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http://www.obi4u.org/, http://www.obi4u.org/

Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd./Omni Business Incubator, 13950 SW Galbreath Drive , Ste. 216, Sherwood, OR (2026)

10/06/2026

How To Start Your New Front Porch Decorating Business

By Kathy Bazan, Certified Small Business Counselor

How can you start a porch decorating business that offers seasonal porch decorating to those in your community?

Your new business could include customized doorstep design, sourcing from local farms, post-season clean-up, and recycling to non-profit wildlife sanctuaries or zoos which is great public relations for you!

Here are the first steps:

· Get a free Google Voice number. The number will ring on your phone so that you don’t have to give out your personal number.

· Rent a private mailbox at a UPS Store, Postal Annex, or a competitor. This gives you a street address (“123 Main St., #567”) which you can use as your address (instead of your home address on the next step).

· Generate a short, welcoming, and memorable name for your business which doesn’t limit you to only Halloween or the fall season. (You can Google “best name for a porch decorating business” and then mix and match the words until you find something unique.)

· Select a legal structure.

o Option A: Trade name. You can operate a business under a trade name which is the least expensive way to make sure no one else in your state uses your business name. You can form an LLC later for more liability protection since a trade name has none.

o Option B: Form a limited liability company in your state. (See our previous posts on the differences between these two business structures.)

· File for a trade name or LLC in your state.

· After your trade name or LLC is approved, go to the IRS website to apply for a free Employer’s Identification Number (EIN).

· Research credit unions and banks to find one which does not charge fees for a business checking account.

o Start the account with at least $500. If your beginning balance is not sufficient, the IRS may think this is a hobby and not a business which means you might not be able to take deductions on your tax return.

· Ask 2-3 of your friends if you can decorate their front porches. Ask them how large a display they want and if they will reimburse you for the materials (e.g., pumpkins, hay, flowers, corn stalks).

o Take photos of these completed porches.

o Create a flyer using a Word template showing your designs and your contact info.

o Put the flyers in the mailboxes of the upscale neighborhoods in your city.

· On Instagram and NextDoor, share your photos.

o Connect with influencers and community groups.

· Start a Google My Business page. This is free and you can show photos of the porches you’ve decorated.

o After you start making money, consider having a website designed for you.

· Start a Facebook and/or LinkedIn page to show your designs and attract customers.

That will get you started!

© 2025-2027. Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide.

10/05/2026

What You Need to Know about the Porch Decorating Industry

In our last post, we discussed how lucrative a porch decorating business can be—whether you are decorating a client’s front porch for Halloween, Christmas, spring, or life event.

What is the business concept?

You deliver farm-fresh pumpkins, gourds, flowers, hay bales, and corn stalks on your client’s front porch to design a gorgeous display worthy of a style magazine photo shoot.

Depending on the client’s budget, you could deliver a few pumpkins in various colors or an entire pumpkin patch.

Then, you can add additional client services such as post-season teardown to generate an additional revenue stream.

Now that you have cleaned off your clients' stoops, what do you do with the leftover pumpkins? You have two options: Get positive PR or create another income stream:

· If you donate the pumpkins to local zoos or wildlife refuges, you may be able to get positive press coverage for the event. Contact local animal organizations before demolishing your displays to ascertain if they will take donated pumpkins, gourds, and hay. After you find a zoo or refuge, then contact media outlets to invite journalists to cover the animals chopping delightedly into these pumpkins.

· If you sell the pumpkins and gourds to a livestock facility, you may be able to create an additional income stream.

What research should you do before you start this business?

· Research other porch decorating companies across the U.S. Did you get ideas for design packages you can offer and the prices you can charge?

· Delineate your territory: Do you want to work with clients within 10 or 25 miles of your home? List the cities you wish to serve.

· Find sources for local produce: Contact local wholesale distributors, farms, and greenhouses to ascertain prices and sign contracts for pumpkins, gourds, decorative cabbage, chrysanthemums, fall flowers, corn stalks, etc.

· Research how to protect your displays in your climate zone and from hungry wild deer, squirrels, and other wild critters. It might be a diluted vinegar solution or a protective spray.

Overview of a porch decorating business:

Start-up costs: $500-$1,500 for inventory.

Cost of inventory needed per porch: $150-$350.

What could you charge to decorate a client’s front porch or backyard? $300-$1,250.

What is the profit margin? 55-65%.

Need funding?

· Many people pay the initial expenses from their checking account or charge the costs on a credit card.

