Thank you Thursday! - (December 20, 2018) Entrepreneur |
- Thank you Thursday! - (December 20, 2018)
- Entrepreneur phrases that make my eyes glaze over.
- Why I Quit My Dream Job at GoogleX to Become an Entrepreneur
- Recently landed my first large web development gig. Deposited a $17,500 downpayment feels amazing
- Do psychiatrists gaslight entrepreneurs?
- Securing your ownership with a patent!
- What's the biggest challenge you're facing at your startup right now?
- From eBay to $2M/month
- Entrepreneurs in here who currently make over 100,000 a year in income (Not revenue) What do you do?
- Helping out the local town, ideas welcome.
- Engagement Groups On Instagram. Are They Still A Viable Way To Grow?
- How do you find and contact suppliers? (esp. overseas suppliers.)
- Player's Lounge Copyright Infringement
- Milksteak, magnets, ghouls
- How do I sell mechanical seals? And to whom?
- Looking to help small business owners with their copy for FREE
- REPHRASING DM Question
- In the future, I want to build solar farms in the rural areas of the world. On top of that, I want to make lunar solar and rain energy possible. Also, if possible, I would like to use perovskite solar cells. How can I accomplish all of this?
- Where to create LLC given my situation?
- Optimise your Instagram profile to attract followers you want to connect with!
- Why do we always compare our business with our competitors? Is it good or bad for business?
- Looking for guidance on my new independent consulting endeavor.
- Where do I start for an Enterprise Application startup
- Tools for scheduling within email?
- Side Hustle turned into a Full-time gig, need advice on taking next step
| Thank you Thursday! - (December 20, 2018) Posted: 20 Dec 2018 05:05 AM PST Your opportunity to thank the /r/Entrepreneur community by offering free stuff, contests, discounts, electronic courses, ebooks and the best deals you know of. Please consolidate such offers here! 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]  |
| Entrepreneur phrases that make my eyes glaze over. Posted: 20 Dec 2018 02:50 AM PST
Feel free to add yours! [link] [comments]  |
| Why I Quit My Dream Job at GoogleX to Become an Entrepreneur Posted: 20 Dec 2018 10:01 AM PST Medium Article: https://medium.com/passbase/why-i-quit-my-dream-job-at-googlex-to-become-an-entrepreneur-2edfd1d9ca41 Getting to GoogleI still remember the anti-climactic moment at the University of South Carolina library when I submitted my application to the Google internship. With one final click, my application joined the thousands of others in HR purgatory. With no connections and no references, I patiently awaited the inevitable rejection letter. But much to my surprise, that rejection never came and after two rounds of interviews, an offer letter, and a semester of celebration, my tenure at Google began. I started as most undergraduate interns do — bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and in total shock that Google would hire me. Surely they could find someone more qualified, I thought. I can only speculate as to why I was invited to join the program. If pushed, I'll usually point to a cliché mix of hard work, luck, and a willingness to fail. The keyword there being luck. Enter the "Moonshot Factory"Fast-forward three years and I had landed a role as an early-stage business associate in my dream organization — Alphabet's infamous research division boldly titled X, the moonshot factory. I had the privilege of working with some of the most well-respected technologists in Silicon Valley on reality-changing technologies during my time at X. Self-driving cars, autonomous drones, applied artificial intelligence, next-generation robotics — you name it. The scene inside the Palo Alto headquarters was straight out of a science fiction film (or HBO satire). Unkempt technology executives wiz around the building on unconventional modes of personal transportation, all working at a feverish pace trying to build technology that will shape our future. The X employees went about their day-to-day tasks, completely normalized to the fact they are surrounded by fragments of what the future may look like. I spent most of my time at X with the early-stage research projects. You know, the really mind-bending, grandiose, and occasionally crazy stuff. Working alongside accomplished scientists, engineers, and executives, I was pretty much always the least qualified person at the table. It was my job to help these teams develop investment pitches, go-to-market plans, monetization strategies, along with other MBA buzzwords. I can say without hesitation that this mix of business, strategy, and technology was the closest I've ever come to my dream job. All this prompts the question… Why leave?My decision to leave came down to three things: (1) I wanted to have more impact as an individual, (2) I wanted to own what I was building, and (3) the realization that the longer I waited, the more I would need to sacrifice in order to build something on my own. (1) The desire to have more impactInside a massive organization like Alphabet, it's hard to feel like you're having a material impact as an individual. Large organizations are designed to survive without you, so by design, you are replaceable. I knew that in order to have the impact I wanted, I would need to build something on my own. (2) The desire for true ownershipHaving spent my early career working alongside entrepreneurs, for better or worse, I had caught "the bug." I wanted to bring the ideas in my head to life just like they did. Being in proximity to innovation is so invigorating, even from the passenger seat. I quickly began to need more. I needed to leave the safety and security of my comfortable tech job to feel the fear, pain, risk, and reward of true ownership. X was an incredible training ground for me, but in order to