I received an extremely well written and thoughtful comment from Bleu Panda regarding my article on 5 Crucial Subjects Schools Don’t Cover That You Should At Home so I thought I’d respond to his comment in a blog entry as a token of my appreciation. Please take the time to read his comment below followed by my reply

Thanks for the being open and honest in your posts. I’ve really enjoyed reading some of them and look forward to the rest, as well as future ones.
Regarding your post about 5 crucial subjects schools don’t cover, I would suggest another one that isn’t really taught – collaboration. You may have alluded to it in the section on how to deal with people or in other entries about entrepreneurship, but perhaps you may have some additional thoughts

Photo By Capra Royale

on it. I think it would be helpful to learn about …

In my previous article on mistakes parents make with kids and money – part 1, I pointed out 3 crucial mistakes that parents make with their kids and money.

1. Parents use credit cards in front of their kids
2. Parents buy their kids stuff because other kids have it
3. Parents hide financial details from their kids

If you happen to fall into any of the above categories, chances are you’re already sending wrong messages to your children about money. What’s worrisome is that this isn’t even an exhaustive list. In this article, I’m going to point out even more things that parents commonly overlook regarding kids and money that I’ve both experienced and observed first hand while growing up.

Photo By RedGlow82

Probably what is most disturbing is that we as parents make these mistakes with only good intentions in mind. We want our kids to look back on their childhood with …

My parents came to the United States with practically no possessions and very little money. They had to take odd jobs just to scrape by and could barely afford to have a roof over their heads. Every morning my Dad had to carry 2 buckets of water with outstretched arms up a mountain barefoot in a snowstorm to the water well a mile away. Okay, my Mom and Dad may have exaggerated some of their hardships but the fact is they didn’t have many luxuries growing up.

Because my parents lived a difficult life, they did their best to make sure that I had a fun and memorable childhood. In doing so, they always tried their hardest to provide me with everything a kid could want and need. In fact, they tried so hard that I kind of grew up a little confused. What could …

I just wanted to take the time to introduce my wife Jennifer who will be guest posting for today. Jennifer is the heart and soul of our online business. She basically manages 90% of the operations on a day to day basis in addition to taking care of our daughter. She is the brains behind all of our products and the buying choices we make.

Technically, she’s not a guest poster since she does own half of everything I do including this blog, but I think it’s only appropriate since this site is called “My Wife Quit Her Job”. I’ll let you know how she feels about being called just a “guest” after I publish this article. Without further ado, I present her first post.
Ebay As An Exploratory Tool

Photo By Matti Mattila

Though we don’t recommend opening an Ebay store, we do think that selling on Ebay …

Pricing your products effectively isn’t just about assigning a set of numbers to items that you sell. It’s also about managing perceptions. A common misconception is that customers shop primarily based on logical thinking. Especially with the advent of the internet and instant price comparisons, you might think that most purchasing decisions are made based on numbers and hard data.
But in fact, the average customer is not only illogical but malleable as well. Studies have shown that the perception of value presented to a customer can easily be massaged and enhanced with a variety of psychological techniques. Here are a few examples of some of the ways you can enhance a customer’s perception of value.
Make Your Customer Forget About The Percentages
Prices are rarely evaluated in absolute terms. Instead, most people evaluate discounts based on the percentage savings off the …

In a previous article entitled how to command premium prices for your small business, I emphasized the importance of coming up with a unique selling proposition for your products and services. A good USP grants you the ability to charge a premium for the products that you sell.

Once you’ve pinpointed the strengths of your company and can effectively convey that message to a customer, it’s now time to search for your pricing sweet spot. While there’s no magical formula or quick solution to finding the right price, the techniques outlined in the article below will allow you to eventually determine the optimal pricing for your products.

One thing to keep in mind is that pricing is highly dynamic and always changing. Finding the optimal price is not a one time affair. You need to constantly keep track of your market and adjust accordingly.
Know Your Customer And …

How much is a customer willing to pay for a product or service? You might think that the most obvious way to find out would be to simply ask the customer. After all, your customers dictate the market price right? Wrong! Turns out that basing your prices strictly on customer input is probably one of the worst ways to price your products and services.

I’ll use buying shoes as an example. If Kenneth Cole came up to me and asked me how much I would be willing to pay for his latest shoe design, I’d probably say $50 (I’m cheap when it comes to shoes). After all, at the very basic level, it’s just a pair of shoes right? But if the shoes were guaranteed to increase my height by 2 inches, I would probably be inclined to pay a little more.

