NooB Monday! - (December 24, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- NooB Monday! - (December 24, 2018)
- Year End Update from "The Window Cleaning Guy" and our Race to $400,000
- Stop pretending saturated business idea's like dropshipping are your only option
- A Deep Breath Before the New Year. 2019 Here We Go
- How do you save your key players?
- This sub is confusing...what are they expectations from everyone here?
- I want to do my own data analysis side gig and build it up to my own business. I have ideas but want you to tell me if it's even worth pursuing.
- I have a great subscription box idea, but I need help bringing it to life.
- LiveAgent: Making +$250K/month with a Spin-Off Project
- Questions About Dropshipping/E Commerce I Need The Answers To!
- Business partner relations
- Help us learn about your pain points about public transit
- What can I do with a high-traffic webpage?
- Market research suggestions
- Companies competing for my business. Are they using tactics that should worry me?
- Business Ideas for a Medical Student
- Favorite "personal brand" websites?
- Best way to legally sell my hot sauce?
- platform for innovative products
- Getting Sales on Twitter
- Fastest way to grow a business ethically, legally, and morally in one year?
- Best way to generate sales.
- Freight Forwarding
- Feeling at an impasse: is success just not part of my DNA?
| NooB Monday! - (December 24, 2018) Posted: 24 Dec 2018 05:06 AM PST Please use this thread to ask any newbie questions. We do this to not overflow the subreddit with newbie questions, so please try to limit the questions to this weekly thread. 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]  |
| Year End Update from "The Window Cleaning Guy" and our Race to $400,000 Posted: 24 Dec 2018 06:53 AM PST Saturday was our last day of work until Jan 2nd so it's now time for the End of Year Race to $400,000 Update. Here is a link to my very first post in this sub for those that dont know my story. I have made regular updates since the first post and you can find them all in my posting history. The short version is that I lost my corporate job and started a window cleaning company overnight. First of all I want to thank this sub for joining me on my journey of almost two years (Feb will be the 25th month in business). This place has been overwhelmingly supportive and I appreciate that. Also, dont forget that we added pressure washing about 4 or 5 months into the business and it now makes up the majority of our revenue. Getting to the main issue at hand…..In 2018 we Completed $348,275 in revenue with $228,062 in expenses. Even though we failed at our 400k goal I am very proud of what we have learned and accomplished. These numbers give us a net profit or 'bottom line' of $120,213. For those that do not own or operate their own business these numbers may seem amazing. Yes, they are great from a 'business health' standpoint but I am not putting major cash in my pockets just yet. The 228k in expenses includes all payroll including my 50k salary. My partner and I have taken some money from the 120k but not too much. Most of it has went to vehicles and equipment, a new lease space (deposits and such), office equipment and furniture, blah blah blah with some more purchases to make before the end of the year. I dont have an exact number beyond our salary's (yet.. still digging into everything) but I would estimate that we have taken approximately 20k (combined) for profit distributions. The way to figure the company's net margin is to take the net profit (120,213) and divide it by revenue (348,275) which comes to 34%. This number will never be this high again for many reason. One, we are scaling and additional employees, services, overhead will drive this number down big time. Two, we are going to be significantly increasing our marketing spend for this upcoming year (and the one to follow). Our customer acquisition cost will be higher with the long term plan of the lifetime value of a customer which equates to less 'first time margin' for the sake of long term repeats. Three, it's simply unrealistic to have a margin this high. I wore most of the hats in the business aside from the actual cleaning which kept our costs down. You may ask "Why not keep doing it this way and keep the high margin?" Because I have a lot of goals including: Not being involved in the day to day operations 4 years from now, and creating a higher personal income for my partner and myself than a small operation like