· They might ask friends or family for funds.

There are additional options:

· The Texas Woman’s University Center for Women Entrepreneurs offers a Texas business start-up grant of up to $5,000. (You, as the owner, contribute a 10% match.)

· Google “grants for business start-up in (your state)."

© 2025-2027. Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide.

10/02/2026

A LEGAL, Part-Time Biz That Makes $1M in 8-12 Weeks? Yes, Please!

By Kathy Bazan, Certified Small Business Counselor

What is it? It's porch decorating for Halloween and the fall!

(No, not with TP. Perish the thought!)

Porch Pumpkins of Dallas, Texas:

· is only open from July to October and only open part-time

· created jobs for designers and delivery personnel

· was completely booked by 1,000 clients last year, and

· earned over $1,000,000 in 2025.

Started during the pandemic by Heather Torres, Porch Pumpkins created different front porch decorating packages ranging from $185 for a single, huge grand prize pumpkin to $1,650 for 50 neutral specialty pumpkins, 2 neutral Grand Prize pumpkins, 2 bales of hay, and last but not least—a set of white mini-pumpkins.

This concierge front porch decorating service also has a price list for:
· Delivery
· back yard set-up
· hay bales, and
· pick up & removal.

The business became so successful that similar businesses have sprung up around the nation including:

· Front Porch PNW (Oregon)
· Pumpkins Stacked and Styled (Oregon)
· Pumpkin Porch Parade (Oregon)
· Porch Parade Northwest (Oregon)
· The Decorated Porch (Oregon)
· Coastal Porch Décor (Alabama)
· The Porch Spot (Arkansas)
· Porch Perfect NWA (Arkansas) and many others.

Why are this business niche booming?

Well, it is Halloween, Kiddies, but it’s more than that.

· It is a very high profit margin business--often higher than 65%!

· It can be started with very low costs ranging from $500-$1,500 for your first inventory. (Inventory might include storage bins, wheel barrows, pumpkins, corn stalks, hay bales, lanterns, chrysanthemums, and other fall flowers.)

· It is a low-overhead business.

· You can charge $300-$1,250 per porch depending on the size of the decorating package the clients selects.

· The inventory needed for each porch ranges from $150-$350 per porch. Do the math: That’s a 55-65% profit margin per porch!

· The business can easily be expanded to create custom porch decorations for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July, birthdays, anniversaries, new baby, graduations, and other events.

· Homeowners who have the money but not the time to design the best looking front porch in their neighborhood are more than willing to pay someone who can take the time to design a fabulous front porch for them.

Several of Heather's competitors only work 8-12 weeks per year. It's the way they designed this part-time business to work for them.

Tomorrow, we’ll dive into how you can start a white glove porch decorating service in your area!

© 2025-2027. Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide.

08/31/2026

How Well Intentioned Grammarians Messed up English for over 350 Years!

In college, I minored in English and was baffled as to why my professors could not--or would not--explain why we can't split an infinitive (the "to" form of the verb as in "to laugh" or "to live") or place a preposition at the end of a sentence. Now that I've researched it, I'm here to explain how grammarians made English much less understandable for over 350 years.

Quick history:

The Celts lived in England from about 1.000 BC until they were conquered by the Roman Empire in 43 AD. Celtic was spoken by the conquered and Latin by the conquerors. In Latin, you couldn't split an infinitive because it was one word.

When Rome was attacked by Goths, Visigoths, and some other Goths in 410 AD, Roman troops withdrew from England and other parts of the Roman Empire to protect the capital. As the Roman legions withdrew, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from what is now Germany moved to England to fill the power vacuum. In the Germanic languages, you could split an infinitive because an infinitive was two words and a preposition could sit at the end of a sentence on its own.

Old English was spoken in England from 450 A.D. to 1100 A.D. (when the Anglo-Saxons conquered England up to the Norman Conquest). In this West Germanic language, you could split an infinitive and have the last word of a sentence be a preposition. The saga/poem, BEOWULF, is written in Old English.

Middle English was spoken 1100 AD to 1500 AD (Norman Conquest to Early Tudors) and is a combination of Old English, the Germanic languages, Norman French, Latin, and the Old Norse of the Vikings. Chaucer wrote in Middle English.

Early Modern English was spoken 1500-1700 AD. To Middle English-Germanic root language, words in Latin and Greek were added to label the many scientific and technical inventions. Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English. Since he was a Latin tutor prior to writing plays, he only once split an infinitive (which you can't do in Latin) but frequently ended a sentence with a preposition.

