Posts Tagged ‘business’

Starting Up a Startup - Jared Hayes: Owner of Apparition Ink - Part 3

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

In the third and final installment of our interview with Apparition Ink owner Jared Hayes, Jared explains why all the hard work is worth it and pays off in the end. He also talks about other potential business ventures he may be part of, such as nan-robot technology! Yes, this time Jared may actually be drinking…

Ryan Johnson makes an appearance to take over control of Pink Jesus, and to offer his…One cent?

All kidding aside, the Apparition crew is a great bunch of guys, and an exceptional group of artists. So, whether you are in the market for a tattoo, a print of one of their pieces of art, a rockin’ T-shirt, or a magnet made by Jared’s lovely wife (they are magnets, not buttons like I refer to them as in the video), Apparition is the place for you. A big THANKS to the Apparition crew for letting me come bug them for a morning!


Starting Up a Startup - Apparition Ink Owner: Jared Hayes - Part 3 from Royal Ants on Vimeo.

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Starting Up a Startup - Jared Hayes: Owner of Apparition Ink - Part 2

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

You thought Part 1 was mind boggling and breathtaking? Wait ’til you see this! Is Jared really drunk? No! (?)

Jared Hayes continues to give awesome advice for anyone interested in starting their own business. Do you wonder why people are getting tattooed even in a down economy when money is tight? Jared gives thoughts and insight into that issue. He also talks competition, avoiding mistakes, hiring the right people, whip cracking, and wet T-shirt contests.

If you haven’t watched Part 1, scroll down and watch! Part 3 will be up in a few days, so stay tuned!


Starting Up a Startup - Apparition Ink Owner: Jared Hayes - Part 2 from Royal Ants on Vimeo.

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Starting Up a Startup - Jared Hayes: Owner of Apparition Ink - Part 1

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

This is the first installment of my interview with Apparition Ink owner Jared Hayes. Jared has earned a reputation as one of the best tattoo artists around, and he also runs one of the best tattoo shops. He sheds some light on what it is like to be an entrepreneur and why he chose to open his own shop rather than working for someone else. Jared also echoes the sentiments of every successful business owner when he talks about the amount of work/energy that goes into creating something on your own.

If you would like to get in touch with Jared or one of his awesome artists, go see them at 1700 S. 380 E. in Salt Lake City, Utah. Or, give them a call 801-487-0635. Go see him, and tell him RoyalAnts sent you!


Starting Up a Startup - Jared Hayes: Owner of Apparition Ink - Part 1 from Royal Ants on Vimeo.

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Business models and customer service

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

These two things are crucial when creating a business. How viable is your business, and how are you going to treat your customers. Both determine how long your business is going to be around and how well they are going to survive. You can have a killer business model, but if you have abysmal customer service you are going to fail. No one wants to do business with a company that doesn’t care or seemingly hates their customers. The same goes for your business model. You can have the best customer service in the world but if your business model ends up negatively impacting your customers they won’t be your customers for long.

What brought about this as a topic was my own recent dealings with a little company known as Citi. Now you might be thinking this is just me complaining, but trust me, I have some good points on building your own business strategy, so please. Read on.

I have been a faithful customer for years. Always paid my bill on time, kept myself in good standing with them and just recently I received a notice that they are doubling my APR for no reason. When I called their customer service to ask why I was being punished for being a good customer their reply was “You’re not being punished this is just the price of doing business with us.” What?

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Starting up a Startup - Financial Crisis

Monday, January 5th, 2009


Money! by Yomanimus

The economy, the bailout, small business, big business, no loans, financing troubles, newspapers going out of business, millions of jobs lost so far and more to come. One can’t help but think we are in for some much darker times before we see the light, but does it really have to go that way? Maybe a little it does, but does it have to be as bad as everyone says it’s going to be?

Being in the position of starting a business involving more people than myself I have been thinking about what I would be doing in this position. What if RoyalAnts was looking at cutting expenses? Where would we start where would we look to shave some of the financial fat? What does this have to do with Starting up a Startup?

Sit down, make yourself at home and I’ll tell you.

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CO, LLC, S corp, DBA, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Saturday, December 20th, 2008

Ryan is kicking my butt with the blog posts and while I was thinking about the many and varied things I could be writing about it hit me that I could and should start at the beginning. I’m going to go over all the crap that we went through, the decisions we made and how we did it… just like Ryan is doing… crap.

Well I’m going to be doing it from a more “analytical” stand point while giving you some reference points, information, and advice.

After choosing our business name (which I’ll let Mr.Roylance explain in a very animated and gesticulated way) we had to get down to deciding what kind of company we were going to be. So we started with a book and then went online and we figured that an LLC will work best for our needs. Now if that sated your need for information feel free to go read something else. If not then keep reading.

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Microblogging can increase productivity?

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Microblogging can be very important communications tool, but as many people have said in numerous conversations I’ve had online (not using Twitter or it’s ilk) those services are worthless. I was one of those people when Twitter first emerged, and I thought it was the dumbest thing that had ever happened, that was until I “got it”.

The value of microblogging (like any form of social media) is in how you use it and the value you create with it. Microblogging comes in many flavors and each one has featers that make it unique. If you are looking for something that gives you the ability to create rooms go look at Utterli. If you are more into video check out Twitter.

Communicating in this manner is great for friends and it’s a nice and easy way to share links and other media with anyone who is “following” you. But how can it be used for business? You can promote your blog, do customer service, or even use it to get information on a certain subject. That’s just the beginning.

There are a ton of microblogging services that are popping up to fill the niche of enterprise level microblogging, for a list of possible candidates you can see my list of both enterprise and consumer serviceshere and Jeremiah Owyang’s list of strictly enterprise serviceshere. Here are 5 ways implementing a microblogging platform can help your companies productivity.

Communication - Need to get a message out to your whole group all at once? If you’re whole office is on a service like this you can broadcast out a message and instantly have dialogue with the people in your company.

Sharing - The nature of this microbeast allows you to quickly share information with a whole group of people, and discuss what you’re sharing. This is great for research teams or people collaborating on a project.

Collaboration - Depending on which type of implementation you go with you can keep everyone connected, including remote agents. Most services just require an internet connection and then you your agents in Japan, Turkey, Europe, Canada, and the US can all communicate, collaborate, and share information at the same time.

Problem Solving - Run into a snag on your latest project? Using one of these services you can instantly have the whole company working on the same page to help bring about a creative solution quicker.

Accountability - Most services keep records of the conversations for later review or to keep track of how a certain thought, solution, or product evolved.

Email is static, it’s slow, and if multiple people reply all at once it can get confusing really quickly. Microblogging is dynamic and keeps everyone on the same page (literally and figuratively). As the needs for communication change within a business utilities like these will get more and more prevalent, and there will be a need to consolidate some platforms, luckily there are some enterprising individuals out there already making great strides in consolidating many services under one roof. I’ve tried several different ones but my favorite by far has been Twhirl. This wonderful piece of software makes it possible for you to use an enterprise implementation of Laconi.ca along with your other microblogging favorites like Seesmic, Identi.ca, Twitter, and FriendFeed.

Microblogging can add productivity to business, and tools like Twhirl can add productivity to microblogging. With a setup like that why wouldn’t you want to implement a tool like this? I can tell you that we at RoyalAnts will be implementing something like this. I’m rooting for laconi.ca because of my strange love for Twhirl, but when it’s all said and done it’s ultimately up to Coat because he will be doing the installation. Me, Ill just be little voice in the back ground saying “make my life easier, install laconi.ca”.

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