The idea I picked to give advice to for ideablob.com Week at the Entrepreneurial Mind is one that offers an innovative product tied to wellness.

Individuals begin fitness programs each year, but set unrealistic goals or improperly structure their fitness programs and eventually lose interest. I’m developing a portable touch-screen device equipped with a heart rate monitor, acting as a personal trainer. The device uploads workouts from our website, where based off an individual’s fitness goals, they can build their own workout or use one of ours. The device displays progress charts, advice for future workouts, and can incorporate daily nutrition information. The website also functions as a social networking website centered around device results for exercise gurus, athletes, and anyone who enjoys living a healthy lifestyle.

While I think this is a cool idea, the entrepreneurs need to keep their eye on the big picture — that is the future of healthcare policy in the US — and not just their customers and competitors.
My advice:

Wellness might well become the “next big thing” in healthcare. The reason I say “might” is due to the uncertainty of the elective and what healthcare plan ends up being passed in the next president’s term.
This is a great example of a good idea that may blossom or fade due to macro trends outside of the entrepreneur’s control.
If healthcare stays a primarily private sector industry, products like yours has a bright future. Health plans will be trying to implement more programs and initiatives to help their population of covered lives get healthier. As a society we have become too sedentary and are eating too many calories. It is taking its toll on health care costs. Insurance plans are trying to find ways to incentivize people to get healthier and use fewer resources for healthcare. Your product would be a great tool for this.
If healthcare goes with a more public payment model in the next few years, we will likely have all attention focused on lobbying to keep coverage for certain illnesses. We will also see resources going to create healthcare entities that will be able to maximize their market share of federalized healthcare dollars (think economic rent seeking). Not as much money will be going to wellness.
When I was and entrepreneur in the healthcare industry we paid attention to the macro changes in the 1980s and 1990s. We saw a shift from insurance to managed care and positioned our business accordingly. We saw Medicaid being pushed down from the federal level to individual states — again we shaped our strategy to meet this macro trend. We still paid attention to our customers and competition, but those really involved more short-term tactical decisions. Our strategy was shaped by the direction of those broader trends.
Don’t just look at your competitive environment — keep your eye on the macro trends that may shape your future. See which way the election takes our country as it will have a huge impact on healthcare and on the wellness sector you are operating in with your new product.

Tune Your World = Music + Microfinance is the next idea I am offering advice as part of ideablob.com Week at the Entrepreneurial Mind. This one caught my attention as it addresses an issue that I hear about every day here in Nashville — the radical changes happening in the music can i buy topamax over the counter industry.
Here is their idea:

Every artist has the same problem of obtaining capital for their next recording. Tune Your World provides the solution of applying the principles of micro-financing to the music industry. Our groundbreaking approach is the creation of peer-to-peer micro-financing of new music projects – enabling fans to deliver start-up capital to aspiring musicians from developing countries around the world. Tune Your World operates on a people-to-people model. Musicians obtain funding for new recordings directly from their fans without giving up ownership or control. Our mission is to revitalize the music industry in places where the music industry has never worked very well. www.tuneyourworld.com

My advice:

I like this idea. It addresses a real need for struggling musicians in the digital age — seed funding for recording.
The biggest challenge is going to be getting the musicians to repay their micro-investors. One of the things that makes the micro finance program Kiva.org so compelling is the high rate of repayment of the micro loans — I believe it is about 97%. If you cannot achieve that kind of repayment, you are not likely to have repeat “investors.” Without people coming back time and time again to reinvest in artists your Tune Your World will not be as likely to become a sustainable program. You need to help the musicians develop business models that will enable them to repay their micro investments.

In my third installment for ideablob.com Week at the Entrepreneurial Mind I chose to offer advice to the idea titled Helping Teachers PayOff Student Loans. Here is their idea:

I am currently working on starting a non-for-profit to help third-year teachers pay off student loans. Do you know that most teacher’s loans are three times what they will make in one year as a first-year teacher? Do you know that teacher’s annual increases do not even cover cost-of-living expenses? Do you know that most new teachers have to work a part-time job at night or on the weekends (and during the summer when they should be able to refresh and plan for the next year’s class) just to make ends meet? That means many of them can’t make the full commitment to the kids which is the reason they opted to get certified to and take a lower paying job to begin with.