continue to grow, I could no longer be insulated from the consequences of my decisions. (3) The realization that comfort gets harder to give upStarting a company inevitably requires sacrifices, and the size of those sacrifices tends to increase as we get older. I am twenty-six years old, and I have no children, no mortgage, healthy parents, and a reasonable amount of savings. The things I am responsible for outside of myself are very minimal, but this will most likely change over the next decade. As we grow up time becomes more and more precious. Starting a family. Owning a home. Taking care of elderly loved ones. These are all parts of growing up that require us to invest emotionally and financially. To start a company in your mid-twenties, you may need to eat more ramen noodles, go on fewer dates, and give up your ski hobby — but compared to the sacrifices required later in life, these sacrifices are nothing. That's why on October 1st, I handed in my Google badge and founded Passbase alongside my two incredibly talented co-founders. Our team has come together in the hopes of creating a more secure and privacy-focused future and give people back control of their data. I don't expect this journey to be an easy one but with an inspiring mission, an incredible team, and enough ramen noodles to last us for the next year, I believe we have the raw materials to build something awesome. [link] [comments]  |
| Recently landed my first large web development gig. Deposited a $17,500 downpayment feels amazing Posted: 20 Dec 2018 05:00 AM PST I haven't been able to tell many people in person so I though I'd come here! I'm super pumped. The biggest job I've had before this was about $4,000. I feel like I'm super lucky, but I must be doing something right. If I had any advice for other developers: Just do good work, and the work will come! Also, don't underestimate your Upwork profile! [link] [comments]  |
| Do psychiatrists gaslight entrepreneurs? Posted: 20 Dec 2018 12:13 PM PST Had my first psychiatry appointment today. Had some great takeaways for sleeping medications, but one portion of our conversation really burgers bothered me. It was pretty obvious he was gunning for a bi-polar diagnosis. I told him about my startup and how I'm unemployed at the moment due to a very serious surgery I'm still recovering from, and stressed about trying to make it work. His next line of questioning was whether or not I started up late at and have experienced moments of grandiose plans/thinking...have I heard voices etc. This really pissed me off, because I don't think running a business when you know how is grandiose...I think it's logical. Not for everybody obviously! Anyways, I'm getting to feel like both my therapist and psychiatrist are trying to push me into a box/mold that fits in with the rest of society, and if I'm not, then I MUST have a psychological disorder. I know Grant Cardone had a similar experience in rehab about having an "obsessive personality". I'm wondering is this type of experience typical for entrepreneurs/disrupting personalities? Has it happened to you? Like come one, I already know that everyone thinks I'm crazy for trying to be an entrepreneur, this is nothing a new. But from a psychiatrist?? I see a huge benefit in managing mental health, especially with the unique stresses of running a business, but I really don't need bullshit like this holding me back, get enough of that on a daily basis. [link] [comments]  |
| Securing your ownership with a patent! Posted: 20 Dec 2018 12:11 PM PST Hello fellow entrepreneurs, As a closet inventor and entrepreneur myself, I'm always looking for ways to monetize my ideas. I recently read an article that motivated me to create this post and share my own research and sources with others who have similar goals. What I learned is that if you have a unique product, invention or idea, you should definitely consider securing your ownership with a patent, but there is a lot more to the entrepreneurial journey than just that step. I welcome feedback on your own research and experience that you may be able to share with me and the community. Where to start: The first important step is to see if there is already a patent for your idea, and whether or not somebody else beat you can tweak your idea to make it unique enough to protect. There are only a few free quality resources on the internet for patent searching and here are some of the ones I have used personally. Feel free to add any additional ones to the list.
Congratulations, let's assume that your search results show your idea has a chance of being unique enough to patent. Now what? In my previous experience, this is where I typically hire a patent attorney and the fees start to accumulate, but there are alternative options at lower costs. In my experience, if the price is not listed on their website, it's going to be expensive (it usually costs me over $2,000 USD to hire an attorney to run a patent search).
A score in the 60-80 range is considered pretty good. The tool even gives you keyword suggestions that might help make your idea more unique, and therefore more likely to be patentable, and you can run the analysis over and over as you tweak the idea to optimize your score. I recommend to still have an attorney give your idea a once over before you file your final patent application, but cost can be reduced by trying to do as much research as you can by yourself.
If you reach this step, you're halfway there. Your idea is novel and you're one step closer to reap its rewards. Now you must secure your idea to prevent anybody from stealing it. You can achieve this by filing your provisional patent application and there are plenty of online services that allow you to do this at affordable costs. This does not save you from across the border theft that could result in devastating lawsuit costs.
