Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (October 05, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (October 05, 2018)
- "During the gold rush, the only people making money were the men selling shovels." Taking this nugget of perspective, what "shovel" selling industries are growing in today's market?
- I'm a woman who wants to buy my favorite adult resort - how do I find investors to go in with me?
- Starting A BUSINESS? 3 things NOT to do!
- Anyone have experience growing a dating app - great initial launch, now what?
- Better employee than an entrepreneur?
- I have an opportunity to take over a small firm...scared and lack confidence
- First time buyer looking at purchasing a website in the Black Friday niche - advice needed!
- How can I make a deal with a company like WalMart to supply certain product from my country?
- Vishal Shah (Director of Product @ Instagram) talks about the future of shopping on IG
- Rosetta Stone Calculus Idea
- [Month Two: USD$2.5k] Success is earning enough to buy your mom something nice
- Can I make a website like Fiver or a service based website like fiver or uber using shopify or pre-template websites?
- Anyone here running a car wash?
- $80k/mo selling a vaccination pain blocker.
- How do you find a good Social Media Management company/contractor
- The art of paying someone a "side deal" for the next project I have coming up.
- How can I find a person/company willing to pay to get their name/website/etc. advertised on my YouTube channel and videos? (I get millions of views, but virtually no ad revenue, looking for alternatives)
- Importing Non-Labeled Skin Care Jars from China and CBP Inspections
- Can someone recommend a good dispatching software for trucks?
- exchange rate when buying from different country
- Regarding Payday Loans
- Launching an app in the EU?
- [HELP] Choosing a Payment Gateway
- It's FRIDAY, What's the biggest thing you've achieved this week?
| Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (October 05, 2018) Posted: 05 Oct 2018 06:06 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: 05 Oct 2018 10:36 AM PDT I'm looking to apply this bigger-picture perspective to modern-day industries, hoping to find a niche field that I can hone and develop into something successful. [link] [comments]  |
| I'm a woman who wants to buy my favorite adult resort - how do I find investors to go in with me? Posted: 05 Oct 2018 08:59 AM PDT TL;DR Looking for advice on how I find cash investors (or just the investors themselves if they're here haha) to go in with me on buying an adult resort in the Caribbean that's my favorite place in the world (I'm the female half of a 30s couple). Friends and family money isn't an option, nor is bank financing because of the nature of the place. I'm thinking something like a $100,000 investment from each of a group of people, but not sure how to find like-minded people with the cash. The resort is currently running profitably and ripe for profit-increasing upgrades; their prospectus claims 17% a year ROI before tech upgrades that would improve margin. I have the hospitality experience and passion for the place to do it. I've been running a small boutique hotel in Philadelphia for a couple of years and hitting it out of the park (average 90% occupancy at above market rates). My husband and I spend some time every year in the Caribbean, and there's a resort for sale that I would like to get together with a couple of people to buy. It's an adult hotel that's got a loyal clientele, good business assets, 17% ROI, fully compliant with local laws, amazing long term staff; owner is retiring due to health problems. This is a place where you can park your money, make 17%/year, and have an awesome full service vacation spot to relax or party whenever you want. I cannot overstate how much I love staying at this place. I want to own it so I can be there whenever I want; looking for other people who'll feel the same. :) There are 26 rooms, a restaurant, small nightclub, pool, huge oversize jacuzzi grotto, incredibly maintained mature garden and landscaping, and it's a block from the beach, with lots of other small restaurants and bars within short walking distance (and is in a gated community with excellent maintenance and security). It also has all of the gorgeous companionship a person (or couple) could ever want. Clientele is mostly male, but there are always some couples, and as a woman, I absolutely love it there (the atmosphere is one of mutual respect and enjoyment). 30 minutes from the small international airport, 10-15 minutes from the nearby small city with good tourist activities. I've been going for 5 years and I've seen them make a lot of upgrades to the facilities in that time, but I think there are a couple of technology-based improvements that could seriously improve profitability. Here's my idea: - 10 people put $100,000 each towards the purchase price (hotel is running profitably now) - My husband and I design a plan for tech-based upgrades that increase profitability (we have solid experience doing this with our hotel in Philadelphia) - We form a US company to own the assets, including the legal company in the country where the hotel is based - We meet there a couple of times a year for awesomely decadent owners meetings I'm really excited about this idea, but sort of at a loss as to how I go about soliciting investment. We're in PA, which is fairly conservative, so I don't feel like I can approach our current business contacts or former investors in our more traditional projects. If you've ever raised money for something that might raise eyebrows, I'd be grateful if you're willing to talk. Alternatively, if you have the cash and this idea "hooks" you, send me a DM! I've never solicited investment on reddit before, but I think my like-minded entrepreneurs who'll be into this are lurking on this sub. :) NB 17% ROI is the amount claimed by the resort in its for sale prospectus, and not something we've verified. We would assume an investor trip to the hotel as a group to look at books, verify numbers, do assessments and other due diligence before moving ahead. That being said, every time we've been there, it's been packed. We always have great conversations with other guests, get stock tips, talk travel and good times, and most people we meet there are returning guests like us. EDIT: Thanks to commenters who've mentioned the need to legal advice re: SEC stuff - we have a lawyer on retainer already for our other company and are aware of the need to get things like this checked out by a competent lawyer before moving ahead to avoid pesky things like jail and crippling fines. [link] [comments]  |
