If you’re one of the courageous people who have thrown off the yoke of working for the man and decided to start a business of your own, you’ve undoubtedly wrestled with the question of who your customers are. Just who will buy your services or products? Are they men or women? What age groups do they represent? In short, who are you trying to reach? The answer of course, defines your niche. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there were 28 million small businesses in 2010. More than three-quarters were non-employers, meaning they are owner-worker shops. They’re freelancers of every variety. Baby sitters, dog walkers and marketing specialists. They’re…
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Footnotes and Shoes Interesting facts about shoes and who wears them
When you look down at your feet, do your shoes give away your birthplace, income level or your social status? Do they tell the world what you do for a living, what your hobbies are or whether or not you’re married? Well, they used to. You Are What You Wear Shoes have been around in one form or another for thousands of years. Some of the earliest shoes were actually sandals worn by Egyptians and depicted the owner’s pecking order in society. Peasants tended to wear “comfortable” sandals made from woven papyrus with a flat sole that were lashed to their ankles with reeds. More affluent citizens could be identified…
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(Don’t Let Me Be) The Last Virgin in Saigon Song writing isn't as easy as it looks... even when you're trying to slide into home
I’d been fogging up the windows with Magda Biedermann for the better part of our senior year. As graduation approached, I had only one thing on my mind: consummating our relationship (and coincidentally, losing my standing as a virgin) before being drafted and sent off to Vietnam. Her motives were considerably more funereal: she wanted to get married and carry our little bun in her oven. My rapaciousness was no match for Magda’s wholesome ambitions, so progress was painfully slow. While I was able to reach first base through a cunning synthesis of deception, chicanery and Olympic-class flexibility, there were no indications that I’d get any further, let alone slide…
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Acting is the Life (Sentence) for Me How prison helped me win an Academy Award
With less than seven months go to before my next parole hearing, I decided to get my house in order. Or, should I say my cell. I was doing 15 to life at Sing Sing for a long list of class C misdemeanors, including furnishing cigarettes to my 12-year-old sister and her friends. Since my parole requests had already been denied 7 times, I decided to try a radical approach to making myself appear rehabilitated: taking acting classes. Sing Sing started offering vocational arts classes to career felons like me through the Convicts and Rehabilitated Actors Program. Founded in 1996, CRAP was modeled after New York’s famous Actors Studio and…
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Screenplays Are Easy What do MASH, Law & Order and The Sopranos have in common?
Late Sunday evening, the phone rang. Which, in and of itself wouldn’t be remarkable except that I had been in the Federal Witness Protection Program for over six months. What was more intriguing was the nature of the call and how it would change my life forever–writing Academy Award worthy screenplays. “Hello, is this Allen Smith?” It is. “This is Yolanda Vonnoh and I’m the Dean of Curriculum at John Wilkes Booth Community College. I got your name from one of the articles you wrote for The Morning Sunset and would like to know if you’d be interested in teaching a class for us?” The Morning Sunset was a throw-away…