The other day, I came across a heated forum discussion that went back and forth debating over the definition of a “true” entrepreneur versus just a regular small business owner. The thread was over 5 pages long and participating in this discussion were a wide variety of different business owners. Some of them ran brick and mortar retail stores. Some of them ran small-medium sized internet consulting or software companies. And some of them were freelancers looking to eventually start their own firms.

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The main crux of the debate was whether a person opening a brick and mortar business like an ice cream store or a freelancer with no employees could be considered a true entrepreneur. Where do you draw the line between true entrepreneurship and just running a small business?

As the two sides argued back and forth, I couldn’t help but think…who …

In order to build wealth effectively, we all have to be frugal to a certain extent. We have to watch our spending. We have to analyze our expenditures and cut back on the fat. We have to make sacrifices to make sure that we can save enough money for college and retirement.

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Fortunately, my wife and I both share the same principles when it comes to spending money (ie. we don’t spend frivolously). Otherwise, we would be seriously screwed. But after analyzing last year’s expenses using Quicken, I feel all frugalled out. We have pretty much cut back as much as we possibly can without drastically affecting our lifestyle.

If we look closely at last years expenses, we cut spending by another 4% over the year before. We are going out to eat less thanks to my wife’s desire to …

Many would be entrepreneurs hesitate to start their own business because they think it is too risky from a monetary perspective. In fact, most people don’t think starting a business is even worth trying unless they can come up with a grand slam profitable idea. Of course profitability is an extremely important factor with any business, but what if I were to tell you that you could save a decent amount of money every year with your business while only making a small profit or none at all?

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That’s right! Most people don’t consider the tax savings involved in running a business. Most people don’t realize that having a day job is one of the worst ways to save on taxes because Uncle Sam takes a huge chunk out of your paycheck BEFORE you pay for anything. On the …

I’ve heard a ton of business ideas. I’ve listened to and read many business plans. And the one thing that always strikes me is how little most people think about the viability, profitability and end goals of their small business. Is the goal to become a millionaire? Is the goal to just make a living? Is the goal to just do something fun?

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Perhaps this explains why in just the past year alone, I’ve seen many brick and mortar businesses open up their doors only to close down just a short while later. Perhaps this is why I know of several acquaintances who are in limbo with their business. They don’t make much profit yet they are literally working their butts off for the equivalent of minimum wage.

Granted, a lot of this might have to do with the current economy and the …

When most people think about starting a company or business, they think of the Microsofts, the Googles and the YouTubes of the world. They tend to think big because the media focuses on these multi-million dollar success stories and over glamorizes the risks and rewards.

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In fact, the media tends to portray entrepreneurs like lottery winners because that’s what makes the news. Because the chances of creating a company like You Tube or Facebook are so slim, most people shy away from starting their own business because they think it’s just way too risky with very little chance of success.

Just the other day, I had one of my readers email me that they were afraid to go out on their own because they didn’t want to risk everything for a measly 1% chance at success. A 1% chance at success? Where the hell did he …

My wife and I jumped right into our online business with a “whatever it takes” attitude. We were excited. We were enthusiastic. And we were ready to make money by any means necessary even if it meant catering to our customers. Looking back, this was not necessarily the wrong attitude to have. But this no holds barred policy got us into a lot of trouble and wasted a lot of our time early on in the life of our business.

The truth was that we felt desperate. After countless hours of work, we launched our online store but didn’t have the customers to justify our efforts. Our website was a ghost town and we practically jumped on every customer that came through our virtual doors.

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As a result, we went out of our way to do special requests for anyone that …

You may have experienced this pattern before. You start a brand new job and work extremely hard in the beginning to establish yourself and your reputation. At first, the nature of the work is extremely challenging. You are constantly learning and trying to keep up with your coworkers. You find yourself staying late at the office just to get by.

As time passes however, you become adept at your job. You find ways to do your work faster and more efficiently. You become proficient and an expert at what you do. As more time passes, you feel comfortable and at ease with your job. You find yourself able to finish all of your work in an 8 hour day. You have more free time to spend at home. Things become cushy. Is it time to leave?