He died before grammarians wrote grammar books in England.

Lucky him!

In the 1600s and 1700s as the British Empire expanded bringing “Pax Britannia” or British peace to far flung locations, grammarians sought to upgrade Germanic-English by forcing its grammar rules to abide by Latin grammatical rules. They wanted English to have the classical feel of classical Latin.

Therefore, with these new rule changes, splitting infinitives and dangling prepositions were no longer allowed.

Grammar teachers scowled at students who violated either rule; grades precipitously plummeted.

And so, it was for over 350 years.

Lucky for us, this has all changed within our lifetimes. English teachers no longer scowl at their students who split an infinitive or dangled a preposition.

The rules have changed and both are allowed!
© 2025-2027. Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide.

08/28/2026

How I Became an Editor :-)

By Kathryn Lee, published humorist

I edited college textbooks in environmental safety and health for over 10 years. Here's how I started that career.

True story:

One day, I walked into my class—a college prep English course for sophomores. The black curtains were drawn but there was no one from the A/V Department fiddling with a movie projector. The lights were off that afternoon, leaving the room in a somber darkness. I thought there might actually be more light in the deepest and darkest of dungeons.

After the final student entered, Mr. Murphy rose laboriously from behind his desk, lumbered to the door, and closed it ever so quietly. Turning to us, he announced we could do homework for any other class but we must be quiet because he had a migraine and couldn’t deal with us.

Since I had completed all my homework for my morning classes so that I wouldn’t have to lug the heavy books home, I opened my grammar book, which I brought diligently to class every day even though we never opened it. To my left was Tina, a fellow honor roll student and Camp Fire Girl, who had also cracked open her grammar book. Thinking that what the gladiators said to the Roman emperor before the games began, I reluctantly started reading.

I read Rule 100 which defined prepositions, Rule 101 on how they are used, and a list of them in Rule 102. "With," "to," and "between" were all on this list of 150 prepositions.

At Rule 103, I paused. My lips twitched up in a smile. I put my hands over my mouth to suppress laughter that was welling up inside me like hot lava about to erupt from Vesuvius. I turned to Tina who also was trying to smoother her giggles.

Mr. Murphy was NOT amused. He glared at us. Curling one finger towards him angrily, he beckoned us to approach his desk. Books in hand, heads hung low, we approached. Opening our books, we each pointed at Rule 103.

Irritated, he glared at us.

He looked down at the rule. He looked up at us. He looked back at the rule and then burst out laughing!

Rule 103 stated: “Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.”

“With” is a preposition.

He told us that the book had been in use in our school district for over 10 years and during that time, none of the 3,000 students or 20 teachers had noticed that mistake.

I think I know what happened. At the front of the grammar book was a list of all the esteemed professors from every corner of the U.S. who had reviewed and approved this textbook. Most professors have grad students do the "grunt work" for the professors. I think a professor assigned the writing of this chapter to a grad student who rebelled by putting in this rule. Thinking that the professor or the textbook editor would correct it, the grad student was rather pleased with Rule 103.

As you can see, the professor trusted the grad student and there might not have been an editor.

Either way, Tina and I earned extra credit!

© 2025-2027. Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide.

08/25/2026

6 Keys to Getting an SBA Loan

As experienced small business counselors who helped entrepreneurs obtain over $35,000,000 in capital, we’re often asked, “What are the keys to getting an SBA loan?”

Here are the 6 most frequently used keys to unlock the assets of an SBA-guaranteed loan:

1. Business status: Is your business legally registered as a for-profit entity operating in the United States?

a. Have you been approved for a limited liability company or a for-profit corporation in any state of the U.S.?

b. If you operate a non-profit corporation, you can’t apply for an SBA-guaranteed loan.

2. Time in business: Do you have at least two (2) years of tax returns and financial statements?

a. There are lenders who require three years of financial statements and tax returns so please be aware that each lender can set up its own rules.

b. Financial statements requested are often the balance sheets, profit and loss (P&L), and cash flow statements.

3. Can your current cash flow cover your current debts AND the new loan payment? This is often called the Debt-Service Coverage Ratio or DSCR. Lenders often require a minimum of a 1.20:1 to 1.25:1 ratio.

4. Minimum credit score: Usually a minimum personal credit score of 650-690 is required. The lender may require a higher minimum score from key owners and/or for larger loans.

5. No federal defaults: Borrowers are not allowed to have any unpaid debt or defaults on any government-backed loans in the past including federal student loans.