If you reached this step, you are finally ready to monetize on your idea. Personally, what comes next was the hardest. I'm not a business person; I don't know anything about marketing and consider myself more of a hands-on builder. If you can partner with trusted professionals that show expertise in areas you lack, this is a good start. However, nothing is for free and you will need funding.
Feel free to add your personal experiences and learned lessons to help other inventors with their processes. [link] [comments]  |
| What's the biggest challenge you're facing at your startup right now? Posted: 20 Dec 2018 12:02 PM PST I'm an angel investor and happy to give some advice, if it is helpful. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Dec 2018 07:14 PM PST Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Tyler Robertson of Diesel Laptops, a brand that sells B2B products to the trucking and off-highway diesel industry market Tyler is also a longtime redditor, /u/jtr8178 and a regular on r/entrepreneuer, so plz don't flame him too much :) Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?My name is Tyler Robertson, and I'm the founder and CEO of Diesel Laptops. We are a B2B company, and our business is selling diesel diagnostic hardware, software, and services to the trucking and off-highway diesel industry market. The business originally was started with the idea of making it easier for customers to purchase the products and services they needed. As time went on, I started to create our own software and services that would support the customers. Since I quit my "regular" job to launch this company, we've successfully doubled revenue each year. In three short years, it went from me in my dining room table and garage to a 21,000 square foot facility with over 90 employees. What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I had worked at commercial truck dealerships for my entire career. Through those years, I've seen commercial trucks become more and more complex, and more difficult to diagnose. Customers kept asking me how they can perform their own diagnostics, or get their own repair information. All of this was confusing, difficult, and expensive for a customer to figure out on their own. One day back in 2012, I found a person in Canada that made this great little software program. While it was focused on commercial trucks, it would also work with automotive, farm tractors, and some off highway equipment as well. It would read and clear codes, view live data, print some great reports, and basically allow the user to do basic troubleshooting on electronic system on these vehicles. First kit sold on eBay in 2012 (link below) I emailed this person and asked if I could put a kit together, which included a laptop, his software, and then the hardware to interface with the equipment. He agreed, and I put one on eBay to see if it would sell. A couple days later it did, and then I just started adding more content to it and raising the price. I ended up doing this for about 3 years while I was working full-time for someone else. While that original kit has been upgraded many times, we still continue to sell it on eBay. In early 2015, my then current employer asked me to make a decision -- Quit my side business and take a nice raise and bonus, or resign. At the time, my wife was a stay at home mom, and I had a 1-year old and 3-year old. I was making a great salary, and I had been with this company for almost 10 years. I was going to quit the side business, but my wife really urged me to give it a shot. We had been pretty frugal with our money and had saved a bunch up, so I took her advice and resigned. Here we are, around 3.5 years later and growing fast. We just landed #422 on the Top 5000 fastest growing companies in America, and quickly have moved from my garage and dining room table to a 21,000 square foot building. We have almost 100 employees now, and are focused on expanding as quickly as possible. Describe the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing the product.At first, my company was simply just bundling various products to create an easier, more simple way for customers to buy what they needed. To connect to a commercial truck to perform diagnostics, you need three things -- Diagnostic software, laptop, and a adapter that interfaces between the truck and the laptop. As you can imagine, most of our customer base (diesel technicians and repair shop owners) aren't the most technical savvy group. They didn't understand what was needed to make everything work, and they would have to purchase from multiple vendors to put together what they needed. My solution was taking different vendors products, bundling them into one kit, and making sure it was "ready to go" out of the box when the customer received it. As simple as that sounds, no one else was doing, and no one else does this today. If you buy a kit from another vendor, you are doing all of your own installation, licensing, configuring, and testing. While a lot of people are tech savvy, our customer base typically is not, and this is another advantage we have when selling diagnostic kits. However, what I quickly found out was that customers needed two more things -- Technical support and repair information. We were selling a great tool, and it would give diagnostic codes and live data, but end users were still confused on how to repair the truck. In the early days, I would help each customer via a phone call. It quickly moved from "I can't connect to this vehicle" to "How do I fix this vehicle?" questions. I decided to make a software program called DTC Solutions. This program is essentially a quick reference for every possible diagnostic code that exists. We have since expanded pass fault codes to include things such as wiring diagrams, specification values, remove and replace instructions, labor time guides, parts cross reference, and more. The other was technical support. We are selling diagnostic software and hardware to diesel technicians and shop owners, many of which aren't technology savvy. We have both IT professionals and ex-diesel technicians on staff. This allows us to help customers with all issues, from computer related to helping diagnose a truck properly. In our case, the process for new products, services, and ideas all come from the customer. We try very hard to listen to what their complaints are, and then work on solutions around that. Almost every software product and service we have launched I can directly tie back to conversations I had with