From The Australian, Entrepreneur: BOUTIQUE ROASTERS Unique blends stand out from the crowd, writes Ed Charles IT’S a typical Melbourne location, an old warehouse off the main drag of Clarendon Street in South Melbourne, better known for its brothels than its beans. If it wasn’t for the smell of coffee roasting you wouldn’t even know St Ali was in [...]

From The Australian, Entrepreneur: The independence flowing from having your own business can come at a high price, Ed Charles discovers | August 31, 2007 MEN work longer hours than women, and self-employed men work longer still. The problem for the entrepreneur is to take control of the hours worked. “The self-employed just work a lot more and [...]

From The Australian, Entrepreneur: Blogs save time and energy, writes Ed Charles | July 27, 2007 THE hype over blogs focuses on gossip and radical politics. What many people miss is the power of the blog as a marketing tool for small business and an alternative to e-newsletters.  BUSINESS BLOGS • workingsolo.com.au • blog.completepotential.com • trevorcook.typepad.com • www.benjaminchristie.com • www.nobledentist.com.au/blog/index.php • www.frankteam.com.au/blog • blog.nowhiring.com.au • www.barrett.com.au/blogs/suebarrett • lukegoodwin.blogspot.com Blogs offer superior features to static websites, sometimes cost [...]

From The Australian, Entrepreneur: Travel broadened the mind for an adventurer who is into cleaner motoring, writes Ed Charles | July 27, 2007 IN starting a business or achieving anything in life, timing and chance play as large a part as passion. For Daniel Epstein, a lifelong environmentalist who recently returned to Melbourne after living in San [...]

From The Australian, Entrepreneur: Ed Charles | July 27, 2007 THE home office is often thought of as an oasis outside office politics, an ideal space without interruptions, but the reality is that there might be more distractions at home. For people who have kids (or partners), their grubby mits can get over everything. Even though a home office [...]

The Australian, Entrepreneur ONCE upon a time chocolate was the preserve of the rich. That’s if you could find any decent chocolate to eat — a chocolate culture didn’t really exist in Australia. Then, inspired by their travels, local entrepreneurs began trying to replicate what they had found abroad. One of the first was Yarra Valley winemaker [...]

The Australian, Entrepreneur ONCE upon a time chocolate was the preserve of the rich. That’s if you could find any decent chocolate to eat — a chocolate culture didn’t really exist in Australia. Then, inspired by their travels, local entrepreneurs began trying to replicate what they had found abroad. One of the first was Yarra Valley winemaker [...]

Here’s the problem: Australia is very good at digging stuff out of the ground, and it’s very good at planting loads of stuff in the ground and growing it. What the country isn’t so good at is making high-value products – whether they be minerals or food staples – out of those raw materials. According to [...]

You can create a marketing buzz on a small budget, writes Ed Charles IT’S the classic business dilemma. You’re launching into a crowded market and the main competition has a marketing budget of tens of millions of dollars, whereas you have a few thousand. You can’t compete head-on. The only option is to use your wits and [...]

The business of sharing cars has taken off in Sydney and Melbourne, writes Ed Charles SOMETIMES you have just got to do it. Car share plan GoGet came into being when founders Bruce Jeffreys and Nic Lowe put their own cars — a ute and a diesel station wagon — into the first incarnation of their [...]