Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Happy 11th birthday, Canadian Entrepreneur!

Next week marks this blog’s 11th anniversary – which is pretty old for a blog.

Canadian Entrepreneur launched on Feb. 1, 2005.

Since then, we've written 1,369 blogposts and attracted 833,214 pageviews. Our busiest year was 2007, with 270 blogposts, about one every business day. Of course, that was before Twitter and YouTube and Facebook came along to reduce national productivity, shrink our attention spans and erode blogs’ already questionable “cool” factor.

You can use the Blog Archive tool on the right-hand side of this page to go back as far as you wish on this blog. But that involves way too much scrolling, so I did it for you – grinding all the way back to Feb. 1, 2005.

Here’s my first post:

TITLE: Today I become the 30 millionth blogger on the Web (more or less).

I will be posting here occasionally to share some of my adventures and learnings in my new career as a totally self-employed entrepreneur. It's fun, scary at times, challenging and difficult to explain. 

If you follow along, I will try to post some entrepreneurial wisdom from time to time. I like to think of business as a team sport.

To inaugurate this column, here's a Time Tip I received today in an e-newsletter from time management guru Harold Taylor. If you read between the lines, it will tell you why having a home office (or at least an office door you can close) is the best solution to workplace stress.

QUICK NAPS INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
According to Matthew Edlund, in his book, The Body Clock Advantage, short naps of 10 minutes seem to do the most for promoting alertness at work, especially in the mid-afternoon 



Here’s to the next 11 years! And more nap time.


My official portrait as a home-based business owner. 
Beard colour may no longer be exactly as shown.





Chart of first-year traffic patterns on this blog show the importance of computer analytics, as far back as 2005. 
Clearly, success would be geometric in scope.

Catching Up: Rick's latest National Post stories

I hope you're following my continuing chronicles of entrepreneurial adventure every Monday in the Financial Post's highly regarded "Entrepreneur" section. 


If you've missed a few here’s a recap – and a reminder that the Post often publishes my articles online one, two or three days before they come out in the newspaper.

Uzair Ahmed, left, and Asem Alsaadi, are the founders of InstaMek. In nine months the company has raised $500,000 in capital for the growing mobile mechanics business.Jan. 25: “Why trust is key when you are disrupting a sector like auto mechanics”
The story of Edmonton startup InstaMek.


The endorsement of networking giant Cisco and Japanese manufacturing titan Mazak took Memex Inc. CEO David McPhail and his team eight years to forge.

Jan. 18: How tiny Memex got two industry giants to endorse its manufacturing connectivity platform
"McPhail says Memex’s systems can deliver a 300 per cent ROI in the first year alone — but product excellence isn’t always enough."


Jan 7: Why this serial entrepreneur doesn’t believe you have to leave Canada to succeed
“Mark Organ is a Toronto-based entrepreneur with a penchant for creating global innovation, locally…”

Dec. 30: “Before you throw out those newsletters, take a second look”
Salvaging the collective wisdom in 2015’s unread emails

Dec. 24: With all the competition out there, accidental entrepreneurs face a big challenge for 2016: Survival
“No matter what you studied, or how many promotions you earned in your march up the corporate ladder, running your own business presents a tsunami of challenges.”