Business Startups discussion

Hi everyone,

I just noticed that there hasn't been any discussions yet in this group and thought I would kick things off a little bit.

My name is Coach Niquenya. I'm from Chicago, IL. I'm a small business coach and entrepreneurship trainer. I'm all about both personal and professional development and read a lot of self-help titles. I also love romance, erotica, and poetry. I'm an author too and write blogs, articles, and now books!

I would love to meet and mingle with the members of this group to expand my horizons.

Thanks!

I just settled into this group and was wondering why there wasn't any action, entrepreneurship being a pretty hot topic these days. I wrote Startup Assembly Manual and was hoping to start some discussions about concerns of aspiring entrepreneurs.

Good start, Coach. I am based in TX and VT. I'm a veteran entrepreneur, teach entrepreneurship on an MBA, run Startup Owl devoted to entrepreneuring. I specialize in small town and rural startups and will soon have a new business incubator in the cloud devoted to their needs. I have an eBook on Amazon called Telling Startup Stories. Check it out.

How do small town and rural startups differ from city startups?

Thanks for responding Timothy and Will. I look forward to learning more about both of your endeavors. I will be checking out the books. I am definitely interested in learning what differences there may be in small and rural startups versus city. Most of my clients live in big cities or are relatively close to a big city (suburbanites). I have yet to run into a specific issue with rural although I imagine infrastructure, resources, and marketing could be issues depending on the industry.

Where do you teach entrepreneurship, Will? I am very interested in teaching online undergraduate level entrepreneurship but I don't complete my MBA until later this year. Every lead I have pursued requires teachers to have the MBA first.

No short answer to the urban/rural divide. there are many differences, including (generally) scale, lack of entrepreneurial ecosystem, access to capital, mentors, training... The aspirations vary too, so it's not just who the people are, but why they seek to remain is less populated places. To give you a bit more, you could look at a paper I did for the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs. It does not answer your question directly, but will give you a smell of the countryside entrepreneur, Click here.

I'm kinda drawn to the country entrepreneur. I grew with one foot in Detroit and one foot on our farm in Ohio. A good idea to develop is one that fits the nature of both the founder and the customers. I stress personal assessment in my book, then customer assessment. It's all about creating a product/customer fit, whomever and wherever the customer lives.