Here is my advice:

You need to find start-up money from a foundation that supports education. Do some searches to see which foundations give money in that space. Foundations always have detailed information of specifically what they will and won’t give to, and often include a list of previous grants that they have awarded. You can find all of this on their websites. I would suggest you use the $10,000 as seed money to develop a strong grant proposal that meets their criteria. Hire a grant writing specialist as a consultant to help attract the big money you will need for this program.
Also, think about setting up an endowment with the gifts you receive. Donors like a gift that keeps on giving. By setting up the donations in an endowment you only use the earnings from the gifts each year to pay out to teachers.
I would make a giving the awards to teachers a competitive process. Develop criteria, such as community service or their engagement with students beyond the classroom, as how you evaluate each teacher’s application.

The second idea that I am commenting on from ideablob.com is College Connection Website – One stop location for all college students to find entertainment, events, and employment in their region:

The proposed website would effectively connect college students in a particular region, in this first case the greater Harrisburg metro area, alerting them to the best entertainment, events, discounts, internships, job openings, things to do, and places to see in the region. Part of the initiative also includes a student comprised team in charge of facilitating monthly events that will allow students from all participating schools to interact, network, and get connected to the Harrisburg area. The initiative is specifically targeting the brain drain in the region, facilitating student engagement and personal connection to the area so that they’ll be more inclined to stay after graduation.

My advice:

My question to you is this a simple one. Where is the revenue stream?
An opportunity needs not only a market need, which you have addressed, but the ability to generate cash flow to support the costs and earn a profit (or if it is a social venture, build a reserve fund).
I am not saying that there is no possible revenue stream. I just don’t see that you have thought about that part of the idea.
The registration fees and money from student government suggested by the previous comment is possible, but I doubt that this would amount to much. Who would pay to support this site? Advertisers? Maybe, but they to see the likelihood of volume and the right people coming to the site.

You might have thought this was Small Business Week — however, it is really ideablob.com Week here at the Entrepreneurial Mind. They have asked me to be the guest advisor for the week. I will be posting some of the ideas from ideablob.com along with my advice.
Here is my first installment.
The idea:

My fiancee and I were in a national student organization event in Atlanta when we joined the Entrepreneurial Challenge. We came up with The Hummus House. Our slogan was ‘Hummus where the heart is’. Essentially it would be a restaurant that produced and sold a large variety of hummus flavor, bread/pita, chips, and for non-hummus enthusiasts we could sell salsa, chips, sandwiches, and salads. We would also provide a list of wines or drinks that would compliment the flavors of the hummus. The restaurant would have graffiti on the walls, local artists paintings mounted on the walls, warm lighting and a welcoming atmosphere with local bands/musicians performing.

My Advice:

There is a reason that bankers run screaming from restaurants — they have high failure rates.
That being said, it always amazes me how well certain niche restaurants can do in the market. Before launching this concept, make sure that the market is big enough and passionate enough to support this very specific niche.
You need to find a location that has enough people passionate enough about hummus — sorry that ain’t me — so that you can sustain enough traffic to make this concept work.
Know that any niche restaurant may end up being a fad. Keep your debt low and your lease short-term so if the passion for hummus passes, you can ease out of the business with little residual financial burden.

Entrepreneur.com predicts ten businesses that will go the way of buggy whip manufacturers:

• Record stores:  My students would agree,  They have already transitioned our campus-based business that was a record store into a “dorm store”
• Camera film manufacturing:  there goes my Instamatic
• Crop dusters
• Gay bars
• Newspapers:Can blogs be next??
• Pay phones:  When was the last time you actually saw one?
• Used bookstores:  Does that mean that students will also stop reselling my textbooks?
• Piggy banks
• Telemarketing: Yeah, right….
• Coin-operated arcades

Can you think of any you want to add?

Well I found her in a pawnshop
somewhere up in Ohio
where I guess some rounder came up short
and he had to let her go
It cost me ninety dollars
but it’s worth much more by far
cause I never had a better friend
than that old beat up guitar
Jerry Jeff Walker
This old Jerry Jeff Walker song has always had a soft spot in my heart as it reminds me of my guitar. I have a 1961 Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar. Although I did not find her in a pawn shop, I did buy her used in the early 1970s from a used musical instrument store. (And it was not actually in Ohio, but Fond du Lac, Wisconsin). But, I digress…

It looks like this:

It is the only guitar I have ever owned. I have never wanted to replace her in large part because her sound has gotten richer and richer over the years. The older it gets, the better it sounds. A new product has been developed by a couple of entrepreneurs out of Florida that might change my thinking. I first heard about it when a colleague of mine attended a business plan competition in California with one of our students. The company is called ToneRite, and it rapidly speeds up the “aging” process of musical instruments to create an old sound out of relatively new instruments. Cool idea!