Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (June 29, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (June 29, 2018)
- Today: /r/Entrepreneur New York meetup for happy hour. This is your chance to talk with a mod in person and meet other Entrepreneurs.
- Case Study: How to Use Automated Cold Email Marketing to Spend $166.70 and Make $3,435.30 in Profit (2,061% ROI) - Email Templates Included
- How to network better?
- I'm too scared to become one of you
- $50k/month selling golf simulators.
- Keeping Side Hustle Blogging and Day Job Separate?
- [Feedback please] Voice voting
- When we live for our goals, we forget to live now
- How do you avoid overworking?
- Need help finding beta testers for new app
- Anyone work in several unrelated industries at once?
- Do you think an entrepreneur without a college degree, money and affluent friends can get an investment?
- Need help with shipping tea (domestic and international)
- your favorite Audible books?
- What are the pros and cons of cold launching with just an amazon page and begin selling vs a full website like shopify for a single simple product?
- I want to create a website that sells sales/marketing services and also health supplements, I'm passionate about it all. Am I able to do this?
- What are the stages of customer relationship management?
- Is there a community I can join that will motivate me and push me in the right direction? I really like providing value!
- Is there such thing as a "liquid bitcoin pool"?
- Adding 2 services to your business name? Ex. Bob's Pressure Washing & Window Cleaning
- Gamifying Entrepeneurship (Do you do this?)
- You have content ready for your business videos, but what about your outfit for the camera?
- Balancing staff culture regarding work hours: Burnout/toxicity/etc
- Growth Capital Pitch Deck
| Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (June 29, 2018) Posted: 29 Jun 2018 06:07 AM PDT Please use this thread to share any accomplishment you care to gloat about, and some lessons learned. This is a weekly thread to encourage new members to participate, and post their accomplishments, as well as give the veterans an opportunity to inspire the up-and-comers. 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 Jun 2018 07:39 AM PDT Hi All Looks like there is enough interest for this to happen. I'm vacationing in NYC this week so I'd be happy to hang out with anyone who'd like to talk about the sub, Reddit or Entrepreneurship at Peculier Pub on 145 Bleecker St. The idea is for people to drop in/leave as they like and buy food/drinks as they want. This is informal and not sponsored by anyone actually from Reddit. If no one shows I'll drink alone and do an "I'm a mod AMA" here. I'll be there between at least 6:00 and 8:30 Friday (today). Look for a black Reddit modshow bag hanging somewhere. Hope to see you. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2018 09:03 AM PDT Redditors, If you're looking to get new digital marketing clients as a freelancer or for your agency, this post will be very valuable to you. In this case study I describe the exact steps I went through to create an automated cold email campaign that resulted in an ROI of over 2,000%. I wanted to create this case study to show that cold email can 100% be used to generate new business quickly. You don't have to learn paid traffic, content marketing, blogging, or social media to get clients. Good old fashioned email will work just fine :) However, salesmanship is a necessity and I go over some of those points in this post. This is a very lengthy case study (~4,400 words). If you're looking for the stats, here they are:' Number of email batches – 5Number of Prospects – 783Emails sent – 3,579Bounces – 99 (13\%) Opens – 1,914 (53\%)Replies – 188 (24\%) New Customers – 10Expenses: $166.70Revenue: $3,602Profit: $3,435.30ROI: 2,061\% I hope this case study is valuable for your business and I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have about building a cold email campaign. Mods: Please let me know if there is anything that I should change in this post. I truly want to bring value to the r/Entrepreneur community because it has helped me out a lot in the past. If you're looking for the exact templates I used, you can find out how to get them at the bottom of the post. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Unfortunately, getting new clients is one of the biggest challenges that agencies face. According to a study by Hubspot, 60% of agencies say that their biggest pain point is finding new clients. When asked what's preventing their agency from growing as quickly as they would like, 55% said that they need more sales and/or marketing. It's obvious that getting clients is the #1 concern for most agencies. As a freelancer, getting clients is at the top of my list as well. In all honesty, I don't have a diverse number of ways to get clients. I'm not a content marketer, I don't know paid ads, and I'm not a great networker either. But, one thing I am good at is getting sales on the phone and via email. After recently going full-time as a freelancer and working on building my business, I have more time to prospect and getting more clients has become one of the main focuses in my business. I've done lots of cold calling in the past but never to sell content writing services. I feel that cold calling is a better channel for selling digital marketing services rather than just selling content writing. I have content writing clients that I've worked with for years that I've never spoken to on the phone so I know that it's not necessary to speak on the phone to secure these types of clients. What's Stopping You From Getting Results With Cold Email So, we know that cold email, done properly, works. But, there are some roadblocks to getting good results Time Sending out targeted, well-written emails takes time. Finding the right prospect, doing research, crafting the right email, etc. Copywriting and Targeting You have to send the email to the right person and your email copy has to pique their curiosity enough to get them to reply to your message. Attention People's inboxes are getting slammed these days. The fight for attention is brutal. According to DMR, In 2018 the average office worker sends out 31 emails and receives 94 every day. Follow up I'm sure you've heard the old saying that the fortune is in the follow-up. It's true. According to Marketing Donut, it takes at least five follow up attempts after initial contact before a customer says yes. They also found that 92% of salespeople give up after no number 4 meaning only eight percent of people asking for the sale a fifth time. This infers that 8% of salespeople are closing 8-% of sales. Following up is mandatory if you want to make sales. But, if you're sending out a large amount of email to new prospects every day the number of follow up emails you're sending can add up quick. No one wants to spend their whole day stuck in their inbox. But, what if you could use automation to scale cold email? Instead of sending out manual, personalized emails one by one you could send personalized emails with automated follow up. If you're interested in getting the results of a great cold email campaign without a ton of manual work, keep reading. Very Important: Please Read For this experiment, I decided to send short emails and use automation instead of manually sending emails and personalizing them. There are a lot of people who crush it by spending more time on their campaigns and I know for a fact that more personalized and targeted emails get better open and response rates but they also take longer to create and send. I wanted to see how quickly I could put together a winning campaign instead of sending out personalized