Archive for the 'Trends' Category

Tuesday night I’ll be at a meeting of a company seeking to open in my rural town. They’re a national company doing medical transcription. Due to contract obligations, the transcription must be done “in house”… no home based transcription. I was asked if this would be a problem for people who normally want to work [...]

North Carolina realtors according to the Triad Business Journal As a Realtor with Re/Max, Marks drives about 400 miles each week just for business. And because all Realtors, even those with large national firms, are independent contractors, Marks is not reimbursed for gas or vehicle maintenance costs. “From a business sense, it just makes more [...]

Everybody who’s little thinks it’s impossible to compete with the Big Box stores. If price is the sole criteria, perhaps that’s true. But there are signs that the Big Boxes like Home Depot have become so big, they’ve created their own downfall. The opportunity exists for small, responsive start up firms to do very well working by doing [...]

MSN had an article about the top 10 Careers requiring only an associate’s degree. Increasingly businesses want to hire people with specialized training … a few years after college but not necessarily a “doctorate” and often no B.A. degree required. Some of these “jobs” also easily become “businesses”. Here’s their top listing…but others could lend [...]

From the Creative Real Estate Forum John: Inflation, and health costs are the two big “unknowns” in retire planning. For this reason, I did not count on a fixed percent (5%) for a certain target fund amount ($1,000,000). I watched my dad and his contemporaries plan for retirement, and in the late 1960′s, when some [...]

Why will you be able to buy some dirt cheap businesses in the next 3 – 5 years? The Baby Boomers will want to cash out and have just have fun in retirement. With lots of businesses hitting the market at the same time, the supply will exceed the demand making business acquisition a “buyer’s market”… or [...]

Many people with “daytime jobs” have work at home jobs on the side to prepare for retirement. I interviewed one such part time “work at home” entrepreneur yesterday. He plans to retire in a few years, so in the last decade or so he accumulated a portfolio of rental properties. The mortgages are timed to [...]