Thank you Thursday! - (March 29, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- Thank you Thursday! - (March 29, 2018)
- AMA: From immigrant and Johns-Hopkins trained physician to award-winning CEO & founder, venture capital mentor (Techstars and more), and investment fund owner: radical career change and the hard-learned lessons along the way - an AMA with Dr. Marcel Muenster TODAY only!
- My desired .com domain is taken and the owner is asking $25k for it, is .co really that bad of an alternative?
- First £10k+ month for my marketing agency - here's what I've learnt
- If you consider yourself successful, what's your schedule?
- Domain I want to acquire expired today. I've read there's a grace period for the current owner to renew. How can I make sure I get this once it fully expires?
- Looking for a SaaS contract template
- Ok so I'm likely going to be offered a Tim Hortons franchise, what should I be expecting, anybody with experience?
- Any of you guys have mentors? How you find them? What do they get in exchange?
- How did you get over your fear of financial failure (e.g. your idea fails and you end up homeless/penniless)?
- Published my kindle ebook on Amazon.com. Ran 5 days free promotion download and got 500+ free downloads which were exciting but now what?
- How Long The Content Creators(pioneers) Can Survive?
- How our business has seen increased revenue as a direct result of Miami's turnover chain player incentive.
- Stop Making It Hard On Yourself - $3400 Revenue @ 70%~ profit
- Came across this serious comment and had to share. I have to remember not to stray too far on Reddit. Some of it is frightening.
- [Serious] How can you find out what manufacturer a company uses to make a product?
- Anyone with experience in importing from China?
- Best approach to get a domain name that's languishing
- Amazon Affiliate question....Chicken before the egg?
- Just (forcibly) retired from IT. Looking to start a business but need some help with the "box".
- Getting back into the game
- How does one get connected with good web designers for a start-up company?
- Is this legal
- Any eCommerce brands here interested in a new ad channel (or decreasing their shipping costs)
- Does anyone here sell B2B customised/promotional products?
- looking to improve my on-site SEO and was refered to BlackHatWorld. Is this forum still trustworthy?
| Thank you Thursday! - (March 29, 2018) Posted: 29 Mar 2018 06:06 AM PDT Your opportunity to thank the /r/Entrepreneur community by offering free stuff, contests, discounts, electronic courses, ebooks and the best deals you know of. Please consolidate such offers here! Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2018 05:26 AM PDT This AMA is dedicated to all of you who hustle every day to make a living as an entrepreneur, decided to join the ultimate "emotional" rollercoaster ride, and left your traditional career paths despite pushback from co-workers, friends, and family to pursue the freedom of entrepreneurship.
I'll walk you through the major business lessons that I think every entrepreneur needs to know to reach success. Ask me any questions along the way and I'll do my best to answer them as honestly and insightfully as possible.
Before getting started, I'll tell you a little bit about myself. Traveling has been a major part of my life for the past fifteen years. I have traveled to more than sixty countries and have lived in four, including the United States, Germany, Switzerland and South Korea. Over the past three years, I've traveled seven times around the world. To put in perspective, the past three years have brought me more than three quarters of the way from the Earth to the Moon!
My journey in the U.S. started nine years ago. I came from Germany as a medical intern to train in cardiology at Johns Hopkins, and eventually decided to stay and build my professional career here. Fast forward three years, I realized that clinical medicine was not my passion and it was time to branch out. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to change something, make people's lives better, and have a larger impact than I could as a doctor seeing one patient at a time. Even though it took another few years to figure out how I would achieve this goal, I eventually came across entrepreneurship as the solution. Starting in 2012, I developed my ideas at the Harvard Innovation Lab, bootstrapped until I was ready to join full-time, left my six-figure job as a consultant, and threw myself into the most insane life experience ever.
Below you'll find my progress as an entrepreneur over the past five years. I detail what each step looked like and, in addition, the pressing challenges that I needed to overcome at each stage. In speaking with hundreds of other entrepreneurs over the years, I found that these challenges are very common. I wrote them down because I believe they are key to consider when you develop your own startup.