cold emails manually. What works best is figuring out what works for you and your business. Test out both methods and see what you like best. Now, back to the case study. The Three Apps You Need to Create an Automated Email Lead Gen System I wanted to get advice on an unrelated business problem so I booked a consulting call with Kai Davis through Clarity.fm – an online platform for getting business advice from experts via a phone call. Kai helps consultants get more clients without spending more on marketing. The conversation eventually led to getting customers and on that call, he gave me insight into a part of his outbound marketing stack that changed the game for me. First, let's do a quick rundown of the tech: Mailshake Co-founded by Susan Patel, this is an awesome tool that scales cold outreach by not only letting you mail merge your contacts but it also follows up with your prospects unless a certain condition is met like your recipient clicking on a link or replying to your email. This tool saves an enormous amount of time because it essentially lets you "set and forget" your campaign. Well, you can't exactly forget about it but it will save you from having to do a ton of follow up. Pipedrive This is an outstanding CRM because it's incredibly simple. It allows you to stay organized without all the bells and whistles that are in other CRMs. This tool really comes in handy when you're handling a large volume of email because you can respond to email, create deals, and move deals between stages all within the app. No need to switch back and forth between Gmail and Pipedrive. You can handle everything within Pipedrive. G Suite I try to work with Google products whenever possible. They're simple, easy to work with, and great for collaboration because just about everyone uses at least one Google product. G Suite is really useful when you're cold-emailing because your send limits with a free Gmail account are only 200 emails/day but with a paid G Suite account you can send up to 2,000/day. I don't send anywhere near that many (only ~250/day) but it's nice to know that I can send as much email as I need to without worrying about getting thrown in Google jail, i.e. getting my account suspended for going over my send limits. How to Get Clients with Automated Cold Email Lead Generation So, now we'll get into how the whole system works. Try to stick with me here. Kai told me how he uses Mailshake to send out cold email campaigns to a list of prospects by linking the Mailshake app to his G Suite Gmail. Gmail is also linked to Pipedrive (called two-way sync) so that all sent and received Gmail messages show up in Pipedrive automatically. Once someone replies to your email you can go into Pipedrive and manage it, i.e. create a deal, delete the email, etc. This keeps everything organized and makes dealing with massive amounts of email much easier. Without this setup you would have to send initial and follow up emails out manually, deal with tons of message threads, and keep track of my deals in some other way. This setup made it incredibly easier to scale outreach. With my framework in place, all that was left to do was write my email sequence, gather my prospects, and start firing off some emails.Getting Clients – Step by Step To execute this cold email campaign there are a few things I had to do. Find Targets First, I needed to figure out who I would be emailing exactly. There's a lot of talk online about creating customer personas using demographics and psychographics. Understanding your customer is good practice in sales and marketing but I prefer to follow Dan Noriss' advice from the book, "Content Machine". Dan built a seven-figure business, WP Curve, using content marketing with $0 spent on advertising and he eventually sold it to GoDaddy. He obviously knows content marketing. In the book, he says to make content for a community instead of individual personas. Although I wasn't looking to find a community for content marketing purposes, I decided to adapt it to my approach because I was still looking to get my prospects to take action. I decided to contact agencies that offer SEO because they always need content. I'll get into who I decided to target at the agencies later. To find the agencies I went to Clutch.co. If you aren't familiar with Clutch.co, it's pretty much Yelp for digital agencies. When it comes to actually getting the data it's a pretty tedious process but there are lots of tools that can help like LinkedIn Navigator, Hunter, and Find That Lead. Once you find the data you'll need to test the emails using something like Mailtester.com, Verifyemailaddress.com, or Email-Checker.com. You can either find it yourself or pay someone else to do it. I decided to outsource the work. I went over to Fiverr and found a provider that offered an appropriate gig, i.e., I'll find X number of leads $X. My lead cost ended up being $.20/lead. When it came to figuring out who to contact I decided to start with directors and managers of Content, SEO, etc. of the agencies. I figured that those people were in charge of content and content writers so they would be the right ones to target. I got decent results with that. More on that later. But things really kicked up a notch when I decided to do two things. 1. The Waterfall Technique I found out about the Waterfall Technique by watching Bryan Kreuzberger on an episode of Andrew Warner's Mixergy show. Bryan Kruzeberger used the Waterfall Technique to win $20 million in business from companies like MasterCard, Bank of America, and Home Depot. So, let's get into the technique. Bryan would write separate emails to the CEO, CMO, VP of Marketing, and Director of Marketing. This technique banks on the fact that CEOs love to delegate. The CEOs won't respond to you're email but they'll delegate it out to the right department, i.e., they will forward the email. Your message will move down the ladder like a waterfall and flow to the right person. You're using the company's hierarchy to your advantage. Instead of spending a ton of upfront time trying to reach the decision maker and emailing him or her directly, and probably getting your email deleted, your email will get passed down from the CEO and the person you want to reach has a better chance of responding because they're getting your email passed down from their boss instead of you directly. I use a slight variation in that I don't email several people at each company. I only email one. I've found a lot of success using this technique. You save time by not having to find the decision maker and you have a higher probability of getting a reply. NOTE: If you're using Mailshake, make sure that you check your campaigns every day. If you get a response to one of your emails that isn't a direct reply, your campaign will keep going and you may continue to email a company that you're already in a conversation with. You don't want to keep them in your email campaign when you're already talking to someone else at the company. Instead, you'll want to pause them or unsubscribe them from your campaign. 