| Starting A BUSINESS? 3 things NOT to do! Posted: 05 Oct 2018 12:06 PM PDT What's up Reddit!? Writing this as someone who took a leap of faith two years ago when I decided to start my painting company. I couldn't imagine the idea of living the way I live now. My best day includes waking up, exercising, walking 5 minutes to my office (in my house) and working from home - as my (awesome) team of house painters service our growing customer base. So, in other words… I feel like I've made it to a point where so many of us try to get to. I no longer have to directly trade my time for money. But, as thankful as I am to be here at this moment - there's some advice I want to share that may help you get to where I am a bit quicker… so I want to lay out some advice of what NOT to do when starting a business. The first piece of advice I have is… Don't Take on work outside of your core profession When we first started our business, I was so excited to get our name out there, find jobs, and solicit my business that my over excitement landed me in the middle of a tile job ($500.00) as a painting contractor. A painter that I had hired on in the very beginning was confident in his ability to do the job, so, me being a contractor and knowing I could make a few hundred off of his work sounded great to me! WRONG. This "small" tile job had more problems than you could imagine. Total job time on this small bathroom tile job was 2 weeks. Oh, it was an hour away. We were done the painting job 10 days prior, and I had to keep coming back to help this guy finish the job. The homeowner eventually got fed up with how long it was taking (and he did a shabby job) that he winded up firing us, and requesting the deposit back. So, first tip - don't compromise. Don't Overpay without seeing performance When I hired my first employee, I was so eager to pay them well. I knew as an employee of a previous establishment, I felt underpaid and under-appreciated. This, in turn, created my theory of exemplary treatment for my hardworking employees. However, my eagerness bit me in the butt. I offered the painter I hired $200 per day for his services. (I Initially used independent contractors for my jobs and later switched to employees). He talked a big game, and had some reputable referrals, so I felt that I would be getting my money's worth. About a week in, I realized I had made a huge mistake. As talented as this painter was, he was EXTREMELY slow. As much as I appreciated his attention to detail, his speed was slowing our production down big time. I realized that hiring a painter was more than just hiring skill, it was hiring someone that could multi-task and had a vision to finish the job. I realized I was overpaying for this underperformance. I learned to introduce a trial period (70% of requested pay) and incentivize them the full amount after 3 months. Don't try and save $ in areas that can be easily outsourced (the time you save is more valuable) I went to business school. And by business, I mean I went to a community college for two years and got an AA in business. It helped, but nothing translated more than my real-world experience. So, needless to say I didn't learn much accounting, or HR practices while I was there. But, from the opinions of others I decided to do the "books" on my own, and figure out payroll. Within two weeks I was up to my knees in research about different laws, and rules…how to send tax to certain entities, what reports need to be filled… blah blah blah. This was my business, I wanted to do it right because the last thing I would ever want is for it to come back and bite me. So, I outsourced my accounting… I hired a reputable accountant and BOOM. Within the first two days of me being a client, they realized I filed my S-Corp paperwork wrong, sent in an amendment, an apology letter, and helped me categorize myself properly before I received a fine. They prepare everything for me on a monthly basis, and my tax returns are done to perfection. Next, I outsourced my payroll - I converted all of the independent contractors I had to employees, (the ones that wanted to stay) and they file quarterly reports, offer them direct deposit, and handle all of the junk I don't want to deal with! I send them the hours of each employee per week, and bam - they handle the rest. I can now focus on my business. Amazing. The best part? Both of these expenses are tax-deductible. Anyway, I hope these tips help you get an idea on some of the things I learned and had experience with. If you're in that office chair right now, at that car dealership, or maybe at home contemplating your leap into entrepreneurship…it's worth it. Scary at first, but it's worth it. Do it! [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone have experience growing a dating app - great initial launch, now what? Posted: 05 Oct 2018 09:52 AM PDT So - I launched a dating site this week, for a niched out community. To do so, I built an online presence in that community, and got feedback/problems from the audience about what the current issues were, and how they would like to see changes improved. I had help from some members of the community, when it was useful, to design/troubleshoot/test. When the site was ready, I pushed it to live & shared. The first day over 1,200 people came to view the site, and about 100 members joined. This is just a hobby project, but based on the initial launch, I feel like there is room to grow this thing. I'll share the site in PM's but don't want to post here as I don't want to come off as spammy. I'm looking for what you would do on next steps? Thoughts I have had are:
I'm open to help/teaming up with someone if they have experience in this. Currently the site is not charging, but i intend to starting 2019. I would like to have at least 2000 users by then. [link] [comments]  |
| Better employee than an entrepreneur? Posted: 05 Oct 2018 03:27 AM PDT There is so much fanfare about how liberating becoming an entrepreneur is but do we undermine the advantages of a traditional corporate career? For those of you who went down the entrepreneurial route – what is your experience? [link] [comments]  |
| I have an opportunity to take over a small firm...scared and lack confidence Posted: 05 Oct 2018 07:36 AM PDT I am a consultant working at a small consulting firm (15 staff). I am essentially second in charge. I am good with operations, I am a good consultant delivering service, I am a decent salesperson, I am good people manager and mentor, and I enjoy thinking strategically. I like to lead and I think I have good instincts and ideas. However.... In our largest service line (accounts for 75% of our revenue), I am not an expert and I don't think I will become one. I don't like the networking and glad-handing part of leading a firm. My network is okay, but not deep and I don't like working on it. I don't have full-blown social anxiety, but the social side of the business is a chore and I am always happy when it's over - it weighs on me. The founder/owner wants me to take over ownership. The idea sounds exciting from a "go for it" perspective. But there are a lot of aspects that scare me (and I know that it's reasonable to be scared), but I lack a confidence and people-orientation that I seem to see in successful entrepreneurs. There is also a fear of tethering my livelihood to a project based, professional services firm. You constantly have to hunt to eat. We have no recurring revenue and I don't see a real path to creating it, it's just not what we do in our industry. I don't expect anyone can really answer my question of "should I?" but I just had to share. So, should I? [link] [comments]  |
| First time buyer looking at purchasing a website in the Black Friday niche - advice needed! Posted: 05 Oct 2018 04:56 AM PDT I've spent the past few years buying discounted products on Black Friday and selling them for a profit at a later date. I've had moderate success from this, but it requires a lot of capital and time to scale up. I've been a long time lurker on Flippa but never bought a site, but I recently came across a Black Friday affiliate site for sale which makes all its money over the deals week. I feel like this perfectly aligns with what I've been doing the past few years, but also I feel like I'm a bit concerned about how seasonal it is. I've run affiliate sites before, and have a good idea what to look in terms of traffic analysis etc, but I'm wondering whether anyone has experience buying and selling seasonal sites like this? Any advice would be appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| How can I make a deal with a company like WalMart to supply certain product from my country? Posted: 05 Oct 2018 06:18 AM PDT What standards should the product comply with? (nutritious snack) 0 [link] [comments]  |
| Vishal Shah (Director of Product @ Instagram) talks about the future of shopping on IG Posted: 05 Oct 2018 08:50 AM PDT Hi Everyone, I made this video to help outline the future of commerce on IG in 2019. Seems like this interview went under the radar but I think its pretty important. Hope a few business owners find it helpful! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2018 01:33 PM PDT Hello Reddit! So, I'm a college student suffering through calculus and various computer science classes. I am blow away about the incredibly low quality of my classes. They tell you to read the poorly written book then the professor does a bad lecture on the material. I usually just end up watching YouTube videos about the material. Piss poor! Seriously, I feel like I'm being screwed over by this government subsidized piece of crap school that has no incentive to increase the quality of its education. Why can't they teach calculus like Rosetta Stone teaches languages?? I have experience building websites and Android apps. I'm thinking of collaborating with a math major to build a format that teaches calculus like Rosetta Stone teaches languages. Maybe the program would be supplemental to an actual calculus course and served to drill the user on the actual math in simple ways that progressively build upon themselves. Anyway, I'm wondering what the community thinks. I think if you could do this for calculus you could do this for ever other subject they teach in college. I guess the problem is that there is no unified curriculum across different schools. Anyway, I love any feedback! [link] [comments]  |
