Are “young entrepreneurs” groups a thing? Entrepreneur |
- Are “young entrepreneurs” groups a thing?
- PPC can suck my balls for a bit.
- Is it ok (ethical) to create an existing product with some addition features ?
- Leave great career path for boring but less time consuming work?
- Spending 26.70 $ on advertisements on Reddit - Sharing my thoughts and results
- Young Entrepreneur Help
- Any benefits/advantages of being a entrepreneur in New York City?
- Data Science Entrepreneur
- Is my pricing too low? $100/month for UNLIMITED answers to SEO questions.
- The last 1.5 years has been super hard, but I am finally through it! Here's what happened:
- Making money online?
- What does really mean when an entrepreneur says I want 20000USD with 10% equity?
- What path would you take?
- Seeking advice on creating an ad on Reddit
- Asking for advice
- What’s an acceptable amount of time to return an email to a client?
- Young Entrepreneur Discord
- What is the best platform to find influencers?
- Student offering powerwashing services
- Physical Consumer Product Investors?
- A food product that I couldn't produce myself, but an established company could...
- Any interest in a Discord?
- MicroSaas product marketing advice needed
- New Documentary which demonstrates the focus required to be a great entrepreneur
- Starting A Men's Grooming Brand And Growing Your Online Presence
| Are “young entrepreneurs” groups a thing? Posted: 03 Jun 2018 04:19 AM PDT Hi all, I'm 23 and have been searching for groups of young entrepreneurs across social media, the internet, and meet up groups. I'm finding it surprisingly hard. As young entrepreneurs are less likely to have experience, I thought it would be a useful community for me to engage in, hearing others growth stories in similar situations. Does anyone else agree? Or am I mental! [link] [comments]  |
| PPC can suck my balls for a bit. Posted: 03 Jun 2018 07:48 AM PDT You know something? I hate Facebook ads. I hate Adwords. Quora ads can eat a dick. LinkedIn ads can also eat a dick. Twitter ads? Yup, dick-eating involved too. YouTube ads are a hot mess of digital wank. Pinterest ads be dead to me. Snapchat ads. Lulz. I run ads for people every so often, and it's fine. The above list is what I do every fucking day - and combine in Google Analytics, optimize, data studio, tag manager, hotjar, CRM automation, JavaScript programming, zapier and a metric fuck tonne of other marketing technology. But fuck me if the old isn't hot and new again - but with a modern twist. Just pick up the phone. Or Facebook Messenger. Or giphycam. Record a 10 second "hey <first name>! Fancy a digital/real coffee mate on Thursday/AnyDayOfWeekExceptMondayOrFriday? Lemme know bruv/luv" video message (or speech to text on giphycam if you're embedding into LinkedIn messenger depending on your audience..) Then have the coffee and just help that other person with at least one referral or one genuinely useful tip that can and will help them achieve a win. Expect nothing in return and do it for the sheer joy of being able to help someone achieve that win - however small or mahoosive. And because you called the meeting, you also pay for the coffee too. I get two things out of this. Three, actually. First, is that givers gain. Lemme explain. Some minority peeps take the fucking piss with coffee time, and those people I'll cut dead for evermore: A $4 cup of coffee likely helped me dodge a fuckwit bullet down the line. Most dont though. The ones that don't c*nt me off (the majority!) give me good feels and I get to flex my brain for someone and get to think outside the box sometimes as a result. And it exposes me to other workflows and industry issues I'm not familiar with. So givers gain for me, means that I can then create workflows and marketing tools for that industry if I can see opportunity. I wouldn't have known otherwise. Second, is that I get a lot of goodwill and referrals as a result of a simple coffee business date and general talk-piss session. I don't expect them, but they come. Maybe not there and then, and maybe a year down the line. But yeah, they come. And finally, fuck me it's good to come out from behind the keyboard isn't it? Good for the head and soul when you can talk piss and have a giggle with someone else that is also in business. Recharges me, personally. I don't like people most of the time, as I'm not one for small talk and I don't really go for family talk or want to know personal shit about you. But when I'm sat there connecting the dots for a business and I can genuinely give them a shot in the arm for their marketing or technology or systems or workflows - yeah, I get my jollies. TL;DR - Selling B2B? Call some business peeps and have a coffee with them and pay it forward. Good shit happens when you're not there just to find the earliest point in the conversation to spruik your own shit. REALLY listen and REALLY help them. Remember noone gives a fuck about you: They care about what you can do for them. That then karma level ups you for another time. Also, note the ones that even at least offer to pay for that coffee too, even though you called the meeting: These people will be business mates. Those that dont even make an attempt at paying are usually are people you'll cut from your lists and life. Also, this motherfucking GDPR plugin we're creating, is a goddamn beast. Taken me by surprise how involved it's got, and how much tech has been fucking stuffed into it, and how much c*ntProofing we've done so it's usable by even me with my legendary low-tolerance for shit software and technology. Not pitching. No links. Just wanted to say it's a fucking beast. PLUR[link] [comments]  |
