Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (November 30, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (November 30, 2018)
- Storytime & Lessons learned: Entrepreneurship after 3 years: ups, downs and the discovery of the true vision
- Starting a Web Development Business, not sure which steps to take
- Online subscription services trend?
- Store Locator, my take on trying to enter an existing market
- What type of work can you do owning a 10ft box truck?
- [x-post from /r/smallbusiness] How Do I Decide How Much Inventory to Order For Opening Week?
- Recommendations on law firm marketing?
- I launched my ecommerce site this week and I would like to get some reviews about it
- Any High Risk Industry Folks Here?
- Question regarding the right places and resources to hire freelancers, and diversifying a web marketing business
- Looking for guidance
- What kind of 3D model program i can use to create product?
- I can’t build a organic audience at all. What’s the best way to learn this?
- Looking for advice on moving from dropshipping to owning stock.
- Do you hire a lawyer to do a prior art search, or just do your own?
- Free Web Design: I will create a personal/business website for you!
- Biggest pivot you've done or seen?
- Would you use a FAQ meets social media website?
- [Shopify] Need for help - Three Points
- Lawn mowing business questions
- Growing as a freelance filmmaker?
- Need a free web or desktop app?
- People who have had their websites built for them. Where did you go to find someone and how happy were you with the final result?
- Branded Product Launching - considerations to sell (and when) on Amazon?
| Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (November 30, 2018) Posted: 30 Nov 2018 05:06 AM PST 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: 30 Nov 2018 04:51 AM PST This is my story as an entrepreneur. Nowadays I know one thing: I don't know anything. A little over three years ago I knew even less, but I didn't consider it as important. Now I know that almost nothing is as important as knowing what you don't know. My company was founded when I found myself lingering in a void of meaningless work. Not in a way that my job or the company I worked at was meaningless – but I couldn't just think that it would be something I'd look back as an old man and would think it as something that had an impact in the world. My father had been an entrepreneur, consultant, for all my life. I had seen all the ups and downs it had offered, from the struggle and joy of getting new customers, all the way to a stroke caused by stress. My mother had given me one career advise: don't be an entrepreneur. Despite and maybe because of this all I had only one choice. To take control of my whole life and start my own company. Do something meaningful for me. Looking back now to those times, I think my strengths at the beginning was my never-ending enthusiasm and lack of negative thoughts. I keep myself as a very optimistic person and thinker, which has helped me to keep afloat during all the hard times of my life. My optimism and smile help me to be a creative doer. I founded my company with a good friend. We had a bunch of good and great ideas, great networks and decent skills of storytelling, which all helped us to get a pretty good start for the company. From the early beginning, we had a dream of helping people around the world to be more creative. To burst into creativity, actually. But we realized soon that we didn't know anything about creativity – so we had to ask for a consultation from the pioneers and brilliant minds of different fields. We had long talks with movie directors, academic masterminds, artists, writers, fashion designers, business people, musicians, activists, priests, travelers, even politicians. We asked from them all about creativity. Eventually, the stories told were published as a book, four months after our company was founded. The stories and the book really changed the way I look at creativity and the world. I've also heard a lot of stories about how they've changed so many other people's lives as well. You could say the book has been a success here in the home country, but I haven't felt any sensation of accomplishment, yet. During the writing and interviews, we also founded a co-working-space in our hometown. It was a beautiful and harmonious little red cottage in the middle of the marketplace. We had no running water or heating, which are usually the bare necessities, at least here where during the winters the weather can be quite brutal sometimes. It had a total of 40 square meters in two stories. We filled that cottage with people, love, inspiration, ideas, networking, and magic. Eventually, space started to feel too small, so we upgraded a little. We leased a total of about 300 square meters from the rooftop on one building in the middle of the center. The rent of that space itself was cheap, but as naive idealists, we decided to use the leftover money on our budget to lease some furniture. A lot of furniture. A lot of expensive furniture. We also hired a person to run all things related to the new co-working space. Needless to say: we ran totally out of money in less than a year. During this first two years now, when we closed the co-working-space because we had no money left to run it, we had written also another book on entrepreneurship for people aged between 12 to 20. We had arranged over 50 events, developed two different products: an online hub designed to connect all the co-working spaces around the world and a mobile game. We had raised funding for those projects and at the same time, we had calendars full of more and more projects and meetings on new projects. At this two-year milestone, I counted that we had pivoted our whole business at least 20 times and we had been involved in over 250 different projects and ventures. Some were successes, some were not. The important thing was to learn the whole time. The company was now in a very weird place. It felt like some kind of purgatory. We had closed unsuccessful business, we had our third book idea bubbling under, we had big events coming up and a large consulting project ongoing. This meant that there was also time to think what did we really want to do if we would for once concentrate on something with a 100%. Eventually, the answer came. We loved to tell stories. People seemed to