6. Personal guarantee required: Any person owning 20% or more of the business must sign a personal guarantee promising to repay the loan if the business defaults.

Now that you know, how can we help you to get approval for an SBA-guaranteed loan?

© 2025-2027. Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide.

08/21/2026

Professor Defeats AI!

When 32 students used AI to answer a midterm question during a summer history course at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, the students were surprised to learn that their professor quickly saw through their artificial intelligence (AI) short cut…and cut their grades down to “F” on that section.

(Three students who did not AI were rewarded for their effort.)

What can we, as small business owners, learn from this?

1. The professor, Dr. Jason Gibson, inserted the word “Madagascar” into a question asking the students to compare the Industrial Revolution to the digital age we are experiencing. Since he placed the word “Madagascar” in a white font, the students didn’t see it. When the 32 students copied the question into an AI chatbot, the chatbot perceived the word and then concocted very odd answers incorporating “Madagascar” into the answer.

What could we expect in the future?

It is very possible that job postings, contract request for proposals, and other communications will have a hidden word in white which the eye can’t see but AI can see to w**d out those taking a short cut.

2. The students didn’t proofread the answers culled from AI. If students had read what AI produced, they would have found non-sensical sentences such as, “Madagascar floats sideways through the afternoon” or “Madagascar purple bicycle whispers to the ceiling” (Source: https://www.today.com/parents/family/professor-catches-ai-cheating-hidden-word-rcna589421).

What can we as small business owners learn?

The students assumed that AI would concoct a truthful answer that made logical sense. If they hadn’t been so trusting (or lazy), they would have spotted and removed any sentences referring to Madagascar.

As business owners, we can’t assume that AI will create the truthful answers we need so we must proofread to get rid of AI hallucinations like this.

3. This surprised Dr. Gibson even more than the prevalence of AI as a short cut to passing the midterm.

As small business owners, we recall our teachers and professors lecturing us on maintaining standards of academic integrity. Plagiarism—copying someone else’s words without giving the author credit—was not allowed. Buying a paper from a paper mill or another student was forbidden. Those shortcuts to obtaining a college degree. Now, there is another shortcut: AI. As long as professors stay vigilant and students abide by the principles of academic integrity, we will graduate an educated, intelligent workforce.

© 2025-2027. Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide.

08/17/2026

How to Win at Marketing

Do you know why that libation is called "bourbon" and how it helped a small business owner win at marketing? Let us at Oregon Business Incubator explain.

First, here's a lesson from best practices at business school, since we often help entrepreneurs name a new product. We keep in mind these five guiding principles:

• Understand your buyer’s behaviors.
• Identify your buyer’s core emotional triggers.
• Be clear about what your product or service does.
• Provide distinct value.
• Create a brand strategy which includes these four points.

A very successful example of this is the man who changed the name of a product to appeal to the thirsty French patrons of his drinking establishment in New Orleans, Louisiana.

According the owners of Left Bank Distilled Spirits, a New Orleans bourbon distillery, here is what happened:

Back in the 1780s-1790s, the Scots-Irish settlers of Kentucky, being a thrifty lot, decided to distill any surplus New World corn into wh***ey using Old World methods.

Aging the brew in new, charred oak barrels, they shipped their libation down the Mississippi River to the thirsty denizens of New Orleans and it aged along the way.

Sold as “corn wh***ey,” sales weren’t exactly brisk in the French Quarter.

In the early 1800’s, a Frenchman owned a bar in New Orleans serving his fellow Frenchmen and those who liked to think of themselves as aristocratic Frenchmen. The saloon owner understood his buyers’ behaviors and identified his buyers core emotional triggers: They preferred to drink alcohol which was created in France and carried the name of a French region.

Analyzing his sales, the saloon owner realized he had a very successful sales record of:

• Armagnac, a grape brandy, bottled in the Armagnac area of Gascony, France.

• Bordeaux red and white w**es produced in Bordeaux.

• Cognac, a grape brandy, was produced in the Charente region of France.

• Ch*****ne, a sparkling w**e, hailed from the Ch*****ne region of France.

The saloon owner decided to rebrand corn wh***ey as though it had originated in France.

To provide distinct value and to be clear about what his product was, he renamed corn wh***ey as “bourbon,” the name of a French region and a French royal family.

Around his new alcoholic beverage, he created a brand strategy which elevated mere corn wh***ey distilled in the backwoods of Kentucky by financially challenged immigrants to an exotic new libation which might have been imported from France.