| Is it ok (ethical) to create an existing product with some addition features ? Posted: 03 Jun 2018 04:43 AM PDT Hey, I'm new to this community. I'm not an Entrepreneur (yet) . But I have some ideas which I haven't tried yet. I'm hoping to try them as soon as I can. Btw, I was using a newly released product (app) for about a week. But I feel like some key features are missing in it. I think adding the features will make it more valuable as they are some features I felt missing (felt badly). I'm pretty sure it's easy to integrate them to the product. So, is it ethical or ok to create the product from scratch and release it with those features (as a competitor to the app I'm using) ? For my morality, I think it's not ethical. But I feel creating this will help me to understand the concepts and etc. What do you think ? [link] [comments]  |
| Leave great career path for boring but less time consuming work? Posted: 03 Jun 2018 07:07 AM PDT Hello, I am coming to a crossroads in my life and would love some advice from others who have been in my shoes. I'm pretty young in my mid 20s and am having great career success so far. I work for a cool large tech company and work on one of the 'sexiest' teams they have. But I, unlike my co-workers who are excited to be there everyday, feel it is all pointless and am always trying to work on a side project, but never have the time/mental capacity to stick with it long before I hit a serious burnout. If I stick around where I am, I am sure I can rise high within the company as I work with great people who try to push my career forward. I feel like I'd be a fool to throw all of this away. And yet my heart says to gtfo since my end goal isn't to be highly placed in a big company, it is to be spending my time working on the projects I want. I've got many half-worked on side projects and would love to pick one and finish it and offer it as as a product/service. I'm thinking it would be worthwhile for me to get a more boring job which would give me a consistent paycheck, yet wouldn't drain my mental energy and would only be a strict 40 hour week, not the variable "always available" work I'm doing now. Either that or independent contracting/freelancing where I could be more flexible with when/how I spend my time. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Most people I talk to about this say I'm being foolish (except thankfully my family), but as a recent post on here said, why take advice from people who don't live the life you want to live. [link] [comments]  |
| Spending 26.70 $ on advertisements on Reddit - Sharing my thoughts and results Posted: 03 Jun 2018 02:29 AM PDT Dear /r Entrepreneur thought I would share my experience with advertising here on Reddit. The product i promoted is a Merch by Amazon t-shirt i created in a niche that had a good BSR: https://imgur.com/a/rzkewlB I did 4 different type of ads for the same product: Highly Specific, Loss Aversion, Longform & Question ad these are the results: https://imgur.com/a/7hzSoT6 Overall my experience with advertising on reddit haven't been that great since they also rejected my campaign twice by error and i had to contact support and wait for 2 days to get them to fix it... Anyhow thought this might be useful to people considering advertising on reddit and if you have any other questions regarding my campaign or just in general feel free to ask :-)! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jun 2018 12:51 PM PDT Hey all, I am a 16 year old. I have saved up a decent sum of money over the last couple years and I've always wanted to start my own business. I have dabbled in trading stock but currently I only have shares in AMD. I am looking for a way to make some more side income or possibly start my own business. I am really into photography, and if i could find something to do with that it would be awesome. If anybody has any ideas for a young entrepreneur—be it book recommendations, business ideas, or ways to use this saved up money—please let me know. Thank you all! [link] [comments]  |
| Any benefits/advantages of being a entrepreneur in New York City? Posted: 03 Jun 2018 08:45 AM PDT do you guys think a place like NYC (or any big city) has advantages when it comes to entrepreneurial pursuits? Ecommerce stuff you can do anywhere where the cost of living is cheaper. Physical stores you're up against a ton of competition as well as expensive rents. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jun 2018 10:54 AM PDT I am learning Data Science and Machine Learning and find it very interesting to work with and spend an ungodly amount of time with it. I am a .net programmer on the side working on Dynamics CRM. I want to setup a company dealing in Data Science but cannot for the life of me understand what should it do? What problems can Data Science solve? Problems that affect regular folks or enterprises that Data Science can solve? Some have advised me to be patient and continue with my journey on learning Data Science and Machine Learning and the answer will come to me but at this stage simply reading files and cleaning the data and then plotting them on graphs and charts isn't doing much for me. The exciting part about supervised and unsupervised learning is yet to come and I am sure I can pick them up quickly but how does any of that transform into a business? Any suggestions on how a Data Science company might be like? [link] [comments]  |
| Is my pricing too low? $100/month for UNLIMITED answers to SEO questions. Posted: 03 Jun 2018 09:10 AM PDT Target market is small business owners who don't know anything about SEO but want to learn (and hold their agencies accountable). I work at a well respected agency managing SEO strategy for the whole agency, so this would be a side-gig for now. I find a lot of my current small biz clients use me/our agency as a Q&A for them learning SEO/online marketing. Normal clients will send me 2-3 of these kinds of emails a month and I usually take 10-20 minutes to thoroughly respond to each, and hopefully teach them something in the process. Figure I can sell the education I give my clients to small biz owners to help them keep their agencies in check and eventually take over their own SEO if they want. It's a rough plan right now - am I being too optimistic? [link] [comments]  |