| [Month Two: USD$2.5k] Success is earning enough to buy your mom something nice Posted: 05 Oct 2018 11:01 AM PDT This is Post two to share progress freelancing in website development. I just thought I'd post this to motivate those to do what they love and achieve financial independence and experience the joy of buying their parents something nice. Note: I will post a full case-study of how I got to 2.5$ as freelancer shortly. Read Post one here: Month 1: USD$800 Before you start judging: I'm a 20YO born in a middle class family in India. My local area is conventional and has little recognition for digital skills. I also work on a laptop with a broken screen and have graduated in a completely different field than what I am freelancing is. Preface: I'm a 20YO Indian Fresher in a middle class family. I graduated in April 2018 with no job prospects and had to move in with my parents as I didn't want to join corporate and wanted to "figure things out". Add to that my dad had to amputate his toes (diabetes) so retired early with little to no savings. My mom was the only sole earner and she STILL believed in me and supported me in taking some time off and living with them till I figure my shit out. Boy times were TOUGH! I almost took a random job for $400/month but didn't because my mom told me to keep going! After 3 months of trial and error I got my first 2 projects in August 2018 fetching my USD$800 income then in September 2018 I got more clients through those clients making me a whopping USD1.3k$. This month I have prospects for another cool USD1k$. Note: I will share a full case study of how I reached USD$2.5k in just 2 months being an Indian and in a marginalized area. I did write a detailed post of my struggles before USD$800 here. P.S. Those that read the old post I just ordered my new laptop will get it soon. Good riddance laggy af laptop with a broken screen! Anyways to the reason I'm writing this: My mom is the coolest 56YO mom you'll ever meet! She's a really good table tennis player and after taking a decade long break to support the family by being a housewife has been teaching kids to learn table tennis for 2 years. She doesn't earn much but is working hard to support this family and I admire her strength. She has NEVER bought herself anything always supporting the family buying me and my sister things when we need things. I recently noticed her training shoes were completely worn off off and also heard from her students she slipped whilst playing due to this. She knows I'm making money but she also knows that I'm leaving home soon and will be needing all the money to support my expenses so she probably didn't bother telling me and sacrificed yet AGAIN for me. It's her birthday next week but I couldn't bear my mother sacrifice any longer so today I surprised her with her very first pair of NIKE trainers! She burst into tears and in that moment I realized what happiness was... Don't believe me? I bet you will when you see your mom unwrap something like a little child! Here's an image ( also comparing the condition of her old shoes): https://imgur.com/a/daItDQf What have I learned?
My mom took her table tennis coaching from 0 to 20 students with a cheap pair of sports shoes and kept going regardless of them being worn out. I started freelancing on a laptop with a broken screen and terrible lag until I made enough to afford one. (previous post) SO WHAT'S FUCKING STOPPING YOU? You don't have your whole life your parents are GOING to get older when are YOU going to buy them something nice? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2018 07:48 AM PDT I'm looking to make a website/build a company where people can sell their services. For example, a site like fiver where people get services for random stuff that people are good at. Anyways to do stuff like that on shopify or other website using a pre made template? [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone here running a car wash? Posted: 05 Oct 2018 02:47 PM PDT Here's what we did to promote a car wash at my previous job a few years ago (I was a developer at a web agency). We took a dirty white Honda Accord and a camcorder, let the employees wash the car and made a timelapse of it, and then put said timelapse as a website background. So a visitor would open the site, and see that Honda becoming clean and shiny frame by frame as he scrolls down the website. And in the end, bam, contact info and directions. Needless to say, the owner was very satisfied with the results. Another one idea we had for that car wash was to have a parking spot for cars exiting the box, equipped with a lamp post with a camera and a light, to take professional looking photos of said cars (squeaky clean and waxed up) and post them to social media. Unfortunately, the owner wanted a different kind of social media promotion (he wanted us to post bland things on Facebook on his behalf), so we never had a chance to do it. Hope it would be of some use to you. [link] [comments]  |
| $80k/mo selling a vaccination pain blocker. Posted: 05 Oct 2018 08:29 AM PDT Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Amy Baxter MD of Pain Care Labs, a brand that makes drug-free pain relief devices. Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?As a pediatric emergency doctor, I was trying to teach other doctors not to cause unnecessary pain. When I realized that patients care more about their own pain than doctors do, I invented a vibrating ice pack bee called Buzzy(r) to block pain from my kids' vaccinations. It worked. And as I got more disturbed by kids unnecessary pain in the emergency department, I decided to apply for a $1.1 million NIH small business grant to research and develop Buzzy. However - in order to qualify for the grant, I had to start a company. We launched Buzzy in 2009, relying on research and champions in the hospitals to spread the word. By 2015, our IVF and arthritis patients were using Buzzy on other parts that hurt. Finally, one of my colleagues who was in opioid recovery used Buzzy successfully to avoid drugs after knee surgery. I gave up medicine to be a full-time CEO. Now we make VibraCool for knees, elbows, and plantar fasciitis, and just launched a crowdfunding campaign for our hot/cold/acupressure/vibration