The example above …

Whether you are freelancing or running an online business, your net profit is largely dependent on the prices you charge customers. Pricing is difficult to get right. If you set your prices too low, you won’t make any profit whereas if you set them too high, you’ll drive customers away. Because pricing is such an important topic for businesses, I’m going to devote several posts to exhaustively explore ways to help you find the pricing sweet spot within your niche. This particular post will help you detect whether you are setting your prices too low.

Especially when your business is just starting out, you won’t have many data points to work with and the lack of data will make setting prices especially hard. Because you may be forced to rely on guesswork or extrapolations from comparable products to determine price, chances are you’re not going to …

Thanks to social media sites like Stumble Upon, Digg and Reddit, I’ve been able to easily find and read more than my fair share of articles on entrepreneurship in just this past month. I really love reading about entrepreneurship because entrepreneurship emphasizes taking action through self-motivation. There’s no better way to push yourself to pursue your passions than to read about other people doing the same. Listening to their stories also reinforces the need to overcome your fears and make mistakes.

In fact, every article I’ve ever read on entrepreneurship emphasizes failure at some point, but failure is rarely defined. To an entrepreneur, what does failure mean exactly? What the heck is appealing about entrepreneurship if all it’s about is failing? Do entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs have different definitions of failure?

I was extremely curious so I asked several people what their definitions of failure were. …

In a previous post entitled 5 crucial subjects that schools don’t cover that you should at home, I ended the article with a paragraph describing how I was going to prepare my daughter for dating when she grows up. Below is an excerpt from the article.

On a more serious note, I’m kind of resigned to the fact that my daughter will eventually start dating with or without my consent. The best way to prepare her for dating is to take her on dates myself. Once or twice a year, I plan on taking her out for night on the town and showing her how a gentleman is supposed to treat a lady. Hopefully, she’ll come to expect this sort of royal treatment whenever she goes out with a boy and will never settle for anything less.

While the majority of readers liked the idea, I did have one reader who …

The tax laws in the United States are always in a constant state of flux. Every small business owner needs to be on top of new tax laws as they are enacted in order to make key decisions on business expenses. Normally, there are only minor changes to the tax law from year to year. But the year 2008 has been a bit of an anomaly since so many tumultuous activities have happened all at once. I’ll try and outline some of the new tax changes that are the most likely to affect the common business owner or real estate investor.
The Homeowner’s Deduction Has Changed For The Worse
After all of the bad loans and speculative buying that led to the real estate debacle, Congress has decided to crack down on the tax deductions for homeowners. In the past, you could exclude up to 250K(or …

If you take the time to sit back and reflect on all of the knowledge and experience you’ve gained throughout your life, you’ll inevitably come to the conclusion that only a very small fraction of practical knowledge was actually learned in school.

Looking back, I used to think school was the be all and end all of education. Growing up, I took my classes very seriously and was encouraged(euphemism for forced) to get straight As. I was the epitome of a model student and studied hard to ace my way though high school and college. But looking at my life today, what knowledge from school do I actually use on a day to day basis? Maybe 5%? Why are so many important and crucial subjects overlooked in school? Why do schools do so little to prepare us for the real world?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the …

Everyone wants to build wealth but why do very few ever succeed in doing so? It’s because most people don’t take the time to establish a proper game plan on how to grow their money. Building wealth requires planning, budgeting and an awareness of how money can work for itself. The sooner you can amass even a small amount of money, the easier it is to accumulate wealth in the long run. It all starts with the proper frame of mind.

Most people try to take shortcuts and end up wasting their time or squandering what little wealth they have. Make no mistake, there are no real shortcuts unless you get lucky and win the lottery. The foundation of building wealth starts with establishing the right mindset and following through on a few basic principles.
Compound Interest
One of basic keys to building wealth …

Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. When I look back and analyze some of the startup companies that my friends tried to start and why they failed, I can immediately recognize certain character traits and decisions that doomed their companies from the start. All of my friends possessed the drive and passion to succeed and they had great ideas to pursue as well. So what went wrong?

You can have all of the discipline and focus in the world, but there are just some character traits that are incompatible with entrepreneurship. If you can recognize these traits in time, they can be rectified, but otherwise you are doomed to fail in the long run. Do you possess some of these character traits? Ask yourself these questions.
Are You A Perfectionist?
You might think that being a perfectionist would be a great character trait to …

Let’s face it. There are only 2 ways to build wealth. Either you can make more money or you can save more money. In a previous article, I already discussed why you should worry about your topline more than your bottom line. But just because you’re focusing on making money doesn’t mean you should neglect saving either. For most people, saving money is easier than making money because all aspects of saving it are under your control.