2. Niching Down Number two was to niche myself down. Instead of just offering general content writing services, I tested niching myself down to legal content writing and as a writer that was local to the Chicago area so I had to tweak my messaging just a bit. My hook was that I am a former law student so I have more knowledge of legal issues than the average freelance writer. For my local pitch, my hook was that I was local to the Chicago area I saw a much better response to my emails once I did this. Writing and Scheduling the EmailsThe next thing I had to do was write and schedule the emails. If there's one thing I know it's that the fortune truly is in the follow-up. Most people will ignore your first attempt at outreach but after several well-crafted follow-ups, you're much more likely to get their attention and get a reply. After doing some research I came across a few awesome blog posts by Steli Efti at Close.io about writing good follow-up emails. After reading these articles I was able to write and schedule eight emails in Mailshake. Here was the sequence: Initial EmailsFollow-up 1 day laterFollow-up 2 days laterFollow-up 5 days laterFollow-up 7 days laterFollow-up 7 days laterFollow-up 14 days laterFollow-up 14 days later Email Timing There was no hard and fast rule on when I would send out emails. I wanted to test as much as possible. I did notice that early in the morning and late at night towards the middle of the week did well, i.e., around 5 am local time Tuesday through Thursday. The weekend was also good too – Saturday/Sunday morning and afternoon were also good times. Email Copy When I wrote my emails I had one goal. That was to get a reply, i.e. start a conversation. The problem with most cold emails is that they are too long, too detailed, and they ask for too much. Here's a terrible cold email that was originally published on Jill Konrath's blog as an example on how not to write a cold email. [Your Name] My name is Jennifer with XYZ Sales Training. We improve sales performance though our unique blend of sales technology and experience, resulting in 89% better quota achievement. Our industry-leading methodology has helped more than 650,000 sales professionals find and close more deals, and our proven sales process makes your forecast and pipelines accurate by putting science behind it. It all gets delivered through our BigDeal® technology - the on-demand Sales Performance Automation application that operates standalone, or can be integrated with your existing CRM system to produced sustained, measurable results. And to ensure that your sales teams get the full benefit, our virtual learning system delivers on-the-job training worldwide – reinforced by expert coaching. I am not sure if you would be the appropriate contact, but I am trying to find the person at your organization who evaluates our type of program offering. Would it be possible for us to speak for 5 minutes or can you point me to the correct person to contact? Find out how organizations like Microsoft, Xerox, Honeywell, Siemens, United Healthcare and Adobe have found success with our offering and how [not provided] can find similar achievement. Thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide. I kindly await your response! Why This Email is Bad: Too long – Coming from an unknown sender, this is too long for anyone to read. Too "Me" oriented – Immediately goes into how good the sender's company is. This is a big no-no. Too big of an ask – This immediately asks for a phone call. The prospect doesn't know who you are. No one wants to jump on the phone with a stranger who is trying to sell them. Too much, too soon – The sender jumps right into the service offering without the prospect showing any interest. The goal of a cold email isn't to sell. The goal is to get the prospect's attention and get a reply. I even consider "no" a good response because at least I got a definitive answer. The worst response you can get is no response. Here's the initial email I used: Subject: quick question Hey {{first name}}, Was hoping you could point me in the right direction. Are you the contact at {{company name}} that handles content for clients and if not could you please let me know who is? If so, I'm curious - would you be interested in working with a reliable freelance writer that's local to the Chicago area? I would be happy to send over links to a few sites where I've been published. Thanks in advance, Why this email is good: It's short and to the point – People don't have time to read cold emails all day. Try to keep your email to 2 – 3 sentences. If it can fit on a smartphone screen, you're good. Show value and spark curiosity – Briefly let your prospect know what's in it for them and build in a little curiosity to get them to ask for more. You don't want to give away the farm in the first email. Keep them guessing just enough to make them hit the reply button. Give them an out – Make it easy for them to say "yes" or "no". In the email, I explicitly state how the prospect should respond to the email if they want to move forward or if they want to stop receiving emails. They don't even have to think about what they should say next (this is good). I agree that personalized emails have a much better chance of getting a response but for this campaign, I was really going for speed and efficiency. If I was selling a higher priced service, or to a larger organization, I would have given more thought to making my emails more personalized. Also, humor works well 🙂 Following Up Is Non-Negotiable The topic of follow up deserves it's own post altogether. Follow up isn't just good practice. It's vital to your email campaigns. If you don't follow up, you won't sell. Tools like Mailshake are great for automatic follow up on ice cold prospects but once someone engages with your email, it's your turn to manually take over and show some salesmanship. Most cold email information on the web is just about the initial email template but your follow up game will have to tight (great) to win deals. Handling ResponsesYou're going to have to wade through tons of email during this process. This part requires a lot of heavy lifting. You're essentially panning for gold – sifting through mountains of sand to find your gold. Some will be flakes and others will be nuggets. What you do at this point can make or break all the work you have done up till now so you want to make sure you get it right. There are four types of responses you will get to your emails: 1. Bounces2. No response3. Go to hell or No thanks4. Interested Bounces Remove these from your campaign at the end of the day so that you don't email them again. No need to clog up your inbox with bounce messages. No Response There's nothing you can really do with no responses. The best thing you can do with these people is to save them in an excel sheet and put them in a new campaign with a different angle in about six months or target someone else at the company. Go to Hell or No Thanks You'll need some thick skin when you execute mass email campaigns because you're going to get some venom thrown back at you. Just make sure to take them out of your campaign, move on, and don't sweat it. But don't forget to take a screenshot of the email so you can put it in your next reddit post 🙂 Other people will just say no thanks. This is fine. Just make sure to take them out of your campaign and let them know that they have been removed. Interested This is where the money is. You need to respond very carefully here. The main principle is you want to give enough information to pique interest and not dive too deep in the beginning. People are automatically looking to put you in a box and label you. You want to avoid that as much as possible. Think of your email exchange as needing to have several different stages. They need to know who you are, that you can do what you say you can do, how the process works, your pricing, etc. You'll notice that after answering tons of emails you will get the same type of questions over and over again. For example, for this campaign my prospects wanted to know three different things: Portfolio – They wanted to see examples of my work Price – They wanted to know how much things cost Process – They wanted to know what my process was for completing assignments and turning things in The best advice here is to figure out your sales process and help your prospects check each box as the move