Once in awhile a small business comes along that helps to change the way we think and feel about a product. While many small businesses have the potential to do this very few do. Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream started as a small business and while growing big managed to change forever how we think about ice cream. In doing so they built a small business to big business success story that anyone could be proud of and should be inspired by.

So how did it all start? If you can believe it Ben & Jerry's was actually started by a couple of ex-hippie friends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in Burlington, Vermont. The two friends had recently taken a correspondence course that they paid $5 for on how to make ice cream from Pennsylvania State University. Their first location was opened in a renovated gas station in 1978 with a $12,000 investment.

Once they were ready for business and they opened the doors their particular way of making ice cream took over. Besides using fresh Vermont milk and cream it was the innovative flavors that won the day. Flavors like Cherry Garcia, Chubby Hubby, and Milli Vanilla. It was during 1980 that they
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started to sell their ice cream in pint sized cartons. They'd managed some initial success in selling to local Vermont restaurants and felt they were ready to expand the business. So they moved into a facility that was large enough to house their packaging operation and went to work.

From that first shop that was opened in a renovated gas station with a few thousand dollars they managed to build their business into a global chain. Eventually they opened over 200 locations and planted themselves in every grocery store while reaching a quarter billion dollars in sales. Finally in 2000 Ben and Jerry sold their business to the food giant Unilever. And although they don't have regular positions with the company anymore they are still active in a number of charitable pursuits and eco friendly endeavors. During their run to the top they were even recognized in 1988 as the U.S. Small Business Persons of the year for their efforts.

Although they no longer own the business Ben and Jerry's name has become synonymous with some of the best ice cream in the world. Once a year the company even holds a free cone on the anniversary of the founding of the business. They have left a mark on society that they can be truly proud of. And a legacy that will outlive them both.

As entrepreneurs Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have done more than most people dream they can do. But there is no reason that your dream cannot become just as great as theirs has. Your business can become your own legacy if you want it to. Your business may start small but is entirely up to you how great it will become. You just need to look deep down inside yourself and ask how much you want your business to achieve. Once you have your answer you'll know what you need to do.

Cash Miller

www.ted.com Bill Gates hopes to solve some of the world's biggest problems using a new kind of philanthropy. In a passionate and, yes, funny 18 minutes, he asks us to consider two big questions and how we might answer them.TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes -- including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at http

Smart Internet marketers know that buying master resale rights is a shortcut to getting products on the market. But did you know that Bill Gates and the Microsoft empire were built from purchasing master resale rights?

That's right - the richest man in the world bought the rights to DOS, the operating system that began the Microsoft empire.

There are Three important lessons Bill Gates could teach you about master resale rights.

1. Find a hungry market with a burning need and fill it.

Bill Gates read about the Altair 8800 computer in Popular Science in 1975. Realizing Altair needed a simple programming language to make the computer popular, Gates sold a version of BASIC to Altair before it was even written. Then Gates worked night and day with Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff to develop it. Microsoft was born.

In 1980, IBM created the desktop PC - but they didn't have an operating system. Gates saw a burning need waiting to be filled, and learned a new lesson:

2. You don't have to create a product to fill a need if you can buy the master resale rights instead.

IBM approached Bill Gates to create an operating system for the PC. Gates initially recommended they contact Digital Research to purchase their CP/M operating system. But those negotiations failed, for more details logon to www.sales-letters-creator.com and IBM came back to Bill Gates.

Gates learned that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products had developed a clone of CP/M called QDOS. Microsoft bought the rights for just $56,000.

Of course you don't have to invest $56,000 to get rights worth selling. Often you can buy master resale rights for $100, $50, even $10 or $20. You can even join resale rights membership sites and get thousands of dollars worth of products for a small monthly fee. Sometimes you can even find master resale rights products for free!

Why so cheap? Sometimes the products aren't very good, for more details logon to www.killer-sales-letters.com but often they're great products that weren't marketed well. Not seeing the opportunity, people sell their work for almost nothing.

Smart marketers know that sometimes you can just rename a product or change the marketing and have a hit. This is where Bill Gates could teach us the third lesson:

3. Repackage or rebred, change the marketing approach, and build your own brand.

QDOS stood for "Quick and Dirty Operating System." IBM might have bought it even with a name like that, but being a savvy marketer, Gates decided to rebreed it. He dubbed it "PC-DOS," for "PC Disk Operating System." He targeted it squarely at IBM - and they bought it, big time.

When PC clones hit the market, Gates saw another hungry market with a burning need. Microsoft quickly reframed DOS, dubbing it "MS-DOS" for "Microsoft Disk Operating System," thus building the Microsoft brand at the same time. The rest is history.

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