So why is it so hard to cut back for most people? Unfortunately, the answer is not clear cut. There are many personality issues and external factors involved that can not be easily controlled. However while you can’t change your current disposition, there are many steps that you can take to mentally prepare yourself to save. Unlike other articles on how to save money, …

We take our privacy policy very seriously with our online store. Due to liability reasons, we make an active effort to not store any payment information or credit card numbers in our database. This way, if our website ever gets hacked, the hacker will only be able to obtain a few names and addresses that we have on file. We also never sell customer information to any third party.

Most customers expect a strict privacy policy when shopping at any online store which made it surprising when this one customer called in asking us to blatantly violate our policies.

Customer: Hi! I’ve ordered from you guys in the past. Love your products and your customer service.

Me: Thank you. That means a lot. What can I do for you today?

Customer: Well, I would like to place another order, but I absolutely need it to be shipped …

Starting and running a successful business is enough of a challenge as is. Add working with your spouse into the mix and you potentially have a recipe for disaster. It might appear like the ideal situation to start a business with your spouse. After all, you have the rare opportunity to work with someone whom you implicitly trust. You know their strengths, their weaknesses and that their interests are directly inline with your own.

The rewards can be great, but when things go wrong, you can potentially sacrifice both your marriage and your business. Even though my wife and I get along really well, working with her on the business was extremely challenging. We never used to fight at all, but we had some pretty bad altercations over the business on many occasions. Fortunately, we were able to work things out …

Even though you should always be on the lookout for new customers and new markets to pursue, it’s important to not neglect the customers that got you to where you are today. According to the Small Business Administration, it’s much easier drum up additional business from previous customers than it is to find new customers. The SBA even goes as far as to say that it’s 65% easier to convert a sale from someone you sold to in the past. I have no clue how they came up with this statistic, but what this implies is that your marketing dollars and marketing focus is better spent appealing to your existing customer base.

In a previous post, I already covered innovative ways to get new customers and grow your online business. This time around, I’m going to discuss ways to sell more to your existing clientele. As …

All of the books I’ve read on how to start a business always focus on writing a thorough business plan prior to taking any other action. Having read quite a few of these books and having written a fair share of business plans, I’ve found that writing these documents have largely been a waste of time, especially for small businesses.

While the principle of writing down a business plan is fundamentally sound, I’ve found that things rarely go as planned and that your business plan practically goes obsolete the minute you are done writing it. Sure, you are supposed to be diligent and update your business plan as changes are required, but realistically there are much more productive things that you could be doing other than amending a document. Business plans are really only useful when looking for funding or when pitching your business to a third party.

Don’t …

It’s always refreshing to have a nice, considerate customer every now and then. I really enjoy speaking to our customers when they are polite on the phone, even if they are just calling to complain about something. 90% of the time, if they state their case clearly and politely, I’ll try and help them out in some way or form. The tactics that I wrote about here on how to negotiate with vendors applies to small businesses as well and is worth a read if you have the time. In any case, the customer I’m going to talk about today was just too damn considerate…so considerate that she actually got on my nerves at one point.

Customer: Yes sir, I was wondering if I could speak to the person who does the embroidery?

Me: Hi ma’am, unfortunately our embroiderist is not in at the moment. Is there …

Is your business growth starting to plateau or stagnate? Once your business is making a good profit, it’s easy to sit back, slack off and watch the money roll in, especially if you are satisfied with how well you’re doing. But keep in mind that if you slack off too much, your competitors will soon catch up and eventually put you out of business.

With that in mind, you need to be constantly innovating and making active efforts to grow your business. There are 2 main ways to do so.

Find new customers and new untapped markets to pursue.
Sell more to your existing customers

The focus of this article will be on finding new customers. While all of the books say that selling to your existing customers is much easier than finding new customers, we’ve found that finding new customers is the best way to grow the business significantly. …

I used to think that entrepreneurship was only about creating unique and groundbreaking technologies and coming up with new and innovative products. Having studied entrepreneurship in graduate school, I was always surrounded by gung-ho entrepreneurs. Some of my peers went on to start web technology companies whereas others created startup companies in biotechnology. Almost every one of them had some unique idea or take on a particular technology and ran with it. Having studied entrepreneurship in this environment was quite intimidating. Looking back, the main mental barrier I had to starting my own business was that I didn’t feel like I could come up with a sexy enough idea to pursue. In addition, I wasn’t the type of person that wanted to devote 100 hours a week to running a startup company either.

Guess what? You don’t need a brilliant or …