A true ninja riddle...

What do two Yorkies, one rescue mix dog, one rescue cat, 2 horses and an sundry of various raccoons, fox and other critters have in common?

They make up the furry pet family of Shed Ninja's creators.

If you have pets you need to familiarize yourself with the Shed Ninja.

The Shed Ninja is a double-edged grooming brush designed for use on both dogs and cats.

Likely, if you have pets, especially those with long fur or those that shed a lot, you’ll want to invest in a Shed Ninja it will help reduce the amount of unwanted fur shed on your furniture throughout your home.

It’s not only great for pet owners, but also for pet grooming businesses and vet clinics.

I always love finding useful products like this.  Usually, because they’re simple ideas that make so much sense and are truly ingenious.  This is one of those products that makes you wonder, “why didn’t I think of that?”

Posted by Nick Venturella

If you’ve ever wanted to know how a lawyer pulled off wearing yoga pants to court, or how to delegate tasks to Fancy Hands then you’ll want to check out Cynthia Conlin’s blog, Facing the Sun.

Cynthia is a lawyer, writer, entrepreneur and optimist, among other things.  While by trade she’s a lawyer that is not necessarily the main focus of Facing the Sun.  

Facing the Sun is a mix of a personal and professional blog.  It offers real value in the stories and posts Cynthia shares.  She covers all sorts of topics like, business, leadership, lifestyle, productivity and even technology.

Not only do her posts cover a range of engaging topics, but they’re well written, informative and entertaining.

Facing the Sun is also a well designed blog site.  It’s easy to navigate and read -- plenty of high quality photos and proper use of white-space.

For professional women, and men, I would recommend adding this blog to your RSS feed, or at least bookmark it in your browser to return often.

Posted by Nick Venturella

I remember back in University (or college if you're in the States) being on staff of the student-run newspaper. 

The paper served as a voice and point-of-view of the students on a variety of campus, regional, national and even international news topics.

Well, an online organization called, Affairs Today, is taking the student journal concept to another, well-connected level.

Affairs Today focuses on global business and politics from a student point-of-view.  It was founded in early 2013 in Glasgow, where it is today.  The goal is to provide a student perspective on business and politics news to share and reach other students around the world.

If you go to Affairs Today you find a plethora of news stories.  Here is a sampling of the news categories covered:

• News
• Opinion
• Interviews
• Travel
  
• Lifestyle
• Career

There is no shortage of useful business and politics news coverage on Affairs Today, and you'll get an angle on each story that may not be what you would find in typical mainstream news outlets, which is a breath of fresh air.

Posted by: Nick Venturella

Have you tried to make money online without very good results?  If you’re trying to build your Tiny Career, like many who come to this site, then the answer is likely, “yes.”

The truth is, you’re not alone.  In fact, I’ve been there too.  There is a ton of information on the internet about how to generate income leveraging it, but these days you have to be careful what you’re reading and determine what’s legitimate and what’s not.

I will say, that there are some online courses and opportunities that are legitimate.  One of which you may want to review for yourself is Swipe Vault Connection.

The premise behind Swipe Vault Connection is to educate you about how to set up your online business for success.  To do this Swipe Vault teaches you how to utilize information about what is selling well online already -- how those products are being marketed -- and swiping those concepts to modify and use for your own business’s success.

It’s essentially reverse engineering the sales and marketing of top selling products, but in this case the reverse engineering part is done for you.

Posted by Nick Venturella

Every business needs an online presence these days.  

It doesn't matter if you're running an Internet-based consulting service or a bricks and mortar retail shop.  Having a website is to businesses now what the phone book used to be -- it's how you're found.

According to a 2013 survey of more than 3,800 small businesses, conducted by Google and research company Ipsos, 55% of small businesses do not have a website.

While there are many tools for the do-it-yourselfer when it comes to developing your own website it's still a good idea to hire a website expert.  

Such an expert can help you work through all the details that will ensure your site effectively accomplishes what you want it to.  

It's a good idea to have a website strategy and a plan to execute that strategy as well as a way to capture and make improvements to your site based on feedback once the site is live.

If you're in the Midland or Odessa, Texas-area you might consider Basin Hosting for your website development needs.

Posted by Nick Venturella

Likely you've heard the expression:  "you can do anything if you put your mind to it."

Well, there is some truth to that if you've ever experienced the positive power of meditation.

Meditation allows one to harness their mind's power, which can result in more thought clarity, peacefulness and happiness.

Training the brain to focus one's attention can help cultivate peak performance in any pursuit.

