The $100 bottles of Bollinger champagne are selling well this week at Corridor 44, a champagne bar in downtown Denver, the city hosting this year's Democratic National Convention. But general manager Brian Siffermann says he hasn't sold any bottles of Dom Perignon. Bottles of the Dom go for $325.

"It seems the Democrats don't have the expense accounts that Republicans have," jokes Siffermann.

He isn't complaining though. Business at the bar is up about one third since the convention started last Monday.

The story's more glum for Gail Lindley, owner of Denver Bookbinding Co.

She expects to see a 10 percent drop in sales this week because she's had to cut back on hours due to road closures in Denver. And on Thursday she shut down operations altogether because almost every road in the area was closed due to security measures for Barack Obama's speech at the city's Mile High Stadium.

It's generally believed that political conventions bring a windfall for local businesses, but the reality is many of them don't see a dime.

Restaurants and bars in the immediate vicinity of the conference center tend to rake in most of the convention dough, but most local small businesses don't see any spikes in trade, and many of them actually lose money, notes Nancy Ploeger, president of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce in New York City, which hosted the Republican National Convention in 2004.

Here's a rundown of what Ploeger heard from her members during the GOP's 2004 convention:

--The smaller retail businesses located near the venue, Madison Square Garden, struggled as a result of so many street closures.
--On the other hand, sales at small convenience stores increased as vendors sold larger numbers of pick-up items like candy and drinks.
--Many offices located in the "hot zone" were forced to close because it was too difficult for employees to get into the area due to increased security and limited transportation.
--A few of the restaurants located in and around the hotels where delegates stayed made out well.
--Stores on Broadway, New York's storied thoroughfare, picked up some business.
--Statistics showed an increase in overall business and activity, but for the most part the city's small businesses did not pick up extra customers and in some cases they actually lost money.

In Denver, there are opportunities for businesses that do work in the Pepsi Center, the convention's main venue.

Empowercom, a Denver-based telecommunications firm, oversaw cable wire installation at the center.

Steve Jackson, a partner at the company, says Empowercom saw a 30 percent increase in revenue, but the big payoff will come from the relationships he's been able to build. Handling work during the Democratic convention also looks good on the company's resume, he said.
"We hope it leads to more business," he added.

Pam Pressel, the CEO of Capabilities, a firm that sells and rents mobility products such as wheelchairs, was hoping to have a location right on the convention floor or right outside the Pepsi Center to rent delegates scooters, but the DNC put the kibosh on that.

So they ended up with a mobile van a few blocks away. Business was slow early in the week, but Pressel says things picked up on Wednesday. While she won't hit her target of a 20 percent increase in sales this week, she expects to get close to 15 percent.

Pressel says visitors to the city often have trouble breathing because of the high altitude and "they discover they can't walk as far."

Hopefully, they'll be able to walk (or scoot) far enough to drop cash at some of Denver's small businesses.

Ever since Barack Obama announced Joe Biden would be his running mate, almost all of the news stories about the U.S. Senator from Delaware have mentioned the personal tragedy he experienced early on in his political career.

In 1972, shortly after he was first elected to the Senate, Biden lost his wife and infant daughter in a horrific car crash that also seriously injured his two young sons.

That's the sort of tragedy that would likely derail anyone's career ambitions, but somehow Biden persevered.

I've always wondered why some people allow tragedy to destroy them, and others don't.

When I interviewed entrepreneurs and CEOs for my book "From the Sandbox to the Corner Office: Lessons Learned on the Journey to the Top," I devoted a whole chapter to how successful men and women in business overcome adversities.

How did they do it?

Truly Nolen, the founder of Truly Nolen Pest Control, contracted polio when he was 23 years old and ended up in an iron lung.

Nolen said he was shaken out of his self-pity by a reality check:

"I started feeling sorry for myself, but I was able to get over it by seeing other patients that were worse off than me," he said. "I remember a guy I went to high school with who also had polio, but ended up paralyzed. I began to think I was pretty lucky."

Stanislas de Quercize, CEO of jewelry company Van Cleef and Arpels, lost an infant son to sudden infant death syndrome.

The experience sent him into shock, but somehow he was able to come to terms with his loss and eventually came to see his son's death as "a call for being more alive, taking more risks."

This type of resilience seems Herculean. I've known so many people who were never able to bounce back from their adversities, but the inability to do so can spell doom for your life, your career and your business.

