Entrepreneurs in the News

Tim Ferriss, author of the bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek, has written a new book, The 4-Hour Body, for which he spent three years experimenting with fad diets, workouts, and medical treatments. "I made myself a guinea pig," says Ferriss. "It was terrifying, exciting, and illuminating."...PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has established a one-time fellowship that will award $100,000 grants to 20 aspiring tech entrepreneurs under 20. Thiel sees his grants as alternatives to college. "Some say I shouldn't encourage students to drop out," he says. "But many students graduate with huge tuition debt, which can stop them from being entrepreneurial."...Speaking of fledgling entrepreneurs, Stephen Ou, a high school freshman in San Leandro, California, recently launched iTunes Instant, a website that speeds up searches of Apple's iTunes store. "I usually finish my homework at school so I can focus on my side projects at night," says Ou, whose site had roughly 100,000 hits in its first three weeks....Kelly Ripa has teamed with TLC to create Homemade Millionaire, a reality show that features Ripa helping aspiring female entrepreneurs market their wares on the Home Shopping Network....Caleb Elston recently left a job at Justin.tv to focus on his own start-up, Yobongo, maker of a mobile app that lets users text others nearby. "Working for other people's start-ups can be great, but ultimately the vision isn't yours," says Elston.

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Pick The Right Twitter Tool: Mobile Apps

You've decided to take the plunge into Twitter. You even have some idea of how you're going to use it (gasp – a real Twitter strategy!). But since this is *online* marketing we're discussing, you now have a array of options facing you for exactly how to do that and which tools to use. Which one has the features you'll need? How do you answer that question without spending endless hours testing and wondering? Which one has the lowest learning curve?

If I can ease the anxiety a bit on this one, I actually don't think this is a place to worry too much about making the "right" decision from the start. If you know (and abide by) these three reasons you'll be able to switch tools at a whim without much, if any, remorse:

Free! - pretty much all the tools have a free version that will work for the majority of people. You don't have to make any financial investment to try the tool out.

Low Learning Curve - the tools don't take a lot of time to learn how to use – so you don't have to invest inordinate amounts of your time to discover if one of them is going to work for you.

Won't horde your content - because the tools are basically taking content from Twitter itself in a more useful and user friendly way, your core content is on Twitter, not stuck inside the tool. You can even use more than one tool to read the same content in different ways if that's what works for you.

Think of your goal as finding one or two tools and then being mindful not to do anything that *removes* content from the Twitter database while using them.

So without further ado, here are some Twitter tools that can help you put in play your tweeting master plan.

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Mobile Apps - Twitter Tools to Manage Accounts, Posts, Replies and Multiple Users

Let's face it, some of our best ideas happen when we're in the car, brushing our teeth, just about to fall asleep or otherwise un-tethered to a traditional computer. Here are some great Twitter tools for the mobile in you:

Seesmic - this application is especially nice for devices operating on Android. It has a clean, thorough interface and connects with URL shorteners and photo/video sharing. It's a great tool if you want a single software for both mobile and desktop.

TwitterBerry - If you've got a BlackBerry, this is a must-have app. It provides most of the basic Twitter functionality you experience at your desktop including the ability to tweet pictures, view timelines, search, and send and receive direct messages. Note however this is only for BlackBerry and as of the time of this article does not have a desktop version.

Tweetie - in addition to the Twitter functionality you'd expect, Tweetie can also do a restoration of your user interface if you're interrupted by a phone call and your offline Twitter actions can also be synced up when you come back online. Note that as of this article this tool does not have a desktop version.

What do you like/dislike about these mobile twitter tools? Which ones did I leave out?

Next time we'll talk about desktop apps, tools to boost engagement and tools for measuring your success.

Follow me on Twitter at @maishawalker. Special thanks to Dave Clarke, Communications Strategist at Churnless, for his excellent help in compiling the data for this article! You can ask Dave about his favorite Twitter tools at @thedaveclarke.