DuoTherm device. In addition to at least 12 babies born to women who were ready to give up on the IVF pokes, it feels pretty great to know that 31 million needle procedures have been blocked with Buzzy. What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?From medical school, I knew the science of gate control. An example is rubbing a bumped elbow to stop pain, or running cold water on a burn. You stimulate cold and motion nerves, which are much more powerful. Pain nerves are whispering, tiny nerves but they're everywhere - if you can get huge motion nerves to yell instead, pain gets silenced. Almost 20 years ago I had been playing around with those twisty thin animal balloons to try to make the sensation of running water, sort of like those ice water cuffs you plug in after surgery. Pro tip, it's super messy when you do it with balloon animals. One morning while driving home from an overnight shift, my steering wheel was vibrating. I realized VIBRATION was a stronger source of motion than water. I ran in the house, put a black and yellow pocket massager on my kids' hands, and poked them with a neurologic testing tool. They could still feel it. Bummed out, I headed to bed, but my husband stopped me first and suggested we add frozen peas like they do in the Boy Scouts. Frozen peas + a massager completely blocked the pokey sensation. We videotaped A Recreation of the Moment and I went to bed. I had no intention of doing anything at this point but making something that could block immunization pain. Who would be crazy enough to give up a job they loved? Describe the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing the product.Two years passed, and by then I had made some prototypes. My kids and I took apart cell phones from neighbors to harvest vibrating motors. We made one prototype using fragile resin SLA (and still using balloon animals for the ice part!) and I did a study in the hospital. Buzzy worked. Getting our funding through a grant A friend told me about the Small Business Innovative Research program at the NIH. This Reagan-era program requires that 3% of all NIH funding goes to start ups with medical R&D. My husband and I decided that addressing needle pain was worth me working part time for, oh, how long could it possibly take. Three years? Sure. To qualify, though, I'd have to start a company. MMJ Labs was born, named for my kids Max, Miles, and Jill. (Since that acronym now means medical marijuana, we rebranded this year to be Pain Care Labs.) I filed a patent, reduced my hours, and began grant writing. I was trained as a clinical research scientist, but the business plan was new territory. Design and manufacturing We were enormously fortunate that Formation Design Group was in Atlanta. They saw my cell phone/electrical tape prototype, and were believers. They helped with design, sourcing manufacturers, and business lessons, all for 1/10th of a normal fee. "If you get funded, we trust you'll make us whole. But we believe in this, and you." Three years later, we had the grant, the research, we had registered with the FDA, and our first box of Buzzy units ready to greet the world! We also had used up our $100K home equity line of credit, and hundreds of thousands in the opportunity cost of not practicing, but made Formation Design whole. We were ready for the streams of customers to knock down our door! Describe the process of launching the business.A good friend was a web designer - this was in 2008, when every little bit of html was handmade. We picked colors, took fancy pictures, and tried to get social media aware for pre-orders. Our fun (and scrappy) launch When we finally had the preorders, we realized we didn't have any boxes. We got cardboard from FedEx and USPS, and used exacto knives and hot glue guns to make the first boxes to send to customers. Since a few of the customers were desperate, we sent them our $1000 prototypes made of SLA. They were fragile and a bit too heavy to work well, but at least we delivered! Fortunately we had SBIR funding for the R&D, but no money for marketing, packing, or inventory. I had a number of friends with small kids who wanted flexible hours. This was also the depth of the recession. I offered equity willy nilly, but my wise friends said "Let's just see where this goes, I'm happy to help." So instead I offered a Disney cruise when we made it big, and we puttered around waiting for the stream of customers. More grants During this period there were several grants we applied for and got. First was the Huggies MomInspired - turns out a lot of moms hate watching their kids get stuck. That was $15,000, which helped pay back my web designer. Then was the Chase Small Business grant - we won $250,000 from Mission Main Street. I got the call in the hospital doing a shift, and had a hairs-raised catch your breath moment. "Oh", I told the person, "I really can't talk right now but I think this is going to change my life." We started growing We sold $57,000 that first year. The next was $110K, and the next $360K. The growth was ok, but considering we had tech that would truly stop pain we should have been much bigger. I did a lot of pitch contests that all wanted to make the tech disposable. By that time, though, we had parents of kids with diabetes, leukemia, kidney failure… so many things, with such a high financial burden. I felt like I didn't give up medicine to screw kids or the environment, so we kept plodding along bootstrapping. I now know the critical importance of social media, how "press begets press", and why strategic angel investors are the path to success. I didn't know the difference between angels, VC, PE, strategic investment, mezzanine financing… but I do know now you need money to grow. