Are you looking for Mr. Right or just Mr. Right Now?

This baby is the the ultimate pick-up device.

Talk about a turn-on.  You’ll be styling in these therapeutic nose air filters.  This is the new status symbol in facial jewelry.  Soon to be available in diamond- studded 24-carat gold (or platinum) to match your favorite grill.

Wait….wait…I’ve reconsidered.  These are more like birth control devices.

Actually the BreathePur is a disposable filtering device that actually works in the nose to block most airborne particulates – such as allergens – from being inhaled.

More comfortable than masks, it’s ideal for chores around the house, in the garden or workshop, whenever the wind is creating airborne debris, or a hot Saturday night at the club.

Another invention by someone who wants to Work Naked. Many off-the-wall ideas are out there, you just have to find the one to live the life you have always wanted to live.

There are plenty of weird jobs that pay good money, jobs that we don’t even realize people do.

Have you ever thought about being a citrus fruit dyer, who makes sure citrus fruits look tasty by adding dye to fruit.  How about an IMAX screen cleaner, ensuring the hefty screen is crystal clear.  

As reported in the dailytitan.com, Nancy Rica Schiff, a photography veteran, became intrigued with offbeat jobs after encountering the official timekeeper at a horse race track.

“I never even considered that someone did that,” Schiff said. “It’s a job you take for granted.”

Fascinated by atypical occupations, she set out to find those surreptitious people who do what others can’t (or won’t) do and photographed them.

Her books, Odd Jobs and Odder Jobs, highlight such occupations as sign painter, sandcastle teacher, beer tester, coin polisher, condom tester, bingo caller, flatulence smell-reduction underwear inventor, ball tester and other zany professions.

Her advice to  people seeking a wacky career: “If you have a particular unusual job in mind, go after it,” Schiff said. “But if you can’t find a job you’ll have fun doing, invent it for yourself.”

You could be an odor tester, making sure deodorants and anti-perspirants defunk armpits.  Maybe even a golf ball diver, finding balls that head into water.  Or, a cheese sprayer, coating popcorn with a layer of cheese.

Have you ever had a bad hair day? 

Well, my hair’s been really uncooperative lately.  You know, dull, lifeless, no body, no shine.

I’ve tried it all - wild New Zealand avocados, truffle oil, pulverized whale foreskins. Nothing worked.

The answer - an incredible new product containing bull semen.   Hey, I couldn’t make this up.  This is where it’s found.

I have it iced down and flown in from England.  The shine is fabulous.   

I’m big into outdoor activities.  When you’re outside in the hot sun, the fragrance of the sperm is just indescribable.  And, once the bull sperm really warms up, every cow within a 100 yards finds me irresistable.

But seriously, it’s a great conversation starter.  The first time you meet a potential customer ask them to guess what type of hair product you’re using.  But don’t let them answer.  Cut them off and shout “Bull semen!  That’s right, I’ve got bull semen in my hair!”

You’ll make an impression they’ll always remember.

When the wind blows who makes money?  People who own windmills do, that’s who. 

As you’re probably aware, landowners who install wind turbines can sell their power to electric companies.

So where would you find relatively inexpensive windmills?  How about an entrepreneur who purchases used commercial windmills and has them refurbished.

As reported in Agrinews.com, Dennis Tuel’s company Wind Song Energy acquired 65 kilowatt wind turbines from California, where they are being replaced by larger half-megawatt units. Once the wind turbines are refurbished they’re then re-rated to under 40 kilowatts.

He got the idea about five years ago when he and wife, Marsha, wanted to install a wind turbine on their Fergus Falls farm.

“It became cost-prohibitive,” he said. “It would’ve taken 20 years for it to pay for itself. These units, though, will pay for themselves in six years.”  The refurbished wind turbines are essentially new units, he said. Once they are re-rated to 40 kilowatts and checked over, they have a 20-year life.

The wind turbines will produce between $7,000 to $10,000 worth of electricity annually or enough power for seven to 10 houses, he said.

Tuel said he and his electrical contractor are receiving two to three calls a week about the refurbished turbines.