along. Don't jump the gun and give them all the info about your offer before they ask for it. Guide them through each step. If you have a good about page, people won't need to ask you who you are because they will just go to your website and read about you. Make sure to end your about page with a good call to action! The Phone: Where Deals are Won or Lost I had to close some of my deals on the phone. Phone sales is way too big of a topic to fully cover in this post. But, if you've had an extended email exchange with someone and they want to talk to you on the phone, it most likely means that they are interested but they just want to speak with you so they can make sure you are a real person and check off a few more boxes. Be confident, stay loose, and make sure you close the deal, i.e. work out the next steps before the call is over. Get some type of commitment, even if it just means that you lock down a date that you will follow up with them. Don't leave the call without setting clear expectations. The Results of My Campaign Here were the results of my email campaign: Number of email batches – 5 Number of Prospects – 783 Emails sent – 3,579 Bounces – 99 (13\%) Opens – 1,914 (53\%) Replies – 188 (24\%) New Customers – 10 Expenses: $166.70 Revenue: $3,602 Gross Profit: $3,435.30 ROI: 2,061\% Looking Back If you're looking to start your own cold email campaigns, here are some things to consider: This is fishing, not hunting. You're trying to find people who have a problem that you can solve. You aren't going to "convince" anyone to work with you. You have to find people that have the pain and then your job is to remove any objections they may have. Find people who are looking for a solution. Out of every campaign, you'll get people who are so happy that you contacted them because they've been waiting to relieve this pain. Don't think of it as getting them to say "yes". Think of it as removing every single objection they have until "yes" is the most logical response. Make it a no-brainer. Timing is a huge factor. You can't optimize having good timing though. All you can do is keep doing outreach. What Worked Using templated responses As mentioned earlier, After working my way through tons of email I started to notice patterns to responses. Pipedrive has a template feature which lets you respond to emails with a templated response. This was a huge timesaver because I was able to throw in a template and make a few small edits instead of writing an email from scratch. Of course, you can always copy and paste a templated email from anywhere but Pipedrive made it super convenient – which I love. Closing on the phone and using a foot in the door offer When you're on the phone close the deal with a foot in the door offer. Give them a risk-free offer, instead of a high ticket one, just to get to the next step. Take a small step instead of a leap just so you can gain trust, show your skills, and win additional business.Making a small ask Don't give away the farm as soon as you get a positive response from someone. When someone responds it doesn't mean that they are ready to buy immediately. If they have a question, answer it and keep the conversation going. They most likely want a little more info. Give them what they need to get to the next step of the sales process. Timing Like I mentioned earlier, the more you email, the "luckier" you get.What Didn't Work Emailing the decision maker directly Emailing the CEO and using the waterfall technique worked much better than emailing a department or decision maker directly. Bad data Some of the lead lists I got back from my lead generator were full of bad emails and the wrong types of companies. I would do a better job at cleaning these lists in the future. Leaving campaigns on "auto-pilot" These automated email campaigns aren't 100% set-it-and-forget-it. Just like a farmer needs to attend to his crops every day, you'll want to spend time checking over your email campaigns doing things like cleaning your inbox, updating your CRM, responding to people, removing bad data, etc.What I Will Do Next Time More personalization using mail merge tokens and niche down I may try using more mail merge personalization in future campaigns. To do this I would segment my lists to keep things organized and to make sure that my messaging stays more targeted. Niching down worked better for me in this case study so I will definitely want to explore that further. Send more emails I got busy with the work that I won during these campaigns and I paused them so I could catch up on my work. DON'T DO THIS! No matter what you should keep your campaigns running so you can keep your pipeline full. You have to continually, mail, test, split test, optimize, etc. to keep your funnel full. Your pipeline is a direct reflection of your past 30 days of activity. Pausing your campaigns will set you back and can lead to a down month.Do The Math Before my next set of campaigns I will look at my metrics and tie my revenue to activity, i.e. I will break things down and figure out how much each outbound email is worth to me. That way I can figure out how many people I need to email to hit my revenue goals.Clean My Lists In any batch of cold email prospects, you're bound to get some emails that are fake, no longer valid, or otherwise non-existent. Getting hard bounces from emails can hurt your domain reputation and email deliverability rate. For a cold email campaign to be effective you need to keep as many emails out of the spam box as possible. I'll make sure to clean my lists using a service like Neverbounce the next time I fire up a campaign. Neverbounce verifies and cleans your email lists to improve your email deliverability. Split Test My Campaigns I will definitely try split testing my campaigns in the future. I'll start with optimizing for opens, then replies, and finally, appointments set. This will improve my conversion rate meaning that I will get better results from sending out the same amount of email. Sell More Expensive Services To improve ROI I will start pitching more expensive services. If I sell products at a higher price point I will get a better return on my time spent working on a campaign. My average order value was low ($100 – $125 per 1,000-word article) so I spent less time on personalization. If you're selling more expensive services or selling to larger companies then I would for sure spend more time on personalization. I'm looking for the low-hanging fruit on a short sales cycle with my emails. Wrapping Up At the end of the day, I consider the campaign a success because I was ROI positive (over 2,061%). I learned a lot from the campaigns and will definitely use what I learned in my next campaigns. If you're looking to drum up quick business from new customers you'll be hard-pressed to find a much better way than cold outreach via email or phone. I hope this case study was valuable to you and feel free to ask me any questions you may have about the process! You can find the original blog post and the templates I used for the eight-email series here: https://thelawschooldropout.com/cold-email-marketing-campaign/ Edit: It slipped my mind to add COSS. I was more focused on the email and sales part of the post that I completely forgot to add it. My COSS is roughly 20% - 30% of revenue which would equal roughly $900.50 making my net profit $2,534.8 (1,521%). [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2018 10:35 PM PDT Networking I find, is very hard for me. I'm not a very sociable person. I'm awkward when it comes to approaching people. Though my friends tell me I'm great at socializing after breaking the ice. My questions is; How do you approach people? How do you break the ice? How to maintain the relationship? [link] [comments]  |
