What businesses that you have started, have failed? Entrepreneur |
- What businesses that you have started, have failed?
- Everybody starts somewhere... Jeff Bezos in 1999.
- My newest development in the entrepreneur world.
- What are some questions to ask a potential app designer and what should be known going in before deciding to hire them to build your app?
- Thanks everyone for the amazing recommendations on product specific landing pages yesterday. (Especially the potato)! I took that information and was able to make my own landing page for a product I'm working on. I'd love to get your feedback on it.
- Does anyone care for text based interviews?
- A Better Way of Approaching Your Goals In 2018 - Real Advice On How To Actually Start Achieving your goals (It's working for me at least)
- Building a website for my start up
- Help me making sense of my two failures
- 10 min summary of David Ogilvy's "Confessions of an Advertising Man" (How to run a successful advertising agency)
- First month of our business - What happened so far & reality check
- Being The Best Entrepreneur
- How reliable is the Amazon Affiliate route in 2018?
- Ways I can make money via my facebook vlog?
- Looking for Gov't Grants in Ontario CAN
- Has anyone bought "low owner involvement" sites from empire flippers or feinternational? How did it go?
- What tools do you use for organizing your Writing? Managing lists of words? Cause Word it's not enough.
- Buzzword business idea generator
- How to deal with MOQ when Private Labelling?
- b2c leads for telesales
- Help with naming
- Any sole-charge creatives out there who are killing it in business?
- Pay someone for niche research?
- Any experience/advice on opening a convenience store?
| What businesses that you have started, have failed? Posted: 06 Jan 2018 01:35 PM PST Everyone is often too keen to talk about when things go right in business, but I think there is a lot can be learnt from looking at failures too. I would be interested to hear what business people have started and why they think they failed? [link] [comments]  |
| Everybody starts somewhere... Jeff Bezos in 1999. Posted: 06 Jan 2018 01:00 PM PST Here is a photo of Jeff Bezos in 1999 in a humble office. Remember, everyone starts somewhere! [link] [comments]  |
| My newest development in the entrepreneur world. Posted: 06 Jan 2018 10:03 AM PST I have always been keen on starting new things and seeing where it goes. A few years ago I thought it would be cool to start a side project on learning how to program, so I taught myself how to create iPhone apps and it has slowly become a business. I just recently created an iPhone app that allows people to repost photos and videos to Instagram without sharing any login information. You have the option to give credit to the original user if you want. Some other apps out there make you pay to take the watermark off the photo, which I feel is an unfair thing to do. If you want to check it out, feel free to leave me some feedback on it as well. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2018 12:45 PM PST The main issue I face is designing an app is out of my depth. I have no idea the potential profit to be gained and no idea what the price range should be. It's a simple app, does only one thing, it's got some machine learning in it and revenue is gained from ad space. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2018 10:38 AM PST Here is the landing page I came up with after reading all of the responses to my post yesterday: SpecterCase.com The desktop version has some nice image hover transitions that shows the the difference when the slider is up and down. The mobile version doesn't have these. I've been working on this product for a new months now, it's a phone case that covers all of your mics and cameras with a single switch. I've gotten great reception when I show people the physical prototype, but It's been very hard to concisely convey what my product is when I try to explain it verbally with nothing to show them. My landing page will be a work in progress until the full site launches, and I have no problem with that. My ultimate goal is to have people understand what the product does without me needing to be right in front of them showing off the prototype. This product isn't for everyone, but if anyone comes to my site the only thing that matters to me is that they understand what the product is. I'm currently working on getting a 3d animation video made for the site, so that will be coming soon. Thanks. Edit: removed a double word [link] [comments]  |
| Does anyone care for text based interviews? Posted: 06 Jan 2018 12:43 PM PST Hi everyone, first off sorry if this is the wrong place for this question. Mods if it doesn't fit here and you remove it, I understand. I want to start a blog which will be linked with social media and basically I want to interview successful and unique people. Starting locally first I know quite a few successful business people and entrepreneurs in my area. What would the best method of interviewing them be? If there was a text based interview, would you lose interest because you have to read? Video format stands out as the most interesting but I know at least some of the people I want to interview wouldn't be comfortable with video. I'd love to hear peoples opinions about this, thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2018 03:01 AM PST Yes it is that time of year again when every person decides to reassess their lives and articles like this one start popping up everywhere.. So well done for actually clicking onto this article. But I hope to provide a different take on what always seems to be the same advice over and over again every year. The first step is accepting and becoming comfortable with fear You see many of us know what we need to do to achieve our goals and many of us know what we would like to do with our lives. But we don't do anything because of Fear Well let me tell you this. Everyone goes through fear. No one is immune to it. It is just that some people choose to push past it while other are paralyzed by it. Tony Robins once said:
So how can we overcome fear? It's simple. Just get started. Just start. Anywhere. Anyhow. You see the main reason most of us never change is because we feel overwhelmed by how much work it will take to start making changes in our life which then just makes us put it in the too hard basket. But you see if you change your mindset towards your goals or dreams then you are far more likely to achieve them. What do I mean by this? Well, you see so many motivational videos they might give us that initial pump up but then a few days or weeks later we are back to our same old selves again. And what do we do? We beat ourselves up and tell ourselves all kinds of negative things which then just makes pursuing our goals and dreams even harder and so we decide to go back to comfort and put our goals and dreams off for another year. Sound familiar? It is something that I did for so long myself. Until I read a book by Chris Gardner called "Start Where You Are" Among the many pockets of wisdom in the book. One of the main things that stuck with his concept that "Baby steps count". A quote from the book
Now this quote, made me realize that the fundamental reason that most of us give up pursuing our goals simply comes down to the fact that we are approaching it all with the completely wrong mindset. Instead of beating ourselves up for not progressing as far as we would like to or when we fall back into a bad habit. We should instead focus on praising ourselves for at least starting to make some progress. Like Chris Gardener said "baby steps count", no matter how small of a change it may be ANY progress forward is better than nothing at all. So instead of beating yourself up start saying to yourself on a daily basis: "Baby steps count as long as I am moving forward ANYTHING is better than nothing" Get a journal (no they are not just for women) Every night write down what you achieved for your day or what you are proud of doing for progressing yourself forward. Because what that will do is start to change your view of yourself from a negative one to a positive one. And once you start to change the way you view yourself then you will find that you will be able to start achieving more and more of your goals. And you may just be surprised where you end up. So to summarize everything I have said today of my advice on how you can finally start achieving your goals this year is 1. Just push past the fear and remember that everyone has it. It's just a natural emotion to change and trying new things 2. Stop finding excuses and just get started. Anywhere.Anyhow 3. Change your mindset and remember that baby steps count too. Don't worry about how far you have to go, or whether or not you are seeing any results yet just focus on one step at a time. Or take Martin Luther Kings Advice"
Well guys I hope this post has provided some advice on how you can ACTUALLY start achieving your goals this year. If you're interested in or would prefer seeing this in video format and in more detail then check out the link below. Hopefully it helps a few of my fellow entrepreneurs out there! Best of luck with whatever your goals, dreams or resolutions this year are I hope that THIS year you actually achieve them and even surpass them. Good luck guys :) How To ACTUALLY Achieve Your Goals in 2018 https://youtu.be/tKuVLdT8dro [link] [comments]  |
| Building a website for my start up Posted: 06 Jan 2018 01:35 PM PST Any tips on where to go to build my website? I have very little building skills. Looking into word press and Google domains, any other sites to help do this for free or cheap? Once it's up and running I plan on split testing and probably hiring a freelancer to clean it up and maybe add some features that are out of my skill level. [link] [comments]  |
| Help me making sense of my two failures Posted: 06 Jan 2018 09:46 AM PST fCan you help me making sense of my two failures? I have tried working on startups with friends in the past and I always dropped out of the project early. On the first project, we were 4. The project was to create a small retail shop, with a bigger picture of creating a chain. The second project, we were 3. The project was to create a software product. Again, the vision was not mine and I was brought as an afterthought. The guy with the vision acted a a leader - which is good. The 3rd guy was more technical (just like me). So I basically had seen nothing from the other tech guy, while I had sent some screenshots of my work to both of them. And I felt like they were working together, brainstorming as a creative/technical duo while I was sticking to the original 3 months plan. I did not want to argue further with my friend because at the end of the day, it was true that I was not motivated enough. We agreed to end it. The paradoxal thing is I hate structure when it comes to working for someone else as an employee. Now I'm trying to make sense of all this and learn a lesson. Am I not cut to be an entrepreneur? They say "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together". Any feedback, insight, critique appreciated. Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2018 01:21 PM PST I found out about David Ogilvy from the Tim Ferriss podcast. And I originally wanted to read "Ogilvy on Advertising", but I couldn't find a summarized version of it. So I read this book, and it turned out to be just as much about core business principles, as about the advertising industry. However, there's a good chunk of advertising hand-to-hand combat in here.