I know you can't just offer a canned tidbit of advice when it comes to resiliency, but I felt compelled to ask some experts about what separates those who bounce back from those who never do.

"What we find in our work supports the conclusion that letting go and finding new goals is just as important for successful living as persistence," explains Carsten Wrosch, an associate professor in the psychology department at the Centre for Research in Human Development at Montreal's Concordia University.

When it comes to a fundamental loss, such as the death of a loved one, he offered a "purely theoretical" take on why some are able to go on:

"The capacity to accept and to find something new that is personally meaningful may make a difference in such situations," he said. "This may channel energy and thoughts toward new endeavors and it may make the situation more bearable."

Larry Winget, author of "It's Called Work For A Reason" and "You're Broke Because You Want To Be," offers a different theory:

"Some people fold after a tragedy because they have a victim mentality -- they approach bad things with the mindset that it is happening to them personally rather than the idea that bad things just happen and they happen to be involved," he said.

"When you allow yourself to be victimized by tragedy you have a tendency to spiral downward until you are crushed by it," Winget added. "When you understand that the bad things that happen are rarely personal, then you realize that it isn't what happens to you that matters as much as what you do about what happens to you."

It's all about choices, Winget stresses, and those who survive "make a choice to move on."

I suppose the big question is how you muster the strength to move on.

Have any of you faced tragedy? Were you able to move on? Would you be able to move onward and upward with your life or your career if something unthinkable were to happen?

My eight-year-old daughter Circe and her neighborhood buddy Taylor decided to launch their own business venture recently.

I had nothing to do with this, I swear.

The firm is called "TC Patches," and the idea is Circe and Taylor will sell patches they cut out of old jeans and then design with butterflies, flowers, etc.

You all remember patches, right? People used to buy them to mend holes in their pants.

And there's the problem with their business model. People used to buy patches to mend clothing. Today, with our disposable society, consumers are more apt to throw away a pair of $20 jeans they got from TJ Maxx, or some other discount store, and buy a new pair.

But should I share this little piece of entrepreneurial reality with Circe and Taylor?

No.

Why? Because I don't have the heart to tell these enthusiastic little girls that their idea is doomed.

I've often heard entrepreneurs complain they have difficulty finding honest feedback about their business ideas, especially from friends and family. It's the type of feedback that's critical for every budding entrepreneur.

So where do you go to get a brutal dose of honesty?

Elizabeth Gordon, who coaches small business owners and is president of the entrepreneur advisory firm Flourishing Business, says one of her occupational hazards is hearing a lot of really bad ideas.

But she feels compelled to be honest with people, especially her clients: "I feel it's a disservice to say, 'that sounds great, good luck with that,' and send them on their way."

What she recommends to her clients and all of you out there is to put together a peer advisory group. This could be a collection of business owners you respect in non-competing industries that are all looking for constructive, honest advice.

'It's not a support group," she stresses. It's all about giving "objective advice."

There's a good site called Meetup.com where you can find like-minded entrepreneurs in your town, or you could go to your local chamber of commerce and find business owners that are looking to brainstorm ideas.

Friends and family, Gordon found, can be useless when it comes to honing your idea. They are definitely more likely to keep their negative thoughts to themselves and feel an obligation to pump up Uncle Fred's ego.

I guess I'm guilty of this to a degree with my daughter. I figure she's only eight and this patches venture is probably just a passing fancy, just like her Wiggles fixation.

And who am I to judge anyway? Maybe patches will make a comeback.

Circe and Taylor have already made over $20 selling patches to friends, family, and even one construction worker who happened upon their patches stand on the driveway. He bought the patch that had the skull and cross bones on it.

They had enough money to give me so I could buy them the Web domain TCPatches.com.

Of course, they don't have enough capital, or knowledge to actually create a Web site. I did tell Circe she could give her software engineer father a percentage of the business in exchange for him designing the site.

The two young entrepreneurs rejected this option flatly. They want to maintain control, and they have grand plans for the profits.

Turns out Circe and Taylor will share 50 percent of the proceeds, and the remaining money will go to the American Lung Association.

When I asked why she had chosen that organization, Circe said: "Well, both our grandfathers died of lung cancer."

As you can imagine, I got a bit choked up when I heard that, still feeling the sting of having lost my father to the dreaded disease.

Now you know why I can't say anything negative about the great patches venture.