According to the Huffington Post -- Meditation 101: The Neuroscience of Why Meditation Works -- article author, Ashley Turner cited the following:

Therefore, it makes sense that if you can slow down your mind's activities to embrace slower brain wavelengths you can become more mindful of your thoughts in a way that can positively affect other aspects of your life -- personally and professionally.

Review the video above in YouTube (or click this link to view the video directly in YouTube), then follow the link in the YouTube video notes following the video.

Posted by Nick Venturella

Every online entrepreneur strives to generate passive income.  Passive income is money that comes in any time of the day or night -- 24 / 7 / 365.

The idea is that you create a system, often online (like a website) that automates the sale of your product or service.  Or generates income from advertising on your site that is seen and clicked on from high volumes of traffic.  Passive income can even be a product you create once (like an ebook or web-based software) and sell over and over again and again online with your automated selling system.

In any case, passive income usually requires you to initially set up some sort of selling system, but once that system is set up and marketed, sales and monetary transactions can take place without a need for you to actually be involved for that transaction to occur.

If you’re looking to learn more about passive income and begin generating your own, check out Dreaming2Win.com, sign up with your email address and get a free guide to generating passive income quickly.

Posted by Nick Venturella

Often small business owners and entrepreneurs feel isolated in their role as the owner and sometimes sole decision maker of their company.

Even if you’re a solo entrepreneur, the best way to grow your business is to not go it alone.

Most business owners benefit, and grow their business, when they have help from a mentor, a business coach or consultant they work with -- usually someone with the experience to help you, but also someone who is not part of your company, which helps to keep biases at bay.

Another great way to gain the help business owners want and crave is to join a mastermind group.

Mastermind groups are typically made up of other similar business owners, all meeting together sharing their unique business challenges.  The group then spends time discusses each owner’s challenge to help come up with a solution and some direction of how they could move forward and even overcome the challenge.

Mastermind groups can work well because you’re meeting with a small group of like-minded business owners or entrepreneurs who are hungary to make their company a success, but are humble enough to know they don’t have all the answers.  However, the diversity of business knowledge and a willingness to help one another makes mastermind groups a win-win for those involved.

And those business owners...they’re no longer feel so isolated as part of a mastermind group.  They now have peers and confidants who understand the entrepreneurial journey they’re on.

If you have interest in joining a mastermind group, Premier Tax and Business Services is putting one together called, Think Big Workshop.  Check it out.

Posted by Nick Venturella

At TinyCareer.com we’re all about living by your own rules, and Challenge Bucket is taking that idea to a whole different level.

Challenge Bucket is small community-based online social network of challenge-oriented people.  These are people who love to watch and/or conduct challenges.  They’re a competitive bunch, they’re a fun-loving bunch and in many ways they’re a bit of strange bunch...but strange in a way that leaves you curious enough to join in, if only to see what’s going on.

As far as I can tell, the idea is that a challenge is proposed on the Challenge Bucket website and other site members can ‘accept’ the proposed challenge.  Once a challenge is accepted the person who accepted the challenge showcases their attempt to successfully accomplish the challenge by capturing the event on video and posting it to the site.  Once the video is posted the community can vote on whether or not they felt like the challenge was successfully accomplished or not.

This is definitely an interesting community that will keep you guessing, and laughing.  I would say Challenge Bucket is a viral video manufacturing company.

Check it out for yourself.


Posted by Nick Venturella

Here at TinyCareer.com goal-setting and purposeful work/life design is second nature. 

Being a creative person myself the idea of honing in on a goal that I can see in a tangible form is useful.  That’s why things like vision boards can be helpful goal-achievement tools.

Vision boards, if you’re not familiar, are often images pasted to a poster board. Those images represent the end result of the goal or goals you’re trying to achieve.  

While vision boards were born out of physically plastering images on a poster board, it’s easy enough to create an electronic collage on your computer or tablet to serve as a vision board.

Beyond having a vision board to help reach one’s goals, making your friends aware of your goals helps keep you accountable toward achieving those goals.  Your friends care about you and they care that you achieve positive things in your life that are important to you. 

By having your friends aware of your goals it encourages them to periodically ask you questions about how your goal-attainment activities are going.  Just by having your friends ask about your goals is going to force you to either take action so you can share a positive update with your friends about your progress, or you’ll have to confess that you haven’t moved the needle toward your desired result – and who wants to deliver that news?

With the new site, BondsWell, you can have vision boards and share your plans with your creative and artistic friends online.  BondsWell is a new social media website that sparks creativity everywhere!

If you’d like to check it out, sign up with this early access code to become part of our community: “bondyeah.” 

Posted by Nick Venturella