| The last 1.5 years has been super hard, but I am finally through it! Here's what happened: Posted: 03 Jun 2018 12:41 PM PDT I own a hot sauce company. Before I started that business I owned an IT consulting business. When I released my first hot sauce kickstarter in 2014 it did well enough that I decided to try and make it my full time employment as it was really successful. In August, 2016, I released 2 new beer flavored sauces via kickstarter. They weren't as successful as my first campaign, but I also didn't really do marketing before hand. I met my funding goals though so all was well. Before I put them on Kickstarter I talked with the president of the co-packing facility (let's call him Chet) about my new sauces and what it would take to get them produced. I had been working with them for several years at that point, and we had a fairly good relationship. Normally my sauce can be produced within 2 weeks since it has been tested and approved and the recipe and procedures finalized. To create a new sauce, I was told it would be about 6 weeks. Since the campaign ended in September, that was more than enough time before the holiday sales season. I ended up making some marketing agreements in the realm of esports (dota 2 and overwatch) for a good bit of money knowing they could help me reach a larger audience in time for the holidays. It was a success and I ended up increasing my sales a considerable amount. I set up an early October, 2016, I appointment on a Monday to meet with Chet and make sample sauces. I arrived and he hadn't shown up for work that day. The receptionist said that no one had heard from him and since he was working fixing a roof leak all weekend, they assumed he was having an issue with his diabetes. I guess that had happened before. I got a hold of him Tuesday and we set up another appointment for Wednesday. Again, he didn't show up. I ended up leaving the sampling materials and when he came back to work someone made the sample sauces. I picked up the sauces when I was notified and sent an email saying the porter sauce was spot on, and I wanted to increase the habanero in the IPA sauce. I later received an email from Chet asking if I had tried the second batches (we are in November now). I responded, "I hadn't even been informed they were produced yet," but I went in and picked them up the next morning. Apparently they made both varieties again despite the Porter being okay the first time. I tried them and approved the second IPA sauce via email, and asked what the differences were. That was the last time I heard from Chet. I assumed that they were going to start testing the sauces and getting them FDA approved at that point. A couple days later I went in to pick up some batches of my extra hot and green sauce that I had ordered and I was informed that Chet no longer worked with the company. Now the person in charge of production of all the sauces was a person that owned a competing hot sauce company. These were all red flags to me. Short Backstory: It took me months to find a co-packer to produce hot sauce in the quantities that I could afford to order (less than $20,000 minimum purchase). I worked with many organizations trying to find this one, and it was the only one in my state who would do it for me. I was stuck there for better or worse until I got bigger. I talked with the new person in charge of the company (lets call her Gertrude), and I was told that Chet didn't relay any information to her about anything on my new sauces. Gertrude and I walked into the office and I was told that her usual Pre-Thanksgiving client had quadrupled their order and they wouldn't have time to make my sauces before then. RIP my Black Friday sales. At this point the best we could do was to have them produced by the second week of December. We looked at the calendar on the wall and the Friday of that week was the 9th. I figured I could still get good Xmas sales if I hustled as I still had the contract going with esports. I would miss the deadline for shipping beer sauces to be shipped to and distributed in Europe with my other sauces, but at least I could sell by Christmas. When I make sauces, I use ingredients I can buy at a store. I don't open up huge cans of tomato sauce, I use the ones I buy from costco because they are cheap and I like making spaghetti from them. In production it is too hard to open 1,000 15 oz cans so I use a different type. There are several ingredients that are slightly different than what I buy at the store, and things cook differently in 90 gallon batches, so I am never sure the exact ingredients in my sauce until after the co-packer scales it up and sends me the info. FDA regulations state that ingredients listed on the label must be in order of prominence in the product. Now I was playing the waiting game. I had to wait for the products to be tested by the government to demonstrate I had cooked the alcohol out of the sauce, the pH and other factors were correct, and the preparation methods met safety standards. I also had to get the final list of ingredients to add to my label based on their recipes. Every time I talked with Gertrude I was assured that we were still on track to be produced by the second week of December, she just had to finish up some administrative stuff like sourcing ingredients and finishing testing. I was informed multiple times via email and in person not to order my labels yet as I needed to have them proofread by Gertrude so that they would have everything like ingredient orders/allergens correct. I couldn't finish those labels until I received the final ingredient information from them. I flew to Boston to support the esports teams and do some marketing on December 5th. I was robbed by my uber driver that night when I arrived and ended up without my laptop. Long story short the cops did nothing, uber did nothing, so I sued them and won money back. Shortly after Uber changed their user agreement to say you couldn't sue them. I ended up flying back to Boston twice for court, so that aspect was part of my crappy year also. I got the final ingredient list on December 6th from my co-packer. I bought a new laptop and edited up the label and sent it back for approval. Gertrude was on vacation this week and couldn't actually approve the