Small-biz startup blogs: Surprisingly entertaining

Jeff Cornwall, a professor in Nashville, TN, runs an entertaining business blog that I read every day. His most recent post was about business plans recently being due for his students, and how a growing number of them are now simultanously maintaining blogs about the actual start-up process. Here's one, for example, from Jason Duncan, one of his students, who plans on moving back to Montana after graduation and opening a new coffeehouse called Cafe Evoke.

Regular readers know I'm starting up a new small business here in Chicago this year myself (slowly, ever so slowly), so am naturally reading a lot more business-oriented literature as a result. Mr. Cornwall's entry reminded me that I've been reading an increasing amount of these "first-person business" blogs as well, and that they can often be as entertaining and fascinating as any by creative writers or other artists. I encourage all my artistic readers to perhaps expand their expectations a bit of what they think a blog can be, and to occasionally take on the odd off-subject blog into their news reader. The results can be surprisingly satisfying sometimes.