| I'm too scared to become one of you Posted: 29 Jun 2018 08:21 AM PDT So long story short- I got terminated from my corporate banking job(I'm a year out of college) because of some immigration issue that has now been resolved. They refused to hire me back and honestly I'm not surprised knowing how soul sucking that place is. In the last 2 months, I've probably applied to over a 100 jobs, talked to recruiters, coffee meeting through LinkedIn- you name it but haven't found anything yet. I'm not in the dark- I have successful friends and they've all looked at my resume and loved it, recruiters love my resume, I'm polished, have an education and am everything corporate America looks for. I've never had an issue getting a job before In the midst of all this, I actually designed a product. A product for women I actually think could disrupt the market and I really fucking believe in it. I've shared it with a couple of my friends, my mom (she's my biggest critic- seriously though she would shoot me down in a second) and my family- they absolutely love it and have actually acknowledged it could work. I want to stop applying to jobs and actually work on my company. I babysit part time right now and make enough to pay the bills with my husbands income combined. If I upped my hours, I'd probably make more than I was making at my last position. So my thing is I'm absolutely terrified to tell my family, my husband, my friends that I don't want tonappply to jobs anymore. I'm scared they'll think I'm delusional, lazy and just wanting to start this bullshit company. I'm also scared for myself. Am I ruining my career because I'm somehow giving up right now and starting this company? Will I regret this in 10 years? ahhhhh my nerves are killing me [link] [comments]  |
| $50k/month selling golf simulators. Posted: 29 Jun 2018 06:53 AM PDT Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Igor Vainshtien of 24/7 Golf, a brand that makes Golf simulators. Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what are you working on?My name is Igor, and I am the founder and owner of 24/7 Golf an Australian startup in the virtual golf industry. I sell golf simulators for personal and commercial use and am the distributor for SkyTrak Golf in the region (Australia, New Zealand and surrounds). When I was 6 years old, living back in the former communist USSR, I started my first business! At an isolated school beach camp in Sevastopol Crimea (Ukraine), I figured drinking water will be in high demand - and it was a booming success! Yet upon my return home, my parents were called into the Socialist Party Headquarters, and chastised for "raising such a BOURGEOISIE PIG!!!" and called for a stop to such travesties! Fast forwarding to a blissful life in "Capitalist Australia," I started up in business again at 15 years of age - developing websites, databases and network engineering. Joining the DOT-COM revolution at 19, with wishlist.com.au, and after barely scraping through (while working full time!) Bachelor of Information Systems (UniMelb), at 20, I moved into Corporate eCommerce Consulting, and then headhunted by the software giant SAP. Working for someone did not last long - after 3 years, and working in Singapore, New Zealand, Indonesia and Japan, I started my own SAP consulting firm and from a humble $280,000 in 1st year revenue went to over $4,000,000 annualised after 4 years. But I also burnt out! After a small career break, I went back into consulting and also got addicted to golf. That led me to investing into a virtual golf centre, then building a brand of unmanned virtual golf centres called 24/7 Golf! Having sold over 1.1m of golf simulators in the first iteration of the business called GolfTec Australia, I partnered with SkyTrak Golf from USA to use at my venues and also to resell. After 18 months of growth in sales I decided to switch to a fully online only e-commerce store … with Shopify! Once I did that, the online store grew and grew and keeps growing! What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?Golf is something I only got into 8 or so years ago and have been obsessed with it since! Around that time I invested and operated an indoor virtual golf center in Melbourne, and after 5 years developed a concept similar to 24 hour gyms, but for golf - called 24/7 Golf. Members could sign up and play or practice virtual golf with no staff in an unmanned golf studio. The business grew a little, and I kept selling golf simulators on the side. Having partnered with SkyTrak Golf, the sales really took off. I always knew golf simulators would be a hit if the price was right. Originally I was selling them for $30,000 plus, and mostly to commercial ventures (like virtual golf bars) - but they actually didn't do well at all and most closed down. Retail rents in Australian capital cities are crazy. In our Melbourne location, we were paying $360,000 per annum! Funnily enough the most profitable part of the business was selling simulators - and in 5 years I sold over 1 million worth of simulators to other indoor centres. Unfortunately most - in fact all of them - went out of business since. The business model just didn't work. As the price of simulators started to come down from $50k to $25k then to $5k (my average sale now) it really became apparent that affordability will cannibalise the simulator business anyway so I decided to go into it - all in. Describe the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing the product.I did not design the "each product" that I sell - but I did combine them to make up a combination that was really affordable and easy to install for customers. With my old simulators, it was a huge job to install and it was so expensive! I combined the best parts from 7 years of sometimes painful and often expensive lessons to form a package - or set of packages - to turn that trend around. To set up my supply side, I just called each company and asked to be a reseller. With SkyTrak I asked to be the exclusive distributor and over months of negotiation … I got what I wanted! What I have learnt is that things must be easy for customers - easy to buy, easy to assemble, easy to manage going forward. Everything I do in my sales process is to try to make it all easy for potential customers. The hardest thing was spending money on products that sometimes didn't work out. In hindsight it's easy to say "why did I spend $1000 on that!?" but as you go through the process it's important to remember that each one of those "mistakes" is a learning investment. If you had perfect information, you would not be here… so don't sweat it. Easier said than done when maxing out your credit cards! Describe the process of launching the online store/business.At first I created a simple website in Wix. It was pretty bad but did the trick… it was just an online brochure. People would need to call and I would talk to them. Since I was running the main business I did not really invest time or money into the online sales until 2018. Then I decided to build a Shopify store (having done a few courses and having heard about it) - I found a template I liked, did an RFP on UpWork for people to build it and after a range of quotes from $2,000 to $15,000 I decided to hire a designer and a developer separately. It only took 3 or 4 weeks to go from zero to a full website and it's pretty much has been the same since! Although the website enables people to buy everything themselves, since it is a fairly large purchase, many customers want to talk to someone before buying. So the site is both a sales tool and a lead generation for offline closing tool. The key we find is customer experience must be top notch for both channels. Now the website gets well over 1,000 visitors a month, which is small in comparison of the "internet" but it's a great number for what I need the site to be at this point in time. If I had 10,000 visitors I would not be able to process everything and deliver a good experience. Growing super fast is not necessarily a great thing… it's good to have "quiet weeks" to catch your breath and improve things. It's very hard to work on improving the site or processes when you're scrambling to fill orders. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Initially I didn't think many people would go to the site. Organic Google search results started feeding visitors after 2 to 3 months. How I got my name out there though was through a large Facebook group about golf in Australia (35,000 members) and the biggest golf simulator forum on the internet. I just started posting answers to questions and asking questions myself. It took about a year but then my name was known for "golf simulator" stuff. More and more would reach out to me. Then, when people started buying from me - I'd ask them to post on the forum saying they bought from me and to share their experience - hoping it was a good one! And they did… and then "word of keyboard" spread and spread. It took well over a year to really build a name. Then I started sponsoring events run by the Facebook group and now I am well known on it and get a lot of leads from there. However, 2 months ago I also started Google AdWords and Facebook Ads - and the visitors and sales have really picked up. Being known in the industry - or what some people refer to a thought leader - is a huge help in driving leads in - they come to you for advice and from that they are usually happy to proceed with the products I sell vs competitors. I never really set out to be a "thought leader" and I don't have a personal brand… until it happened naturally. I've used forums since the days of dial up internet and BBS (bulletin board systems) and would talk to people online. This is really how you become known. Just by being vocal with useful information - not self promoting fluff. When you know what you're talking about you can share your knowledge and people will appreciate it. For example I often refer to my competition in my posts about my own products and suggest people try out things because I am confident they will come back to me. And if they don't… it's not a big deal. When people see that I am so frank about the products in the market and my confidence in my product line inspires confidence in others… and then they become customers. I've never had to return a single simulator - so I have a bit of a track record here to give me confidence. It's important to note on self reflection that I have always had the confidence - I did not wait for it to come to me. One of the biggest conversion tools - one that has made me tens of thousands of dollars - is Raven Call Back button. I really want to give them a huge shout out!!! Conversion from that little button is something like 90% … it allows customers to request a call back and we are on it right away. Sometimes a sale is made minutes worth $5,000 or more just from that awesome little button! For high cost items I think it is a must have. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?The business has grown 50% month on month this year and I hope to keep it going that way! I am launching an event hire part of the business where people will be able to book a golf simulator for their party or corporate event and hoping to expand that to 22 cities/regions around Australia. It will be a great way for people to have fun but also try SkyTrak and may be buy one after that. I am also currently spending only $1,000 per month on AdWords, and I want to double that now that I can see results. I am trying to do Drop Shipping only, but as volume increases it's getting harder to manage all suppliers to orchestrate all delivers. I may need to consolidate in one warehouse and then fulfill. In addition, I have started partnering with other affiliates to sell SkyTraks (and fulfill events) to grow faster and give me more time to focus working on the business. I also have a great offshore team that manages things for me which I will need to expand to cater for growth. Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?I have made SO many mistakes. The key is to understand that the key is to minimize the risk and impact of mistakes, not to try to avoid them like the plague. You simply cannot. What I have learnt is that it's important to understand the downside and make decisions that do not expose you financially in a big way. I didn't do that at the beginning and it cost me hundreds of thousands… probably millions along the way. I think I am better at managing risk now and at decision making. The most interesting thing is that my two most successful ventures I kinda … fell into them. 24/7 Golf being one of them. What helps is loving what I do so that working insane hours is not work… it's fun! What platform/tools do you use for your business?For my shop itself I use:
For overall work I use:
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?So many… I read business biographies all the time. I find that the best lessons in business are in the stories of people who have "done it" - but some of the absolute best lessons are in business biographies of FAILED businesses. For example BooHoo.com was a major disaster that went through $500m or so of VC money. Great book if you can find it. I am a big fan of Tim Ferris 4 hour series. And some classics like Think and Grow Rich. Another great book that is hard to find but brilliant read is No Cash, No Fear - I think many entrepreneurs will be able to relate to that book (even the title)! In terms of skills I cannot recommend enough learning how to sell in the "real world" - I think it is the most important skill for any career, in a job or in business. I have devoured hundreds of books on sales. If you learn how to sell offline, you will be able to sell better online I think! Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Learn from other people's mistakes as much as you can. Seek out people who have been down the path you're going and take them out to lunch and ask to share. They don't need to be your "mentors" or "mastermind groups" … just need to listen to their stories. Make your own mistakes, pay for them, move on. If you want to avoid mistakes, work for a simple company and get a simple salary. Kill your ambition. Read a lot, watch documentaries, feed your brain with ideas and inspiration. Interesting people have interesting stories, seek them out and enjoy them. Find a way to enjoy life no matter where you are in it - sometimes that will be really bloody hard - just get to the next day and then the next until it's easier. Too many books talk about the good times and underplay how hard it can be. Many entrepreneurs go through depression, anxiety, lots of fear - but they find a way to deal with it - your skin will grow thicker as the years go by - I am certainly grateful mine has grown thicker. Find a happy place. I have two… my family who I love more than anything I could have imagined, and golf. When I play golf, I escape from the world for 4 hours - find a happy place (hobby, movies, books … keep it legal! :-) ) and you will find it easier to work harder than you ever thought was possible. Use nootropics! Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?Looking to expand events business into USA after Australia, starting with Texas. Where can we go to learn more?24/7 Golf https://www.youtube.com/247Golf Liked this interview? Check out more founders that shared their story on StarterStory.com. [link] [comments]  |
