How to Find and Persuade Small Business Investors
October 20th, 2009
The most difficult task facing any entrepreneur or current owner of a startup company is trying to solicit equity from small business investors. You’re asking people to make long-term, illiquid, risky investments in your business while offering little if any say in how the business is run. In effect, you’re asking them to become silent partners. Is it any wonder so few people say yes?
There are two secrets to successfully recruiting small business investors. First, you must become an expert on the people you are approaching. You need to know their risk aversion and needs in order to tailor your proposal to fit them. Most of all, you need to know that they actually have the funds to invest. That’s because the second secret to successfully recruiting investors is to realize you’ll almost always be rejected initially, and the one reason for a no that cannot be turned into a yes is “I don’t have the money.”
Not being able to play videos is a common problem for many modern computer users. Most of the time this happens simply because you are lacking some type of application that is needed to play the video in the proper format. This article that was sent in by Everett Bryant earlier today can give you some ideas about some of the most likely solutions that will allow you to get your videos playing again.
This article describes some of the places of interest in Aspen, Colorado, home to the famous Buttermilk, Aspen Highlands, and Snowmass ski resorts. In addition to skiing, there is also a shopping district with plenty of upscale restaurants, salons, and boutiques. Currently the city has a population of about 5,800, including many wealthy part-time residents.
According to the feng shui system of aesthetics, the five traditional Chinese elements of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water can be expressed in the forms of different materials used to decorate or construct our homes. The amount and arrangement of these elements can affect the energy (often referred to as chi or qi) that flows through the house or other building. The goal of feng shui practitioners is to bring these elements into balance and achieve the maximum amount of harmony and comfort. This article from my PLR collection describes the five feng shui elements in terms of the colors, shapes, materials, directions, uses, and emotions that are associated with them.
Morphy Richards is a UK-based company that manufactures a wide range of toasters as well as many other small appliances and household items. Beginning in the 1930s, Morphy Richards has now become a leading brand within the industry; according to the company’s website, at present more households in the UK have a Morphy Richards product than any other small appliance brand. 
Many people in the UK have been wondering about how to ask for a pay rise in a recession. Here in the USA, we call it a “raise”, but it’s pretty much the same thing. This series of articles on salary negotiation and pay rises will cover the topics of not only how and when to ask for a rise, but also how to assess the various factors such as company performance, economic conditions, salary averages for your industry, and of course your own experience and merits, all of which will determine how much of a chance you have of actually being granted an increase in your pay rate.
One of the questions that many people ask when they are trying to improve their financial condition relates to what exactly is considered a good credit score. Yesterday I browsed around on one of my favorite forums and commissioned an article on the topic in an attempt to find an answer to this question. Today I received this article, and while it will probably not win any major literary awards, after a bit of editing it does seem to provide readers with some basic information about how the credit score number is determined and how we might improve it.
This article from my PLR collection on how to build a compost pile contains some useful information for those who are looking for a good source of fertilizer to use for their gardens. This is one of those things that I might like to try; up to now I have been using a combination of Miracle Gro and manure-fortified top soil for my gardening efforts, but having a local source of organic material to mix with the soil would be even better because it would save me the time of having to haul around some of those heavy bags of dirt.
As the demand for backup and storage space has increased over the past few years, more people have begun to use external hard drives as a way of retaining and transporting their all-important files. Finding one with FireWire capabilities is especially important for Mac users because these systems actually use some of the hard drive space as virtual memory to run the operating system. One author at MacWorld.com, for instance, reported that his Mac OS X system uses anywhere from five to nine gigabytes of the hard drive, depending on how many applications are running. 
Yesterday while doing research at the almighty Google, I discovered the potentially lucrative niche topic of cheap window blinds. Surprisingly, advertisers are paying up to $14 per click for topics like “hunter douglas wood blind” in an attempt to entice people to buy various types of shades and window coverings. In some cases these amounts are actually more than the cost of the blinds themselves! For example, when I woke up this morning and ran a quick search on Amazon, I found 
. Apparently they are the cordless kind where you can use the “peel and stick method” without the need for brackets, nails, or screws. The dimensions are 36 by 72 inches, although they are designed so that you can easily trim the material to fit the width of your window. 
Many people who are planning ski holidays or vacations and hope to get in lots of practice may be wondering about how to assess their progress compared to other skiiers and figure out how far they have to go before they can be considered true experts. There are two different charts that can be used as a way to evaluate your ability against a definition of skill levels. 