Brenda Dronkers: Finding Success with Inflatable Party Spaces

Sometimes the best business ideas are just around us — if you know where to look. Brenda Dronkers, founder of the inflatable party place Pump It Up http://www.pumpitupparty.com/index.htm, got the inspiration for her business in her church’s fall festival in 1999. She was then a California mother of three who struggled to make ends meet [...]

Debbie Weiner: Interior Design for Budget Conscious Families

As a small business, you can’t offer everything to everyone. Hence, niche targeting has been an effective a strategy used by many small businesses to succeed. With more limited resources, you can offer better products or service if you concentrate on a smaller (but profitable) market that the giants of your industry has overlooked. This [...]

Richard Branson: Keys to Success

Richard Branson, CEO of the Virgin Group of Companies, shared the keys to his entrepreneurial success in a recent magazine interview (Playboy, January 2009, pp. 39-46): Hiring great people and keeping them happy. If your staff is inspired and enjoying their work, they’ll do what it takes to make the company succeed. In a nutshell, [...]

Ashley Qualls: 17-Year Old Success Story

One of the most interesting success stories of 2007 is Ashley Qualls, only 17 years of age but has already built a million dollar website. Her site, WhateverLife.com offers free MySpace page layouts giving her main target audience — young girls — the ability to change their MySpace pages using Ashley’s flowers, hearts, celebrities that [...]