label until she returned on December 12th. I called up my label producer and put a rush on the labels when they were approved. This is close to holidays and they were busy, and ended up shipping via UPS ground instead of overnight. They didn't make it in time to be finished by the second week of December. The sauces were produced on the 15th or 16th of December, without the labels. UPS didn't deliver the labels until right near Christmas, so everyone I told would have it for gifts I had to let down. I delivered the labels to the co-packer (shipped to my billing address rather than my co-packers address). When I dropped them off I was chastised for not calling first before I came, but I figured since UPS wouldn't have called to drop something off I didn't need to. Apparently I made the receptionist pretty mad. Anyway, the sauce wasn't ready to pick up until around January 10th. I didn't quite get it by the second week of December. I had plenty of pissed off people who pre-ordered and and expected it by Xmas. At this point I had still been selling my 3 original flavors of sauce, and needed to reorder two flavors as I was low (original and green). I was pretty freakin pissed off that I didn't get the sauces until almost 2 months after I was told I would have them by Chet, who was the president of the company so I had no reason to believe that wouldn't be true. I called the co-packer up and said that I wanted a discount for these late batches of sauces on account of their lateness. I was told it was my fault as the labels weren't there on time. Even if they were there on the day the sauce was produced it still would have been after the second week of December. Gertrude ended up getting super mad at me and hanging up on me after an hour of telling me how it was my fault and if I wanted to hold Chet responsible for telling me they would be ready I could take it up with him. This is when I found out why Chet wasn't with the company anymore. He was serving 12 years in prison. Why might you ask? Well he got arrested for selling 1.5 pounds of meth. Then he was arrested again a week later for selling another 2 pounds of meth, but this time with 9 illegal firearms. Apparently this was his third strike and he went away for a while. While that certainly explained a lot, it still didn't make me feel better about the sauce being 2 months late. I want to emphasize that my sauces were completely okay and the actual people that produced the sauce had nothing to do with meth and no drugs made it into my product. The addicting quality is just because of their great flavor. I still wanted a discount on the sauces, and the new cook (the guy who owns the competing hot sauce company) tried to work as a middleman and find a deal for us to work this out. I didn't want them to lose money, so I offered they break even on the sauces and I will order more from them at that point. They didn't like that option and said they won't produce my sauces anymore as it was my fault they were late, not theirs, so they shouldn't have to discount anything. I disagreed with their analysis and said if they won't give me a discount then I would not pay them immediately. I offered to pay them several months later at a discount since they were several months late with my sauce since I now had to find a new producer and would need the money for initial costs. It can cost several thousands of dollars just to get initially set up and develop a product at a new facility. I gave them a date and said I will pay them x dollars on that date. Now I had to figure out how to produce sauce on my own. I called up so many co-packers, no one would do it. People just don't want to make hot sauce in Oregon. So I had to start from scratch and make it on my own. I was trying to build relationships with farms so I could create a consistent product. I eventually got my foot in the door and was able to source ingredients. It took me 2 months to find everything so I could try and make more sauce. All the while my uber lawsuit is going on and I am out of 2 of my 5 sauces. I was glad that I kept a few clients on for IT consulting so I could make some cash to get by in the mean time. Shipping ingredients up from California (no one grows peppers in Oregon) was going to cost me about $500. I ended up flying down to California on the way back from one of my Uber court trips and renting a car, and then driving it back up Portland and it only cost me $200. Wanted to save money where I could and $300 is $300. I rented out a shared commercial kitchen to produce the sauce over 2 nights and got to it. It was a lot of work and all-nighters but some friends helped and it was great. I found a new company that could produce my sauce shortly after this. Oh man this facility was amazing. They actually used machines to fill bottles instead of my hand. A totally automated process to fill and seal and it was big and I felt so good about it. This was in around mid April-ish. I was told it would be 6-8 weeks to get up and going. Things were looking up. The date was arriving I told Getrude I would pay her, and just a few days before I got a letter from her attorney saying I had to pay the full amount or I would be sent to collections. I had to get my attorney involved at this point. We tried to get them to just walk away and then after two months of not hearing anything I got a call from some place in Texas asking if I wanted them to try and mediate a settlement in my lawsuit. I had no idea what they were talking about and they informed me the day prior a suit was filed against me in Oregon by Gertrude. My attorney was surprised but we went through all the legal stuff. Argued back and forth for a bit, did discovery, did some depositions. August, 2017, was coming up and I was told by my new co-packer any day now until we could produce. A little past 6-8 weeks but whatever. Now we are in November, and I guess the bottles are on order at my new co-packer. Once those arrived we can produce, looks like early December. We also set the arbitration date for my lawsuit to try and avoid going to court, also early