Would you? I look forward to your comments.

 

I'm not big on employers forcing employees to do anything other than their jobs. But forcing workers to be better stewards of their finances -- why not?

Spiratex, a Michigan-based plastics maker, forces its 127 employees to get one-on-one financial planning help with an advisor whether they like it or not.

The company mandates up to an hour of money education as a way to help its workers become more knowledgeable about the firm's 401(k) plan, and also learn about debt management, college savings, and other personal finance topics.

Why did this small firm decide to make the sessions mandatory?

Just as you wouldn't let someone commit suicide, Spiratex doesn't want its workers to commit financial suicide, explains Garry Markle, a vice president at the company. 

Spiratex used to hold group financial education meetings for workers, but decided that many employees weren't getting enough out of the sessions because some were too embarrassed to ask questions publicly about their private money matters.

So they decided to opt for mandatory one-on-one meetings as a way to force employees to sort out their money messes. The meetings are held on company time, so workers are essentially paid for the time they have with a financial advisor.

Markle says Spiratex's one-on-one financial planning sessions are run by The Principal Financial Group, the company that administers its retirement plans, and an independent financial advisor also sits in. Overall, the reaction from workers has been positive, he said.

According to Principal, more and more companies are offering private financial powwows for their workers, and some firms are adopting Spiratex's "shotgun" approach.

"Employers are so excited about what their employees get out of the meetings that some decide to make the meetings mandatory," said Luke Vandermillen, national services director of worksite solutions at The Principal. "They understand that employees can be overwhelmed with the magnitude of financial decisions they need to make these days and often do nothing."

The company's benefits experts that counsel employees are not paid on commission.

There often seems to be a workers-are-disposable view of employees these days, especially in manufacturing where so many firms are running off to Asia to get cut-rate labor. So it's refreshing to hear about companies actually investing more time and money in their workforces here in the United States.

It makes a lot of sense because it all comes down to productivity.

"We want to help people exist in this world," Markle explains. He says workers who are struggling with money issues will invariably bring that heavy mental burden to work with them, and that can impact their motivation and ultimately the work they do.

Many of Spiratex's workers have worked for the company for over 10 years, he adds, and the last thing the firm needs is to lose that institutional knowledge for any reason.

"We all work together to get the job done here," he stresses. "There's no reason to leave people hung out to dry."

What do you all think? Should employers force their workers to become more money savvy, or should they let them work out their own finances?

OK, I'm going to admit to doing something really dumb recently.

I went into my Verizon Online account to add an additional e-mail address, and I accidentally removed my main work e-mail address.

I realized the mistake pretty quickly and rushed to fix it. But when I tried to put my old e-mail address back a message popped up to say the username wasn't available.

I took a deep breath. I called Verizon and Alfonso, the e-mail support manager, said it would take six months before my old e-mail address becomes available again.

This means thousands of my contacts can't reach me, and all the editors I do contract work for will be wondering what happened to Eve.

How can any business survive after losing its primary e-mail address?

Turns out this happens to quite a few small businesses.

I figured I'd ask some business owners how they survive such a tragedy.

Mellanie True Hills, CEO of the American Foundation for Women's Health and www.StopAfib.org, a Web site for atrial fibrillation patients, told me her story in an e-mail:

We went through that early this year. It was awful, and it happened just as we were starting our busiest month of the year.

Our e-mail server that our Web host had us on lost the hard drive, and it took days to replace it. They kept saying they were restoring the data, but it never happened. We were down for days and days, and lost tons of e-mails; messages to us were bouncing for days. When it appeared that they weren't going to get it recovered in a timely manner, we changed Web hosts (including our Web site). We had been with them for 12 years, so it was very painful.

Fortunately, we had a working relationship with another ISP through another business we have, and they were kind enough to accommodate us very quickly. We used that e-mail address while the other was down, and we still use it. (This might be a good reason to have a separate domain for your e-mail and your Web site.)

I had backed up my whitelists and blacklists as well as distribution lists before the outage, and that was a huge help in getting us back in business. We were back up and in business long before our original ISP would have gotten us back into service.

[Mellanie later told me a "blacklist" refers to the people in your e-mail addresses list that you always block, while a "whitelist" contains addresses from which you always receive e-mail.]

