Thesaurus Generator?

A source of mine, customer service guru Micah Solomon, alerted me to something funny last week.

A column in which I interviewed him popped up on an obscure website without any link backs or explanation as to where it came from.

That's not all too uncommon in this age of Internet ripoffs. What was notable about this web version of my column is that it read ike it went through a meatgrinder. Or, rather, a weird thesaurus.

So my words, "good friend" became "fine companion." Micah's book, "Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit," became "Incomparable Service, Incomparable Profit."

My tagline stayed in place, but instead of, "Karen E. Klein is a Los Angeles-based writer who covers entrepreneurship and small-business issues," it now read:


Karen E. Klein is a Los Angeles-based writer who covers business enterprising and little-business issues.

I kind of like it! I ran a WhoIs search on the offending site and found a Russian address. I sent a "Hey! Cut it out!" email to the address listed for the site admin, but I doubt it will do much.

Anybody else had this happen?

Home-Based Businesses

This Thursday, at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern, the U.S. Small Business Administration will hold a web chat on growing a home-based business.

Here's the pitch:

WASHINGTON – What do Apple Computer, Hershey's, Mary Kay Cosmetics, and the Ford Motor Company have in common? These well-known corporations all started out as home-based businesses. In fact, more than half of all U.S. businesses are based out of an owner's home. Starting a home-based business has many rewards as well as challenges. Join chat host Boyd Wright to learn what it takes to grow a successful home-based business.

Web chat participants can post questions online in advance and on July 28, join the live web chat by going online to SBA.gov, and click on the web chat event under What’s New.

An Exciting Opportunity

This Thursday, I'll be hosting a web chat with John Suh, CEO of LegalZoom.

You can see the broadcast at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern. It's part of the CredibilityLIVE series, hosted by Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp.

I'll be asking John, a serial entrepreneur, about recruiting talented people, where to look for the next big idea, and the keys to building a successful business.

Check it out!

Old Boys' Club

What do they have in common? Brooksley Born, Sheila Bair, Christina Romer, Elizabeth Warren.

Strong women economists, outside of the old boys' club, responsible first to the American people - including small business owners and those of us who are self-employed.

And all of them sidelined, shut up, insulted and discounted.

There's a disturbing and discouraging pattern here. We need to recognize it and call it out.

(h/t to Desiree, who recommended the excellent Born documentary)

Call It the Soupy Sales Special

In light of the "humble pie" served up to Rupert Murdoch in London yesterday, Businessweek.com does a round up of the high and mighty being felled by baked goods throughout recent history.

It seems that the pie-in-the-face treatment is a favorite of animal rights groups.

But no one mastered the art quite like Soupy Sales.

Why the Disconnect?

New job creation is lagging woefully behind, our legislators can't seem to compromise for the public good and the middle class is experiencing record wage stagnation - if they're lucky enough to still be employed at all.

Pretty dismal stuff, right?

Then you get a report like this one, from ThomasNet's Industry Market Barometer:

From upgrading facilities to buying technology, industrial companies are confidently investing in their businesses to build upon a period of sustained growth, according to the results of ThomasNet’s newest Industry Market Barometer™ (IMB).

Nearly half (45 percent) of the companies responding report growth over the last six months of 2010, and 88 percent of those are confident in their future expansion. The survey reveals a set of specific strategies that fueled this growth, from customer retention efforts to movement into new markets and product development. Bolstered by the results of these strategies, respondents are investing more in their companies and recruiting talent in anticipation of increased customer demand.

What in the world is happening to create such a huge disconnect between our economic sectors?

I certainly can't explain it, but it might have something to do with this Tale of Two Recoveries from the New York Times.

Even as the stock market and industrial production have recovered strongly over the past few years, jobs and personal income are way down.

Thomas Friedman addresses one of the causes in his New York Times column:

Look at the news these days from the most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy — Silicon Valley. Facebook is now valued near $100 billion, Twitter at $8 billion, Groupon at $30 billion, Zynga at $20 billion and LinkedIn at $8 billion. These are the fastest-growing Internet/social networking companies in the world, and here’s what’s scary: You could easily fit all their employees together into the 20,000 seats in Madison Square Garden, and still have room for grandma. They just don’t employ a lot of people, relative to their valuations, and while they’re all hiring today, they are largely looking for talented engineers.

What does this mean? Basically, we must all adopt entrepreneurial mindsets, and plan our careers accordingly. Here's how Friedman concludes, quoting an upcoming book by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Garrett Hoffman:

It also means using your network to pull in information and intelligence about where the growth opportunities are — and then investing in yourself to build skills that will allow you to take advantage of those opportunities. Hoffman adds: “You can’t just say, ‘I have a college degree, I have a right to a job, now someone else should figure out how to hire and train me.’ ” You have to know which industries are working and what is happening inside them and then “find a way to add value in a way no one else can. For entrepreneurs it’s differentiate or die — that now goes for all of us.”

Ars Gratis ... Huh?

All too often, there's a disconnect between the artistes of this world and the bottom-liners.

We don't always think of business consultants as artsy-fartsy types, but indeed the best among them have strong visionary and creative stripes. They must solve problems by looking into a company's future and devising solutions that are sometimes a bit "out there."

So what happens when they run up against the coin-rattlers, who can't see beyond next quarter's projections? They must finesse the situation, frame their statements and think about "art, for money's sake."

So says my long-time source Ray Coen, food and restaurant consultant extraordinaire, on his blog this week. Check it out - it's a terrific read.