December. I was hoping everything could be wrapped up by then. Bottles didn't come in on time, missed another Christmas in sales. We had our arbitration, were supposed to hear back within a couple weeks, ended up hearing back around late January 2018. The arbitrator said that they actually owed me money because Chet was the president, and I have excellent documentation of everything. I am very fastidious about my record keeping. Obviously Gertrude didn't accept it so we were going to trial. After our attorneys went back and forth a bunch they ended up paying us and we wrapped up the case just before trial last month. I just picked up my hot sauces from my new producer last week and I can finally get back to selling them. Everything just completed all at once, but the in between time was spent worrying about bills and hustling side projects to get by. Using balances on credit cards to pay off credit cards. It was rough. I can't express the relief and excitement that I have now that everything is done and I can just move on. I have so many plans and now I finally have the sauce to execute. I am sorry this was so long, but it has been an absolutely awful year+ and I wanted to share it with people that would understand the trials of running your own business. TL;DR: My old co-packer got arrested for selling meth and then the new owner of the company sued me and things dragged on for over a year where I couldn't produce/sell my product but it finally ended and I have a new producer and life is good. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jun 2018 07:28 AM PDT How can i make money online? I need some extra cash so i can do what I've always wanted to do and start a company. Is there a possible (and reasonable) way i can do this? [link] [comments]  |
| What does really mean when an entrepreneur says I want 20000USD with 10% equity? Posted: 03 Jun 2018 02:10 AM PDT What are the most important things to know before I ask for fund infusion? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jun 2018 11:10 AM PDT IF you had a skill set of -Sales -Web Development -Digital Marketing, seo, adwords, social media etc what would be your thoughts of a entrepreneurial path? [link] [comments]  |
| Seeking advice on creating an ad on Reddit Posted: 03 Jun 2018 06:47 AM PDT Hey guys, I'd like to create my first ad on Reddit (for my app), and it would be great to get some help on how to go about doing that. I'm not really sure where to start and I'd also like to learn more about starting a campaign - what that entails and what to include in mine? Any tips on how to begin and how to make my post more effective would be highly appreciated:) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jun 2018 01:46 PM PDT Hey, I work with a online radio (very small) but it's starting to pick up some followers and a little fan base but with that being said, we would like the Radio to grow but to do that we need to put money into buying better equipment and a member of our team suggested selling t-shirts online which is cliche because everyone is doing that but I am on here to ask if there is another thing we could do or if selling t-shirts is a good idea, how to go about doing it. I found a couple companies that sells shirts in bulk and a couple of places that will do the printing and what not for a low price and what not. Is there anything I am missing like a sellers license? Help a guy out. [link] [comments]  |
| What’s an acceptable amount of time to return an email to a client? Posted: 03 Jun 2018 01:31 PM PDT I run a small business. It's frustrating to me how emails have become like texts. Since most people get email on their phone I feel like others expect you to respond within a certain amount of time (minutes? Hours?). Sometimes I need to be at my desk to look everything up and answer them accurately. Is it bad etiquette to write back within 24-48 hours? I always find myself apologizing for not getting back sooner. And another thought- should I have an auto reply that says I'll respond within a certain amount of time? Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jun 2018 12:56 PM PDT Come join, give advice, or just talk! https://discord.gg/gbrvSJ [link] [comments]  |
| What is the best platform to find influencers? Posted: 03 Jun 2018 12:54 PM PDT I am looking to find influencers for a project, what is the best way to find them? [link] [comments]  |
| Student offering powerwashing services Posted: 03 Jun 2018 12:43 PM PDT I'm thinking about starting a little one man business with powerwahing services. Anyone here willing to share some knowledge/experience connected with it? I thought about buying a powerwasher from a brand like karcher and offer my service to clean people's driveways, fences, gardens etc. I'm a student so it wouldn't be a thing that I'd have to live from. Also would a normal powerwasher from Karcher be enough for that type of work? Appreciate any help EDIT: Also how much could I charge for a service like this? [link] [comments]  |
| Physical Consumer Product Investors? Posted: 03 Jun 2018 12:37 PM PDT In summary, I'm an engineer and have have developed an innovative coffee mug over the last 2 yrs. I have a functional prototype, have paid for a patent search, completed market research via online surveys and met with product developement agencies to refine it visually and make it ready for manufacturing. Once a professional product developer finalizes it, i can send out the final design to get quotes for tooling and manufacturing. My plan is to bring it to kickstarter (campaign paying for tooling + manufacturing), but need apprx. $55,000 to get it there. Im trying to find an investor to help (i can pay for part of it myself), and be a partner, but am having difficulty finding investors interested in things other than apps/websites. Pre-Kickstarter Funding Breakdown: Forming LLC: $600 Professional Product Refinement: $30,000 (per quote) Professional Prototype: $5,000 (educated guess from product developer) Kickstarter Video: $5,000 (educated guess) Product FDA Safety Testing: $3,000 (per quote) Marketing: $7,000 (educated guess) Provisional Patent: $2,000 (per quote) At a wall right now, any advice on how to proceed from here? TLDR: Have a functional product prototype (innovative coffee mug) and am trying to get it to kickstarter. How do I find an investor? [link] [comments]  |