our current one can support. If I were to keep doing it this way I will burn out. What does 2019 look like for us? Our revenue goal is $717,181. I originally had 800k in my sights but as I ran the numbers I was able to drop it to 717k which allowed me to only add one truck and crew instead of two. A truck setup is roughly 30k along with two employees. Lowering the goal by 83k reduces a lot of unnecessary expense and stress and will still have us set up for our 2020 goal of $1,100,000. Due to a lot of necessary additional overhead including my higher marketing expense mentioned above my net margin for 2019 is going to drop to 5.9% and will be in the same ballpark in 2020. I want to take a minute and explain why we would be willing to sacrifice profit for the sake of growth for the next two years. I have done a lot of research for businesses like mine. All of the experts and successful business owners in our industry talk about a stage referred to as "The land of despair" or "Cashflow Purgatory" which starts around 350k and lasts until roughly 1.1mil. This is a time in the business where growth requires additional infrastructure that eats up the profits. They teach that in order to be a healthy business you need to make a decision to stay below this range or be above it but it is not realistic to live IN it, be profitable, AND be a business owner and not just an owner operator. There is another small stage similar to this that starts around 1.3mil and goes to 1.5mil due to the need for upper leadership in order to continue to grow. This second stage is not void of profits but there are not any additional profits during the 200k ish increase in revenue My partner and I have a goal of being business owners that are not involved in the day to day. Taking this goal and "Cashflow Purgatory" into consideration we deemed it beneficial for us to push through this stage as quickly as possible and make short term sacrifices. When I originally found out that I was losing my job and started this window cleaning company LITERALLY overnight I was very stressed and scared. In an effort to 'get it out of my system' I decided to document my journey so that I could go back and watch it later in life. This vlog is not a 'how to' but more of a 'what it's like' to start a business from scratch with my son/business partner. Feel free to check it out. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTS3WLs0t2stlWFaqTzP2mQ Happy Holidays to everyone! [link] [comments]  |
| Stop pretending saturated business idea's like dropshipping are your only option Posted: 23 Dec 2018 05:27 PM PST Seriously, man up or women up and launch a website offering a service that's not saturated. If that's too hard, post 'I'm an idiot' below and I'll gladly point you in the right direction. Edit: Submissions are closed. Hope these ideas get the wheels in your brain turning. Edit #2: The formula I used to come up with business ideas is simple: Create a niche website offering a single product-ized skill, sold at a preset price, that you delegate to a freelance expert in the niche. Traffic can come either from an affiliate deal with a relevant blog or FB group (short term) or from niche articles that rank the site on Google (long term). [link] [comments]  |
| A Deep Breath Before the New Year. 2019 Here We Go Posted: 24 Dec 2018 11:27 AM PST I was brought up to believe traditional employment was the only way to succeed. Go to school, get a degree, find a job and work there under strict regulation. Do what's required, follow superiors and fall in line. For much of my professional life I have done just that. I worked in business development for multiple companies and have done so successfully. Marketing, budgeting, prospecting and money management and forecasting have all been involved. So has financial stability. Yet something has always bugged me. Traditional employment has just never felt, well, right. Perhaps this is due to my innate nature to be independent and want to forge my own path but I'm just not sure why subjecting myself to authority is so difficult. I don't want to just always fall in line with what is considered "best practice" just because it is said so. I want to innovate and develop new, efficient solutions to complex problems. This has led to disagreements with co-workers and superiors who are so ingrained in traditional thought that they are completely system oriented. There is no room for independent thought that may lead to efficient innovations and solutions. So it is with great