Part 1 - Building a global digital health company
For the past 5+ years, my team and I built the first-of-its-kind global digital concierge service called Doctor In Your Pocket. In short, it helps international travelers connect with a qualified and vetted medical doctor or dentist wherever they are on the globe, and at any time of the day. We have since launched our service in 180+ cities around the world. Below you'll find some of the major business challenges and lessons that I've learned along the way.
ScaleTruth be told, and I'm sure most of you can relate or imagine this, I had no clue what I was doing when I started out with this company in late 2012. Although I had two "silent" co-founders, I ended up having to make all major decisions by myself. To start, I recognized the reality of scale: to assist American outbound travelers with trusted medical care around the globe, we needed a physical presence in (at minimum) the major tourist and business traveler destinations globally.
Challenges
SalesOne thing that medical school definitely never taught me was how to be an effective and convincing salesperson. As a result, I had to learn these skills the hard way. Back in 2013, I traveled to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where I approached medical doctors in private practice, clinics, and hospitals to sign them up and onboard them to our service. Let me tell you, that it was the most humbling experience in my entire life. Despite my academic background, I wrestled daily with serious doubts concerning my ability to sell our product.
Challenges
RecruitmentThe success of your company, in terms of raising money, building a compelling product or service, and being competitive, is a direct result of finding the right founders and employees. I've had to learn a lot about the different strategies of interviewing people successfully.
Challenges
Business DevelopmentIn order for us to really scale the business from a revenue point of view, we had to build partnerships with global travel companies. Over time we successfully launched business partnerships with the likes of HomeAway, Hostelling International, and many more.
Challenges
Technology - (Web Development)I'm a non-technical founder, making the early stages of the startup journey brutally difficult, especially since our core product is a technology-enabled service. As a result, it took many iterations and a lot of money to eventually build a sustainable team.
Challenges
FundraisingEven though we never raised venture capital, there was still a need for angel and seed capital. This was especially important in the early stages before we generated revenue. As you can imagine, never having raised money before came with its own set of challenges.
Challenges
Part 2 - Mentorship and Consulting for Venture Capital firms A-Level Capital, General Catalyst, Techstars, and selected companies
I believe that the success of any company depends on the type of people, advisors, investors, and team members you meet along the way. I am very privileged to have met so many outstanding people throughout my still young entrepreneurial journey. Hence, I decided to give back to the global entrepreneurial community through my Entrepreneurship Unplugged World Tour 2018 by visiting major startup hubs globally and offering workshops. See some of the most common questions that entrepreneurs come to me with below.
Challenges (Read more here)
PS: I'm really proud to support: 1. Akos Balogh, CEO of Moscase 2. Mohammed Alturkistani, CEO of RVLTOO 3. Ed Buckley, CEO of Peerfit.
Part 3 - Launching my first investment fund
As part of my Entrepreneurship Unplugged World Tour, I traveled to Dubai in early 2018 and mentored 34 companies in seven days. Every founder (and even the existing investment community) complained about the same obstacle: lack of early-stage funding. On my fourteen hour flight back to Boston, I couldn't stop thinking about this problem. I know how critical and also how difficult the first funding can be in the life cycle of a promising company. As a result, I decided to take action and combat this problem head-on. I'm excited to announce that I have started working on a fund that will invest between $10k to $50k in early-stage companies across multiple industries. We'll invest in companies in the Middle East as well as globally so long as they intend to do business in the region.
Challenges
PS: Even though we haven't launched the fund quite yet, please take this first public announcement as an invite to send me your deck or pitch your idea! Contact details are below.
PPS: The fund is supposed to launch within the next three months (by June 2018).
Thank you so much for joining this AMA! I truly hope that I'll be able to be a valuable source for you all. I'll make sure to thoroughly go through all of your questions and get back to you within the next few hours.