Since I am a computer programmer by trade, I am trying to fill in the gaps in my game, and these leadership books are demystifying a lot of the business world for me, and giving me solid amount of comfort and confidence for when I'm going to run my own consulting shop.
My Medium currently has 24 books summarized. (FranticRock). Here's the 10 min version of Ogilvy's "Confessions of an Advertising Man".
An advertising agency first has to hunt for whichever customers it can get. But it's long term game should involve picking out a few large key accounts. Be very picky and gradual when adding new accounts. A first-class agency can be very selective and picky when adding new accounts, because the demand for excellence will always exceed supply. Only add accounts, as you are able to train your employees to service them.
Make sure to understand why the client is leaving their current agency. You need customers that you can really work well with. If they simply have unrealistic expectations, and need therapy, then they are not the right choice of customer for you. Avoid customers which change agencies all the time.
Do not take on new or dying products. New products are too expensive to bring to market. Dying products can not be saved by advertising. If a company is advertising openly: which agencies they are considering, you should withdraw voluntarily, so that you do not fail publicly.
Never add an account that's too big for you to lose, to avoid a possible state of fear. Make long term relationships with your accounts. Make sure you put your best people on servicing your best accounts, rather than have them chasing new accounts. Make yourself indispensable to them. It really hurts losing big accounts, and can cause a panic and kill an ad agency, as the other accounts also leave. Establish intimate relationships with your clients, use their products, buy their shares, and listen to them more than you talk. You will appear more thoughtful to them that way.
Clients statistically change their ad agencies every 7 years, but they also change their internal marketing managers more frequently than that. When a new marketing manager comes on board, they frequently revamp everything, including changing the partner agency. So you need to impress and get comfortable with new marketing managers as they come on board. You want to become a lasting and valuable partner.
Dishonesty is short sighted, and not profitable. If you are duping people into buying an inferior product, your reputation will get damaged, and consumers will not come again.
Giving out as much information about the product is the best way to sell it. Consumers are not morons, and will not buy just because of broad headlines and slogans. Use your own family as a sample target for your advertisements. If you wouldn't want your family reading the ad, don't give it to the consumer.
Use similar integrity when communicating with the customer. For example, if you feel your agency is weak in a particular area, tell them this. If you don't feel that you can do a better job than the previous agency did, do not accept the account.
Avoid copy-catting other agencies successful campaigns. It doesn't look good on your reputation. But know that this is a very popular practice in the market.
Only hire people who have respect, integrity, are hardworking, well-mannered, highly skilled and courage to stand up to their bosses. One tactic to do this is: when you see an advertisement you really like, find out who did that, call them up, and congratulate them for it. If your reputation as an agency is strong, that person may ask you for a job right there on the phone.
Ensure there is no incompetence among your ranks. Nothing discourages skilled people like working with un-skilled co-workers. Never hire people just because they are family and friends (nepotism). This breeds political maneuvering, and undermines your commitment to only high-caliber hiring.
Watch out for account executives who are quarrelsome. Anyone who likes to pick fights is a liability, and will eventually court rejection from your clients.