risk that in 2019 I am embracing my desire to forge my own success and moving back into the world of freelance B2B Copywriting for technology, finance and law. I am not doing so without experience. I would not subject my wife and family to that nervousness. Prior to traditional employment I worked as a freelance writer for a few months and saw success. Outside pressures and influences drew me away, unfortunately. But not anymore. I am going to make an impact for many businesses once again because I am good at what I do. I am confident in my abilities and I need to be. The freelance world is not a light one. It is competitive. It is ravenous. To be the best means you can be significantly rewarded. I am planning on that. As 2019 approaches like many of you I am nervous, excited and exhausted from the work I have done. I have spent the past weeks building my personal website and updating portfolios and profiles as necessary. My prospecting has already returned a few clients who I am thrilled about and I can't wait to continue building my list. It has been tiring work but once you get behind your passion and motivated it is hard to stop. I'm even writing this as the rest of the family rests and relaxes before Christmas Eve celebrations. But such is the drive of an entrepreneur. We take charge of our lives and find opportunities to offer our expertise to others. We know we provide something of benefit and will do whatever it takes to let others reap the rewards of our endeavor. I would LOVE for you all to check out my website and give input. I am not a web designer by any means but I wanted to make it attractive and informative. I think it it is just about there. I have chosen to be a freelance B2B Copywriter in technology, finance and law because I understand the human mind and that my services are hired to bring about sales. A copywriter does not write just to write. I write to bring prospects into your conversion funnel and make conversions of them. In technology, finance and law I am well-read and experienced. I am not just strategically positioning myself for a lucrative career, I am doing so in industries I love and am knowledgeable of. So yeah, this is the end of a brain dump/rant at the end of an exhausting few weeks. I am so ready for 2019 and to see what it brings. The thought of controlling my destiny is both frightening and exciting. My motivations will drive me forward. I hope yours do the same for you. Happy Holidays all and good luck in 2019! [link] [comments]  |
| How do you save your key players? Posted: 24 Dec 2018 11:51 AM PST How do you, as business owners, prevent burnout from your the most valuable people? [link] [comments]  |
| This sub is confusing...what are they expectations from everyone here? Posted: 24 Dec 2018 01:19 PM PST I see post after post downvoted like crazy, people self promoting and getting downvoted, people telling stories and getting downvoted, people asking for advice and getting downvoted. Just kind of wondering what this sub is supposed to be about really. Are there other subs I should be visiting? Are there just trolls on here? What is everyone looking for here? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Dec 2018 02:26 PM PST From what I've seen so far, most data analysis consists of:
I would love to start doing this on the side while I work full time, and see where it goes. Start up costs should be minimal because I have computers and Excel. So: Is this a service businesses actually pay for? Is it as simple as it seems? Is this an industry that's difficult to get into, or can I start small and build up? Anything else I should know? [link] [comments]  |
| I have a great subscription box idea, but I need help bringing it to life. Posted: 23 Dec 2018 02:07 PM PST Im 16 and have never written a business plan, this will be my first business. I am coming in pretty optimistic, but I need some mentorship. I want to start but I don't know where to start [link] [comments]  |
| LiveAgent: Making +$250K/month with a Spin-Off Project Posted: 24 Dec 2018 10:10 AM PST Hey! It's Rich, maker of Failory, a site where we weekly publish startup-related content. A few days ago I published an interview with David Cacik, the Head of Growth of LiveAgent, a help desk software for customer service. This started as a spin-off project for their main business, but it is now generating 75% of their company's revenue. PPCs, content marketing, and SEO were some of the strategies that grew the business into revenue of +$250,000 per month.
