wide-full

This first event in Anthill's upcoming 'Tunnel Talk' series, held in conjunction with Design Victoria, is a two-part initiative developed for business builders, commercial...

Today we launch a new blog. ‘The Entrepreneurial Truth’ is written by mag nation fopunder, Sahil Merchant. In this, his first post, Merchant admits that his new venture has yet to turn a cent of profit and offers his own brand of unspun entrepreneurial truth, direct for the coal-face.

For a small car, the Mini packs a big punch: particularly when it comes to its global advertising campaigns.

According to Dun & Bradstreet's (D&B) latest trade payments analysis, the payment terms of Australian firms have declined for the second consecutive quarter. A fall of three days since the previous quarter and 5.6 days in the past six months has reduced terms to 51.8 days – just above pre-crisis levels.

Sponsored Message: Did you know that phone names are up to 20 times easier for your customers to remember than phone numbers? This is something that retail pioneer Gerry Harvey discovered first hand. Discover Gerry Harvey's tips on increasing the effectiveness of your advertising.

Are you... Under 35 years of age, based in New South Wales, with a passion for business, and a desire to learn from and network with other like-minded business builders?

We discovered that the keywords we were using to deliver self-created (text) content could be treated as 'managed interaction objects'. Or in simple terms, keywords could be embellished with logic to allow a mobile user to perform fairly complex but identifiable tasks and functions, by effectively proxying a user of existing system interfaces. From this point it quickly developed where keywords come together to create an 'answerSpace'. The keywords provide structure to the browsing, enquiry and resulting information for users of mobile devices, to access common or high demand elements of an organisation's web and business systems.

I used to Google hairdressers, plumbers, cafes. Now I ask my Facebook and Twitter connections who to go to, because a personal recommendation tells me a lot more than someone’s website can. SEO is doomed. In the format we know it, at least.

Promotion: On the back of Melbourne Pitch Club last month, we are off to Hobart next week (17th March 2011). Pitch Club assists aspiring entrepreneurs to launch their new business ideas. We provide a forum to Pitch ideas; tools to manage and syndicate ideas and match you up with quality advisors and business angels. Pitch Club chapters are in most major cities in Australia.

... I read a book about how surgeons can do better. If medical doctors measured treatment results and received feedback about it, their patients did a lot better compared to patients who had treatment by doctors who did not audit themselves. I am a gynaecological cancer surgeon and responsible for the lives of a large number of women. The idea "how we can do better" is the passion of my life. I developed SurgicalPerformance mostly for myself and the thousands of medical doctors around the globe to enable them to provide better treatments for their patients and become better doctors.

So, you want to start a business but have no time or money? That’s no excuse, according to Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin. For seven days, he blogged about his adventures (and misadventures) creating a business for under $500. Now, you too can learn from his journey, follow in his footsteps and discover that the road-blocks to starting a business are often all in the mind.

We recently got slammed. Last week, I was cc’d on seven emails in the space of a minute. They were all from Wordpress, each one a comment from the mag nation blog waiting for approval. On further examination, the author of all seven comments was the same person, and they had posted the exact same comment on seven different blog posts.

As tempting as it is to confirm whether there’s $5 squillion sitting in the bank account of some nice old reverend from foreign climes who’s devoted his life to poor children and very cute puppies, we both know this one pongs to high heaven of over-ripe spam. But the good news is there are a number of precautions you can take to avoid scams, protect your personal information, and keep your email address safe.

"Book Rapper was born out of the idea of earning money from doing the things that I love. I love reading books so I asked myself, how can I get paid to read books? I knew I didn't just want to do reviews because I think what a book is about is almost like the booby prize. I want to know what the big ideas are but more importantly I want to know how to apply them."

Business coaching is delivered 1-on-1 at a cost of $2000/month. Results vary and the industry is overrun by advisors that have little understanding of financials and no systems to track financial results. Many SMEs need help but cannot afford this type of coaching. IP represents a paradigm shift in the way that business coaching is provided - online, anytime and leveraged. It all comes down to the numbers and the numbers don’t lie. IP pinpoints pain and teaches owners how to improve their bottom line and cash flow. SMEs access the best coaching available at a fraction of the cost.

I was 24 and doing a program called Slingshot, which helps young people in the West realise a business. I noticed that there was very little available for Muslim women and the scarf they were wearing was always held in place by pins. I wanted to create something comfortable and without any pins.

I realised I had to dig up my patio and garden just to install some simple lighting and an irrigation system. Instead, I attached the conduit for each service to my wooden fence and although it did the job, it didn't look good. I then thought what if the system was built into the fence in the first place? I set about designing how this could be achieved and in the process incorporated the use of recyclable materials as well as designing a unique "no bolts or screws" installation system, while making the system aesthetically attractive.

They embody the passions of earnest inventors and the dreams of budding business builders. They are the products of industries both old and new,...

Meet and learn from other young business builders. Share a drink. Have a laugh. Gain insights from a panel of business builders. And most importantly of all, help us build a culture of entrepreneurship in NSW!

Last week, I was fortunate to be among a small group of people who attended Anthill's Grant Funding by Design Masterclass, in partnership with Design Victoria. In addition to providing an extremely candid explanation of what grant assessors are looking for, AusIndustry's Samara Fitzgerald-Gelnay provided an extremely helpful document on the programs and grants available to growing, innovative Australian businesses through AusIndustry.