Protecting Your Trade Secrets
Your intellectual property (IP) can come in many forms: patents, copyrights, trade secrets and trademarks among others. This post will...
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Doug Howe
- Mar 23, 2021
- 2 min
Being Seized by the “Better Mousetrap” Syndrome
One of the “5 - P’s” of Marketing is “Product.” The product development process needs to be guided by marketing-oriented staff that have...
Doug Howe
- Feb 15, 2021
- 2 min
ENTREPRENEUR’S COMMON MISTAKE #1: Having insufficient start-up and operating funds
The most important element you must include in your business planning is determining the amount of funding that will be required to get...
Rusty Shaffer
- Feb 13, 2021
- 5 min
What's the difference between a business incubator and a business accelerator?
If you’re an entrepreneur looking for guidance or investment it can be a daunting task to figure out the many players in the arena. There...
Doug Howe
- Feb 8, 2021
- 2 min
SEGMENTING YOUR MARKET: 10% of a watermelon, or 90% of a grape?
If I were to ask you, “What would you rather have – 10% of a watermelon ... or 90% of a grape – how would you react? Think about this,...
Jeffrey Sheldon; patentpend@gmail.com
- Feb 6, 2021
- 2 min
Patent Protection: You Get What You Pay For
Is our Covid economy the real mother of invention? It appears to be. Whether it's because of a lost job or a slashed salary or working...
Rusty Shaffer
- Feb 4, 2021
- 5 min
Can you "learn" to be passionate about what you're selling?
Often when I speak, people ask me where I get my passion from for certain topics, ideas, products, business techniques, etc. The short...
Doug Howe
- Feb 2, 2021
- 2 min
Having A Product That Is Never “Ready” For Market: taking too long to get your product to market
A frequent error that start-ups make is taking too much time getting the product into the marketplace. In typical fashion, our start-up...
Doug Howe
- Feb 1, 2021
- 2 min
Practice Guerrilla Marketing: Use inexpensive yet highly effective tools to achieve success
With any start-up, we want to conserve that ever-precious commodity – cash. Guerrilla marketing tools and techniques represent a basket...
Doug Howe
- Feb 1, 2021
- 1 min
THE UCSB TEST: Here’s a sanity check for your creative ideas and messaging.
THE UCSB TEST: Here’s a sanity check for your creative ideas and messaging. First, the UCSB test has nothing to do with the California...
Rusty Shaffer
- Dec 22, 2020
- 2 min
What if Your Business Could Talk to You?
In many of my discussions with new entrepreneurs, I'm constantly asked, "How do i....(fill in the blank)," or "What should I do with...
Rusty Shaffer
- Dec 22, 2020
- 3 min
Looking Behind the Value-Prop Canvas
If you're familiar with the value proposition canvas you know that parts of the canvas are filled out with answers to yield an idea's (or...
Rusty Shaffer
- Dec 22, 2020
- 5 min
Beware of Shifting Pain Points
I recently left a 30-year career in the musical instrument business. I invented the Fretlight® guitar in 1989 and built a company around...