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Shark Tank The big change came with Shark Tank. Because they heard of me through the Huggies grant, and a vibrating bee for needle pain seemed like good crazy lady TV fodder, I never had to stand in line. While the appearance has given me access to fantastic business owners who also went on the show, doubling our yearly revenue wasn't as cool when we dipped back to our normal trajectory the next year. There were a lot of remoras feeding off the Shark chum, too - wholesalers who then undercut us on Amazon, so many consultants to assess and politely turn down, and weirdos who wanted us to endorse their untested tech or to sue us for copying their cat purr machine idea. One lesson I've learned is there is no big moment. So many people expect to hit a tipping point, one big TV appearance, or some other milestone after which the business gets easy. Thus far, I don't believe those Moments of Destiny happen, unless perhaps in retrospect. Instead, having a business is step by step trial and error with social media, HR, inventory tracking, e-commerce platforms, and everything else. Amazon One tremendous asset (now that we're backordered and I can see exactly how much it hurts our sales) is Amazon. Instead of selling devices at wholesale, you send a crate to Amazon, and make 10-20% more than you would with distributors. The critical thing is to NEVER let someone else sell there. Everyone wants to, particularly these days, but we learned the hard way to keep custody of our e-commerce. With new vendors, we even put a secret mark on the bottom of boxes so if someone else shows up selling, we know who did it. We spend about $100 a month on ads on Amazon, which have the highest ROI of just about anything we've done. New products In May, we were thrilled to find an angel investor who loved what we were doing. We decided to use the investment to rebrand and create a low back pain device, supplementing what we would need to pull off something spectacular with crowdfunding. We funded 30% the first day, and are close to 60% our first week, but time will tell. The device itself feels great and is needed (our distributors are already pressuring us), so we know we're on the right track. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?We look great! While we've been profitable since 2014, it has been from lean operation rather than booming sales. Advertising and social media plans In part because of the SBIR not allowing marketing, we've been reluctant to advertise, and we have never had enough inventory to invest in a dedicated sales person. Hmm - sales and marketing - I hear they're going to be big, we might just have to try that! Seriously, since we got an investment, we've been able to really dig into calculating ROI from social media. We contracted with EmberTribe for Buzzy and Cape and Bay for VibraCool and DuoTherm, each with expertise in moms and sports people, respectively. We learned it took about 3 months to really build up a solid profile of our customer to be able to get ROI on ads. For Buzzy Google Ads have worked better, while for VibraCool Facebook is the better venue. It's all about learning your audience. Amazon and new sales channels We sell about ⅓ of our devices through Amazon, so being backordered really hurts us there. About ⅓ is direct incoming sales from hospitals, and ⅓ is national and international distributors. This is changing rapidly - we've just signed a contract with the largest lab distributor, and the two largest physical therapy and chiropractor distributors have signed up to distribute VibraCool. Performance Health, the PT group, has ordered three times in the past month - this is going to be a new level for us. Financials Our margins range from 58% - 84% - our COGS had crept up to $14 for our most popular $40 Buzzy mini, which wasn't sustainable. Since there were ongoing quality issues with our US manufacturers, and we were too small to merit good solutions, we re-engineered the vibration part and are now manufacturing in China. Because of backorder and airshipping to get the supply chain rolling, it's still in flux what our final COGS will be, but it should bring them down to the landed packaged cost of $9.50. We ship our established Buzzy products to a fulfillment center in Virginia, but our new devices go through our hands in Atlanta so we can assess quality. Once we're at 10K units from the new factory, we'll switch delivery and fulfillment back to Virginia. Launching our new products Short term, we want to raise awareness of our VibraCool product lines and get pre-purchases of our DuoTherm™ Low Back pain device. Ideally, the IndieGoGo crowdfunder will help us not only assess market, but give us passionate advocates to help with final design tweaks - color, aesthetics. DuoTherm combines not just our Cool-Pulse™ high frequency vibration and ice, but low frequency and variable frequency therapy cycles. The most difficult part of the design was figuring out how to make it portable and capable of hot OR cold - which we did. As part of my research on low back pain drug-free therapies, I learned that acupressure is well studied, so we designed the unit to be capable of acupressure as well. Long term goals Long term we want to have multiple devices in every medicine cabinet, so kids grow up knowing that physical solutions are the go-to for pain rather than medications. This means broad distribution by a company with established OTC and consumer penetration, or strategic VC investment from a company in the consumer medical device arena. Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?A few things that made it easier along the way were HARO - Haro is a great platform to help journalists when they need it, and make relationships for the future when you need them. We got in the Wall Street Journal, Mashable, People, Forbes, etc., all with HARO connections. We made partnerships with nonprofits in our space: dLife since lots of people with diabetes use us; the Platelet Disorder Support Association; Allagiles syndrome, Immune Deficiency Foundation… the list goes on. Now that we have DuoTherm, the alliance with the US Pain Foundation is a particularly win-win arrangement. People donate to them, and we provide them with our current and crowdfunded products. In addition, magazines like Diabetes Forecast will feature us, and we can write copy for them. It's always good to help your champions. What platform/tools do you use for your business?We've really been excited by Shopify - the ability to change our look and choose a theme before we build has saved a ton of money. Plus, their ability to incorporate our multiple product lines has been great. We have been disappointed with the Orderhive stitching tool connecting Shopify with our fulfillment, so are changing to Quickbooks for that. ShippingEasy is what our fulfillment house uses for transferring information from Shopify - that's been an easier way for us to incorporate our UPS codes. UPS has unfortunately been harder to work with and more expensive than FEDEX, but I made a decision not to voluntarily ship with FEDEX after the NRA issues. I've taken care of children dead from gunshots in the emergency department, and felt ethically I had to do my part. "Stand up and be counted", as my grandfather Robert A. Heinlein would say. (It's not ironic - his science fiction books featured gun toting freedom lovers, but all were very well trained and practiced. He would have been solidly in favor of background checks and probably competency testing before licensing. But I digress….) I've been very happy with OnePage CRM ($15 per user per month), we love our GMAIL system, we use SmarterQueue for social media scheduling and MailChimp for communication. I've recently been playing around with GMASS for our DuoTherm campaign. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?I was a huge Junior Achievement nerd in high school before deciding to be a medicine nerd, so I read The E-Myth, The One Minute Manager, and tons of business books popular in the 80's. The three books that have influenced me most recently are Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman's brilliant book about why we decide what we do, The Power of Positive Deviance by Jerry and Monique Sternin about what it takes to analyze and act on outliers, and Abundance by Peter Diamandis. Abundance grounds me in the positive about strides we're making in the world. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?I doubt I'm the best to give advice - given that we have technology that is proven to block pain on contact in over 23 randomized controlled trials, we should be HUGE by now! That said, the medical device industry is one that is a slow starter - they could come up with a cure for dead and doctors wouldn't adopt it for ten years. My best pieces of advice are to make sure before you start that people who DON'T love you still love your product idea; be prepared to give 10 years of your life to the idea, and never be too influenced by any one day. You will be up at three in the morning worrying many, many times. Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos. [link] [comments]  |
| How do you find a good Social Media Management company/contractor Posted: 05 Oct 2018 02:22 PM PDT Social Media Management is sucking up way too much of my day, so I'd like to hire somone to spend a couple of hours, 5 days a week managing it. The problem I'm finding is that there are a million people out there that do it, but none that seem to have any concrete metrics / case studies showing why they're any good. How did you find yours and what steps did you take to ensure that they weren't some bored wannabe somewhere that thinks they know how to be a SMM professional. [link] [comments]  |
| The art of paying someone a "side deal" for the next project I have coming up. Posted: 05 Oct 2018 01:55 PM PDT I am trying to grow my business and help people along the way. I have a client that I have done some work over the years for. 2 projects and now I am in a position to do a large ticket item project (low six figures) the thing is, I want to lock this down. Recently, it came to my attention that the liaison I use that talks with the owner about my proposals, he is not actually directly employees by the company. That said, I REALLY want to lock down the deal. Now some background. We have done 2 other projects. During that time there was a 3rd project I pitched that went to a different firm because I was priced to high after we did the first project. I understand he likes to shop and generally goes lowest bidder. I showed my client this new style of working on a project I did for a client which cost considerably more of a budget than what we are used to. (about 4x as much as they are used to spending) From what I heard, the client liked it. We are meeting next week for a pre project meeting. I told the client that the project they liked cost 130K and he was on the page of "what could you do with 50-60K? There is no way I can deliver a project they want for that price. However, knowing that the owner will shop me and knowing that they go lowest bidder, my plan is to give the liaison 10K if he can shop me to the owner with my project only and explain that the competitor does not that the capabilities to do the work that I did. The liason is conservative and not always a good read but, since he is not directly employed and more of a 1099. how can I tell him "get me this job for 130K and I will give you 10K on the side for putting it thru" I am on the fence because what if it backfires and he gets offended. I have been looking at wolf of wallstreet and the way he sort of "bribed" the agent with the use of a story. Obviously I want to concel a payment from his boss. all the moral