To learn more, follow my blog posts on Medium, follow me on Twitter, and add me on LinkedIn! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2018 08:19 AM PDT Changing my brand name is completely out of the question. The brand revolves around this particular word and unfortunately the .com won't be possible. Does .co look bad professionally? The issue is, my brand is luxury high end fashion, so I'm very worried .co will appear cheap or something? Not as official? No luxury brand I know of uses anything but .com. I'm not too worried about potential loss of misdirected traffic, as they will obviously figure out that's not the brand they're after and decide to do a google search. What do you guys think? Sort of puzzled, thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| First £10k+ month for my marketing agency - here's what I've learnt Posted: 29 Mar 2018 11:47 AM PDT First $15k+ month for my digital marketing agency. It's taken quite a while to get here. I quit my job in banking at the end of 2016 but there's a few key things I wanted to share:
Hope that helps! [link] [comments]  |
| If you consider yourself successful, what's your schedule? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 11:25 AM PDT We know that the highly successful have a routine that makes them a winner everyday, usually it's to give them a crap ton of energy during the day. What do you do that gives you the energy you need to get your goals? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2018 10:21 AM PDT It expired yesterday but still not available so I did some reading and apparently there's a grace period before it goes back onto the market? Not sure the best way to go about making sure I get this one it actually expires. [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for a SaaS contract template Posted: 29 Mar 2018 10:28 AM PDT A project of mine has made it remarkably far without the need for contracts, relying on my relationship with customers to get deals done. We're now working with a customer whom we don't know and they're asking for a contract. Nothing crazy, but something formal nonetheless. It's time that we start building one anyway. I'm hoping there is a beloved template that I have yet to find. Any point in the right direction is appreciated. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Mar 2018 11:49 PM PDT I've been with Tim Hortons for 8 years, 7.5 of them as just a regular employee, and in the last half year I somehow rapidly rose through the ranks and am currently the manager of a restaurant. The store owners told me that they're retiring in a few years and that their two locations will be first offered to me and the other manager. They told me I need to front 1/3 the value of the store to qualify, that it doesn't matter to Corporate where the money came from as long as I have it, so I suppose I could take out a loan. I've got 40K in savings already. Thankfully it's a smaller but very busy store located in a mall, I doubt it's nowhere near as expensive as a regular sized store. It would be cool if anybody who has bought into a franchise or attempted to buy into one could share their experience in the whole start up process. [link] [comments]  |
| Any of you guys have mentors? How you find them? What do they get in exchange? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 07:11 AM PDT |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2018 11:18 AM PDT |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2018 12:49 PM PDT Hi, I have published my first ebook on Amazon (Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Freedom-Made-Simple-Independence-ebook/dp/B07BCCWMJM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522352984&sr=8-1&keywords=haidar+shbeeb), ran 5 days free download promotion, posted several posts on social media and got tons of support especially from Reddit (Orginal post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/FreeEBOOKS/comments/86rvpb/kindle_financial_freedom_made_simple_proven/) So I wanted to thank you all who downloaded my ebook for free and I truly hope to see and hear your honest review. Now that being said, I don't know what to do next. How do I promote my ebook to get some sales? Where do I go? What resources to use? I read several blogs and got about 100 websites to post to promote my book for sale for "free" but what else? I would appreciate any help, advice or tips. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| How Long The Content Creators(pioneers) Can Survive? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 05:50 AM PDT Hi Guys, I just been wondering how long these content creators(pioneers) can survive? I lnow they monetizing their accounts with affiliates, shoutouts, reviews & merch, but for how long. I starting to see the pioneer creators are starting to look boring with new and fresh creators out there. Even the companies starting to reach out those fresh new creators to review their products. Am i the only one seeing this? This is just purely for discussion only. Pleaae show your hate somewhere else. Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2018 09:35 AM PDT My name is Oliver and I am a co-founder of BigHead Custom. We make custom pendants and chains from wood that blings almost like gold and diamonds but wont break the bank. Our proprietary process allows us to recreate images perfectly. Our primary customers have been west coast marijuana shops/enthusiasts. Second is the up-and-coming hip-hop guys. I think that needs no explanation. Both of these groups send in some awesome artwork. The most fun of this whole things has been seeing the artwork, or in some cases ideas, and then what it turns in to as the final product. We really love it. So now that you know who we are and what we do check this out... So business has had a significant up tick over the last 6 months. We have been getting a lot of corporate logos in that you would recognize. Initially it came as a surprise but after speaking to many customers on the phone (as we often do due to the custom nature) we now know why that is. Many business owners are sending in their logos to get our pendants and chains as performance incentives essentially copycatting the Miami Hurricanes turnover chain. The most common industry that has bought has been the insurance industry, independent local agents offices that is. At first it sure was strange to login and see large insurance carriers images being uploaded but once we spoke with them it all made sense. A very unexpected pivot to go from B2C then B2B all of a sudden. One metric Im not yet aware of and not sure if I ever will be is did the chain actually work as intended once implemented in the business? As business owners, do you think you could incentivize your sales team with something like this? Honestly I wouldn't think so but we have had far more of these type orders that I would have ever expected. Now for a question, does anyone know how I could go about further targeting customers for more of these type of sales. I have started with the obvious blog post but am racking my brain right now for more ideas. Thanks for reading, love the sub here! Keep hustlin'! [link] [comments]  |
| Stop Making It Hard On Yourself - $3400 Revenue @ 70%~ profit Posted: 28 Mar 2018 04:02 PM PDT Hey all. Just a quick non sexy experience here. I just started this a few months ago and am happy with the progress. I see a lot of people overcomplicating things. I simply took a skill I knew and sold it to just a few businesses and now I'm making a liveable income remotely and I'm literally an ordinary dude and have nothing to sell on here or any reason to post this other than procrastinating. Basically, i wont go super indepth but i just sell marketing services to a company. I do it remotely so I can travel anywhere, wake up at anytime, and take whatever days off i need to. which i really, really love. I'm a shitty employee, i hate having a capped wage, and i absolutely dread having an amazing opportunity pop up and having to think "oh let me see if i can take off work, probably not." My client invoices anges from $600-$1500 right now. Looking to move it into the $2k+ territory. I really just went to a company and said hey, ill do xyz for you for this amount of money. I made a cute proposal to go with the offer and had a few different levels of service to choose from. They choose, and I deliver. Just did this a couple times and here I am. I keep track on google sheets, use a simple invoicing software, and require upfront payment (which literally no one has had an issue with or mentioned being a problem) I had one shitty client, that i turned into a happy client. I outsource some of the work to quality freelancers. I had one freelancer shit on me, so i moved the work onto another freelancer i was using that worked a lot better. That was a 'headache' but it was just a process that was necessary for better service to my clients. So i did it. Oh well. So if your goal is to just have freedom and make your own money, don't complicate it by trying to become an inventor or the next elon musk. Get over it and just start providing value and getting paid. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2018 11:14 AM PDT |
| [Serious] How can you find out what manufacturer a company uses to make a product? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 01:50 PM PDT I want to design my own version of a product, and by that i mean with better color and pattern options, as well as some other fundamental changes. There's so many crappy manufacturer's especially on Alibaba or Aliexpress, where the quality is not going to be up to par with what I need. There is a large company who makes a simple version of what I want, and there quality is great. But the product could be better designed and with more options. I would love to use the same factory as they do. But I have not been able to find who their manufacturer is. I know its made in China and then imported over to the US. Is there any way to find out who they are using? [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone with experience in importing from China? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 01:29 PM PDT |
| Best approach to get a domain name that's languishing Posted: 29 Mar 2018 07:25 AM PDT So I wanted to register a .com domain name, and of course it's taken. This person's had it for 10 years, and has basically a test page on it and nothing else. In Japanese. No privacy on the registration, it's an individual's name, there's a phone number, and an email that looks like it's an organization's, with a different domain name (with the word "bet" in it), that then forwards to another out of date website. The technical contact is info at xserver.co.jp if that makes a difference. What's the best approach to try and acquire it cheaply? Have Network Solutions or GoDaddy try and get it? Contact them myself? Thoughts and experiences appreciated... [link] [comments]  |
