Madoff that it actually is.  Either way, it’s a ton of free pub.

All that being said, do we really believe it’s fair for a company of less than $500,000 to be taking up the space of such prime reader real estate? While this was a complete and mutually driven publicity sucking exercise on both sides (Fortune used the Madoff name for eyeballs and Catherine Hooper used Fortune for free publicity), It still leaves me wondering what the small business guy with sales of under $500,000 (I think there are like 12,000,000 of these) has to do to get noticed. Do small businesses have to be tied to something sensational to get publicity? If you’re Catherine Hooper, and fortune calls you to do a story, what do you do? Is that what happened? Did Catherine know someone at Fortune who got her the opening? Did Catherine approach Fortune? I will say I hope Catherine did not approach Fortune. If she did, I hope it wasn’t with the hope of the kind of story that was actually printed.

I’m Jealous!
At the end of the day, it’s more to do with jealousy than anything else. I ‘m jealous! There, I said it. I’m jealous that Catherine Hooper gets her free pub and all us small business owners get to be jealous.

Certainly Catherine Hooper did little to deserve the stress she’s had to endure over the last several years. This isn’t about her (unless she framed the story with fortune purposefully which I hope and don’t believe she did) as much as it is about the never ending fight for a morsel of exposure for all of us business owners who struggle to get noticed.

How do the rest of us get noticed? Good question. Ask Catherine Hooper (@goblackumbrella) since now I’ve given her BobandScott.com publicity!

Google Keyword Tool

Many of you may be familiar with the Google Keyword tool. It’s a tool designed to give people an idea of how many times, per month, internet users search on what are known as “keyword phrases.” Keyword phrases, for those who don’t know, are what we type into search boxes. As Google accounts for a large majority of overall search traffic (I’ve heard as high as 90%), using the Google keyword tool is a good way to find information about keywords.

Why use the Google Keyword Tool?
For guys like me who have a bunch of “interesting” ideas, the Google keyword tool is good for vetting these ideas. By using the tool, I’m able to find out quickly if a keyword phrase is popular. If the keyword phrase is popular, then it might be a good business opportunity. If the keyword does not get many searches per month, then it’s probably not a worthwhile business idea.

In addition to finding out how often keywords are used in search, you can also find out how competitive a keyword phrase might be. Once you type in a particular keyword phrase, the results will show the number of searches per month and how competitive the search term is. Google lists search words or phrases, in terms of competition, as low, medium, or high. Low means there are a relatively low number of advertisers competing on the term. High means many advertisers are competing to be in front of visitors when they search for a keyword phrase. Sometimes, however, it’s hard to determine sometimes if the number of searches are for a specific search term. For example, the google keyword tool says, the keyword “sports” is searched on globally 151,000,000 times monthly. While this is true, it means keyword phrases containing the word “sports”in the search phrase is searched on 151,000,000 monthly. In this case, if someone searched on “winter olympic sports” the word sports is counted in the 151,000,000 searches. If we look at “winter olympic sports” specifically, Google says there are only 6,600 monthly searches. If we search on “fox sports”, the monthly searches are 3,350,000 monthly. In other words, the total monthly searches for the keyword “sports” includes all the keyword phrases with the word “sports” in the entire keyword phrase.

In addition to showing the number of searches per month and the competition level, you can also select to show the average CPC “Cost Per Click” for each keyword phrase. This will allow you to further define how competitive a search term is or what you might be likely to pay, per click, for traffic or visitors related to specific keyword phrases. The tool allows you to search by country, device (desktop computers and mobile devices), category, etc.

Personally, over the years, I’ve found the Google keyword tool to be very helpful in finding out how popular specific keyword phrases are and what people are looking for. I’ve used it extensively in 2 successful online business ventures and hope its available to me for a long long time!

BrightStar Healthcare

BrightStar Healthcare is an exciting franchise opportunity for those who want to specialize in staffing services to hospitals, nursing homes, schools, as well as to private individual clients. So far, BrightStar has over 100 franchise locations and is growing. Soon, they will expand into Canada and other countries.

Statistics say Americans 65 and older will grow dramatically over the next 20 years which will increase the demand for home health services and all types of care for seniors. As the baby boomer generation ages, nurses are increasing in demand as well. BrightStar is the only national franchise of its kind and serves both corporate and private clients. Many of BrightStars competition serves one or the other.

Other exciting facts about BrightStar Healthcare:

• Reasonable franchise investment
• Average number of employees: under 2
• Business to business AND business to consumer
• 5 income streams
• National contracts can drive business at local offices
• Proprietary systems including web-based software programs
• Strong Item 19 representations

Scott offers a risk free, no obligation consulting service designed to help you find out if franchising is right for you.
http://www.franchiseopportunities500.com 

Why franchising? 

There is lots of information on the internet about franchising. The more information, the easier it can be to get confused. If a franchise opportunity is good, it should offer the following attributes:

1. Brand name
2. Proven business system

That’s not it but always keep these two things in mind when considering a franchise. If franchising works for you, it will also do the following:

1. Allow you to be in business for yourself but not by yourself.
2. Bottle success and pass it on to the franchisees
3. Build on the success and failures of others.

Most importantly, it’s your decision. No one else. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t proceed no matter how hard others might be “pushing” you to do it.

If you have any questions or would like a no obligation consultation, please contact: Franchise Opportunities 500

Failed Banks 2011

One of the more popular topics at BobandScott.com is any post that discusses failed banks.  The FDIC has a fairly orderly process for bringing in banks that are failing for one reason or another. Typical failures are due to reserve requirements not being met.

During this latest budget crunch, we heard that the government site data.gov might be shut down. We jumped over to take a look and noticed that there is a nice dataset for the failed banks since October, 2000.   The data includes the failed bank along with the acquiring bank, and date of closure.

Failed bank list. Update February 12, 2012
failed-bank-list-2012

Click on the image to download the 2011 failed bank list (CSV format)

2011 Failed Bank List (updated 04/14/2011)

Bank Name,City,State,CERT #,Acquiring Institution,Closing Date,Updated Date

[csv id=1]

Fed officials cautious on economic recovery – Yahoo! News.

A very encouraging article if just from the standpoint that our government sees the problems! They actually correctly listed the major problems with our economy which are high unemployment, heavy reliance on government support, and commercial real estate. WOW! Not bad. They did forget the HUGE US deficit and the business lending environment but I’ll let them slide since at least they seem to have their collective eyes on the ball.

Not sure how to gauge this administration with others because I am really now old enough, experienced enough, and interested enough to be following it. It do like what I see. They are working hard. They are trying things. They aren’t sitting on their hands. They are making mistakes. So what. At least they are working hard at the problems.