| A food product that I couldn't produce myself, but an established company could... Posted: 03 Jun 2018 12:30 PM PDT I have an idea for a food product, that would likely require expensive processing equipment to produce. Is there a strategy for introducing the idea to a pre-existing company that already has the equipment needed, showing them that you've proven the market for this product, and make money in doing so? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jun 2018 08:19 AM PDT Hi, Just posting here to see if anyone would have any interest in joining a discord to discuss ideas and all things entrepreneur. You don't have to be some mastermind entrepreneur, just someone honest and truthful who doesn't post phoney figures which I'm sure we are all too familiar with. Drop a comment and I'll get you the link. Thanks guys. :) [link] [comments]  |
| MicroSaas product marketing advice needed Posted: 03 Jun 2018 03:13 AM PDT My first real MicroSaas product is almost ready to go live. It's B2B and subscription based. I have no idea about how to market it. I plan on starting a blog detailing every minuit detail about building it, I also will contact potential customers with hand written letters explaining my product offering. What else can I do to get it in front of decision makers? It's bootstrapped so not a huge advertising budget. Hoping for more organic growth. Any tips/tricks for a beginner? [link] [comments]  |
| New Documentary which demonstrates the focus required to be a great entrepreneur Posted: 03 Jun 2018 11:53 AM PDT While it is not specially about entrepreneurism. I saw a documentary last night that really epitomizes the self discipline, passion, and focus required to be successful entrepreneur: Dealt. The story of Richard Turner. While very well known in magic circles, Richard is less known outside the magic community. Blind since he was 9, Richard became the leading card "mechanic" of his generation. Practicing 16 hours a day, at the same time getting his black belt in karate, one of the most inspiring stories I've seen. Highly recommended. Currently on Hulu. [link] [comments]  |
| Starting A Men's Grooming Brand And Growing Your Online Presence Posted: 03 Jun 2018 08:23 AM PDT Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here. Today I interviewed Jack Scrimshire, who started The Gentlemen's Lounge, an e-commerce store that sells men's grooming products. I love this interview because Jack really goes into details about all of the little things about starting a business. He only started a few months ago, so hopefully this interview helps out some others out there that are just getting started. Hello! Who are you and what are you working on?Hi there! My name is Jack Scrimshire, and I'm creating a men's grooming brand that promotes men's health, grooming, and the lifestyle of the modern gentleman. Our products are all centered around beard care, and we sell to men who take pride in caring for the way they look and use natural products to do so. Right now our monthly earnings are at about $1,000 with huge month-over-month growth. By the end of 2018, we expect to be averaging $10,000/month. What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?The idea was a long time in the making. Around my second year into my college business degree, I got really into the idea of becoming a true gentleman and learning all of the skills and traits that makes someone a "man". About a year later, I realized there was no one way to be a man, and started looking for communities to learn a grow with and be a part of, to surround myself with likeminded people. As my passion for entrepreneurship (and my fear of working for others my whole life) grew, I began looking into options of what kind of businesses to start. Ecommerce is obviously huge right now, and I figured I'd combine that with my passion for manliness and style. I had a long beard and had been buying beard products for a few years, but always had a few issues with them: they weren't always effective at controlling the irritations that come with beard maintenance, it was hard to find organic products, and when they were they tended to get really pricey.
So, I started researching suppliers, ingredients, and recipes, and realized there was absolutely no reason that a bottle of healthy, natural, organic beard oil should cost as much as companies were asking. So, I ordered my first batch of ingredients and got to work! I started out handing them out to friends and coworkers and they all loved them. I went ahead and created an Instagram, which quickly grew to around 8,000 followers and I started running giveaways there to further validate the products with people I didn't know. When they told me they were the best beard care products they'd ever tried, I knew I was onto something. At the time, I was making very little money having just graduated college. I'm still working full time as an operations analyst, living a modest lifestyle, prioritizing my earnings and funneling absolutely everything to aggressively paying off student and car loans, and I've reinvested every penny of the business income back into the business. I don't plan to take a salary until loans are paid and the business is sustaining itself. Describe the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing the product.I'm a pretty do-it-yourself kind of guy (and frankly don't like spending money when I don't have to), so when I realized how essential quality beard care products are, I started making them for myself. As I tried different recipes and batches, I was able to use them on myself to see how they worked. What's great about beard products, is if something doesn't work it's, objectively obvious. If my beard was flaking after two weeks using particular oils, I knew that recipe wasn't great.
