Bizosphere

Carnival of the Capitalists for January 29, 2008

This week’s guest host of the Carnival of The Capitalists is cehwiedel from One Man Band: DIY Online Business for One. She is a freelance commercial writer with 35 years experience writing everything from technical manuals to news releases to website copy.

cehwiedel’s Carnival of The Capitalists:

One of Jay Solo’s avowed goals for CotC v2.0 is making the Carnival worth the time invested — not just by hosts but also by readers.

To me, that means that serving as a fluff-and-bullsh!t filter is an important part of hosting. We hosts serve, that readers may find true gold not fool’s gold.

So here are your hot and savory CotC servings!

Pick of the Litter:

Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends wins Best of Show with the kick-off post of a new section on marketing with “Top Experts Dish with their Best Kept Marketing Secrets.” I had already snagged this post myself. Then Jay forwarded it with his own stamp of approval. Ya knocked it outta da park, Anita!

Small Business & Entrepreneurship:

Matthew Paulson at American Small Business News asks a big question of prospective entrepreneurs: “Are You Ready to Manage Your Small Business?” The decision to go freelance was easy for me personally to avoid enforced transplantation to a cubicle farm by my former employer. By now, almost two years on, I am having way too much fun to consider returning to Cubeville. Matthew Paulson’s article considers what happens at the next stage, when the solo entrepreneur is faced with adding employees to sustain growth.

This might have been filed under “Marketing” but I decided to plump out this section. Besides, writers and novelists generally should consider themselves small business persons. Roland Hachmann at Web Jungle points out a case of a novelist unsatisfied with his publisher’s marketing efforts who took matters into his own hands, with happy results.

Big Business Management:

David Evans at Catalyst Code tangles with a tiger by declaring Steve Jobs’s current digital media strategy an eventual failure in “Apple’s Achilles Heel.” You can’t accuse Evans of picking on the little guy!

Thomas Wailgum at CIO’s Information Collective ponders the lessons learned about risk management and information security by the mind-blowing loss of $7.2 billion by French bank Société Générale at the hands of a single person, Jérôme Kerviel. To read “Computers Aren’t as Devious, or Smart, as Us” is to be nervous about how long it’s been since passwords were force-changed, to sign off more quickly on implementing two-factor authentication, and to feel queasy about the concept of cloud computing.

Karl Goldfiend at Coaching Sales Champions offers stellar advice for finding and growing good sales people in “Finding Talent - Unearthing potential and making stars” — advice that can be applied to finding and growing good people no matter what field.

Markets, Investing & Taxes:

Will the current disarray in the housing market provide an opening for foreign investors to buy out America, Inc.? Ken Sterling at Pivotal Investing thinks that folks in China and Abu Dhabi are more subtle, looking for longer range influence. Read “China, Abu Dhabi Buy Keys To U.S. Influence” for his understanding of their aims.

Speaking of market disarray, did I hear someone mutter “short term stimulus?” James Hamilton at Econbrowser talks right out loud about last week’s Fed rate cut in “The Fed makes its move”. The Fed may have moved, but I’m waiting for the second shoe to drop on Wednesday. If the Fed cuts another half a percentage off its rate, I just might refinance to pay for remodeling our house — long overdue. But if Bernanke wants me to take the longterm risk, he has to do better than last week’s cut!

One more on the housing mess? Sure: it can only get worse! Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade weighs the longterm consequences of buyer’s remorse in “Buyer’s Agency, Due Diligence, and the Illusion of Comity.” Not remorse for purchasing a house — for a poor choice of real estate agents. Melson warns against entering into a business agreement under the illusion that everybody’s friendly. (For another cautionary tale against the notion that “We’re all friends here,” see Thomas Wailgum below.)

If business is good, you’ll need to worry about taxes, corporate and personal. Kurt Brouwer at Fundmastery Blog helps you to understand whether attempts to refill the government treasury by taxing the rascally rich work at all, in “Does Soaking The Rich Actually Work?” Hint: keep in mind the law of unintended consequences.

Marketing:

We have dueling entries!

Rob at BusinessPundit calls attention to an article at Fast Company that declares tipping-point guru Malcolm Gladwell is all wet.

Influentials, schminfluentials!

In contrast, Jonny Bentwood at Technobabble 2.0 has posted a link to a white paper about measuring online influence based on a roundtable last year.

Fight, fight, fight!

Thinking about using online social networks to market your business? Not sure where to start? Then read Brenda Aulinskis’s post at Compete entitled “Behavior Match: Social Networking and Auto Shoppers” that describes matching car buyers with online communities.

In the place of honor at the tail of the carnival comes one of my favorite frequent CotC revellers, Wayne Hurlburt, talking defense in “Recession management: Positive brand image” at Blog Business World.

Closing:

Always ask for the sale!

Suggest entries via bizosphere@gmail.com if you see or have written a great business or economics post. Please include a brief description, as well as the link, naturally. That might help sell it if we’re not sure about including it, in addition to helping us follow it if the topic is esoteric from our perspective. We’re still monitoring thecotc@gmail.com, so no worries if you submit the entry there instead.

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