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This particular reader was feeling a bit discouraged about her situation so I thought that I would try to lend a few words of encouragement. A, Thank you for emailing me. This post is for you.

I have been following your blog for about 3 months now, I work retail so I absolutely love the customer stories(I can relate). I have been working on starting my own business (it is very hands on in that includes sewing and screen printng) both of which I love. So much so that this has actually lead me back to school, and I know exactly what I wish to do. However I keep butting my head against the wall, now thanks to you I understand BHAG and have been working accordingly.

However I still get those nagging, you should be happy to have a job, you’re a bit old to start(really I’m 35!), you …

I admit it. I used to be ashamed of telling other people about our wedding linens business. When we first opened our online store, not only did we not receive many orders in the first 4-6 months, but the idea of opening an online wedding linens store seemed almost silly compared to what my other entrepreneurial friends were up to.

You see at the time, a good number of my friends and acquaintances were starting their own businesses and they were all quite impressive. One of my friends started his own cellphone gaming company. Another friend started his own web development software company. And a third friend started a small consulting firm. Whenever we saw each other, we would ask each other how things were going with our respective companies.

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Friend: So Steve, how’s the linens business? Is it fun?
Me: Linens …

Home prices have dropped 10-20%. Interest rates are at historic lows. So does it make financial sense to buy a house right now? I’ve been asking myself this question for the past few months but can’t seem to find a compelling reason to do so. The numbers just don’t quite stack up.

Since I have a child and a business, my parents are also pushing me to buy a house. Even my accountant is advising me to purchase a home in order to provide a tax shelter. Do I listen to my parents and my accountant? Is it worth sitting down and running the numbers? In general, I don’t take anyone’s advice blindly unless I have a chance to do my own math. Here’s why I’m holding off on buying a house and a breakdown of my analysis.

Calculating The Monthly Mortgage Payment

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The …

Once your business is up and running smoothly, it is surprising how easy it is to become complacent and allow your business to stagnate. Especially if you are already in the green and making a decent amount of profit, human nature inclines us to sit back, relax and just watch the money roll in.

On the flip side, your business can also stagnate even though you are working your butt off. One of the easiest traps to fall into when your business is extremely young is to work yourself to death just maintaining the business that you have no time to expand.

Our Story

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My wife and I fell into both of these traps in the course of running our online wedding linens business. Early on with our small business, my wife and I spent so much time trying to keep up with order fulfillment that …

The number one question that I receive from readers who want to open their own online store is how to go about finding vendors and suppliers. Do I purchase wholesale? Should I drop ship or should I contact the manufacturer directly?

When my wife and I first started our online store, we faced these exact same questions. But having done a fair amount of research on each of the above options, I’d like to talk about our experiences and our take on each of these ways to stock merchandise for your online business.

While our experiences are primarily related to wedding linens, what we are about to tell you should apply to almost anything that you choose to sell in your online store.

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Drop Shipping
Most people fall into the trap of getting excited about drop shipping when they first open their online store. Drop shipping seems appealing …

Most people think that starting their own business has to be an expensive endeavor. While it is true that many successful entrepreneurs self-fund their startups by racking up massive debt on their credit cards, it definitely does not have to be that way.

Thanks to the internet, starting your own online business is as inexpensive and risk free as ever. In fact, I highly recommend that you create a business that is well within your own means rather than risking your life savings all in one shot. If you can handle it, it’s best to start your own business while you have a steady job or an alternative source of income.

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I’ve received many questions regarding how much we spent starting our wedding linens business and I’d like to enumerate all of these costs below. As you’ll find out from reading this post, we risked …

Last Friday, an engineer in the office complex where I work brutally gunned down the CEO, VP of Operations, and the Head of Human Resources of his company before fleeing the premises. This engineer, named Jing Wu, had recently gotten laid off from his job and decided to take revenge on the executives who were responsible.