customers about pain points in their day-to-day work environment. Describe the process of launching your products.I started this company with just a couple thousand dollars, but I have been ultra-conservative in taking money out of the company. Our company has grown so fast, that we've needed every dollar to continue to expand operations, accounts receivables, inventory, acquisitions, and pay taxes. Basically, my mantra around here is to keep reinvesting in the business until we are broke. It is a bit frustrating to not see that huge bank account balance, but I feel the long-term play here to build something great and sustainable for decades to come. We are constantly launching new products and services. This year alone we've launched 10 new "major" products, services, or platforms for our customers. An example is that we are about to sell and market marine diagnostic tools on a whole new level. We previously had one listing on our website, and we've sold over $500,000 from that one product, and we knew nothing about marine diagnostics. This is our step-by-step playbook in how we decided to branch out to this industry. First, we hired someone to become our marine diagnostic tool expert. We purchased one of every marine diagnostic tool that existed, and sent him out to local boat repair shops to get permission to connect to engines and start learning. He is about 4 months into it now, and he created a great network of people assisting us. He does weekly reports, pictures, and videos that we send to our sales team and our technical support team. Secondly, we will want to market marine diagnostic tools. Our company name of "Diesel Laptops" doesn't make sense in the marine world, so we purchased MarineDiagnosticTools.com, and had our web designer start creating a new website. This means we had to come up with a color scheme, logo, product photos & descriptions, blog posts, videos, and everything else needed. It's a large project, so this it taking a couple months to get it to where we want it. So now is where the marketing comes in. We've learned about the product and we created a great website, but now we need to get the word out. The first thing we did was outsource some data entry people from UpWork. We literally had them go do Google searches by US State to find and document every possible marine repair facility in the country. They documented the company name, physical address, phone number, and email address if they could find one. We now have a directory of over 30,000 marine repair facilities in the USA. We will use this data to send postcards, mailers, and have our sales people make phone calls so they will be introduced to our solutions. In conjunction with the launch, we will be doing paid search across Google, Bing/Yahoo, FaceBook, and YouTube. In our case, customers don't know or realize that there are diagnostic tool options for the marine industry, so it is all about making that impression to the customer that there are solutions to their problems. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Diesel Laptops started as an online only company, and we still have a strong presence online. Backlinks I've devoted a lot of time to obtaining good, high quality backlinks from companies in our space. This includes vendors, customers, business organizations, directory services, and much more. When starting out, my goal was to get one additional high quality backlink each week. Today, if you do Internet search for terms such as "diesel diagnostic tool" or "heavy truck scanner" you will see that our website pops up organically on page 1, even though our website looks horrible. Obtaining relevant backlinks should be a priority for every business owner that wants an online presence. Don't worry if they are "do-follow" or "no follow", you shouldn't be building backlinks for just SEO, you should also be building them to get people to your page! My advice on backlinks would be to get your Google My Business first, then open up on whatever social media platform fits your demographic. In our case, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube do well for us. Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and others not so much. Everytime we launch a new product, service, or new software version we always send a press release to every relevant media outlet in our industry and also local. Sometimes we get picked up, sometimes we don't, but we always send it. We also signed up with our local Chamber of Commerce (backlink!), signed up for free on Manta.com, and various other business websites. A link back from one of our customers. From there, we went to every one of our vendors that we purchase from and asked for a link back to our website. I also became active on various forums and Facebook groups, and I always try to offer great advice without promoting my own company. The only time I typically place links back to our websites is if someone is specifically looking for a tool or software program that we sell and support. I've also done a couple "blog swaps" with other companies in our industry, when it makes good business sense. Currently we have around 300 high quality backlinks, and roughly 50% of them are industry specific to us. The other 50% is a combination of media organizations, social media, and everything else. Paid search Sample of our paid Google Search results We also do a lot of paid search advertising. We do this across Google Shopping, Google AdWords, Bing/Yahoo, YouTube, and FaceBook. We will easily spend over $1 million this year on paid search alone. Currently our customer acquisition rate is around $50 for a high quality lead looking to purchase a higher end diagnostic tool (Priced $6,000 and higher). eBay and Amazon Diesel Laptops was started on eBay, and used to be 100% of our sales around 4 years ago. Today we have more than doubled our eBay sales, but it is now less than 10% of our total revenue. We are also active on Amazon, which accounts for around 15% of our total sales. We are a bit picky on which items we place on which platforms. In our space, we are almost all business to business and selling tools that are $2,000 and more. Customers usually have questions regarding warranty, functionality, financing, return policy, customer service, and a ton more. While customers mainly find us online, they usually end up purchasing from us through a phone call. Email and social media We also are active as possible with doing weekly email campaigns (40k subscribers), FaceBook (17k+ likes), & YouTube (Over 4 million views). On