| Keeping Side Hustle Blogging and Day Job Separate? Posted: 29 Jun 2018 09:48 AM PDT hi all, i am starting a blog focusing on self help-ish, inner work type material to help people and share some wisdom and tools I've learned over the years that I sincerely think will help certain people, I want to reach those people and eventually make some simple video courses demonstrating some things they can do to, bottom line, be happier no matter their circumstances ... at the same time I have a VERY CONSERVATIVE type day job and would rather not have my boss or coworkers find me and this blog. Doing it anonymously seems sleazy somehow and would be the opposite way I would want readers to perceive me and my work. This is really where I am stuck, not sure what to do about this. Would appreciate any helpful ideas on how to achieve this impossible goal lol ... cheers [link] [comments]  |
| [Feedback please] Voice voting Posted: 29 Jun 2018 11:05 AM PDT Building a polling platform- SoPo, would love to hear your feedback on the voting experience. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.sopo Feel free to ask anything, suggest anything, go ahead and give brutal feedback. Negative feedback will help a lot <3 and is DEFINITELY welcomed! [link] [comments]  |
| When we live for our goals, we forget to live now Posted: 29 Jun 2018 02:28 PM PDT I've just seen something on TV that totally struck a chord with me, and I'm going to go ahead and summarise it as I think it will be helpful and to look back on in the future. I'm sure we all have clear goals and vision of where we want to be in the future, and are working towards achieving those goals. But that doesn't really work. You might become a millionaire by the time you're 40, but you realise you've been unable to sustain a happy relationship, or if it doesn't work out you're completely lost and begin to blame yourself. When we live for our goals, we forget to live now. The philosopher Allan Watts said, "when you listen to a piece of music, you don't skip to the end because that's the part where it all comes together, you don't skip to the last chapter of a book because that's the climax. Yet in life, we're obsessed with endings". We spend so much time working towards our goals, a significant portion of our lives. And at some point in our 40s it 50s we may or may not get there. And will that moment, will we be in ecstasy or will we be questioning "Is this it? The thing I've always worked towards?" Maybe life should be more like a piece of music, and we should all be dancing. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2018 02:07 PM PDT I'm working once again on a project, this one is closely related to my biggest interest so I'm very excited. The problem I have is I can't think about anything else and end up doing up to 30h sessions, then sleeping a little and repeating it. My social life and mental health really take a toll and it feels like it's impossible to limit it to something like 8-10 hours / day and then relaxing and meeting girlfriend and friends etc. If you suffered from something similar, how you got rid of it? [link] [comments]  |
| Need help finding beta testers for new app Posted: 28 Jun 2018 10:57 PM PDT Hello, We need beta users to test out our mobile app, Taster. We built the Taster app because we don't like the existing solutions for finding food. We thought it would be amazing if we could see all the nearby restaurants serving a dish we were craving, like chicken & waffles or ribs. Currently, we are working with NYC restaurants. The iOS version of the app is ready to be tested through TestFlight, we have a website set up (https://tasterapp.com), and we have just started posting on Instagram (@taster_app). However, we are having trouble finding users to test the app. We think the concept is really good, but we want to make sure we're building something people want. How do we find more testers? Thank You! [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone work in several unrelated industries at once? Posted: 29 Jun 2018 01:54 PM PDT I have a traditional job as a health care analyst. On top of that, I'm an occasional freelance health care writer. I'm in need of a different creative outlet and plan to manufacture fine jewelry. Years ago, I handcrafted jewelry, but I never scaled the business. I went back to a traditional job for the benefits and quite honestly the ease and pay. That said, I'm bored again. I'm often bored if I'm doing any one thing for any length of time. Do you run a product-based business and work full-time in a completely unrelated field? How's that working out? Is this feasible or do most folks get burnt out or have to choose one or the other? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2018 12:21 PM PDT I am one of those entrepreneurs and I am getting a little discouraged that only people with at least one of those things secure investments. Has anyone saw or hear about someone who came from the bottom get someone to investment in them. [link] [comments]  |
| Need help with shipping tea (domestic and international) Posted: 29 Jun 2018 08:35 AM PDT Hello! I've done some due diligence and can't find anything definitive or up-to-date on this sub regarding shipping. I'm launching a tea business soon. My storefront is through shopify. Products are 2.5oz (bag and leaves) and I would like to ship domestic US and international. What is the most cost efficient way to approach shipping? I don't mind eating a bit on the cost to make customers happy. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2018 11:48 AM PDT Whether it be about business or ones that inspired you, what are some of your favorite Audible books? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2018 11:37 AM PDT I'm only going to be selling a single window decal like item. I have to make it myself, but its fairly easy so I'll be able to hand make 100's of these in a few weeks time. I'll design my own art and logo, and buy the physical packaging from amazon and put everything together myself. This product will not revolutionize anything, but I think it will sell based on how well similar yet inferior products are doing on amazon alone. Looking for opinions and advice, thanks everyone! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2018 11:32 AM PDT If I am able to, is there something I should take note of? I'm really passionate about helping others start a business, and also living a healthier lifestyle, and I thought I could just do both...and brand myself as a "lifestyle" website to "improve one's life" in many avenues. [link] [comments]  |
| What are the stages of customer relationship management? Posted: 29 Jun 2018 11:26 AM PDT |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2018 11:21 AM PDT Hey there, I have been doing internet marketing full time for around 5 years and hit some awesome goals! I am very experienced with Shopify and Facebook/Instagram advertising. I have e-commerce stores that I run ads to, all personal. The problem is that I am getting burnt out so often by business/person stuff and I haven't been able to actually get to where I want this year, not even close. I don't have to many outside friends due to moving to a new city and being in the industry I am, not needing to leave home. That's why I think being a part of a group of people in the same field trying everyday would really inspire me, especially if I can help out in any way. I really like to giving back value to the community in anyway I can. I'm always testing new Facebook ads so I kinda know what's working! What would be ideal is daily, weekly or monthly calls or even an discord where I can pop in and chat. Ultimately a mentor would even be better but I don't really know how to go about finding one. I am part of Facebook groups but it's not really the same, to many people talking negatively about the future of the industry, I don't like those vibes so I only try and pop in there once in a while. Thanks allot! TLDR: Looking for a community of entrepreneurs that I can be a part of and contribute to everyones success so we can push eachother to new heights, or a mentor... [link] [comments]  |