Hi David! What's your background, and what are you currently working on?Ahoy! I'm David Cacik and I'm the Head of Growth at LiveAgent. I started my first company in high school and then another one in college. I failed the first one and sold the second one and later took an exciting role at LiveAgent. I was the first growth guru to join the company, and helped it grow from $20k to $250k MRR. LiveAgent helps improve interactions between customers and companies. We are a bootstrapped SaaS, based out of Bratislava, Slovakia (Central Europe). Our competitors are venture funded companies like Zendesk and Freshdesk which makes my job super challenging and attractive.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?When I was 15, me and 2 of my high school buddies started a game hosting company. We were kids and we were selling virtual server space for games like Counter Strike or World of Warcraft to other kids. We failed and discontinued the project when we all went our separate ways to different universities. During my studies, I started a new eCommerce project, an online pharmacy with automated delivery of commonly used products like toothbrush, razors, toilet paper etc. Even though I made it to the final of the Student Entrepreneur Awards, I decided to sell the project and move on. I joined LiveAgent in 2013, and I was employee #10, the 1st and only marketing guy. I was 21 years old, not knowing what I was getting into but I experimented a lot and over the course of 4 years, I've helped the company grow from $20k to $250k in Monthly Recurring Revenue. How did you build LiveAgent?LiveAgent was built as a spin-off project. Our first product was Post Affiliate Pro, an affiliate management platform, which popularity was growing rapidly. We were in the market for a new customer service solution when we realized none of the tools were sufficient. That's when we started to build LiveAgent. It took 3 years for it to become a multichannel help desk software, like it is today but is still improved daily by new updates pushed by our devs. We didn't plan on selling LiveAgent in the early days, we only wanted to use it internally. Some of our customers, mainly B2Bs, were asking us about the support tool we used. That's how we sold the first license. Today, LiveAgent makes up 75% of the company's MRR, overcoming Post Affiliate Pro in both revenue and number of customers. Both PAP and LiveAgent are built with similar technologies, utilizing PHP & Java as the main programming languages and using MySQL, Kibana, Elastic and also Grafana for performance monitoring. Our servers run in multiple locations (EU, US, Asia) with multiple providers starting with Linode where most of our accounts run on the fast SSD nodes, AWS where the bigger files are stored. Recently, we started building our own "in-house" server farm in EU to ensure the highest performance possible and increase uptime. We will be migrating our EU customers there soon.
Which were your marketing strategies to grow your business?The initial traction was achieved by upselling former customers. It wasn't sufficient enough though. In order to be ROI positive, we needed more customers and better growth. We started experimenting with PPC, content marketing, improving onboarding experience, SEO outbound sales and many more. At first, we didn't have much success but we were still growing continuously. We've tried Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook, Twitter and all kinds of other minor PPC networks. The fact that the average customer value was lower than most of our competitors' and also that they were literally burning investors' money with PPCs made it especially hard to compete in the Pay Per Click space. We had to find long tail keywords, and competitor keywords which worked out pretty well (be careful to obey Google's rules). Generic terms like "customer service software" were super expensive and we've burned a lot of cash trying to compete the big players. I would not recommend going down this way for other startups. Eventually, we figured out the keywords that were performing well and we've been bidding on them until today. Do content, they said. So we did - we pushed out valuable, fact-based, well-formatted blog posts supported by infographics and images. 99% of the blog posts didn't get much traction. In fact, there are only 2-3 articles that rank well on relevant keywords. Doing content right is hard and we have yet to figure it out. On the other hand, one of the growth strategies, that helped boost growth particularly well, was including LiveAgent in software directories and boosting our presence there. Ever since the beginning, we've been a customer-centric company so we had a pretty solid base of satisfied customers. After listing LiveAgent on websites like G2Crowd, Capterra, GetApp or FinancesOnline, we've reached out to our audience and invited them to leave a review, good or bad, on one of these websites. We even incentivized their efforts by providing $20 Amazon coupons to everyone who shares their experience. We received hundreds of positive reviews which helped us rank high in comparisons and gained a lot of traffic. What were the biggest challenges you faced and obstacles you overcame?When we started actively promoting LiveAgent, we quickly realized the big players like Zendesk and Freshdesk dominated the market. We were struggling with positioning ourselves and setting the right USP to stand out. Also, we are a bootstrapped company and we had to compete with companies with more than 300M+ in funding, which didn't make acquiring customer easy. Another struggle was finding the right talent. We've always had a hard time to find good sales reps and developers. Recently, we also encountered quite a few problems with our datacenter provider which caused downtimes and we had to restructure our infrastructure completely. Thousands of companies rely on LiveAgent when supporting their end users, including fintech and telco companies, where even seconds matter. We had to invest a lot and act quickly because the consequences could have been fatal. Last but not least, new competitors are popping up like a mushroom, offering free plans with no viable business model. With that comes a higher demand for better functionality, improved UI and customer experience. It's a constant game which is changing and maybe that's what intrigues me about my work the most, it wouldn't be so much fun it was that easy, right?