LinkedIn, business pages don't do very well but I'm pretty active on their personally trying to grow my network and posting content a couple times per week. If you want to connect with me and keep following our story, connect with me on LinkedIn! We do post a little on Instagram and Twitter, but we don't feel our customer base is very strong on those platforms. Offline We are also very involved in the industry offline. We will do more than 30 trade shows this year, all related to the truck or diesel engine industry. These include national shows, regional, and even local ones. The expense of these add up pretty quickly, and it usually costs us around $10,000 to do a single show. That involves booth set up, employee time, registration costs, travel costs, and everything else. We've done a little bit of print advertising, and we just didn't see the ROI there. Part of our ability to retain customers is that we offer support and updates. So on our typical packages, customers will be receive updates & support for that first year. If they want to continue to receive those things, they need to purchase a support package. This gives us a revenue stream into the future, and also keeps the customer supported. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Today we continue to grow very fast. In July we passed our total sales from 2017, and we are constantly pushing hard to launch our new products, services, and platforms. I've been fortunate to be profitable through this process, but my role in the company has really changed a lot. It is difficult to "let go" of responsibilities and trust employees around me, but I have some really awesome, energetic employees that are helping us run at lightning speed. I'm now more focused on the longer-term goals and working on those projects. Long-term, I really want to change the truck repair industry. Today, it operates like it did 30 years ago. A technician diagnoses a truck, and then he needs a part to fix it. He has to call around to local suppliers or pass that job to someone else at the store. They may have to call several different stores, and probably try to cross-reference it to other manufacturers. I think we have a solution that will enable that technician to find the exact part he needs without making a single phone call, along with ordering it right from his phone or laptop. This solution would essentially save technicians and repair shops hours of wasted labor each day, and in that environment time is literally money. Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?I've probably made more bad decisions then good ones, but I always knew the risks. One of them was putting 100% of my focus on sales and marketing. As we grew, I knew we needed to button up our digital security. I had no firewall, no antivirus, no company password policies, and essentially no controls setup. Well, someone ended up hacking our Amazon Seller account and diverting a $40,000 Amazon deposit to their bank account. The other thing is that the saying "cash is king" is 100% correct. Keep an eye on your inventory levels, receivables, and every other area that you spend. Although we are growing fast and profitable, literally every penny goes right back into the company to keep funding it. The minute you start making some good money, a lot of people tend to pull it out. Then you find out your growing company doesn't have enough money to pay employees, taxes, or more inventory. Our cash position is a daily topic of conversation, and we focus heavily on managing that. Since I've started this company, we've had tremendous growth. When I "quit" my full time job to focus on growing Diesel Laptops, I was already doing around $1.2 million in annual sales. In my first full year of business in 2015 we did $3.5 million in sales. In 2016 this grew to almost $8 million, and in 2017 we got up to $16 million in sales. We aren't going to quite double in sales this year for 2018, but we will be very close. The challenge now is that it is getting harder to move that sales number each month, but we have plenty of new products and services in the pipeline to keep pushing it. The majority of our sales still take place over the phone, but they often start online. The less expensive, "commodity" items in our industry are used as sales leads. Every week we have a customer that starts with a $50 cable purchase, but ends up purchasing a $8,000 diagnostic tool once they realize what we offer. In our business, if we can save our clients time, money, or both it is an easy decision on the customers part to purchase. What platform/tools do you use for your business?We use a ton of SaaS tools, as we have employees spread throughout the USA. For collaboration, we use Slack, Trello, Zapier, OneDrive, and Dropbox. We are still using QuickBooks Online for our accounting, and it is a major pain point. We will be switching here in early 2019 to a new ERP. We ended up building our own web-based platform for managing our customer's information such as which software license they purchased, and when it expires. We also use it to track all of our laptops that we refurbish for our customers. Another great service is 71lbs. If you do any shipping with FedEx or UPS, look them up. They save me around $12,000 a year and it requires no extra work. For our CRM we use PipeDrive, but we will hopefully be switching to SalesForce in 2019. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?I've read a ton of business books over the years, along with listening to a bunch of podcasts. More than anything, I felt like the 15 years of my life previous this adventure was a paid internship. I made millions for other people, but I was constantly learning and trying new things through the process. Without that experience, I don't know if I could do what I've already accomplished. The other big influence was my father and family business. Conversations at our dinner table growing up were about business, so a lot of that followed me through life. I still will have frequent conversations with him when I have big decisions to make to hear what he thinks about it. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?I've seen some things through the years. The first one is that your product or service doesn't need to be perfect. I've seen it more then once where someone is constantly re-designing and re-creating, just to get it to the point of "perfection". I'm more of the mindset to get it to a working state, and start putting it out there and seeing what the public has to say about it. Another one that I get asked about all the time is finding investors or funding sources. In most cases, you don't need them and it is going to be a difficult road to finding one. If you have a product or service ready, just get it out there and start hustling to get customers. If you need money to create your product, figure out a way to get around that. Break it down into smaller chunks, and start bootstrapping it. Save every nickel you make and keep re-investing in it. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We've hired a new employee every 3 days or so in 2018, and we always have a ton of openings. While we do use Indeed and ZipRecruiter, we put all of our open job positions on http://jobs.diesellaptops.com. We have employees both locally and spread across the USA, so we always on the hunt for great talent! Where can we go to learn more?Our website, as horrible as it is, is located at www.DieselLaptops.com. Otherwise, I love hanging out on LinkedIn, so connect with me there! If you want to follow our company, here are some links:
Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos. [link] [comments]  |
| Entrepreneurs in here who currently make over 100,000 a year in income (Not revenue) What do you do? Posted: 20 Dec 2018 08:05 AM PST I thought this would be interesting as many people see 6 figure incomes as a sort of milestone -How many streams of income do you have? - What are they? -How many years or how long did your "Overnight Success" Take? [link] [comments]  |
| Helping out the local town, ideas welcome. Posted: 20 Dec 2018 01:19 PM PST I live in the middle of no where. My wife and I both work for the same company and we make pretty decent money but not everyone in this town has the same privileges as us. We are not financially rich by any means but we do make more each week than what we need and I do invest weekly and my 401K is growing at a decent rate. I've got funds setup for our kids' college. What I'm asking is what are some businesses that run with a few employees that I could help get started? I'm not looking to make a big profit but my aim with this is to start something that can help other people in the community get a steady pay check. We would cover all the costs, insurance, rent, utilities and so on along with the capital to get started for equipment and training for the employees and let the business be self efficient with all profits going back into the business or the local community. Breakdown; Community is below poverty, population is just at 2k. Most are at the peak of the bell curve when it comes to education but we have been working on changing that by helping out local schools out where we can. I've seen some real talent here but once they are able they leave to another larger town. I've lurked around this place for a while and if this isn't allowed here I'm sorry, most of my ideas that I can come up with only require 1-2 employees for the first couple of years and I'm looking for something along the lines of 10-20 employees within 5 years. I have a background in leadership, mainly with the IT and LEAN Manufacturing areas but I have contacts in all sorts of different fields that I could approach but nothing quite as diverse as Reddit so where else could I ask one question that would reach out to so many different people all over the world? Sorry for the long post, just worried about my local community that I grew up in. [link] [comments]  |
| Engagement Groups On Instagram. Are They Still A Viable Way To Grow? Posted: 20 Dec 2018 07:21 AM PST I have heard that they will get you shadow banned but I understand that they also help boost your post and get posts ranked easier. What is your take on it? Personal experience? [link] [comments]  |
| How do you find and contact suppliers? (esp. overseas suppliers.) Posted: 20 Dec 2018 10:53 AM PST This might be an embarrassingly basic noob question, but... is there some sort of service or forum or organization or directory or anything that makes it easier to track down and communicate with suppliers? I have what I think is a very strong idea for a product (retailing in the mid-hundreds to low thousands of dollars) that would be a simple modification and combination of some existing products. I think that I can get a little initial investment from my old man for prototyping and creation of promotional materials, generate enough grassroots interest to crowdfund, order the parts and then happily work 14 hour days to do the modifications myself and ship 'em out the door. I just need to figure out how to find and order those parts. I would not need any outsourced assembling or packaging services; I only need the parts. I might even order the same exact parts as my competitors (well, semi-competitors... no one is yet offering the exact product I have in mind), if I only knew where they bought theirs from. I haven't the slightest clue where to begin to find the original manufacturers, whom I suspect are going to be east asian companies. And then I have to negotiate the bulk order... are there services or middlemen that can assist in this process for a reasonable fee? Or DIY guides? I mean, all those guys on Kickstarter who talk about setting things up with their suppliers... how does that work? How are all the other small shop startups handling this? My apologies if that is a really obvious question, but Google is being shockingly unhelpful to me right now. [link] [comments]  |
| Player's Lounge Copyright Infringement Posted: 20 Dec 2018 02:21 PM PST So I am a big fan of Players' Lounge. If you aren't familiar it is an online platform where you can play people in various video games head-to-head for cash and prizes. I am just curious though, how does Players' Lounge avoid committing copyright infringement while offering a service that is based off games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 20 Dec 2018 02:07 PM PST |
| How do I sell mechanical seals? And to whom? Posted: 20 Dec 2018 01:54 PM PST Looking at buying a business. I am familiar with industrial and manufacturing environment, but not a ton of experience in mechanical seals. Please help. [link] [comments]  |