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8 Types of People on TwitterYour Social Media Marketing "Killer App"A Guide to Social Media Tools and their Uses

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How to Start a Boutique Hotel

Luxury hotels were a big deal in Atlantic City in the 1920s, as depicted in HBO's hit series Boardwalk Empire. In the 1950s and 60s, Atlantic City was actually known as the "Queen of Resorts" before gambling was legalized in 1976 and monstrous casino hotels took over the landscape. So when New York City-based companies Cape Resorts Inc. partnered with Normandy Real Estate Partners L.L.C. a few years ago, they wanted to re-create the luxurious boutique hotel of Atlantic City's historical past. They developed the only boutique, luxury, and non-gaming hotel in Atlantic City, The Chelsea, to cater to travelers looking for a refined, independent experience away from the casinos.

"We recognized that there wasn't a natural market for this type of resort at the time we were developing The Chelsea," says Jane Mackie, vice president of marketing at Cape Resorts, a company focused on smaller properties built on the principles of luxury, comfort and service. "But we also recognized that there were no options in town for the upscale traveler who might just want to get away, spend some time near the water and do something different. People want a hotel experience sometimes more than just a bed and breakfast or motel, and less than the large casino hotels."

Opening in May 2008, The Chelsea features 330 rooms and two suites, but is focused on an intimate and exciting experience that doesn't revolve around gambling. From a design perspective, it fits much in the mid-century form of the town, and philosophically it focuses on its waterfront location with a full-service beach, two outdoor swimming pools and an upscale nightclub. Since opening, the resort has outperformed a volatile market in town, catering namely to leisure guests on weekends with high amounts of disposable income. Unlike the casino resorts in town, no rooms are complimentary.

Starting a boutique hotel in a time of economic volatility as seen in the past few years is a risky proposition, but if done correctly, it can be a profitable business venture. As travelers change their vacationing patterns, they want more out of their experiences than some of the traditional big-brand hotel chains can offer. In this guide, we will discuss what exactly a boutique hotel is, the principles to focus on when opening one, and how marketing yourself differently can lead to success even with competition from larger, branded competition.

How to Start a Boutique Hotel: Definition of a Boutique Hotel

Ask three different people to define a boutique hotel, and you'll get three extremely different responses. At the most basic level, boutique, or what some refer to as lifestyle hotels, offer a level of intimacy in an increasingly impersonal world. For many travelers, it's the element of surprise, in a positive manner, which helps them choose a boutique hotel over a branded facility. But how many rooms does it offer? How big is the property? And what makes a boutique different from any other small lodging options?

"To me, a boutique hotel is no larger than 150 to 200 rooms that can sometimes operate as part of a brand but more often are known for independent ownership," says Rick Swig, owner and founder of RSBA & Associates, a San Francisco-based consultancy firm for many in the hospitality industry. "They're usually not very cookie-cutter in terms of design or experience, and they display distinct characteristics of the target market. So when a customer walks in, they see customers who look like them, think like them and has common values."

Boutique hotels were by many accounts invented in the 1980s, with the first noted as The Morgans Hotel in New York City, The Blakes in London and the former Bedford in San Francisco. As time went on, customers became disenchanted with the similar service they had always received from larger chain hotel brands, and wanted something unique and different, in terms of look, feel and level of personal service delivered. What many customers say when asked what they prefer about boutiques is the connection they as guests have with the hotel staff, a level of personalized service that isn't achieved in larger hotels.

"To put it quite simply, you need a clean hotel designed to fit the needs of the customer you're looking to attract," says Joe McInerney, president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based American Hotel & Lodging Association. "You need the right design, the right destination and the right location. If you don't have all of that, you're not going to be successful."

Dig Deeper: How I Did It: Butch Stewart of Sandals Resorts

How to Start a Boutique Hotel: What to Focus on When Opening a Boutique Hotel

From the very start, as McInerney notes, the biggest factor in success as a boutique hotel is destination and location. In terms of destinations, you need to look at cities that can attract a pretty diverse market segment, from the traditional leisure traveler to the business traveler and then events and conventions.

Dating back to the days before it was a casino town, Atlantic City has been a destination for wealthy urban residents from three of the largest metropolitan cities in America. It is located less than three hours by car from Philadelphia, New York City and Washington, D.C., making it an ideal weekend or even overnight trip. These facts were critical in choosing Atlantic City as the location for The Chelsea.

Ideally, those cities are not seasonal destinations, and there are visitors both during the week and on weekends. Regarding location, you need to be centrally located to the other things in that particular destination that are going to drive business to your hotel.