like to read and listen to those stories. This combination gave birth to an idea to become a media on creativity. We would start to write stuff and just see if people would see it as something useful. Everything started maybe a little too well, our first month of being a media brought us tens of thousands of readers. The second month even more. Then we implemented a paywall to the site since we also had to make money someway without jumping between tens of projects at the same time again. Paywall made some financial progress, but not enough to pay all the bills. Well, not at least after the first month. It meant we had to make up something else to sell at the same time. We decided to take one of our previous workshops and produce it as an online course. In January 2018 we launched an online course on creative writing. It was an instant success. There were more buyers we could have ever imagined. Enough to pay bills, but still not enough to have a buffer for the future. At the same time, our media had seen a steady growth but not enough to keep us afloat by itself. We had to scale everything. For scaling the business we needed money. More money we had at that moment. We decided to try to find funding, seed investors. During the summer of 2018, we arranged a successful funding round. Successful but not as successful as we had hoped it would be. It would be enough to keep us alive and to start the development, but not as fast as with more money. At this moment the other founder realized that she couldn't keep on going any more in the company. All the juices were drained and every day was a struggle. We agreed that it would be best if I keep on going by myself, at least for a while. At the same time, I talked with a few friends about our funding round and ideas of the future. I told them also about the side-project of online learning, which had been a success. As my surprise, all these conversations ended up with this enthusiastic agreement, that we should make online classes together. We should help people with all the knowledge we have in business, life, creative skills, and everything else. I started to realize that the real product of our company is not only stories and "being a media" but telling captivating and insightful stories, which help people to be more creative and active in their lives. We would offer world-class online learning content, tools, and entertainment. We would help people to accomplish more, to be more creative. Now, about three months after that idea and realization, as we just have launched our new website, learning portal and the first course, I truly get that one simple Steve Jobs' quote. You can't combine the dots by looking forward, but only by looking back. This adventure in the world of entrepreneurship has been the craziest rollercoaster there could ever be imagined. There have been very high ups and gruesome drops that make me still a little sick. I look back on all these events now and just keep on thinking that the process of getting out of that awful void a little over three years ago has been very hard. I didn't know who I was back then. I just knew that I had to be someone else than the person I presented to be. Now I know almost nothing, but what I know, is that this is a good place. I've connected my dots from these years now and the result is our global launch. We are a home for all the people around the world interested in creativity and developing their skills in some way. We will have a lot of tools, courses and other content coming up on the platform. Now we have launched our first course and our MVP of the platform. The future will tell if this is a hit or miss, but at least I feel like we would now be on the right path. At the end here I have to misquote Neil Armstrong a little. This is only a small step for a humankind for now, but a massive leap for me. Let's make the world to burst into creativity. Thank you for getting all the way down here. I don't know if this story helps anyone or if it's useful, but I think the sharing feels like a necessary therapy :D now I would love to hear your feelings after reading :) TL;DR: My lessons learned
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| Starting a Web Development Business, not sure which steps to take Posted: 30 Nov 2018 10:10 AM PST I've been working lately to improve my web Development skills, starting with html, css, and javascript but upgrading to react.js, and I think I'm ready to take my skills to the market. Before I register as a business, I want to secure some income first - tennessee lets you earn $3,500 before being required to register as a business, and I figure that raising that money initially would help me trademark and register. I'm having trouble finding clients, though. The main problem is that I'm not sure where to start - I've made some websites for friends and encouraged them to spread my name via word of mouth, but I would like to expand my reach. Any advice or links to resources would be appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Online subscription services trend? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 10:10 AM PST How's the trend going for paid/subscription online content services? [link] [comments]  |
| Store Locator, my take on trying to enter an existing market Posted: 30 Nov 2018 09:28 AM PST I've been a serial "idea builder" but I most of my ideas haven't been commercially viable, and ultimately fell by the wayside. This is my first attempt at working in an existing market. I had the idea while working at an eCommerce agency, but realised others had done it before. A few years later and a few other side projects in my cap I decided to give breaking into an existing market a go. My reasoning is the business need is proven, and I just need to make a better product, be better at selling it, and get enough of the pie to sustain the business, which is currently just me. So here is my attempt at entering an existing market, a Store Locator for commerce sites that can be easily embedded. Here is hoping for the best! [link] [comments]  |
| What type of work can you do owning a 10ft box truck? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 10:24 AM PST Any ideas and tips would be appreciated. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| [x-post from /r/smallbusiness] How Do I Decide How Much Inventory to Order For Opening Week? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 01:40 PM PST My small business is opening in the next 3 weeks or so. However, we can't decide how much merchandise to order for opening! Some considerations:
Do you have a formula or any specific metrics you use to guess how much inventory to order before opening? After our first run we'll be able to work from initial sales, but it's tough to gauge before opening. [link] [comments]  |
| Recommendations on law firm marketing? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 01:34 PM PST Does anyone on here have experience with law firm marketing? What are the best ways to bring in new clients for young lawyers? I'm an associate at a personal injury firm in Southern California and get a percentage of every case that I bring in/settle. I'm trying to come up with an affordable marketing plan for my law firm so I can make money on top of my salary. What would you recommend? [link] [comments]  |
| I launched my ecommerce site this week and I would like to get some reviews about it Posted: 30 Nov 2018 01:27 PM PST Hi! I just opened my ecommerce site and I would love to get some advice. Can you take a look at my website and give me some reviews please? [link] [comments]  |
| Any High Risk Industry Folks Here? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 01:24 PM PST hi folks, we have a ecommerce business (auctions platform - B2C and B2B) and were using paypal payflow to have our payments processed. We were using them for about two years now and then decided to make few upgrades to the platform last month with an development company out of eastern Europe. As of this morning paypal no longer provides their services and has sent an email stating that they have re-evaluated our business model and we are at high risk. Our return rate is at 12% and thats way below industry standards, not once have we skipped payments. Any way, we are looking for new merchants and there are quite a few out there. But any one in a high risk industry here? that recommends a merchants with less problems? Our business is based and operated in US and clients are US as well. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Nov 2018 01:16 PM PST Hi, I'm a web marketer and developer, and since this job tends to be quite volatile I'm interested in launching some websites and apps to stabilize my income. I currently make over $35k per month after all taxes and expenses, but this will not last forever because things tend to change quickly and my particular niche is very volatile. As tempting as it is to go and buy stupid shit and luxury items, I'm going to use this money for something stable, and then I can give something nice to myself once I know the money wont' dry up I have some great ideas, and I need web and mobile developers to make it happen. The budget is relatively big as long as the job gets done properly. I'm also a developer myself so I will make sure high standards are met. My question is two-fold: 1- Any web marketers (affiliate, ppc agencies etc..) here managed to build a solid, stable online presence other than marketing? How did you do it? 2- Need a place to find professional people who can get the job done. I tried asking locally and they want $10k for an app. Not going to happen. But also I don't want $5 offer form some Indian. What is a good trusted place to go and find people who can get things moving? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Nov 2018 12:56 PM PST I launched my consulting company over a month ago and I was hoping if some of you successful entrepreneurs can provide me with some guidance please. My company helps families connect with elderly care facilities and help them through the entire process from selecting the facilities, completing paperwork, evaluating applicable benefits, scheduling tours, and finalizing placements - www.familycareconsultants.org I have established my company's website, completed minor SEO using the platform godaddy, created a facebook page (www.facebook.com/familycareconsultants) , invited friends & family to like my page, uploading content almost daily, and used facebook advertisements. I constantly do word of mouth when I'm out and about, leave business cards at local restaurants, my gym, and any other place that allows, talk to my uber drivers, etc. However, I haven't had a single person reach out as of yet. My next steps are continue to do facebook advertisement to my target demographics, create a physical flyer that I will start mailing out, and buy a lead list of age demographics 70+ in my surrounding zip codes. If there is anything else I should be doing, please advise. I do work a full-time job and this business is currently part-time or else I would be spending more time networking during business hours. Any constructive feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| What kind of 3D model program i can use to create product? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 12:49 PM PST |
| I can’t build a organic audience at all. What’s the best way to learn this? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 12:49 PM PST Right now I currently have a personal brand on Twitter and a clothing brand on Instagram, and I'm trying to grow and audience for both but I just can't seem to make it happen. On my twitter account, I've gained 175 followers in 2 months. I utilize follow/unfollow, I tweet roughly 10-12 times a day, and am always retweeting and liking others posts. But on my posts I average about 6 likes a day. My main goal for this account is to drive people to my email list, but as of now I have 9 subscribers and a constant 0 opens on all my emails. On my Instagram for my clothing line, I've gained 5,000 by Follow/unfollow/liking, but my engagement is an average 50 likes per post, even with using engagement groups. I run sales pretty much every week, and I get lots of complements on how good my feed and products are, but no sales. I see now that my main issue is I have no idea how to organically grow and audience interested in what I am promoting. What are the best resources for learning this skill? [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for advice on moving from dropshipping to owning stock. Posted: 30 Nov 2018 06:47 AM PST Hi, I figured I would post here because I'm on the cusp of making a big decision, and would like as much feedback as I should