FREE Workshop - "How the Library Helps Your Business"

FREE Workshop - "How the Library Helps Your Business"

For those entrepreneurs and inventors ready to start your own business, please venture down to the Central Library of the Saint Louis Public Library, located at 1301 Olive Street, St. Louis, MO 63103 - 2325. We have an excellent free workshop that you can sign-up for. "How the Library Helps Your Business" is a new workshop that will be taught by our Business Librarians on Wednesday, September 23, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.It will be taught in our second floor training room that is close to the Locust Street entrance.

When you attend, you will get free information on the valuable resources that an entreprenur can use at our Central Library. We will cover business databases that are available both in and outside the Library (if you have a SLPL Library card you can access many databases from home. Government documents and websites and new books that we have available will also be discussed.

 Please call (314) 539-0390 or email, sfraser@slpl.org, to register. Space is limited.

Book Review: Users, Not Customers

Users, Not Customers: Who Really Determines the Success of Your Business by Aaron Shapiro, 243 pages

In Users, Not Customers, Shapiro turns our focus to the digital users of a business rather than the tried-and-true customers. Shapiro argues that users--here defined as digital followers or users of websites, with an emphasis on "digital--are the key to creating a successful business, and outlines the ways in which a company can capitalize on this segment.

While Shapiro makes some excellent points about website usability and rolling out tech innovations at the right time (it does your company no good to be first to market with something if it's riddled with bugs or if the supporting tech isn't yet ubiquitous), a lot of what he says may be difficult for a small company to implement. Paradoxically, it also sounds difficult for well-established brick-and-mortar businesses to make the switch to user-centric design without some major cash going into it. There's a lot to be gleaned from this book, though I don't know that many companies can use all of it, at least not all at once. It's worth a read though, if your business is in the market for a digital overhaul.

Entrepreneurs and Intellectual Property

When entrepreneurs are becoming more focused on starting their own business, they need to consider protecting their intellectual property. Why should they think this way? Because they should know that someone can take their business idea and, if not patented, make it their own. That's when you will find in stores spin-offs of familiar products with odd names. These entrepreneurs took someone else's idea and had it rebranded.

Thus, if you have a great idea, you should consider filing for a patent. Patents will offer fourteen to twenty years as yours. Fourteen years is the life of a design patent, whereas twenty years is for a utility patent. However, you must remember that it could take about three years to have your patent examined. There are over 500,000 patent applications waiting to be reviewed by a patent examiner.

If you are willing to spend an extra one thousand dollars ($1,000), then you can have a decision within a year. This is considered to be a prioritized patent application. Do not forget that it is up to you, the entrepreneur to sue a potential competitor for infringing on your right to an idea. The United States Patent and Trademark Office just grants a patent, it so not defend it for you if someone else takes your idea and starts selling your product or service.

Prototypes should be carefully designed. However, you should get a confidentiality agreement in place before you start contacting a manufacturer who could build a prototype of your idea. It should be your agreement that your attorney has written in your best interest. Once you are confident you have a prototype, you should be well on your way to beginning a marketing scheme.

Next step will be to confirm your patent is accepted. This usually takes about three years, so in the mean time, hold back on running to a trade show and giving away free samples. That could destroy your patent chances.

Book Review: Risk Intelligence

Risk Intelligence: How to Live With Uncertainty by Dylan Evans, 276 pages

How do you make decisions? Do you carefully weigh all the factors, creating pro/con lists and weighing the risks inherent in choosing the wrong thing? Do you just wing it? Evans argues that good risk-takers have something called high risk intelligence, meaning that they know how to estimate probabilities accurately. A lot of us, he argues, are either underconfident or overconfident in our abilities to make these estimates.

Despite the fact that this was much more of a psychology or even math book, there is inherent uncertainty and risk involved with owning or running a business, which place it somewhere in a Venn diagram of business literature. That's certainly true, and some people may find Evans' focus on probabilities fascinating and useful. However, as someone who has been known to say that there's a 50% chance of anything happening (either it will or it won't), I was largely frustrated by this book. (And based on what Evans was saying, I think he'd be equally frustrated with me.) I enjoyed a few of the chapters, particularly about those about the tricks of the mind and being aware of what you actually know and don't know, but I didn't care for the heavy emphasis on mathematical equations. This was similar to Think Twice, which has also been reviewed on this blog; of the two, I prefer Think Twice.

Reference USA - Database to search for businesses

Reference USA is a well-known database that is available on all of our Saint Louis Public Library reference computers.  I like to recommend our entrepreneurs to use this database when they are beginning to write their business plan. Why you may ask do I recommend it? Because you have the ability to use North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) to search for your type of business.

Before you start using this database, you must decide if you want to create a custom search. I personally recommend doing so, as you will then get exactly the type of business you are searching for as well as the location. I suggest selecting the geographic location (by zip code) and then by NAICS code. If you put in the city and state it will over ride your search by zip code.

Searching by zip code, combined with the NAICS code, provides the entrepreneur with a list of all the names of potential competitors. Once you have selected custom search for geographic location and NAICS code, you then add your specific search.

By selecting the specific result, you will find a screen that provides much, much more information. On the detailed screen you will have the following information to use: Competitors, names of executives, along with their gender and contact information, number of employees, volume of sales, if it is a head office location, and even articles where that company was in the news.

When you have your Saint Louis Public Library card and four digit pin number you can conveniently access this database from outside the Library.  First select "Online Learning and Reference," then select "Databases."

If you have any questions about using this database, please do not hesitate to give us a call.

Book Review: The Lemonade Stand

The Lemonade Stand: What Every Entrepreneur Should Know to Succeed in Starting and Running Any Business by Ara Bagdasarian and Nick Gustavsson, 192 pages

The Lemonade Stand focuses on entrepreneurs and starting small businesses. As in other business books, the authors offer up a list of principles for their "Lemonade Stand" method; what makes this one different is that Bagdasarian and Gustavsson have some fairly unorthodox principles, including forgetting about a business plan and investors, and not setting out to compete. When they explain themselves, these actually make sense, especially for someone with a small business in mind (they often use the example of someone starting a lawn-care business or car wash). There's also a LOT of emphasis on optimism and learning from problems, which are probably pretty good ideals for everyone, not just entrepreneurs.

What I didn't particularly like about this book was the fact that they pushed the "lemons into lemonade" analogy a little too hard; it's not a bad metaphor to use, but it gets old quickly. I wish they'd introduced the idea at the beginning and maybe touched on it again toward the end rather than referring to problems as "lemons that must be squeezed" on nearly every page of the book.

On the whole, however, this was an easy-to-read book with some good ideas. Anyone thinking of starting a business would probably appreciate some of what the authors are trying to say.

Business News Roundup

Governor Jay Nixon announces he's matching $10 million in funds for University of Missouri-St. Louis' Business School (St Louis Post-Dispatch)


Give STL day surpasses $2 million in donations (St. Louis Business Journal)


Missouri jury awards woman $77 million for mismanaging funds in case against Wells Fargo (Business Ledger)


Bridge Bread will be opening a storefront on Cherokee Street in South St Louis City, set for June 1! (Sorkins Directory of Business and Government)