To make sure your advertising is contemporary, hire young copywriters. They will keep ads fresh.
Demand excellence from your staff's advertising campaigns. Personally inspect them before they go out, and send them back if they need more work.
Use compliments sparingly, instead of gushing constant approval. When you make the compliment potent, and even public, then you have a chance of making the person become a devoted servant of the agency. As an example, when Ogilvy was working as a chef for Monsieur Pitard (the head chef), Pitard once called the other cooks, as Ogilvy was preparing frogs legs, and told them: "That's how you do it". This made Ogilvy, a "devoted slave" to Pitard.
Once a week Monsieur Pitard actually cooked something himself, so the other cooks could watch him in awe. Therefore, in an ad agency, the owner should do the same thing and create advertisements himself. When the owner works longer hours than the employees, then they have fewer qualms about working overtime. This is how you lead by example. (Stay occasionally hands on; work over time) The most important metric for advertisements is how many sales they bring in. It's not how many people they entertain. Forget about making "creative" campaigns or "award-winning" copy. Great campaigns sell products, and don't draw too much attention to themselves.
Monitor mail-order companies and large department stores, for how well their advertisements actually increase sales following their release. For mail-order companies, from the coupons sent in, for department stores: increase in sales generated after the advertisement.
Don't use complex puns or allusions. The most important thing is: "did they buy the product?", rather than "did they admire this penmanship?".
Promise a benefit with each advertising. For example, for a Helena Rubinstein Hormone Cream: "How women over 35 can look younger". Insert certain words into advertisements, which are proven to work. For example "new" and "free" are good at grabbing attention.
Emotional words: "love", "baby" and "darling" evoke powerful responses. One of the most provocative advertisements of Ogilvy's is: a girl sitting in a bathtub, speaking on the phone: "Darling, I'm having the most extraordinary experience… I'm head over heels in DOVE".
Grab attention by using facts, intrigue and research results. You need to compete with all the other advertisements people are bombarded with. Be charming, riveting, unique, memorable, and to-the-point.
Giving facts is a powerful tool, even if the facts are not about your product. When Ogilvy advertised KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, he emphasized their safety precautions, even though every airline was practicing the same precautions. But since he was the only one talking about them, the approach was effective.
Use photos which are intriguing. For example: an empty chair with a cello leaning up against it, begs the question: "Where is the cellist?", and people are led on to read more.
Photographs are more effective than drawings.
Colour photographs are more effective than black and white ones.
People read headlines more frequently than body text. So make sure your company name is included in the headline.
Use captions with your photos.
Use research and long copy. Ogilvy once made an over 900 word advertisement for a travel promotion to Puerto Rico, which 14,000 people clipped a coupon from. You can give helpful advice, include testimonials, and other long-form pieces of content.
Create and test ambitious campaigns. Don't shoot for mediocrity, but instead try to make it the best campaign of all time, so it succeeds over the long term. An example of a long term ad campaign is: Sherwin Cody School of English, who ran their campaign for 42 years.
Build up your brand name over time consistently. Be unique, distinctive, and stylistic to try and become iconic. Examples are Guinness and Campbell Soup.
Test images, headlines, and campaigns before running them. Allows you to be more effective, and avoid embarrassment of failing campaigns.
There are several benefits using dozens of wordings that you can promise to the customer. Test each variation until you find the most effective one. With Helena's cream example, the phrase "Cleans Deep into Pores" generated way more sales than "Smoothes Out Wrinkles".
Test different layouts of photo and text in the same way, to see which generates more sales.
Now pretend that you are the client. Don't haggle with your agency or underspend on your ads. If the agency is not making a profit, they will not put the best brains on your campaign. Don't have too much approval phases for the advertisement. Too many masters will make it too hard to actually release.
Fearful people can't produce great advertising. Instead of frequently switching agencies, spend more time up-front to understand your right agency, and really understand what they have to offer by studying their existing clients. Set high standards, by making it clear that you expect home runs only. Be candid with them if they are not meeting your expectations, so they get a chance to rectify the situation by putting stronger talent on your account.