Which are your greatest disadvantages?I think that my biggest disadvantage is that I want to know about everything that's happening, what our customers are saying, what's the quality of their interaction with our team, how is our marketing performing on a daily basis and sometimes I get lost in all the information and lack the general image. At LiveAgent, we try to be disruptive and push out new features very often which sometimes brings complications like bugs or functionality not working 100%. On the other hand, no software is perfect and if somebody says, their software is bug-free, they are lying. Recently, we hired a new software tester so I'm confident this move will help us to deliver more stable releases. During the process of building & growing LiveAgent, which were the worst mistakes you committed?We should've optimized our onboarding process earlier, instead, we focused on adding more features. When we introduced a new getting started guide (which didn't take much time to implement), we immediately saw a spike in conversions. We definitely should've done this earlier. We hired an agency to help us with our marketing initiatives and failed. They didn't know the product well enough, they've focused on redesigning our pricing plans and website instead of finding new leads which cost us money and work time of our internal team. We also hired an external team which didn't work out as well. They knew even less about the product and did not close a single deal. From that moment, we decided to minimize our outsourcing efforts and focused on hiring internally instead. Apart from mistakes, what are other sources for learning you would recommend for entrepreneurs who are just starting?I recently stumbled upon a group on Facebook called Saas Growth Hacks. It's a free to join community of entrepreneurs and growth hackers so make sure to check it out. Also, there's a similar community on Slack, which is paid and called The10xFactory. As any other growth hacker, I regularly check GrowthHackers. IndieHackers posts a lot of interesting interviews with startup founders which is a great resource. If you are a bootstrapped company, I also recommend Bootsrapped.fm. You can discuss your ideas and questions on their forum, for free. Quora offers a ton of valuable content, just search tags like SaaS, eCommerce and you will find a plenty of relevant questions answered by experienced professionals. Where can we go to learn more?On LiveAgent's blog, we post lessons on growth, marketing and customer service in B2B so make sure to check it out. Recently, I started blogging about SaaS Growth Hacking on my personal blog. In my latest post, I wrote about how boosting our presence on software directories brought a 300% spike in MRR.
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| Questions About Dropshipping/E Commerce I Need The Answers To! Posted: 24 Dec 2018 01:00 PM PST I have had some questions for a while and I would like it if someone could just help me get all the answers on this thread that way if someone else has the same questions I can just link them to this thread.
Hopefully these will all get answered. If I get a good answer that I like I will edit the post and put the answer under the question in bold italics so when people come on this thread and have the same questions they can just read the post and wont have to scroll through a bunch of comments to get the answer they are looking for. Thank you to everyone that helps me with this :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Dec 2018 12:34 PM PST A question for anyone with business partners, and I guess this applies even more if they are not direct friends... What is your relationship like and is there anything you do to strengthen the bond? [link] [comments]  |
| Help us learn about your pain points about public transit Posted: 24 Dec 2018 12:09 PM PST Hi Everyone, Many thanks for the time of reading this in advance. We are trying to see what kind of product we can build to solve the public transportation system. I know there are so many things to tackle here, we are starting with the bus and will find our way to other areas. My gratitude if you could spare a minute and give us some data points in the form [link] [comments]  |
| What can I do with a high-traffic webpage? Posted: 24 Dec 2018 12:05 PM PST Basically, I have a way to direct a high amount of traffic to several webpages for some time (was offered free temporary ad spaces on some popular websites). I am a web developer, however, I do not own a business or provide freelance services at the moment. Is there a way I can monetize this or turn into a longer-term asset? One obvious idea is using them to gather emails, however, I don't see a way to get the users subscribe when I don't have anything useful (a blog, a product, a company...) behind all this yet. Any ideas are appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Dec 2018 10:50 AM PST Hello r/Entrepreneur, long time lurker first time posting. Looking for suggestions on how to conduct market research for a product/service I'm considering offering. I have been a small business owner for the past 6 years and as my company has grown I'm looking to add another revenue stream. [link] [comments]  |