"My favorite exercise when you're looking to buy or develop a hotel is to stand on the proverbial roof of the building and look around you," says Swig. "You need to look at what other businesses are going to send customers your way, and if you can't see enough of that within a one mile radius, you're probably in the wrong location."

To Swig, the keys to measuring success with a boutique hotel are as follows:
Defining the hotel's purpose and/or niche
Developing a high-quality product created to appeal to an underserved clientele
Conveying a clear, interesting message to the target market
Not spending too much money in development to make profitability with your product difficult to achieve

As you design the hotel, you should be forward thinking in terms of amenities but also consider the market you are in. For The Chelsea, they focused on Atlantic City's past while also incorporating modern amenities. There are historical photos throughout, but a salt-water swimming pool, restaurants with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the water and distinct post-modern design scheme.

"It's important that it look good, but sometimes there's too much emphasis on style," notes Mackie. "Through our experience with other properties, we've learned that the largest driving force in return customers or repeat business is an overemphasis on service. It's easy to get people to come once, but the hospitality industry is all about getting people to come back again and again. So we focus on making the experience unforgettable."

Dig Deeper: How to Pick a Site For Your Business


How to Start a Boutique Hotel: The Cost of Opening a Boutique Hotel

In the last few years, the industry has seen a rise in rooms for luxury and middle-tiered hotels with a decrease in supply from older hotels and many economy-based. There is certainly opportunity for a boutique, which could fit between the middle and high-end of that spectrum, but you need to be smart about your investment. According to a recent cost estimate guide published by HVS, a global industry consulting firm based in San Francisco, "the expectation is that projects will return in the second half of 2010, with an overload in 2012 similar to what happened during the post-9/11 recovery."

In terms of start-up costs, buying an existing property and renovating to fit your needs is much more cost-effective than developing an entirely new project. Cost will also vary based on how many rooms you are building, as well as the additional amenities of the resort. This is considered a per key basis, or how much money is spent on the resort compared to how many room keys exist. According HVS and their 2009 end-of-year study, the cost per room (when factoring in land costs, site improvements, soft costs and working capital) could be anywhere from $75,000-$400,000, depending on the hotel and location. To determine the local per-key sales figures, check out the HVS study or find a local hotel industry consultant in the market you are targeting to figure out the going rate.

For many in the hotel industry, it's a minimum-wage (tip-based job). For a boutique hotel, you need to hire experienced hotel workers with great customer service skills. As Mackie says about Cape Resorts, "Customers always say, 'My God, you have so much staff, how can you afford it?' And that's exactly what we want. We just say that is really what the brand is about. The whole experience is delivered by the staff and its emphasis on training, so you need to find the best." Smaller staffs should be paid more based on the level of service you're asking them to provide.

The limited overhead as a smaller hotel both help boutiques post larger profit margins than many bigger brands, according to Hotel Investment Advisors, another industry consultant. Part of the profit margin is the cost you can charge your customers, which can sometimes be double what the larger local brands are offering for similar rooms but without the personal touch. Initially you won't have the brand equity that the larger brands have built up over time, so it may take you longer to reach the point of breaking a profit.

Dig Deeper: The Best Hotels for Business Travel


How to Start a Boutique Hotel: How to Market Your Boutique Hotel

An oft-overlooked aspect of opening a smaller hotel is your product distribution, or how you market yourself. Because you don't have that existing brand recognition of the larger chains, you need to get the word out there about your resort. By defining your resort as a brand of one and communicating your standards in the same way that larger resorts do, your customers will gain a level of comfort and familiarity with your resort. Telling a unique story behind the location or history of the hotel (for The Chelsea, it's nod to Atlantic City's past) can put you over the top in terms of occupancy and success.

The good thing for many start-ups is that the Internet has made this marketing aspect considerably easier. You can now put your boutique hotel on a level playing field with some of the larger branded properties thanks to the benefits of travel search engines like Expedia, Bing, Hotels.com and more as a great way to raise your brand recognition.

No matter how you break it down, it comes down to your return on investment as a boutique hotel. But with no franchise fees and the opportunity to operate with your own customer service ideas and brand characteristics, boutiques offer the chance to succeed as an independent hotel.

