TheADDentrepreneur.com

After reading a chapter from one of my favorite books Predictably Irrational  I learned how the brain processes information all based on comparisons.  In the book he gives an example that some restaurants will put an expensive item on the menu not necessarily to sell that item, but so by comparison the 2nd most expensive thing on the menu doesn't seem so pricey. This whole concept is VERY interesting to me and I've used it to my advantage in more ways than I can even recall at this point.  I wanted to share 1 particular application I came up with that I think is a powerful way to improve your chances of selling or even buying on Craigslist. Years ago when I had to sell my Honda Civic, I looked up the Blue Book value, which at the time was $3,500 and posted it on Craigslist for that amount.  After not getting that many responses I came up with an idea to use the newly acquired lesson from Predictably Irrational.  I went on Craigslist Los Angelos (I live in Ph...

For several years I was teaching entrepreneurship to high school kids through a not-for-profit called Startup Corps .  The idea was to get kids to actually create businesses, not just fantasize about it.  Initially we worked mostly in inner city schools, but eventually we developed a group we called "The Hub" which was the best and the brightest young entrepreneurs from all over Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs. I had gotten so good at helping kids develop their ideas into something that possibly could work, when we launched The Hub at First Round Capital I was one of the main instructors.  I'd meet with the kids weekly to teach and mentor.  In this blog post I wanted to share a couple of those experiences. The best idea -in my opinion- to ever come out of the program was from a young girl at an inner city school.  If I remember correctly the school was in Germantown, not a nice area.  Most of the kids had little or no support from their families. ...

This is not a business idea, it's more more like a marketing idea to help a supermarket get customers to come into the store (which I imagine is half the battle), buy more products, and differentiate themselves with a competitive advantage (until the other markets start copying the idea at least). You pick a day of the month -perhaps a typically slow day- like the 1st Tuesday of the month.  On that day you are going to offer samples of 2 categories.  So in other words, lets say the categories this month are Whole Wheat Bread, and Tomato Sauce.  You have a jar of every tomato sauce opened and ready to be sampled as well as all the whole wheat bread loaves.  As a consumer, I see 20+ brands/styles of whole whet bread, but I'm not going to buy every one to taste them all and figure out which one I like best, so I stick with what I know.  A few years ago a friend recommended Rao's Tomato Sauce, and now I am obsessed and buy it exclusively.  I never would have ...