| Looking to help small business owners with their copy for FREE Posted: 20 Dec 2018 01:39 PM PST If you need copywriting for your website, email flyers, landing pages, blogs, articles, street signs, whatever else you may think of, I'm providing FREE samples and pieces custom made for you if you wish. Why free? Because if I'm going to be somebody in copywriting, I need to build credibility first of all. Some may take advantage or think this is stupid or spammy. I don't care. If you'd like help with converting more visitors and selling more to your current subscribers, let's talk a bit about your business and what your current goals are and how good copy can help you achieve them. What's in it for you: Free copywriting samples custom made, provided for you to you sell more or convert more, or perhaps another current goal you have. If you like it, feel free to use it. If not, you have nothing to lose. What's in it for me: Some groundwork to build credibility, network, copywriting practice, and additions to my portfolio. (If you end up liking my work, I'd love if you give me a short review, there's no obligation, however) Send me a PM or reply here to get the ball rolling. A little background about me:
I've seen these posts for web developers and graphic designers with no shaming or being against the rules. Hopefully I'm not breaking any in this sub. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 20 Dec 2018 01:38 PM PST Ok lol. I am rephrasing my last question that led to people calling me a creepy man. I didn't mean it like that haha. Has anyone COLD MESSAGED a business or business owner via FB or IG and have it NOT be totally cringeworthy? Did it end with a sale? Something that feels more organic and less salesy/creepy. Any feedback appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 20 Dec 2018 01:06 PM PST As you can see, I have some pretty ambitious plans. I will explain each one in depth so you can tell me your suggestions as to how I can accomplish these goals. First off, I want to build solar farms in the rural areas of the world. More preferably, the parts of the world that receive the most sun. Places that would be ideal (I am not saying these places receive the most sun; They're just ideal places) include western China, the Sahara Desert, deserts in Australia, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Mexico, and India. Now, I know I would need a lot of funding which I think would be possibly to receive. I know that solar farms exist and all, but building systems where there aren't any currently could attract funders. I would also like to make these farms better than the rest and make it so each can have high capacities of MW. The most in the world right now is 1,547 MW. I would aim for 2,500 at least on each farm. Keep in mind the solar industry is really just getting started and won't become huge until a few more years in the future. I predict we will see a big boom in solar sometime throughout 2025-2030. It will be like the technology boom but maybe not as big. I just know something is coming. That's my prediction though. Secondly, I mention lunar solar. Now, lunar solar is a very interesting concept. "Lunar Solar Power (LSP) arrays would receive higher energy density from sunlight than we get through Earth's atmosphere, avoid weather, and could beam energy to any part of Earth facing the moon." - Discover Magazine. So, basically putting solar panels in orbit and transmitting the energy back to earth by using either laser power or microwave power, solar panels in space could solve the problem of solar energy not working at night (and during rainy/cloudy days) and could produce extra power for here on earth. While it could be more costly and needs to be perfected, it could eventually work well and become practical. Also, putting solar panels on the Moon could work as well and supply much energy for earth. I mention rain energy as well in my title. I'm talking about kinetic rain energy. While according to Stanford it could only supply 25% of the USA's need at max, I still think making rain farms in highly rain prone parts of the world could work out. Once again, funding and perfecting a model for how rain could be harnessed would have to be perfected. On top of all this, I would like to use Perovskite solar cells if possible. The cells (from what I hear) would be more efficient and would be easier to manufacture. This is just from what I've heard. It could eventually be the future of solar cells. So, how could all this be accomplished? What are your thoughts on these ideas? [link] [comments]  |
| Where to create LLC given my situation? Posted: 20 Dec 2018 01:05 PM PST situation: current CA college student starting an e-commerce business (expected first-year revenue of 10-20k), will be starting full-time job next year in CA, so that would likely be my "base of operations", family is from IN and recommended I start it there, but based off what I've been reading that may make tax filing a pain. Questions:
Happy to supply other info if relevant to my question [link] [comments]  |
| Optimise your Instagram profile to attract followers you want to connect with! Posted: 20 Dec 2018 12:54 PM PST Hello all! Today I'm going to be going over some key points on how to optimize your Instagram profile to attract the followers you are trying to reach! Everything mentioned here is relevant for any niche and can be achieved regardless of your ability with Instagram! PROFILE OPTIMISATION. Before we go ahead and start optimizing our profile, we need to have a clear idea in our head of WHO we are optimizing the page for. By this I mean we need to make a few notes on our ideal follower. I would suggest just taking a few minutes and actually writing down some details including; age, gender, income, style of language, location, interests, what do they like to see, etc. Now that we know who we are optimising our profile for, we can go ahead and start changing things. Instagram Name (not your @) - Your Instagram name is searchable from the search bar, so we need to make sure this is optimised for our ideal follower. If you are a personal trainer in New York then you would want to write something like 'Nick - Personal Trainer New York'. This way when someone searches for personal trainers in NY, you will pop up! Bio - Your bio is how potential followers will be able to tell what your page is about, so we want to GRAB their attention and make sure they don't leave without following. I personally find that the bullet point format is the best way to format the bio. We want to explain WHO we are, WHAT we do, WHY we're unique, and finish with a CALL to action. Here's an example:
4.Story Highlights - Spending 5 minutes to make matching story highlight covers is one of the most worthwhile things you can do. It makes your profile that much more attractive to potential followers. It also shows you are being professional and take pride in the appearance of your profile.