And Zalmi Duchman, CEO of gourmet food delivery company The Fresh Diet, offered a similarly harrowing tale:

My company was originally named Zone At Home, and my Web site was ZoneAtHome.com, and all of the company's e-mail addresses ended with @ZoneAtHome.com

In 2007, one and a half years after I founded Zone At Home, I was forced to change the name to The Fresh Diet due to a lawsuit. My number one worry with the name change was the changes to my Web site and e-mails. I had sleepless nights -- not about the fact that I had to change my company's name, but over how I would get over the fact that all of my clients and ex-clients would need to know of these changes.

This was over a year ago, and now we're doing great and growing.

The number one way we found to combat the issue of the company name change was to reach out to our clients and figure out any way we could to forward their e-mails, or bounce back a new e-mail address.

We sent letters out to all of our clients informing them of the Web site change, and especially the change of e-mail address.

Phew, it's good to hear there's life after the death of an e-mail address.

At a time when banks are reining in loans to small businesses, it's not surprising that there has been an explosion of contests promising seed money for budding entrepreneurs.

There's an endless stream of entrepreneur contests available out there run by an array of organizations, some fly by night, others established financial institutions or universities.

There's also a popular reality show in the United Kingdom called "The Dragons' Den" where individuals with ideas for businesses come before a group of highly critical, rich people who have money to invest in a concept they find interesting. A host of would-be entrepreneurs appear on the show looking for funds.

You guys have to see it -- it's addictive:

[YouTube:PF6ZBqaAcY8]

But can any of these contests or competitions lead to entrepreneurial gold?

Bo Fishback, vice president of entrepreneurship for the Kauffman Foundation, says we're seeing an increasing number of these competitions.

As for long-term idea "ka-ching": "Anecdotally, we know some successful companies are launched out of these programs, but we don't know for sure how effective or quantifiable the outcomes are," he explained.

I'm constantly getting e-mails from companies that hold these contests.

Two such contests that have received some media attention (in part because they're constantly pitched to reporters like me), including Ideablob.com, which is run by credit card company Advanta, and American Express Open's "Micro to Millions" program, which is part of the company's larger "Make Mine a Million $ Business" initiative.

Basically, credit card companies are trying to tap into the lucrative small business market, and what better way to do that than host entrepreneur contests?

Ideablob has a monthly contest that pays out $10,000 for the best idea determined by its online community, while Micro to Millions offers $5,000, marketing help and business coaching to firms with less than $250,000 in sales.

I asked both organizations what the success rate has been for their entrepreneurial winners.

Ideablob spokeswoman, Jennifer Sherlock says:

"We have five winners who started new businesses, and we have five winners who used the money for their existing businesses."

And Danny Urquia, a spokesman for American Express, says:

"We've got 40 women in Micro to Millions right now. The goal is to get them to $250,000 in 18-24 months, and since we only started in March of '07 we don't have any numbers on success yet.

These goals are indeed ambitious, but before you enter a competition you have to figure out what's at stake for you and your concept.

Disclosing highly-confidential information with the public is a bad idea, Fishback maintains, but you can offer an elevator pitch on how the product or service will work "without giving away the secret sauce."

And you also have to consider how much time and money you want to spend on preparing a business plan to submit to a contest. Some universities require extensive background material and information about the company you want to launch that could take months to prepare.

"You may have to go through a lot of hoops in order to even be allowed to compete," he notes, referring to one well-known national competition called The MIT 100k Entrepreneurship Competition.

But there are some benefits beyond cash prizes.

You can make connections and develop possible mentoring relationships with the people you meet through competitions. And every entrepreneur can use the exposure winners often receive in the media.

The bottom line, Fishback adds, is figuring out whether the value you could receive outweighs the risks.

"Everything in the world of entrepreneurship is about the risk-value ratio," he said.

I have a serious piece of advice for all you business owners out there who have a Web site and insist on including unprofessional headshots of yourselves — take them down now!

Many of you have figured out how to upload photos to your Web site, and that's a good thing. Lots of sites have been too text heavy, so it's nice to see more entrepreneurs using photos and graphics online.

But just because you fancy yourself as a bit more tech savvy these days, it doesn't mean you or your spouse or your nephew should be shooting the photos you include on your company site.

It's time to hire a professional for that.

A potential source for a story I was working on recently sent me an e-mail with background about her company and a link to her Web site. When I logged on to the site, I gasped — there was a horrible photo of her on the front page. It was dark, blurry, her face was washed out and she was dressed in a blazer that looked like something Barbara Bush would wear.