Dig Deeper: Forget Travel Agents, Social Media Has the Power

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Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3)

The last 2 posts I've written have focused on featuring real businesses that have created highly successful social marketing strategies using LinkedIn as a key element.

I started the series with an overview of LinkedIn concepts, then moved into a guide for creating your LinkedIn profile, followed by a list of the 11 most powerful LinkedIn tools for small businesses. Finally, I outlined 6 core strategies that small businesses use to leverage LinkedIn for building a tribe and covered the first three:

Building a live community (LinkedIn tribe part 1) Business development (LinkedIn tribe part 2) Promoting a blog/branding/building traffic (LinkedIn tribe part 2)

I also hosted an in-person Social Media Marketing workshop in New York City in which I provided the hands-on help many small business owners need to translate these strategies into action. If you missed it, click here to be notified of my upcoming Social Media Marketing events.

Today we cover the final 3 strategies.

Getting work as a freelancer or consultant Promoting a product Strategies for everyone

The Freelancer or Consultant

As a consultant, outside of being good at what you do and generally being able to successfully run a business and manage clients, success is heavily dependant upon two things:

making sure people remember who you are and what you do

making sure enough people are in group number 1 to keep your pipeline full.

Finding ways to stay on the radar of people who will either hire you or refer you to new business is a critical challenge for freelancers and consultants.

You will find many examples of business owners who are using LinkedIn's "Q&A" feature as a significant element of their visibility and lead generation marketing.

Heidi Cool, owner of Heidi Cool Consulting is one great example. Heidi shared with me how by providing excellent answers to the questions of other LinkedIn members, she has built visibility and credibility for her business, more and higher quality traffic to her Web site and more leads.

Here's what Heidi did...

Using LinkedIn Q&A

The key for Heidi is not generic visibility, but high quality visibility - where her answers set her apart. She focuses on answering questions that are directly relevant to her areas of expertise and will possibly get selected by the questioner as "best" answers. When this happens, both the question and the answer show up in her profile further building her credibility as an expert in her field.

To give you a sense of scale, Heidi has spent 1-2 hours per week over the last 6 months answering questions related to Web site design. Questions her take about 5-30 minutes each to answer properly.

As a great example of the inherently holistic nature of social marketing, Heidi relies heavily on her existing blog content to make sure that questions get a thorough response in a way that would not be possible by just answering the question on LinkedIn alone (as of this writing there's a limit of 4,000 characters for responses). Heidi's Results

Related Articles by Maisha:

Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2)

Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedIn

LinkedIn the 11 Most Useful Features for Small Business

How to Use your LinkedIn Profile — a ChecklistHeidi received more than 3 times the number of visitors to her site in July when she focused heavily on this technique. She adds:"I can generate traffic from other sites for much less effort, but the quality of visitors isn't as high"Heidi defines quality as both how many pages visitors view on her site ("stickiness") and how many real inquiries/leads she receives from site visitors. For example, the visitors from an article aggregator site she posts content to are not "high quality". 86% of those visitors leave after viewing only one page, "and so far none have made an inquiry through my contact form".


But during July when she ramped up her Q&A strategy, LinkedIn visitors sent her 29 email requests for more information or project proposals.

Other Freelancer/Consultant techniques:

Create an Email Signature and consider including your LinkedIn Custom URL on your business cards and on more of your marketing materials to enable potential customers to learn more about you and your company
Create a group
Send connection invitations immediately after conferences and events
Recommendations as strategy. Michael Zittel Owner, Serr.biz LLC offers this advice (in response to a LinkedIn Q&A of course):We use, and recommend to our clients, to at least utilize Linked In as a validation service of testimonials and "recommendations." It's easy for anyone to write a bogus testimonial about their services and post it on their site. It is not possible to do so on Linked in. So, having recommendations here, and posting on your site, then linking to LINKED IN so people can validate the reference is, in our approach, one of the simplest methods of utilizing LinkedIn.

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The Product Promoter

LinkedIn is a very interesting tool for those who have a product to sell or promote. The same way communities must be built for the purpose of congregation, businesses also need to build communities around services and products.