| Companies competing for my business. Are they using tactics that should worry me? Posted: 24 Dec 2018 10:47 AM PST I just started a business and I'm currently collecting quotes to make a MVP. I've been moving forward with the lowest quote (I need 250 of a custom component.) Here's my question: this morning, the company who had the highest quote asked why they hadn't been chosen and I responded with information about the quote I had received, leaving the door open for them to be competitive. I just got a reply that basically said that I can order 500 or 1000 of the custom component at a deep discount and that these are "special discounted Christmas prices for you and are only applicable for today." The email makes me feel like I have to choose them RIGHT NOW OR ELSE I LOSE EVERYTHING and it seems like a scummy tactic to me for a project worth $800+ dollars. Is it? I'm new to business. I'm the smallest of fries. Even still, their response makes me feel like they're not interested in meeting my needs of 250 pieces, but instead just want my money. Please gut check me and let me know if my newness is showing in how I'm assessing the situation. [link] [comments]  |
| Business Ideas for a Medical Student Posted: 24 Dec 2018 10:26 AM PST I majored in business in undergrad, and I really think starting a small side gig can be a good hobby for my well being. Any ideas of what I can do? Doesn't have to be medical related - just something I can do in my limited spare time. [link] [comments]  |
| Favorite "personal brand" websites? Posted: 24 Dec 2018 10:13 AM PST I'm considering redesigning my personal website to be more blog-based and create a personal brand for myself. Anyone have any favorite website designs by known bloggers/"thought leader" types I could draw some inspiration from? I will mostly be blogging for now (focus is fitness, rationality, self-development, Tim Ferris type of stuff), and I have a few articles/guides I've written that I'd like to bring to the forefront. I'm essentially looking for sites like Seth Godin or Gary V, though I don't actually really love either of their designs, and I won't be selling anything like they are (yet). [link] [comments]  |
| Best way to legally sell my hot sauce? Posted: 23 Dec 2018 11:25 PM PST So this is something I've been struggling with, as I have a very delicious fermented hot sauce that I've been working and iterating on for the past year. I'm finally at a recipe that I'm confident in, and I use it the most frequently now out of all my hot sauces (I'm a hot sauce collector) I've been wanting to take my sauce to market in smalll batches to test the produce with real world customers and validate it, but unfortunately here in Los Angeles, hot sauce does not fall under the cottage food law, meaning I cannot produce it in my home kitchen and sell it. Aside from renting out kitchen space from a restaurant or shared kitchen, is there anything I can do to legally sell a small batch of my sauce either in person or online from Los Angeles? I know I will eventually need to get a copacker as that's probably the best thing to do, but the minimum runs with copacker is so high that I don't feel comfortable with that risk at this stage. Would love some guidance and suggestions, and also I would love to send sample bottles to anyone interested in helping me out! [link] [comments]  |
| platform for innovative products Posted: 24 Dec 2018 09:23 AM PST hey guys how many of you would be interested to see a platform where hardware founders create their product presentations sort of like kickstarter however it's for b2b purposes only whether you want to buy in bulk or import the product to your country all questions covered in presentations what do you think? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Dec 2018 08:32 AM PST Hey all , JP here! I posted last week about getting your first 10 sales and utilizing your personal network about finding people to actually open up their wallets and pay your service/products which would be a legit confirmation that your business idea has a chance of being valid. Now is a good time to ask yourself, what pain are people feeling that your product or service can help? Try to trim that down into a single sentence and stick by it. For instance, My Business, Another thing to look at is how often do people 'feel' the pain and how intense is it? For an example, an online retailer that is struggling will need my help much more so than a hardware store in the rural midwest. Back to getting your first 10 sales, let's say you've tapped out, you've gotten maybe 4-5 buyers from your own personal network and you still feel like you haven't gotten a good feedback and still need more sales from outside of your personal sphere. What I usually suggest first is to go to Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and even the google search engine. I wanted to cover how you can get an sale from Twitter. I've used this approach to get sales for myself and my customers. Twitter is still an massive platform with over 300 million users every month. Every single industry that there is in the world will be on twitter in some shape and form.
