Cinventure - For the Cincinnati Entrepreneur

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 […]

At its core, entrepreneurship involves the discovery and exploitation of opportunities. New entrepreneurs often wonder how to increase their chances of identifying unseen opportunities. A common belief is that the only way to find great opportunities is to stumble upon them inadvertently. In truth, most great opportunities are simple ideas that have been cultivated […]

Guy Kawasaki asks: Do you want to make meaning with your company?
Kawasaki believes the essense of entrepreneurship is about making meaning; changing the world in a positive way should be the core of any new start up. In The Art of the Start, he defines four ways to create meaning:

Make the world a better place
Increase […]

The Institute for the Future, a research company in Palo Alto, CA, recently conducted a study to predict trends affecting small business over the next five years. Study participant Rhonda Abrams summarized six trends identified by the study:

Retirement businesses: Millions of baby boomers will soon retire. Most boomers are still too energetic and engaged to […]

Spotted over on the Signal vs. Noise blog:
When you think small business, think 1-10 people not 50-100. There’s an endless supply of 1-10 person companies. Who cares about the Fortune 500? It’s time to care about the Fortune 5,000,000. Forget the enterprise market. Forget the mid-sized company market. Build for the smallest of small companies […]

Unusual Business Ideas That Work tells a story with an important underlying lesson: More people with more money have more varying tastes - it is easier than ever to exploit a small portion of consumers by focusing your energy on a defined niche:
Reading a business magazine in the doctor’s office inspired Joseph Tantillo to try […]

OnStartups.com provides us with this great list of 17 Pithy Insights for Startup Founders. The first five are listed below, make sure to visit the site and see the entire list:

Seek transparency and understanding with your partners early. Issues get harder as time passes

Startup founders work long hours for a reason. There’s more […]