| Is there such thing as a "liquid bitcoin pool"? Posted: 29 Jun 2018 11:18 AM PDT Hi (this is my first post on this sub, doing the best I can to follow rules), I'm pretty close to buying into my first bitcoin ATM machine. For the uninitiated, in order to not be considered a money transmitter, I have to sell bitcoin directly from a hot wallet. This means tying up anywhere from 3-10k in bitcoin for customers to buy. Although you can do exchange mirror deals, there's no way to avoid floating a few thousand bucks of bitcoin in a wallet at all times. Does anyone know of a service (perhaps a subscription-based service) that will let you sell/reload bitcoin from a pooled wallet instead of constantly having to float my own money in bitcoin 24/7? [link] [comments]  |
| Adding 2 services to your business name? Ex. Bob's Pressure Washing & Window Cleaning Posted: 29 Jun 2018 07:07 AM PDT I am starting a pressure washing business that will be doing other add ons such as window cleaning & gutter cleaning. I'm wondering if by adding another service in my business name if people won't see me as someone who specializes in either and see me as more of a "handy man". Examples: Bob's Pressure Washing & Window Cleaning Bob's Pressure Washing [link] [comments]  |
| Gamifying Entrepeneurship (Do you do this?) Posted: 29 Jun 2018 06:44 AM PDT Fellow entrepreneurs,I run a business. I've found that in order to motivate myself to do the little important things on a daily basis, I've needed to create a world for myself to gamify the building of my business. Do any of you do something similar? I would love to hear what you do and possibly give me ideas on how to improve my "fantasy world" that I've created to push me even harder. Here's a sample of what I've created. Perhaps it can inspire you too if this resonates with you: ---- The World of GrandiaMy name is IronSharpener the Conqueror. I am the Guild Leader (CEO) of the Forsaken Clan (my fictitious business name). I possess the following stats:
Currencies in my inventory: War Chest: $xxxxx gold (money in my bank set aside from the business) Introduction In the World of Grandia, my mission is to grow Forsaken Clan (fictitious business name) to be the most dominant and noble guild in the land (most successful and thriving business in my niche) while slaying every monster (business obstacle) and defeating any other guild (business competitor) that stands in our way of total domination. This mission will be accomplished by liberating (acquiring) new territories (clients) in Grandia from tyrannical rule (dysfunctional and/or ineffective marketing tactics) and taxing those territories on a monthly basis (collecting a monthly retainer.) The more territories we liberate (clients we acquire), the more we grow as a guild (more revenue generated for our business.) We also strive to be the most noble rulers of our territories (achieve insanely positive results for our clients) in order to increase our prestige and reputation across Grandia, so other territories defect without any effort on our part and submit to our sovereignty (referral clients.) We actively liberate clients through the following daily quests: Scouting Scouting (prospecting for new leads) entails active scouting and passive scouting.
Monsters In Grandia, vicious monsters lurk in the forests, plains, and mountains surrounding territories (business obstacles preventing client acquisition). Here is a sample of just a few of these monsters that need to be slayed: Goblins (Distractions) These small, green tenacious creatures may look weak, but beware: If they are underestimated, they will gang up on you and prevent you from reaching your destination. It is best to always stay vigilant against these seemingly harmless foes and aggressively vanquish them upon sight. (Remove all distractions at all costs and don't underestimate the danger of wasting just a little bit of time. A "little bit" can quickly turn into a lot. Stay focused at all costs.) Dragons (Limiting Beliefs) Perhaps the most powerful and fearsome beasts in all of the land are Dragons. Some say that we all have dragons that we need to slay, but the problem is that they are often times very illusive. They can cause destruction in a flash without any trace of their presence, often times leaving victims blaming other monsters, their rulers, or even themselves. However, one must be aware of the dragons existence and capacity to bring devastation, constantly be searching for them and uncovering their secret lairs, and destroying them immediately. (We all have limiting beliefs that stand in our way to success. These can be lack of confidence, self-doubt, fear, unworthiness, guilt, etc. Often times, it is what holds us back the most. We must constantly audit our way of thinking and challenge these limiting beliefs in order to make progress in our lives and take 100% responsibility for everything without blaming others.) ---- I am constantly adding to this, including writing up more about how to recruit new guild members (people on my team like virtual assistants, referral partners, sales people, accountants, lawyers, mentors, etc.) and significant guild achievements that will level up my guild (such as collecting $10,000 of retainers of a month.) For those that have read this far (thank you if you have!), do you see any ways I can improve upon or add to this to immerse myself further in this world I am trying to create? I would love your thoughts and feedback. Any criticism at all would be great. Thanks everyone! TL;DR: I created a fantasy world in order to motivate myself in my business. Do you do this? [link] [comments]  |
| You have content ready for your business videos, but what about your outfit for the camera? Posted: 29 Jun 2018 09:42 AM PDT Video creators are constantly thinking about what content to make for their audience. But what clothes to wear on camera is just as important to keep your audience engaged with your content. One of the biggest things I learned out of the below video is to not wear black! It's recommended to wear jewel tones, and I've been wearing black in tons of my videos! See the link below to learn about all the tips for looking good on camera. https://youtu.be/LfcSHnrmjQY [link] [comments]  |
| Balancing staff culture regarding work hours: Burnout/toxicity/etc Posted: 29 Jun 2018 09:39 AM PDT Hey all, I have a 7 person tech firm that's trying to figure out how to balance (volunteer) work hours. It's not uncommon for me to come to the office in the morning and see one or two of the core original engineers still there from the night before pounding out work. As we have grown the company we now have "normal" staff who are expressing discomfort with the cultural normality of this. IE feeling discouraged/alienated by other staff because the are only "wearing the minimum pieces of flair". This culture is a hold over from when we were in "startup" mode. But I am curious how established companies handle this sort of thing? Any suggestions? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2018 09:12 AM PDT Do you guys have any advice/templates/benchmarks for an investor pitch deck for growth capital? background: we offer an SaaS niche market tool and we've been on the market for 3 years with substantial growth on the European market. We need capital to grow internationally [link] [comments]  |
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