Repeat - Do this 3-4 times a week, you'll start getting responses, follows, and direct messages to solve the said problems your competitor is not addressing. (I have this on my calendar to make sure I stay on track for this) I plan on going over the other platforms on my other posts coming up, Stay tuned. [link] [comments]  |
| Fastest way to grow a business ethically, legally, and morally in one year? Posted: 24 Dec 2018 07:48 AM PST |
| Posted: 24 Dec 2018 07:20 AM PST Hey peeps, I posted about a week ago in regards to my website, StupidlyRichClothing I received a lot of great feedback. Thanks. My next questions is I am struggling to get sales, I am doing a lot of IG marketing and I have used Instagrams Advertising and although I gained a few followers and a few hundred likes on the post. Also my website is showing that we have had over 1000 views, however I am not sure how accurate that is. What is the best way to turn these into website sales? Anymore tips would be very helpful please. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Dec 2018 05:37 AM PST Has anyone else used freight forwarding before? It might not be freight forwarding I need because it's low quantities. 4 pcs received and then shipped out next day. We offer custom products to our customers and we have low piece orders coming from China to the rest of the world regularly. We need a freight forwarder who can take these from China, repackage and forward on to our customers. Does this exist for such small quantities? If so, can you DM me a link to a company who does this? [link] [comments]  |
| Feeling at an impasse: is success just not part of my DNA? Posted: 23 Dec 2018 11:29 PM PST I toyed with the idea of creating this post with a throwaway account, but I settled on my real one so I can get something off my chest and provide a real testimony even if I'm easily traceable. For the better part of my life so far, I've tried to make things work—with poor to downright terrible results. I had a pretty effed up childhood but never let that get in my way. I worked hard to go to university and complete what I consider a pretty worthless degree (translation) in insight. To make it short, I got fed up of getting scraps for my work pretty damn fast. I've also always been interested by entrepreneurship and business in general (mostly online). So naturally, I've tried lots of ideas like dating websites, affiliate marketing blogs, etc. Anything to make some money, even if I had to throw a whole lotta spaghetti at the wall to see if anything stuck. Fast forward to now and most if not all of my projects either died off or weren't profitable at all. I do have a website that's been up for a decade now, but it's almost 100% volunteer work as I contribute to a highly competitive niche (video games) and can't seem to get more traffic even when I try (part of it due to being in French vs. English consumption of entertainment in my region). So although that's my biggest "success," it's still far from what I'd call a sensational one. For years now I've been wanting to own a store (LGS). Not to revel in riches, but to share my newest passion (board games + tcg) while making money doing so. However, I feel there are two main obstacles to overcome: my past failures that are somewhat haunting me and the big one—saving enough to actually open a physical store in modern times. When I see fellow business owners, I can't help but think: do I have it in me? I've seen people open up shop without a single clue about the business part—having zero idea how marketing works. Yet here I am, complaining on a forum while I see all those entrepreneurs achieving what I can't seem to do. So I guess part of my problem is not taking enough action and feeling jealous about others. My goal for 2019 is to finally open a store. However, it's a tall order since that's a hefty investment. Sometimes I'm just left wondering "how do they do it?" I know, some people just cut around corners and pray it works. I want to maximize my chances this business is profitable while not being stretched to the very limit. What I discovered is my energy was divided into way too many projects, ultimately dooming them—unbeknownst to me. So starting right now, in an effort to get in the right tracks, I've decided to focus solely on what works (i.e. my decade-old website) and scrap everything else. I think focus is a big part of being successful in fact, so this might be a game-changer. I'm pretty sure lots of subscribers to this sub feel the exact same way. Usually, it's because we can't put the money down to transform dreams into reality. I'd like to ask what you think are the best ways to rub shoulders with success, create something that works and raise sufficient funds to make it all happen in the first place. [link] [comments]  |
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