| Amazon Affiliate question....Chicken before the egg? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 07:22 AM PDT Hello, I have been a longtime lurker of the site and wanted to ask anyone who does amazon affiliate marketing. When can you implement this before or after the site has been built? If its after the site has been built - what is the recourse if you are not accepted into the program? any information would be most appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Just (forcibly) retired from IT. Looking to start a business but need some help with the "box". Posted: 29 Mar 2018 01:17 PM PDT I've spent the last 35 years in IT doing all sorts of programming in all sorts of languages, but was recently laid off. Oddly enough, I view this as an opportunity, since I'll have unemployment for the next half a year, and want to start a business. I did IT consulting for about 15 years and can always fall back on that, but I have an opportunity here and am trying to wrap my brain around the possibility of something that doesn't involve computers. I'm good at various IT type things including software development, debugging, database and sysadmin work, but don't actually enjoy it very much anymore, at least not enough to do it all day every day. I very much enjoy dogs and had considered setting up a dog daycare business, but it's kind of a big thing to eat all at once since I would need a building and insurance and at least two employees. I've been a tech geek for so long that it's sort of taken over my head-space and I'm having problems coming up with non-tech ideas. Anybody have any ideas, or any ideas where I could look for ideas? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2018 01:14 PM PDT I've been out of the real business game for a while, just letting things coast by while orders come in. I have the will and want to get back into it now. After I get the stuff I need to get done, done, what should I do next? How should I focus down Twitter or Facebook? Interact with customers long after their orders were placed? And, in your own opinions, what might be a good way to get people to review some of my products beyond leaving olive branches? [link] [comments]  |
| How does one get connected with good web designers for a start-up company? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 12:45 PM PDT I am a lawyer with an idea for a legal services website that informs people of what options they might have to immigrate to the United States. It seems like a relatively simple idea, but it doesn't really currently exist anywhere on the web in the form I am imagining. The company would involve me combining my expertise in immigration law with a web designer who can bring it to life online. How should I go about trying to connect with someone who could contribute on the tech side (whether online or in real life)? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Mar 2018 12:31 PM PDT A brand new company started this major initiative to reach customers through social media platforms using a name that is a play on the companies name. This name is the name of their Facebook, Instagram, and twitter handles. I have that name for Snapchat and I wanted to offer to sell that to them [link] [comments]  |
| Any eCommerce brands here interested in a new ad channel (or decreasing their shipping costs) Posted: 29 Mar 2018 12:09 PM PDT Hi friends - just wanted to share a link to my business, Insertly. Essentially lets brands advertise in the packages of other (non-competing) brands. The buyer gets to run hypertargeted ads that convert 3x better than FB ads, while the seller gets to increase their margins and delight their customers. We run all the logistics, find you the right brand partners from our network, ensure the inserts are well-designed and the partnerships make sense, etc. If you're interested in working with us gimme a shout - we're looking for brands that are shipping a few thousand orders a month, so if that's you DM me :) [link] [comments]  |
| Does anyone here sell B2B customised/promotional products? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 11:58 AM PDT I've only ever focused on B2C but since getting an enquiry about a large B2B order, customised with their logo, I've been inspired to push this side of things more. I don't really have any knowledge of or experience in approaching companies about orders like this and I guess I'm looking for any useful insights that anyone here might have. [link] [comments]  |
| looking to improve my on-site SEO and was refered to BlackHatWorld. Is this forum still trustworthy? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 11:39 AM PDT wondering if people still trust BlackHatWorld for SEO needs. From what i have herd, "blackhat SEO" doesn't really exist for the most part anymore. Apparently BlackHatWorld is more focused on questionable but technically legal/safe methods that no longer run the risk of google de-listing your site. i find it hard to beleive that this forum is really a safe way to go but maybe thats just because i naturally associate "black hat" anything with illegal practice. anyway, would love to hear some feedback of those who have gone down this road in the past. Thank you for your time and consideration. [link] [comments]  |
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