Cinventure – For the Cincinnati Entrepreneur

A potential customer walks in the door to buy your product but you notice she is holding an ad from one of your competitors.  Does this make you excited?  Or anxious and nervous?
We should all be excited when someone walks in our door to buy from us, especially when we see they are serious about [...]

March is an exciting month if you are a college basketball fan, and there’s no reason why it can’t be an exciting month for your business, too.  Not too long ago I posted an article about setting New Year’s resolutions for your business.  Well, it’s been two full months since the year began and we’re [...]

So in my October 18th, 2007 blog article I talked about advertising exposure that claims to reach a large audience but fails to reach your target audience.  I also briefly touched on the need to have good advertising exposure, effective advertising, as it’s all about quality over quantity.
Well just to briefly revisit this topic, there [...]

Happy New Year!  It’s that time of year again when we all make idle promises to ourselves that we’ll quit smoking, start dieting, exercise more, and so on.  But what about our business? 
While many businesses have strategic goals, long-term plans, mission statements, and exit strategies perhaps it’s also time that we started making new year’s [...]

People often make fun of the fast food industry and you especially see this group used as the setting for jokes and sketch comedy on tv.  We can look closer at this group and learn some important lessons about customer service and marketing.

The phrase Do you want fries with that? is actually a great example [...]

Donald Trump is known for saying “there’s no such thing as too much exposure.”  And certainly no one would disagree with this when you think about the good exposure.  But I would venture to guess that no one likes bad press.  And the only thing second to bad press is ineffective good press, or better stated… [...]

The US Census Bureau is a great resource that most entrepreneurs over look.  Aside from all of the excellent demographic information that you can find, the Census also handles industry classification codes, known as NAICS (pronounced nix), which stands for North American Industry Classification System.  While it is certainly important to understand the demographics of [...]

Whether you’re sitting across from the other party in a fancy boardroom or standing on a gravel parking lot haggling with a used car salesman, there are some basic principles or strategies that will help you during the actual negotiation.
Be direct.  Don’t hint around at what you want or what you have to offer.  Make [...]

I have a friend that use to sell cars for a living and he said something that has stuck with me to this day.  “A good deal is a state of mind.”  Meaning of course, that as long as the customer thought she or he was getting a good deal, then it was a good [...]

So you’re business is growing and you needed to hire some employees.  That’s great news, but now you need to come up with a way to identify and select the best candidate for employment.  It is also important to note that employees represent not only assets to the firm, but potential liabilities as they will [...]