While he didn’t claim it was French in origin, he let his buyers assume it was French by the name.

By applying the five marketing points we listed, this entrepreneur successfully named a product by understanding his buyers’ behaviors and identifying their core emotional triggers. He was clear about what his product did and he provided distinct value to his buyers.

Now that you know, you can succeed at naming your products too!

© 2025-2027. Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide.

08/14/2026

The Mysterious Missing Musketeers

While we admit that this is not one of the great mysteries of life, we, at Oregon Business Incubator, are happy to have solved it:

Why there is only one piece of candy in the 3 Musketeers package?

Where are the other two musketeers?

To answer this, we have to dust off our history books to almost 100 years ago.

In 1932, everyone in America was excitedly waiting for debut that December of a French movie, The Three Musketeers, based on the swashbuckling adventure novel written by Alexandre Dumas in 1844. To capitalize on the romance and adventure in the movie, the candy manufacturer, Mars Incorporated, debuted a new 3 pc. candy bar, The 3 Musketeers.

In 1932, Mars, Incorporated, the candy manufacturer, debuted a new candy bar, the 3 Musketeers.

Trying to stay true to the concept of three, inside the package were three pieces of candy—vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate. Each piece was filled with a light, fluffy, whipped nougat. Together, the three pieces sold for five cents (5¢).

While the chocolate piece of candy was widely loved, the same can’t be said about the vanilla and strawberry pieces. They were tolerated. Mars wondered how they could delete these 2 pieces without upsetting their customers.

Their answer came 14 years later in 1942.

As World War II raged, Americans were asked to reduce their use of sugar so that sugar could be diverted to American military personnel bravely fighting the war.

In 1942, sugar was rationed on the home front.

Seeking to be perceived as patriotic, Mars saw its opportunity by conforming the constraints of sugar rationing while eliminating the vanilla and strawberry pieces in the candy bar.

Mars was able to use less sugar (and obey government mandates) while becoming more profitable by reducing sugar costs while providing customers with the piece of candy they loved the most. It was a win-win-win for Mars and its candy-loving customers.

And thus, we solved the mystery of the two missing musketeers from the beloved candy bar.

© 2025-2027. Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide.

08/11/2026

Google Changed the Rules

Imagine that you are up to bat in a baseball game, eager to run to first base. Suddenly, the umpire halts the game, hands out a new rule book, and announces that everyone will do the opposite: When you get a hit or a walk, you run to 3rd. base. Yes, you are running in the opposite direction.

That's what Google just did: It reversed the rules for Google search.

Up until recently, Google rewarded small business owners for having a large quantity of commodity content--content that was an introduction to your business niche. If you were a florist, you posted content about birth flowers...just like every other florist. If you owned a wedding venue, you posted lists of colors that were "in" for that season...just like every other wedding website. So long as you rewrote the content and didn't copy the content created by another business, you were fine.

Recently, Google changed the rules on what a search page looks like and how your small business can be included in a search answer.

Here’s how the world of search changed:

1. The format of a Google search page: In the past, when you posted a question, you saw on Page 1, a dozen active links to websites which could answer it. This was followed by additional active links on Page 2, etc. As a small business owner, you might get traffic from your content on Page 2.

Now, that is no longer an option.

Instead, the search page posts an artificial intelligence (AI) answer and live links to only a very few sources. Your goal now is to become one of those chosen few sources to generate traffic.

2. Keywords: They are still valuable in Google search.

· At the dawn of the Internet, content creators were rewarded for keyword stuffing—the endless repetition of a keyword to meet the requirements of exact match.

· Keyword stuffing was replaced by keyword diversity—using synonyms such as “canine” to reel in more searchers fishing for dog content.

· Natural language algorithms expanded Google’s ability to identify semantic content (synonyms, variations in meaning, and context), anticipate the audience’s intent, and be responsive to their demands.

What changes do you need to implement to stay current with Google?

· Ditch any keyword stuffing.

· Ditch HTML meta keywords. Google hasn’t ranked those for years.

· Use your keywords to connect with your audience’s terminology, uncover their exact questions, answer their queries, and solve their problems.

· Blend your keywords into your titles, headings, and any URLs so that you are abundantly clear on your topic.

3. Use market research to uncover underserved topics and measure commercial intent.

4. Google Ads sets prices based on identified keyword themes and established search behaviors.

In our next post, we’ll dive into how you can win in this new world of Google search!

© 2025-2027. Oregon Business Incubator, Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide.

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