get. Me and my business partner dropship from China. We have recently found a lot of success with a clothing accessory type item. We are planning on personalizing the design, purchasing around 1000 from a chinese factory (as well as a dozen other similar items) and shipping them to Amazon in Europe. We would then sell from both Amazon and a new branded site, as well as continue to advertise in the same method we do currently. The uncertainties for us are around the cost of the item and returning visitor rates. To pay for shipping the items over and customizing them, were going to have to increase the price from around 20€ to 30€ or 35€, and on top of that we will need to charge VAT. We are also not sure what affect 1-3 day shipping (instead of 20 days) will have on conversion rates and rebuy rates. Right now very few customers purchase more than once, usually due to dissatisfaction with how long it took the items to arrive. So we would love some feedback on what moving the price from 20 to 35/40€, fast shipping times will have on conversion rates (you will be able to find similar items for 15-70€), as well as any tips people may have about customer return rates, online I've read it's around 20%. Thanks for the feedback! [link] [comments]  |
| Do you hire a lawyer to do a prior art search, or just do your own? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 12:33 PM PST I have an invention that I have been working on. I want to start posting build log videos on YouTube to see if anyone else finds the invention interesting, get feedback, and possibly make money from and grow the channel. I've done my own prior art search and found some patents that are similar, then looked at their citations to find a few more. After reading all the patent's claims I am confident that my invention does not infringe on any of them. I don't want to patent my invention, I just want to start posting videos about it and see where that goes. Would you still hire a patent lawyer to do a search, just in case? I'm not sure if I'm being overly paranoid in thinking I might want to hire a lawyer to do the search for hundreds of dollars for a YouTube channel I'm just starting and probably won't make any money for some time (if ever). I also was thinking of starting an LLC for the liability protection, but again I'm not sure if that is overkill at this point. [link] [comments]  |
| Free Web Design: I will create a personal/business website for you! Posted: 30 Nov 2018 12:26 PM PST Hello! I'm trying to build up a portfolio of websites that I can showcase from 2019. To make this happen, I would like to offer my web design skills for free! If you have ever wanted to have your own website – feel free to contact me and I'll design one for you! Nb.
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| Biggest pivot you've done or seen? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 04:39 AM PST Started off by looking for developers for an app similar to Yelp. 100% failed at gaining any traction but gained a lot connections with some exceptional mobile app developers. I now own an android / iOS development firm which contracts out almost all work to those same connections. Monday will be the first day of my working life that I have to report to no one but myself. What's yours? [link] [comments]  |
| Would you use a FAQ meets social media website? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 11:49 AM PST The idea is to have your social page that's full of FAQ's that are usually asked about or to you. I could see how this would be useful for well known people/companies but would you as a normal person find it useful, assuming it had all the basic social media features? [link] [comments]  |
| [Shopify] Need for help - Three Points Posted: 30 Nov 2018 11:04 AM PST Hello,
I would like help on these three points, a big thank you to those who will take the time to answer. [link] [comments]  |
| Lawn mowing business questions Posted: 30 Nov 2018 10:13 AM PST If a friend and I are planning to start a lawn mowing business, what type of business would be better: a partnership or an llc? Secondly, how would you go about setting up a way to accept credit cards from people for our business? [link] [comments]  |
| Growing as a freelance filmmaker? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 10:02 AM PST Hi Guys, I am a freelance filmmaker and in my opinion a freelancer is also an entrepreneur as they also need to do everything an entrepreneur needs to do so I would like to know if anyone of you talented folks is a freelancer and can help me with my query. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Need a free web or desktop app? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 09:54 AM PST I need more apps for my portfolio, although I don't have any good ideas. If you need a web or desktop app, post below. If I like your idea, I will contact you and build it for free. You will need to be ok with the all code being publicly available on github.com. If it matters to you, I plan on using Electron for the desktop app and Node for the website. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Nov 2018 08:55 AM PST I have been browsing for people to design my website for me as web design is not something I want to spend my time learning. However, while looking around there are a ton of options and I'm not exactly sure how to vet these options and find the one that is best for me. I also see a lot of freelancers in this field. It seems like a impossible task to just pick one. How did you all go about finding the right designer for you? [link] [comments]  |
| Branded Product Launching - considerations to sell (and when) on Amazon? Posted: 30 Nov 2018 08:50 AM PST Hi All! I'm launching a unique product (and brand) shortly. Branding will be built up strongly via Instagram and sold directly through my site. I recognize Amazon drives high traffic - but also high fees and higher exposure to copy cats. I'll eventually leverage the Amazon sales channel (of course for the sales!) once I've established a solid brand reputation. When you launched your product - how (and at what point) did you think about broaching the Amazon sales channel? Anyone try this method and have any feedback - or feedback on alternative methods? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
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