Working naked and helping save the environment, too.  Are there other opportunities like this one?

On the work-at-home front, aside from a large number of scams – there are real opportunities.

Let’s take a look at some approaches to working at home.

You should strongly consider being more proactive to pursuing opportunities.  Some potential work nakeders just respond to ads.  A better way is to select companies you’d prefer to work with and contact them directly.

Two up and coming opportunities are:

Customer Service Representatives
At-home customer service representatives are being hired by a number of large retailers and service providers.  Usually they’ll want you to work a minimum of 20 hours per week or more.  Depending who the company is and the skills required, the pay is usually between $7 to $15 per hour.  And needless to say, you’ll need a telephone line for inbound calls and high speed internet access.

These type of positions are highly sought after by thousands of applicants, so be patient and persistent.  If you’re interested, contact companies like Customer Loyalty Concepts, Accolade Support, Reps for Rent, Overflow and Alpine Access.

Concierge Services
Can you handle unusual requests?  Providing home based concierge services is a growing trend.  There are concierge companies providing services to their corporate clients who hire home based agents.

The company VIPdesk.com employs work-at-home concierges who have experience in high-end customer service, travel and/or the hospitality industries. 

You might be asked to provide to the clients the convenience of researching travel plans, planning parties, or making dinner reservations.  Other requests can require activities outside of the home like running errands.

There are many small independent concierge businesses.  These groups appeal and market directly to local businesses.  The owner of a concierge group I’m familiar with belongs to several professional organizations and obtains much of her business through those connections.

These are just two of the options for work-at-home positions.  We’ll cover more in the coming days.

Yes, you can work naked.   And, there’s more legitimate options than you might have thought. 

Going out of town without your pets?  Check Fido into the Bellagio.

As reported in In Business Las Vegas, Christopher Easley , owner of the American Dog and Cat Hotel , just opened his second location. The high-end pet hotels cater to pet owners who treat their pets like children and are willing to pay anywhere from $25 to $250 a night to ensure the pets are comfortable while they are away.

As a side note, for Mr. Easley’s sake let’s hope Blue (in the picture) is well trained and doesn’t take a dump on the $10,000 persian rug.

The company’s pet suites come complete with rugs, televisions and in some cases, day beds to simulate the home experience. A team of “human play pals,” most with a veterinary background, are kept on-hand to amuse the pets, administer medication and clean the rooms. At least twice a day the dogs are brought out to play pens to interact with each other and tire themselves out.

An ever-increasing number of people are replacing children with pets, and that means big money for pet pamperers.

The pet industry - everything from grooming to Greenies - is booming. Last year Americans spent more on their animal companions - about $38.5 billion. That number is expected to rise to more than $40 billion this year. Ten years ago it was $20 billion.

Customers use pet sitters and pet hotels because the animals are generally less-stressed than in other settings, and the exposure to fleas and illness such as kennel cough is considered less, according to industry surveys. 

“In 2001, when so much corporate downsizing was taking a place, a lot of people who were passionate about pets turned to professional pet sitting to do something that aligned with their interests,” said John Long, spokesman for Pet Sitters International. “It became an opportunity for them to do something radically different with their lives.”

Nationwide, most pet-sitting clients are married couples with no children who live in the suburbs . Time-stressed residents hire outsiders to do everything from walking and playing with pets to cleaning up excrement in the yard. Even Pfaffinger, who owns pet-sitting company Crazy Critters Pet Care , uses doggy day care services when she has an extra-long day at work.
 

Do you remember the Segway electric scooter?

It’s creator, Dean Kamen, believes in the power of innovation to change the world.

As reported in CIO magazine he offers his thoughts on “5 Things I’ve Learned”.

Taking risks is essential.
In my case, taking risks is easier because it’s my limb; I own the tree. I quit school at a time when no one quit school and started a company in a basement with no money. I discovered that I’m a risk taker. I get up in the morning knowing that I’m either going to have a spectacular win or loss that is going to be exciting. I prefer the former but either is more appealing than the warm death of mediocrity.