Because this tragic triple homicide literally happened within 50 feet of my office, I’ve been thinking a lot these past few days about all of the things that I’ve been taking for granted. I’ve also been trying to place myself in the same situation as Jing Wu to figure out his frame of mind. What possessed him to follow through with such a heinous act? What caused him to become so desperate to think that losing his job meant the end of his life?

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While I’ll never know the …

Everyone knows that starting and running a small business is glamorous. In the past few weeks alone, I’ve read at least a half a dozen stories ranging from “How I made $1027.53 in a single day!” to “How you can work 4 hours a day and be rich with a small business!”.

Clearly, these guys are living the good life. What’s funny is that these business owners never mention how glamorous their lifestyle really is. They don’t mention the power, the freedom and the luxury that comes along with owning a small business. On second thought, it’s probably because they don’t want to make their readers jealous.

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Fortunately, I don’t care if I make you envious. I’m going to tell you about all of the “bling bling” that I experience on a day to day basis. For all of you who are new to …

In a previous article entitled how to build wealth by saving money without sacrificing your livelihood, I discussed different ways that my wife and I save money on a day to day basis without drastically affecting our lifestyle. While finding good deals and extending your money is an important aspect of accumulating wealth, deciding the right things to buy and avoiding spending altogether is every bit as crucial. Because spending and saving go hand in hand, the ability to allocate your funds wisely coupled with a proper savings plan will exponentially increase your pool of wealth.

So how does saving money differ from spending money wisely? Saving money is the act of finding the least expensive method of making a purchase that has already been planned. Spending wisely

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pertains to the decision making process that goes along with making a purchase. …

Students often have to make certain sacrifices in order to earn good grades in school. I used to be a model student in both high school and college and I always thought that earning good grades would take me the distance in life. It was only when I graduated did I realize that my emphasis on getting good grades contradicted some of the fundamental principles of entrepreneurship .

First off, I just want to emphasize that the point of this article is NOT to discount the importance of getting good grades in school. My purpose in writing this article is to reflect on specific examples and experiences with my education in both high school and college where getting good grades had a negative impact on my entrepreneurial spirit.

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So how can getting good grades possibly be construed as a negative? How can getting an ‘A’ possibly …

Do you believe that money is the ultimate panacea? Have you ever thought to yourself, “If I just had more money, my life would be so much easier and less worrisome?” Most people tend to think this way until they amass some wealth and the opposite happens. Their life gets harder and more stressful.

During the dotcom boom of the 90’s, my stock portfolio did extremely well. I amassed a small fortune, got greedy and starting investing more and more into the markets. Sometimes I even used margin and other forms of leverage to increase my gains. Because I was risking so much money, I found myself obsessing over ever little up and every little down.

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I would wake up at 6:00am PST every morning and agonize over my real time stock quotes until 9:00am when I had to go to work. …

When I was a kid, I always wanted to buy what my friends were buying. I remember when the Reebok Pump basketball shoes first came out, all of my friends bought a pair except for me. I never was allowed to buy my own pair because they cost 160 dollars, enough to buy 4 reasonably priced pairs of shoes. I remember playing basketball and not getting picked to play because all of the “Reebok Pump” kids wanted to play on the same team. (I assure you that not getting picked had nothing to do with my basketball skills:))

My point is that your child’s spending habits are very heavily influenced by peers and other societal pressures. Take my Reebok Pumps story as an example. We all wanted the shoes because Reebok did an excellent marketing job. Kids who couldn’t afford the shoes wanted them even …

In a previous article entitled mistakes we made early on with our online store, we outlined 5 early decisions that hindered the growth of our business. While those mistakes slowed us down, none of them were showstoppers by any means.

In this article, I’d like to talk about decisions that nearly put us out of business. Sadly, most of these early choices were made due to greed and human nature. Many of our actions were downright stupid and I’m quite ashamed to even share them with you. I’ll try and start with the dumbest ones first and work my way up.
We Didn’t Accept Credit Cards Directly

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Have you ever heard of an ecommerce shop that didn’t accept credit cards? Early on, we tried to save money by using Paypal as our sole payment processor. Paypal basically offers 2 different account …