Several years ago, my wife brought up with me the topic of purchasing a nice mini-grand piano to put into our front, formal room. We did a little research and found out that we’d be looking at spending in the range of $5,000 to $10,000 to get something that matched what my wife and I…
Several years ago, I was asked by a company that had over 50 employees to help their struggling marketing team, who was sending over to the sales team under the name of “qualified leads” simply a list of names, phone numbers and email addresses (many of them outdated) that had been purchased from Data.com. Desperate…
Last fall I had the opportunity to attend a community-based self-reliance class called “How to Start and Grow Your Own Business” along with twelve other people who were in various stages of business development. Some only had ideas they were hoping to vet. Some were operating fledgling companies or part time side businesses, and some…
I’ve made my career out of building and selling online businesses. After trying to start an automotive business (an endeavor that was going to cost us over a million dollars to get off the ground) with my father and brothers, then realizing how little risk was involved in selling things online, I jumped into the…
It’s no secret that Americans are actively shedding the Judeo-Christian moral conduct codes that have set our society apart from most of the rest of the world for generations. We seem to be highly conscious of the direction we’re heading. A Gallup survey started in 2002 that assesses public opinion about morals in the United…
Chase Bank Summary Chase Bank (part of JP Morgan Chase & Co.) is the largest bank in the United States in terms of assets. Chase has the second most branches (5,193) of any bank in the United States. Only Wells Fargo has more locations (5,930) than Chase. Chase’s core banking products, like most other banks,…
Credit Reporting Agencies and FICO Score Understanding how significantly your credit score affects your access to borrow money, you naturally want to know what factors affect your credit score. I will answer that question for you, and I’ll provide other details related to credit scores that should help you make good financial decisions as you…
I love to see small, local businesses thrive. On the other hand, I hate it when I see a local store or restaurant shut its doors after not having enough customers to keep it afloat. In fact, whenever I’ve seen that happen, I naturally feel a sense of guilt for not having solicited the business…
My wife and I have built our careers together creating online businesses and selling products to people all over the world. Operating online businesses has always tended to put us into contact with a lots of regular and interesting types of people, some of them awesome, and some of them not so awesome. Some of…
In the spring of 2008, the online sporting goods business my wife I had built and operated over the four previous years was growing and things were looking up for us. We were still inexperienced enough to not be considered experts at running a business by most professional standards. Almost everything we’d learned to make…