The future is the world of ideas.
Innovation and creativity will be the only serious metrics to sustain us as a world-class country. I believe CIOs are in a huge position to drive this change. They are technically savvy and have a more open perspective on change than others in senior management. I think it’s because they’ve seen firsthand what happens when you fall behind the state of the technology. That’s one reason I created First, which holds competitions to foster science, technology and leadership skills in high school students. Companies need the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Hype is the enemy of innovation.
There was a ridiculous amount of press coverage related to the Segway. I knew the hype around what the invention could do would be problematic. I knew it wouldn’t be able to do what people expected it to do right away. I don’t think anyone could make a product that could fulfill everything claimed for the Segway.

Outsourcing is practical and necessary.
This country has always outsourced things. Each generation has a golden goose and then they outsource those golden eggs. Outsourcing is a measure of the fact that we’re always raising the bar. As an entrepreneur I’ve learned that we stand on the shoulders of the generation before us and grab the next rail, provided that we’re the best educated, ambitious and courageous.

Innovation comes in many shapes.
We have two classes of projects at DEKA. Most people here would affectionately call one of those groups “Dean’s Crazy Ideas.” Those projects tend to be high risk—nobody knows whether they’re doable. I’ve learned from these projects that sometimes we must stumble around in the garden of new ideas to find a better way to solve a problem. But we also work on well-defined problems where we’ve got a good solution and need an innovative way to make it work. In my experience, you have to strike a balance between the two. If you think you’re in development mode but you’re really in that other place where failure is the most common outcome, then bad things can happen.
 

The results are in - small business owners continue to be optimistic about their businesses. 

The Wells Fargo Bank surveys the confidence level of small business owners quarterly.  At the end of 2006 the survey results were at an all time high.  And, although the index dropped slightly this quarter, business owners remain very positive about their futures.     

In addition to the generally positive sentiments, 90 percent of small business owners report they are satisfied owning their businesses and 78 percent would do it all over again.

Who would’ve thought?

What are the two key factors for your success? 

It’s simple really. The key factors are 1) your knowledge about the business and industry, and 2) your intensity of commitment.

From an article on sun-sentinel.com.  A study by the Entrepreneurial Research Consortium concluded that “Any person with the knowledge, skill, ideas, drive and the ability to mobilize resources and organize a business can create a new firm”

Factors such as age, gender, education, household income or net worth are unrelated to an entrepreneur starting and completing the creation of a new business.

The study screened 64,000 people in the U. S. and included four interview sessions to identify the factors that drove people to start new businesses. Smaller groups of successful entrepreneurs were studied to determine their key success factors.

“This is the mother of all studies,” says Paul Reynolds, who is director at the Entrepreneurship Research Institute and has conducted previous entrepreneurial studies.

The results of the study show that the activities pursued in the start-up process — not the characteristics of the entrepreneur — are what have an impact on the transition from start-up to a successful business.

Reynolds says it doesn’t matter how a budding entrepreneur obtains knowledge: it can be formal classes, an apprenticeship at another firm, or general business experience.

And, guess what?  The number of entrepreneurs is growing.  In 1999 there were 10 million people pursuing new businesses, in 2005 that number jumped to 16 million.

Join the work-naked way of life, everyone’s doing it.

If you’ve read the blog before, you understand how specializing in a particular area can be profitable.

Take John Drummond for example.  A unicycle enthusiast as a youth, he rediscovered the unicycle to help him get in shape.  He lost his job with IBM, and his company unicycle.com has become the world’s largest unicycle retailer with franchises in seven countries.

As reported on MSNBC he says “It was supposed to be a hobby.  We didn’t think we could make a living at it.”  Having no experience running a business, he scraped together $700 and bought six unicycles.

He announced the business’ grand opening on a newsgroup, but no one showed up.  Within two weeks they received their first order.  For a unicycle?  No, for a rearview mirror mounted on sunglasses.

Eight months later the business was generating $22,000 income per month.

He sent a thank you note to his former boss at IBM explaining that his departure was the best thing that could have happened.

After this success, he launched Banjo.com.

So, unless you’re at the circus, if you see someone playing a banjo while riding a unicycle it’s probably John.