Author Gary Unger shared a great example of how he uses LinkedIn to regularly sell out of his book which is available for sale at Amazon.com. In July 2008 he published the book "How to Be a Creative Genius (in Five Minutes or Less)". Gary spends about 4 hours per day on LinkedIn, reading messages, looking for questions to answer, writing answers and interacting with people he meets. His results? He explains that for every good answer he posts, about 15 people will email him asking to connect. For his Web site he gets up to 500 unique visitors per week if he is as he says "in the zone" - active in answering questions. He also regularly checks his book sales during these periods and says that he will easily sell 20 books per week and see his Amazon ranking jump when he is actively posting.

Supporting this experience, freelance copywriter and marketing consultant Leon Altman cautions "You shouldn't try to sell directly from LinkedIn. But you can start building the bridge to marketing your products and services". Leon's also underscores the importance of landing pages "on your website you must get people to opt-in."

To Connect or Not to Connect?

One of the questions that often plagues early LinkedIn users is deciding who to connect to.

LinkedIn offers these suggestions:

Thoughtfully select those people you know and trust because these are the people you will seek advice from and request a recommendation about your/other's quality of work. Because of this, the quality of your contacts is always more important than the quantity of contacts. It is important you know your connections because you may be asked to recommend one of your connections to another. If you know little about the connection you weaken the integrity of the recommendation and your network...Choose your connections wisely as there are certain questions you might only ask a connection because you know and trust that member with this information. Be sure you trust your connections with the information you make available to them."

However on the opposite end of the spectrum, many members of LinkedIn support what's called "open networking" meaning they will connect with pretty much anyone who sends them an invitation.

Also keep in mind these LinkedIn facts:

all connections are visible to your direct connections by default (although you can change this)

maximum number of connections is 30,000

maximum number of invitations you can send is 3,000

My take on this is that I think once you know your goals, resources and the tools you have to work with, the question of who to connect with no longer takes on the same importance. If you need to build out a community of 500 people with very specific goals like Daniel Tunkelang from LinkedIn strategies part 1, perhaps open networking is not necessary for you. If however you're trying to build a community of 5,000 people with broad interests it's probably more important. Keep in mind that the more people you have in your network, the more people you can contact directly. This is probably the biggest advantage to accepting most of the invitations you receive.

Strategies for Everyone

Here are tips for other things you should do regardless of what category you fit into:

Update your job description — your profile and the details in it are the center of ALL activity on LinkedIn and are at the core of your credibility for whatever you do on LinkedIn. Keep it current with new accomplishments by updating it a few times per year.

Check in — often a tactic used by successful business owners as a core of their business success. Use your profile as a Rolodex and check in with a few contacts each week or month just to say hello

Check References & Interests — it is always good to do a little research in preparation for a new relationship. In fact these days it's not at all creepy, it's respectful. The same way you'd research a company before an interview or a big sales presentation, these days each person is his or her own walking brand. Research their interests and know a little before you interact with them to help make the interaction more successful

Find people you should meet — if you know who your target audience is, you should also know some search criteria for finding them on LinkedIn. Perhaps it's not cost-effective for you to try to reach out to every one of your potential customers individually, but perhaps it's super smart to reach out to that guy or gal who runs the local chapter of the retailers association who could make a great strategic partner for your business.

Consider a LinkedIn ad — and tailor the reach to your target audience

What are you working on now? — this feature is often not noticed by your connections in my experience, but it can be used to share good news, newly completed projects, new hires with your connections

Maximize Travel - check the locations of your connections before you travel so you can schedule time to see people in the city your going to. (Thanks to @merylkevans for the reminder on this one!)

Maximize New Connections — Barbara Rozgonyi offers these words of advice "After you accept an invitation, consider replying with a quick personal message that includes a few bullet points about what you do, an opportunity to ask questions about your industry and additional ways to connect with you online such as your blog, ezine or forum." A great tip and something I try to do as well. Thank you, Barbara!

Connect Your Connections - helping others find the people they need from within your own network can go a long way. (Thanks to

Post Your Comment

Have a question? Got something to share? Something I missed?

Your feedback, comments, real world experience and tactical questions are an important part of the discussion. If you have a comment, question or feedback post it below.