I spent about 4 months developing the best recipes I could come up with using cheap ingredients off Amazon, then when I had something worth using (and people were begging me for more), I found the absolute highest quality ingredients I could find. When I made the first batch of real product, the results were unbelievable. When it comes to beard care products, it typically takes about a week to see if they help in preventing itching, flaking, skin irritations, and brittle hairs. But my products had results almost instantly. It made my beard crazy soft in seconds and the irritations that developed from lack of use were all gone within a few hours to a day. I gave some samples out to friends and a few of my Instagram followers and they all shared similar stories. All in all from packaging to ingredients my startup costs were around $2,000. Describe the process of launching the online store/business.In November 2016, I officially got my license and became a legal entity. It was at this point that I created social media accounts and started building my online presence. I tried growing organically using hashtags, relevant content, and engaging with my users and saw decent numbers but not much traction. I then switched to an app that would follow/unfollow people on Instagram in the background, which got me to around 5,000 followers, but got me really low quality followers. I will say however it gave me the initial credibility I needed to not look like that guy who started a beard care business using some ingredients he found in the kitchen. People like to see that you have a few thousand followers, so in that sense I think it helped a lot. My engagement is low as a result so it's something I'm working through and have been seeing some decent results from testing new strategies and being more personable. I financed the business out of my own personal savings, and have used my low limit business credit card to float transactions right up until I'm about to get charged interest to let money flow in before I spend the actual cash. I never let the interest hit and I always make sure I keep the balance within my set budgets, but this really helps keep cash on hand for what-if cases. My costs for the full pre-launch phase were around $4,000. This includes the $2,000 from product design and testing, to creating the first batch. Getting a logo made, domain, website hosting, supplies and tools to make products, packaging, shipping for test batches to customers, and a few small marketing campaigns. I launched officially on October 1, 2017, and began by hyping it up on social media. I did a count down where every day I would feature a follower by posting a picture of their beard with an overlay saying how many days left until the launch. In the background I was scrambling to get labels printed properly (wasted a bunch of money on low resolution labels since I didn't know how to make them properly), and literally finished my launch batch of products on September 30, with only two days to spare for launch. I took the product photos and was editing them right up until the moment my site went live. Within the first 15 minutes, I had around 400 visitors to my site coming from Instagram, and a few sales. The sales kept trickling in over the next few days and this gave me hope that this was worth pursuing. The biggest lesson I learned was that you can do it all yourself, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should. After launch I spent the next few months tweaking the site, fixing product photos (which were horrible, by the way), writing automated email flows, and doing all those one-and done tasks that take a lot of time but have to be done. This doesn't sound like much, but when you only get a couple hours a night to work on it after work and the family is in bed, it takes a long time to get done. Once they're done, they really don't need to be focused on aside from updates over time to maintain them. The thing is, if I'd have hired someone to do these things, it would maybe have cost me around $1,000 but I would have been months ahead of schedule and had a much more professional appearance from the start. So figure out what you're good at, do those things, and get help with the rest. Since launch, what has worked to attract new customers?Traffic comes mostly from social media still, and a decent amount from SEO, although now that my site is where I want it to be I am switching gears over to paid marketing. The site has been profitable every month since launch, but now I want to get new eyes on us and really start to see how this performs with people who don't know us. I know I will have to be very tactful with my marketing because our market is very saturated. It's going to take strategic effort to show that we're the real deal and have something that's better than what they've used before.
Right now we use automated email flows and they work great. I have a pop-up on my site where you can opt in and every month we give one person on our list a year's supply of beard oil. It's got a good conversion rate and gets surprisingly high quality leads. When they opt in they get a 7 day flow of introductory emails that indoctrinate our brand, introduce the company, talk about our values, our products and how great they are, and makes them feel as though they are now a part of our community/family. We really want high LTV so community is huge for us. We have also set up automated flows for first-time purchasers, repeat purchasers, people who haven't bought anything in a while, and we send weekly campaigns that talk about what's going on, links to new blog posts, give sneak peeks of new products and an occasional sale. I'd say email flows are huge. It lets you personally reach out to someone to welcome them without having to lift a finger. You just set it and forget it. I'm big into automation and this is easily the most powerful personal interaction you can automate. Social media is also huge, and Instagram is a large chunk of our revenue right now. If you're not using Instagram to showcase your company's values and the lifestyle around your products, you need to. Don't just post photos of your products, people want you to entertain, educate, and enlighten them. Do this, and they'll feel a connection to you and to your products. They'll want to support you because they know you and they believe what you believe. How is everything going nowadays, and what are your plans for the future?As mentioned above, the next step is serious growth and customer acquisition. I believe that once a customer purchases from us they will continue to come back for more, and we have our email automation set up to keep them actively engaged with us for a long time to come. So the next step is Facebook ads and email collection. Overall, we are right about at break even, so I'm looking to test the best ways to spend what we need to in order to get quality customers to join us, while still trying to scale enough that we push ourselves into the green. Operations-wise, it's still pretty hectic as I'm a one-man show. This means I do all content creation, social