Specialize your way to nakedness. 

We’re not talking about acupuncture, or the newest high potency prescription pain killer.

It’s been proven that most people have higher motivation to relieve their pains than to receive pleasure.

There are always exceptions of course. Have you ever seen the TV show with Danny Bonaduce (the former child TV star turned semi-psychopath) where he straps an electric dog collar around his neck, cranks it up to the highest setting and gives his kids the remote control to zap him? Danny is an exception (or whatever you want to call him).

But, for most of us, these pains are not just physical, but pains in various aspects of our lives.  Wanting to lose weight, rising gasoline prices, and restless nights trying to sleep are all pains. And, we want quick and easy relief.

What does that mean for us? Opportunity!

Look at all the advertisements for diet pills and exercise equipment – potential solutions to the pain of losing weight. How about the continuing stream of kitchen devices that make the burden of preparing meals faster and easier. Wedding planning services help relieve Bridezillas’ stress. And, there’s hundreds more solutions to pains. Can you think of your biggest pain and a solution to it?

And, please exclude references to family members or co-workers.

You can invent a brand new pain relief solution. Or, you can take advantage of an existing product or service and spin it and sell it more successfully. The most successful businesses provide a fast and easy solution.

Provide pain relief and prosper.

Where’s the money for career independents?

The answer is – be a specialist. Just think about it. In the medical professions, who makes more income, generalists or specialists? And, that’s generally the case in other industries.

As a Work Nakeder you can ride the wave of this trend.

Let’s look at an example of fellow that I’m familiar with. Bob went to school for mechanical engineering. He applied that degree to land a position as a manufacturing engineer. On the job, he trained and developed expertise in lean operations management. He acquired professional certifications and was able to translate his lean management expertise into the healthcare operations field. Through contact with other professionals in the field of this specialization he learned that there were appealing opportunities to plan and produce conferences.

He now makes very good money at sponsoring, and producing summits for this narrow specialization.

Bob went from a manufacturing engineering generalist to a lean operations expert, then applied that to the healthcare industry, and finally to producing conferences.

So, what does this mean to you? Think through your skills sets and your career desires. Try to narrow those down. Zero in on a specialization. Then, make it even skinnier. And, then shave it thin again. Picture yourself being a specialist’s specialists specialist.

When Bob was starting out he had no idea that he would land where he is today. He continued to narrow his focus and promoted himself as a specialist.

If you take notice, you’ll begin to see the variety specializations in the U.S. economy. As you’re probably already aware, many high income career independents have narrow specialties.

Sharpen up your own specialty to gain career independence.

Outsourcing? Who said outsourcing? Yes, that’s been a dirty word for many workers here in the U.S.

The outsourcing that sends work overseas at the expense of American jobs is different from opportunities that outsourcing can offer Work Nakeders.

As companies experience worker attrition, they’re choosing to offer more work to independent business owners and contractors. These companies see outsourcing as a way to manage headcount, overhead, and benefit costs.

Outsourcing initiatives open up career freedom opportunities. Many of these opportunities are service oriented and can be easily launched. In a wide cross-section of industries there is income to be had for independent business people as code writers, editors, graphic artists, marketing specialists, customer service representatives, and more.

So, how would you find these independent positions? Once you’ve made the choice to pursue independence, inform your friends, family, and business contacts that you are looking for outsourcing work. Opportunities may drop into your lap. In some cases, your current employer may offer you outsourcing work. But be cautious about disclosing to co-workers and management your outsourcing intentions.

And, needless to say, the Internet opens up worldwide opportunities. Find and search the websites that address the type of business you’re interested in pursuing. Many Work Nakeders provide services to business customers, who are hundreds and even thousands of miles away.

Once opportunities are brought to your attention, you’ll want to have a summary available of your experience providing and delivering similar services. This summary or business brochure will emphasize your ability to provide high quality and reliable services.

Ensure that you’ve got all the resources lined up that you need to make this venture work. Because when you land your first customer, they may want to start using your services right away.

Many Work Nakeders have capitalized on outsourcing to make a brighter future.