Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

When, if ever, is lying justified? I talked about this conundrum this week in a freshmen humanities class, in which we were reading Immanuel Kant on morality

Call for Nominations Are you, or do you know, an under-30 superstar entrepreneur who we should consider for this year's 30 Under 30 Coolest Entrepreneurs list? We're calling for nominations from all industries to create a diverse list of companies led by young entrepreneurs who have the potential to become the rock star CEOs of their generation

Starting a business has its challenges.

In 2010, Sean Bandawat acquired Jacob Bromwell, a specialty housewares company that's been in existence since 1819.

A young entrepreneur presents a few disruptive strategies to help grow your business. Her message: Stop planning. Its useless

Starting a business? You should write a business plan--even if you're not raising money any time soon

Siamak Taghaddos and David Hauser met as undergrads at Babson College while both were managing businesses they started in high school. One of their biggest challenges was how to answer work calls while in class. "If a customer wanted to place an order for a product, the only number I could give them was my house line," says Taghaddos.

For businesses just starting out (and even for businesses that are already established), writing a business plan that bankers and investors can understand can be difficult. What is the point of a business plan

When the topic of business plans comes up, it tends to polarize people into two separate camps: those that think business plans are worth the effort to put together and those that think that unless you're trying to raise money, writing a business plan is a waste of time . For Ellen Rohr, a business consultant and founder of Bare Bones Biz , the answer lies somewhere in between. "The primary purpose of a business plan is to help you gain clarity and hold yourself accountable for moving in the direction of what you want," she says

Walk into any bank in the country and ask for a loan to start a business and the knee jerk reaction of the banker behind the desk will be to ask you to write a business plan—even though they themselves have likely never written one and will not base their lending decision on its content. The problem with writing a business plan as a start-up is that it will be based on one assumption on top of another. If your first assumption is flawed, then the whole thing is useless.