I hope this helps some of you optimise your profiles and start attracting more followers that you want on your profile. I made a more detailed video outlining some of the thought processes to be aware of and some screenshot examples of story highlights, aesthetic content, profile picture etc. Feel free to check it out here: https://youtu.be/KLRyl-yAqCg [link] [comments]  |
| Why do we always compare our business with our competitors? Is it good or bad for business? Posted: 20 Dec 2018 12:16 PM PST I always seem to check out my competition to see if they have gained any more followers and/or clients. When I see that they do, I get worked up because I offer the same service they offer for free. I know that you should periodically check out your competition to see what they are offering, but I feel doing that has a negative impact on how I want my business to be ran. Does it have the same impact on you? Do you study other businesses in your industry? [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for guidance on my new independent consulting endeavor. Posted: 20 Dec 2018 11:26 AM PST I recently established my consulting firm. My goal is to work exclusively for myself within the next 8 or so years. In the meantime I want to cultivate experience working independently and engaging as an independent, boutique consultant. My primary challenge and source of anxiety around this endeavor has been trying to formulate a strategy for how I will handle pursuing opportunities, executing work and maintaining tip-top customer service along the way while also recognizing I work a 9-5 M-F. Interested in hearing feedback and other ways you all handle this challenge! [link] [comments]  |
| Where do I start for an Enterprise Application startup Posted: 20 Dec 2018 11:19 AM PST Now, let me begin this by saying that the book I have been following by Steve Blank suggests step by step growth. But I get a feeling that this approach is more suitable for consumer facing startups than for huge Enterprise Solutions endeavors. I have a pretty solid idea & I think that this idea if used can help Companies in saving millions in services that are outsourced in current age. However, my problem is "where exactly do I begin". My scope is pretty vast so very little chance of coding all this by myself. I definitely need a good team & people with skillset across various technologies. Problem is that if I follow the approach by Blank, then I won't be able to develope an industry standard application which I wish to develop. The solution that I want to develope needs huge initial investment which I can't commit to at the moment. However, I'm pretty sure about the success of this solution simply by looking at the market of the companies which provide this functionality as a service. So my questions are: 1. Am I being too concerned about the quality of software than focusing on developing a prototype in the beginning & following Blank's approach? 2. My analysis is correct and I need to run to investors with a solid business plan to get the investment and start buying this solution? Looking forward to suggestions/comments. [link] [comments]  |
| Tools for scheduling within email? Posted: 20 Dec 2018 11:09 AM PST I want to send an email with times that a client can click and automatically schedule a meeting with me on my gmail calendar. I know this exists, but I can't find it!! Anyone know off hand? thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Side Hustle turned into a Full-time gig, need advice on taking next step Posted: 20 Dec 2018 10:40 AM PST My wife and I run a wedding videography business that started as a side hustle to paid off debt (over $100k in student loans). In 2 1/2 years, we accomplished our goal but our business continues to grow. She went full-time last September and I'm close to leaving my contracted position as video editor to work FT for our business. Our issue (although a good one) is that we can no longer book weddings in 2019 since we have reached our limit of 25. After 25 weddings, it becomes a bit overwhelming managing couples. We take a limited number of weddings to ensure that we are able to give our full energy and attention to every film we create. In addition, I manage 3 rental units as well but that's a whole other post. Question for you all is: How should we take the next step? The inquiries continue to roll in but we have to turn them all down. Since booking 25 weddings, we must have received 150 inquiries that we had to decline. I know training someone seems like the obvious answer but I'm afraid this will take a lot of time and the person may run off and start their own business. Outsourcing could be an option but how do we explain to the couple we aren't the ones shooting/editing. We recently raised our rates in August but may need to do it again soon. Any advice is appreciated, thank you! [link] [comments]  |
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