media management, customer outreach, order fulfilling, etc. so automation is huge. I use software that allows me to schedule posts to Instagram, facebook and twitter, and I'll spend a few hours each month scheduling out the next month of content. Being able to automate processes like this make it way easier to keep everything under control and really chunk your time in manageable buckets to still be able to get things done and keep your focus on one thing at a time. Eventually I'd like to hire customer experience specialists who fulfill orders, manage social media, and respond to customer support inquiries. That will free up a lot of time to work on the bigger picture items and the revenue-driving aspects of the business. I'd also like to start wholesaling to high end barbershops and salons to get other people selling products for us. In the near future we'll be releasing handmade wooden beard combs and boar's hair brushes that are being designed and built by a master woodworker, and from there we'll move onto beard soaps and conditioners. Short term the goals are just to get our names out there and start building a buzz. Long term, we'd like to be the premier provider of hand-crafted men's grooming supplies in the US, ranging from beard care to skin care to hair care and beyond. Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?I think the biggest thing is to avoid wasting money on things you don't need. I'm very financially sound but was still able to talk myself into some purchases that have not yet served the purpose I thought they would. I had to learn a lot about a wide variety of topics, so if you plan to start a business in the future, start learning now. The more you know the better off you'll be and when you eventually do hire help you be able to talk to them more effectively since you have a basic understanding of what they're doing. Be honest about your capabilities, and if you're not good at something, get help. A good freelancer will be able to guide you in the right direction and take your vision and put it into play in a way you never thought possible. Make sure you vet the people you hire and do your due diligence and you'll be really happy with the results. And of course, there might just be lucky breaks but you have to put yourself out there for them. A few months ago I emailed a large subscription box service about having them use my products in a box, and now we're discussing a recurring wholesale agreement with them. Things like this do happen if you put yourself out there. So seize opportunities and never view yourself as "too small" to do the things the big guys do. I've learned a lot of lessons along the way and will continue to learn every day. The education I've gotten out of this experience have made it worth every penny and every second spent building it. If you're worried about the expense of your idea, just try to view it as an expensive course on life and business and go for it. If it goes well, then great! If not, then at least you learned something. Be open to learning, listen to your customers, and take what your peers have to say with a grain of salt. A lot of people will doubt you and some will believe in you. Just expect that there will be people you never expected that will doubt you, and it's going to suck, but you just have to keep moving forward. What platform/tools do you use for your business?I use Shopify to host my website. Their customer support is unparalleled and the platform is super easy to use. I recommend you purchase a paid theme for it. I use Motion, but Turbo by Themeforest is really good too. The out of the box themes are going to make you look just like everybody else and that's never a good thing. As for Shopify apps:
I use Klaviyo for email marketing, because the way you can set your flows is so advanced. I can send an email to every guy named John who bought a beard balm on a Tuesday, and have it send every time that happens. Obviously this isn't how you'd use it, but it's truly very powerful and worth the expense. I use Hootsuite to schedule and automate social media. It's around $250 a year, but the amount of time it saves is well worth the expense. They have a free version which I think allows you 35 scheduled posts at a time, but I have around 150-300 schedule at any time. I use G Suite for their business suite. Google drive allows me to work from anywhere and keep everything organized. Calendar lets me book video calls with freelancers and stay on schedule with my limited work hours. This also gives me my domain's email address as well. This product has helped a lot with appearing professional and staying organized. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?To be honest, I can't really say that any book in particular inspired my business. I love to read business books and try to apply any learnings I like, but can't say anything has really been influential in particular. The 4-Hour Workweek had me focusing on how to automate processes and keep my time on my hands. I have used YouTube a lot to learn the things I had questions about as far as marketing, coding, and sales. I really think in the beginning you should just get out there and do it. Start learning hands-on what works and what doesn't for your business, then as you continue to read and learn you can try new things, but you'll also be able to weed out the things that won't work based on the experience you already have. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?First thing's first, just get something started. Even if it's only a tiny portion of what you want to eventually have, at least you're doing something. Don't be afraid to lose money on something you believe in, you can always get it back. Try things and learn what works, and view it all as one big lesson in life, and really figure out why you're doing this. Entrepreneurship is hard. Like, really hard. I've spent the last year and a half working towards some mystical place I call success, not really even knowing what that is or how long it will take to get there. All I know is that I really love what I'm doing and it makes me happy as hell. I also know that I may wake up some days and wonder why I'm even bothering, and doubting that this kind of thing can take off. I know that there's one thing that is driving all that I do, and that is to be able to provide for my future family. It is me and my fiancée right now, and it kills to me tell her we can't do something because I can't get off work, or my bank account isn't set up right (a.k.a. they forgot to put the money in it). So until the day I have the financial and time freedom that I'm searching for, I'll keep doing whatever it takes. Find out your "why" and go for it. Where can we go to learn more?You can find me in quite a few places. (I love to network with like-minded entrepreneurs and would be more than happy to assist anyone in any way I can): Like this interview? Find 50+ more interviews at StarterStory.com. edit: If you have any questions or comments for Jack, drop a comment. [link] [comments]  |
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