Entrepreneurship 
Ah, January. Maybe it’s the cold, the eggnog-induced five extra pounds or the impending credit card bill. Anyway you slice it, getting revved up for work in the new year isn’t easy. But here’s the good news: We’ve got five sure-fire ways to start making more money in your business right now. That should get your fire burning!
read more at our Mom Ink blog at YummyMummyClub.ca
Walking through Ikea today reminded of the Dragons’ Den. This week’s episode touched on the concept of the loss leader, a strategy Ikea executes to perfection.
One upside of being a small player in business is flexibility. Before you’ve gone too far down the garden path, and before you’ve invested too much money, you can take advantage of your ability to react to demands in the market.
Gail Vaz-Oxlade is mad, really mad, at Canadian lenders these days. We’ve all seen the author and television host force people to pull up their britches and get their debts squared away on her popular TV shows, ‘Til Debt Do U$ Part and Princess. And while no one is a bigger believer in personal responsibility when it comes to taking on debt, this time Vaz-Oxlade is setting her sights on banks and their ‘irresponsible lending practices.’ She sees a disconnect between the amount of credit lenders are willing to extend and the ability of people to assume that debt. Gail Vaz-Oxlade wants to ‘school’ lenders and is taking advantage of Credit Education Week (Nov. 13 to 19th) to ask Canadians to avoid credit card transactions, using only cash, in order to send a message to lenders.
We caught up with Ms. Vaz-Oxlade to talk about debt specifically as it pertains to entrepreneurs.
My favourite Dragons’ Den lesson this week came courtesy of Carolyne Braid, founder of Pole Fit. Although pole dancing may sound titillating, essentially this was a pitch that tapped into the latest trend for getting in shape. Pole Fit offers fitness classes in Winnipeg and brought in $89k in revenue last year. Braid’s ask of $35k for 20% of her company was to finance studio space, as well selling Pole Fit franchises across Canada.
This week’s episode of Dragons’ Den featured the best and brightest young entrepreneurs from across Canada, and it was fantastic.
Read more at our Yummy Mummy Club blog:
http://www.yummymummyclub.ca/dragons-den-season-six-episode-six-recap
We think that setting yourself up to provide as much separation between your ‘work life’ and your ‘family life’ is one of the keys to success. Here are some simple tricks for creating some sanity-saving, efficiency-boosting work/life boundaries:
Read more at our Yummy Mummy Club blog:
http://www.yummymummyclub.ca/sanity-savers-for-work-at-home-mompreneur
I love Dragons’ Den because of the stories you hear from some amazing Canadian entrepreneurs. But I also love the show because it’s great tv: dramatic, funny, occasionally over-the-top, sometimes sensationalistic. The stories on the show also happen to be true. Like the best reality tv, you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
Read more at our Yummy Mummy Club blog:
http://www.yummymummyclub.ca/dragons-den-season-episode-recap
A few years ago we found ourselves invited to admire our most senior employee’s brand new bedroom set. It was lovely. Believe us, we were delighted for her. But at the time, it made us wonder if her grass wasn’t just a little greener than ours. For example, at that point in time, we both happened to be sleeping on box springs - sans fancy bedroom sets. How was it that our employee was having sweet dreams based on her paycheque while we were still juggling the need to grow our business with the cash we were taking out personally?
Read more at our Yummy Mummy Club blog
The take-away from this week’s episode of Dragons’ Den reinforces one of our long-held beliefs: There is nothing wrong with starting small.
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