It made me wonder how on top of her "A" game she is.

Did I use her as a source?

I must admit, I decided to put her contact info at the bottom of my source pile.

I know what you guys are thinking: You can't judge a book by the cover. But the photo did make me wonder about her professionalism. Did she think this photo was a good way to represent her brand?

There's been a lot written lately about older professionals getting Botox or surgery so they can look more hip and young. I'm not a believer in this. Frankly, I think it undermines a professional's credibility instead of enhancing it.

But there's nothing wrong with a little make up so a camera can see your features.

I rarely wear makeup, but recently I've done a few TV appearances and even though I look like a freak when I leave the makeup room, it always seems to look okay on camera.

I know, entrepreneurs are busy and they also want to try and do everything themselves, but sometimes you have to enlist the help of others to enhance our business.

Photographers and artists can be your best friends when it comes to a Web site.

A photo editor for the main newspaper in my town gave me a good tip. He said lots of businesses call him when they need a photo, and he has no qualms about giving out freelancers' contact information because they're always looking for extra work. The rate for one of these freelancers can be a fraction of what you'd pay a professional photo studio.

You should also review the photos of you on the big social networking Web sites, liked LinkedIn and Facebook. You might have a connection that has a connection that knows an artist or a photographer.

When I decided to add a photo to my workplace blog CareerDiva.net, I toyed with the idea of using an old photo that my husband had taken, but then I thought better of it.

I've seen a lot of Web sites that use caricatures of company executives, so I thought that might work for my site. I ended up with a cartoon of myself done by Alan Baseden, an incredible graphic artist from a major Philadelphia newspaper who is also a friend.

There are also some online services that will turn a photo into a caricature.

Now, I know a caricature won't fly for every business. I would take a gander at a bunch of Web sites out there and figure out what would work for your firm's image.

But before you do anything else, take down those scary photos.

I'm actually feeling guilty about the source I told you about who I ended up not using. Should I call her and tell her why I put her at the bottom of the pile? Would she appreciate my candor, or make a voodoo doll of me?

Would you want to know?

Recently, a colleague from New York told me about her new strategy for being more productive -- cut back on face-to-face meetings.

With e-mail, phone calls and even Twitter available to us, who needs real human contact?

Her strategy made sense. She had more time to do her work because she wasn't out gallivanting around Manhattan meeting friends and business associates.

Long lunches, she found, were one of the worst time sinks.

I've written about the death of lunch at large companies, but I always figured small business owners and freelancers need the business lunch to keep clients and in order to not lose touch with the world outside.

It made me think about an inscription the author Robin Jay wrote for me in her new book, "The Art of the Business Lunch." In the book she wrote: "Share a meal and close the deal!"

A nice sentiment, to be sure, but what about just sharing e-mails or phone calls?

"Business lunch is my life," Jay said.

That makes sense since she's trying to sell her book. But seriously folks, she thinks we're all crazy if we don't make time to break bread with others.

"The choice to bypass a lunch meeting is one of the biggest mistakes anyone in business can make," Jay maintains. "In our digital age of cell phones, text messaging and 'have your voice mail talk to my voice mail' there's no replacement for good, old-fashioned face time. People prefer to do business with people they LIKE."

I'm trying to think of people I have only emailed or talked to on the phone and whether or not I really liked them. There was one editor I worked with for the now defunct Ziff Davis magazine called "Smart Business." I never even talked to the guy on the phone. It was all e-mail -- getting assignments, negotiating my fee, etc. Did I like him? It's hard to go that far, but he seemed like a nice guy.

Eating together would have definitely helped our cyber friendship, but what if you just don't have time? Jay has some advice:

"If your work day is too, too full, then meet for breakfast. This is also a great suggestion for entrepreneurs on limited budgets, as breakfast is almost always more affordable than a big business lunch. But to pass up the opportunity to share conversation and ideas with clients is a tremendous mistake."

When I was getting off the phone with my colleague who is against face-to-face meetings, I told her, "Next time I'm in New York let's have lunch."

"Eve," she said. "Remember, I really don't do lunches."

"Ooops," I said, a little embarrassed.

"Let's do drinks," she suggested.

I'm assuming she meant real drinks in a real bar and not a rendezvous in Second Life, or some other virtual venue.

Cyber cheers anyone?