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Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (part 2) Small Business "Success Studies" Using LinkedInLinkedIn the 11 Most Useful Features for Small BusinessHow to Use your LinkedIn Profile — a Checklist

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GVO and the 10 Questions You Should Ask When Choosing a Network Marketing Company

Yesterday, I wrote about how I had come across a number of different Network Marketing opportunities, which looked viable on the surface, but either did not stand up to initial scrutiny, quickly we

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Move Over, Snuggie

Each day, Inc.'s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here's what we found today:

Could this start-up be the next Snuggie? Two Wisconsin entrepreneurs are hoping to infringe on the lucrative wearable blanket's territory, the Associated Press reports. Tyler Galganski and Dave Hibler, the 25-year old founders of Forever Lazy, peddle their fleece, footless, hooded "adult onesies" online from Hibler's parents' basement. And while the operation may seem casual, the Wisconsin pair have actually gained quite a bit of recognition for their ad hoc basement start-up. BusinessWeek named them 2010 finalists for America's Best Young Entrepreneurs, with Forever Lazy projected to earn more than $500,000 by the end of this year. Galganski and Hibler have also gained publicity from the Today Show and In Touch Weekly magazine as "Fergie's favorite way to cover up."

Could today's unemployed be tomorrow's unemployable? The New York Times explores this question, stating simply: "The longer people stay out of work, the more trouble they have finding new work." This is troubling news considering most recent Labor Department data shows that unemployment rose from 9.6 percent to 9.8 percent in November. One New Yorker, who has been unemployed since 2008, tells the Times, "I am so worried somebody will look at me and say, 'Oh, he's probably lost his edge.' I mean, I know it's not true, but I'm afraid I might say the same thing if I were interviewing someone I didn't know very well who's been out of work this long.'" The Labor Department also reports that people out of a job for less than five weeks are three times more likely to find a job than people unemployed for more than a year. Still, Jay Goltz, a serial entrepreneur and former Inc. contributor, says there's hope for people with a time lapse on their resumes. “Generally speaking, when the economy’s good and someone’s been out of work for a year, you might look at them funny," he tells the Times.

Stemming the leak. What can you do when your service provider intentionally takes down your site? Not much, it seems. The Wall Street Journal reports that the WikiLeaks domain service provider, EveryDNS.net, made the site inaccessible to U.S. users after what they claimed to be a series of attacks on the site by hackers who threatened "the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure." The Journal explains that "people coordinating such malicious attacks use a network of often virus-infected computers to make multiple requests to call up a website, which can overwhelm the site." WikiLeaks, which is despised, lauded, and lampooned—depending on who you ask—was also recently removed from Amazon servers, revealing the large-scale pressure organizations face in either supporting, or not supporting, a controversial site.

The top start-ups of 2010. The year is not quite over yet, but the folks at ReadWriteWeb are getting an early jump on their year-end lists with their recap of the top 10 start-ups of 2010. Rather than focus on such big name start-ups such as Groupon and Zynga, the list focuses in on some of the year's scrappier start-ups. Among the honorees on this year's list is the voyeuristic ChatRoulette, the photo-sharing app Instagram, and the iPad-friendly reader Flipboard.

Fix it within 24 hours. That's Ford's policy for dealing with engineering flaws, hitches, and customer complaints. Bernie Fowler explains in the Harvard Business Review how his company integrated the "24-hour rule," which he calls an "iconic yet practical measure of performance," into its customer service and engineering. What's more: it is beginning to show results.

Will ending the Bush tax cuts hurt small businesses? No matter how the tussle over this one plays out in Congress, you probably won't see a change in your tax rates. "Not if you're one of the 98 percent of all small business owners who have less than $250,000 a year in adjusted gross income," writes Rhonda Abrams, president of a publisher of books for entrepreneurs, in USA Today. Abrams dissected the political rhetoric behind the fight to extend, or repeal, the Bush-era tax cuts across various income brackets. If small businesses in the highest brackets face a tax hike, will they put a freeze on hiring, as many politicians insist? Nope, she says, since most "small businesses" in this category are actually hedge funds and wealthy individuals who have little to no impact on jobs. And will extending a tax cut for the wealthy have a trickle-down effect on entrepreneurs? Not so, since the Congressional Budget Office found the Bush tax cuts to have a very low stimulative effect.

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