For young advertising professionals, the advice is: work hard, become a specialist and seize big opportunities. Become extremely knowledgeable on your specific assignment by reading textbooks, trade journals, and marketing plans related to your client's industry. Get to know your customers until you know more about the client than your superior, meaning that you will be ready for their job.
It's easier to impress as a specialist, rather than just a generic account manager. So choose to start as a copywriter, researcher, or specific media type expert.
Most of the work in an ad agency is routine labor, but once in a while an opportunity comes up. Make sure to identify it and seize it. As an example, once a client has requested policy papers on television advertising. Most agencies responded with a few-page responses. But one of Ogilvy's co-workers worked tirelessly on a 175 page analysis, which eventually propelled him to the board of directors of the organization.
Working harder and longer will get you promoted faster. You may be more likeable than a workaholic in the short term by spending more time with your family, however workaholics will advance more quickly.
Summary: focus on honesty, ambition, great people, patience, selling products, meticulous design and rigorous testing. Choose your clients carefully. Cultivate long term relationships. Be a lasting, valuable partner to your clients. Be honest in your ads and dealings. Hire hard workers with brains and integrity. Demand excellence and lead by example.
Great campaigns: sell products, not entertain people. They use facts, get people's attention, create intrigue, and take advantage of research. Are ambitious and rigorously tested. As a young professional: work hard, be a specialist, jump on and use big opportunities when they come up! [link] [comments]  |
| First month of our business - What happened so far & reality check Posted: 06 Jan 2018 01:11 PM PST Launching an own business is coupled with excitement - the day you start you think you can finally provide a great good to the world and as Elon Musk says "hope and excitement is high." Shortly after, it begins to rapidly decline as you realize that nobody is buying your product! You start to think about the product, maybe it's not good, maybe it's not the right market, platform, tool, timing, whatever, should I tinker this, change that but I learned that in the end, all it does is fill up your brain with useless thoughts and I should focus on making our products better and getting it in front of more people. www.worldinprints.com was launched on December 10th and so far it's going mediocre at best - lots of improvements need to be done. The not so good part: Metrics:
The good Our Instagram (@worldinprints) is growing organically and reached 200 followers today which is great! Many brands often have thousands of followers but only a few likes because they have poor content and poor strategy (follow for follow.) I'm very pleased with the reaction from our fans, we get around 100 likes per picture which is 50% of the followerbase! Moving into the second month: The goal now is to combine the organic growth with advertising. We're on a tight budget so here's the plan:
What do you like / dislike about the page? What would you improve? My grand vision is to offer a platform where: a) our customers have access to great interior design products b) our portfolio photographers have a way of earning an additional side income (commission based) Also, I forgot to promote our Facebook page. Is Facebook solely promoted through ads and boosted posts? What would you do? Goals for the second month: 1) 1st sale 2) 500 IG Followers 3) 250 traffic 4) Get 25 followers on our Facebook How are we going to achieve that: 1) Send a thank you IG DM for every new follower with an invitation to buy (a friendly one) 2) Continue engaging with others and promoting our page organically. Get some partners to promote giveaways, this might take a little longer than the second month though. 3) Post 3x a week on Instagram and promote our website more in the caption 4) ? What is your advice? What can we improve? Thanks for your help and wish you a lovely start into the new week! Edit: Implementing recommendations from r/entrepreneur:
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| Posted: 06 Jan 2018 12:13 PM PST I've always problems with motivation but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8dHp4hIjaM - Change your life today. [link] [comments]  |
| How reliable is the Amazon Affiliate route in 2018? Posted: 06 Jan 2018 11:57 AM PST I'm looking into acquiring a few businesses and a lot of the ones for sale seem to be Amazon Affiliate sites with high revenue but how reliable are these businesses? Who here has an Amazon Affiliate site and how is it going? Do you have any concerns business wise? [link] [comments]  |