people in here, please don't comment, I am trying to make a living and it is not easy. I would rather take care of people and consider the bribe a cost of doing business [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2018 01:11 PM PDT To make a long story short, I have a pretty successful YouTube channel in terms of views and subscribers, but due to the past 2 years of changes in the Google Adsense policies I no longer earn hardly any revenue. I went from hundreds of dollars a day in revenue at the peak to a couple dollars daily. I would opt out of Google's Adsense in a heartbeat If I could find a person or company interested in getting their name, brand, website, logo, url, amazon link, etc. in front of tens of thousands of people a day (millions of times per month). I am not exaggerating when I say I would be willing to partner up with someone or any company and plaster their brand name/logo throughout my videos, comments, video description, etc. for such a low cost that it would have to be a good deal to virtually anyone out there -- I just don't know how to find anyone or even how to start looking. At this point I am so frustrated and tired of trying to revive the Adsense revenue that I would pretty much give someone the deal of the century just to make a little money again -- I mean I am thinking of charging something like $0.01 for a thousand views or something like that. Thanks y'all -- any and all input would be tremendously appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Importing Non-Labeled Skin Care Jars from China and CBP Inspections Posted: 05 Oct 2018 12:47 PM PDT I have done a ton of research and I'm now ready to import my fist large order from China. I have a imported a few items via DDP air (DHL) - but they were small both in quantity and items. Now I'm looking to import just about half a pallet with a higher cost. So I'm going to be dealing with either FOB or CFI. Now, the main question I have is: I'd like the factory in China to send the products without labels, so I can print different labels for different marketing campaigns. My question is, I know CBP enforces label restrictions upon entry to the country. So, if my jars don't have the labels, but I an present them at the time of import, would they allow me to take my jars and label them in my business? Or would they confiscate the jars for failure to have proper labeling? The shipment would have an ingredient list and all necessary paper work provided by the seller in China. [link] [comments]  |
| Can someone recommend a good dispatching software for trucks? Posted: 05 Oct 2018 09:01 AM PDT Like being able to see where the truck is and such. I'm looking to find one that's good but don't know much about them. I need to compare the prices...thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| exchange rate when buying from different country Posted: 05 Oct 2018 12:36 PM PDT I'm starting a new online business and I'm getting product from another country, everything is ready and now I'm about to order everything. The thing is that the price list he gave me is in dollars (company is in Thailand) and I will pay distributor in euros (he's in europe). I calculated with exchange rate 1.16 dollars for euro and sent him my calculations. He told me that he's calculating 1.085 since start of his business because that's pretty much the average. He also told me that it will sometimes make me few euro and sometime for him. I checked the prices and 1.085 is pretty much lowest not the average. Plus, if I order product for 10.000 euro that would mean I need to pay 800 dollars more for the order right now. This is my first business and I'm not sure how to deal with it. How does it usually work? What should be the exchange rate in this case? edit: grammar [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2018 12:29 PM PDT Would it not make sense for someone to take a more sagacious path to the payday loan business? Maybe say charging unusually LOWER apr and interest rates to those who actually need the cash and make it somewhat feasible to pay off this loan? Obviously, you wouldn't be raking in the cash and charging the crazy high percents that some of these assholes are doing, but building a reputation as a lender who cares for the clients and doesn't have the intentions of screwing people over? I know that there are people in the business that say they do this already, but in all actuality don't give a shit about being ethical. Could lending payday loans with the utmost ethical intentions be more or less beneficial to a lender in one way or another? EDIT: Just finished watching the Dirty Money episode on Scott Tucker on Netflix. It was so interesting and had me thinking [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2018 05:57 AM PDT Our app launched in the US last year and we have seen immense growth within the past few months. One of our new goals is to expand into the certain EU regions as US is #2 in market share while the EU is #1. Other than GDPR, what kind of market research should be performed to launch successfully in these regions? [link] [comments]  |
| [HELP] Choosing a Payment Gateway Posted: 05 Oct 2018 11:27 AM PDT Hello I'm trying to find a payment gateway that requests customer information such as a membership number or any other custom information that i require, this information needs to be sent to me along with the payment confirmation Basically when a customer makes a sale, i will need their membership number to allocate digital funds to their account manually, Is there a way to do this? Thank you in advance [link] [comments]  |
| It's FRIDAY, What's the biggest thing you've achieved this week? Posted: 04 Oct 2018 10:12 PM PDT Let's share our positive experiences from the week just gone. [link] [comments]  |
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