| Ways I can make money via my facebook vlog? Posted: 06 Jan 2018 11:07 AM PST Ok so first of all. I know this sub isn't the best place for this but I had no better options. I wanna say that I am an actual entrepreneur who owns a video studio and that's where my main income is coming from. What I also do is a motorcycle vlog. I post it on Facebook since where I am residing now, the target audience watches videos on FB almost exclusively. So youtube monetization is out of consideration at the moment. I'm wondering how can I make a tiny bit of money thru the vlog? This would be put back into the hobby. I can't justify spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on vlog-exlusive equipment over the top of what I'm already spending to produce the videos. So far I've thought about getting sponsors per video. I also have a deal with a local motoshop for 'first ride' style videos where I pick a bike and do a technical rundown and a test ride. Selling merch is probably gonna flop since people here don't have enough spare cash to spend on entertainment. Any other ideas are welcome :) [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for Gov't Grants in Ontario CAN Posted: 06 Jan 2018 10:28 AM PST Hey Reddit, I'm the owner of a small business located in Ontario and was wondering if anyone has any experience applying for grants for young entrepreneurs within Ontario (or elsewhere). How do I do it? Any specific grants I should take in? My field is workplace safety and manufacturing. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2018 01:44 AM PST There was a post here recently asking the same about flippa, but since EF and FE vet what they sell, the risk should be lower, right? I'm interested more in "low owner involvement" listings (like this one ). How many hours per week are low involvement? Has anyone bought a site like this? Did the profits match the listing? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2018 10:21 AM PST I'm asking because I've stumbled upon an issue. I have lots of lists of various words for copywritting but I don't know here to put them. They're written down in a text file but it's hard to visualise them that way. Are there any online tools that might help with that? Tried One Note - it kinda sucks. Also, what other writting tools are you using? I've stumbled upon Ginko, it seems like a nice tool for composition. Would love to hear about more. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Buzzword business idea generator Posted: 06 Jan 2018 09:52 AM PST I've been toying with the idea of a website that can generate genuinely interesting business ideas. Here's my first hack at it: http://lincoln-b.com/bizname Let me know what you guys think! Or if you know of a site that already does something similar! [link] [comments]  |
| How to deal with MOQ when Private Labelling? Posted: 06 Jan 2018 09:42 AM PST I'm in talks with a manufacturer in China about a product I want to private label but b/c of uncertainties, I'd like to reduce my risk exposure. Any ideas or suggestions on how, other than lowering MOQ? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2018 05:51 AM PST Hi Guys, I'm starting up a new business and I was wondering if anyone has any experience/ ideas as to where I could get a decent list of phone numbers/ leads which i could use to begin a telesales campaign. I've tried to search quite a bit through google but it all seems pretty shady/ generic so i was hoping someone here has some experience in telesales who might know a good place to start! I can give more info if people are curious. Thanks Tom [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jan 2018 12:43 PM PST I need help with naming my business. The problem is that the company I want to name, is more of a mother-company like Alphabet. It will own other small companies in many fields such as game development, graphic design, entertainment, etc... So its really hard for me to name it. I would prefer if it would end in co., corp., incorporated or anything like that, but I'm open to suggestions. [link] [comments]  |
| Any sole-charge creatives out there who are killing it in business? Posted: 06 Jan 2018 08:56 AM PST What makes your sole-charge creative business successful? What aspects have you mastered to make it viable to make a living doing what you do? What are the areas you're struggling with? What are your goals to take your biz to the next level? [link] [comments]  |
| Pay someone for niche research? Posted: 06 Jan 2018 02:00 AM PST Tl;dr: Want to set up an affiliate niche site. Struggle to find keywords. Has anyone paid someone else to do niche research? How has that worked out for you? My problem is not setting up a site and creating content for it. I love that part of the process. What I struggle with is finding and validating the niche in the first place. So I'm thinking about maybe hiring a VA to do research for me. Where do you hire your VA's? [link] [comments]  |
| Any experience/advice on opening a convenience store? Posted: 06 Jan 2018 06:37 AM PST I know of a prime location that is vacant but have never owned a retail business before. What are the most important things to know? Thanks in advance for your time! [link] [comments]  |
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