Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (February 27, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (February 27, 2019)
- START TODAY IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT BUILDING SOMETHING AND MAKING MONEY
- Podcast about helping people figure out what jobs are out there in the world, what it takes to get those jobs, and what it is like to actually work in those jobs
- Sweet Baby Jesus This Is How You Find An Audience To Target On Facebook
- Building my first business by myself. Finally going to do it.
- Picking a name
- College Student Business Partner
- Lost Interest In Successful Business, What Now?
- Here's my unpopular advice on Social Media for your business.
- Help! I think my wife is holding herself back!
- I got into biz school for an MBA without an undergrad degree. Now I want to quit cause I feel like it’s wasting my time.
- Dashboard for investors? Basecamp?
- How to tell if it's your MVP or your idea that sucks
- How much would you pay for an online program, "go from 100k to 150k in sales in 9 months"? My details below
- Monetizing a property rental management system
- Website Feedback
- Best slack and facebook groups
- Entrepreneurs that went to China for business, what did you wish you knew before going?
- Need genuine mentoring as I venture into the import/export business
- Instaram advice
- How do you start getting your business's first line of credit from a company when you have no other lines of credit?
- Supplement Manufacturing: Small Batch Tablet Manufacturing?
- If you don't create limitations on yourself, you'll never have true freedom. And if you don't take care of yourself first, you won't be able to help, serve and add value to others.
- $36k/month selling backpacks to music festival-goers.
- I'm a college student who just made his first iOS app, what are some effective ways I can market this specific app for cheap?
| Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (February 27, 2019) Posted: 27 Feb 2019 05:13 AM PST Please use this thread to ask questions if you're new or even if you haven't started a business yet. Remember to search the sub first - the answers you need may be right at your fingertips. 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]  |
| START TODAY IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT BUILDING SOMETHING AND MAKING MONEY Posted: 27 Feb 2019 06:14 AM PST I know this might not be what you want to hear. Stop trying to drop ship. Stop trying to sell on amazon. Stop trying to sell digital marketing. Stop trying to sell t-shirts. STOP! Its highly competitive and a race to the bottom. We have a booming service economy. Nobody wants to get out and work. Everyone wants to sit behind a computer. IF YOU ARE WILLING TO SWEAT YOU WILL WIN. Start small. Start today. Its a 3 year plan. Buy web hosting for $1.99 per month. Build a website for free on wordpress. Get a google my business location. Answer the phone every time with eager professionalism. THATS ALL IT TAKES TO BE IN THE TOP 10% OF COMPANIES OUT THERE MAKING A KILLING RIGHT NOW Sorry to link offsite but here is a list of the basic tools you can use to get started on the cheap. Lets start with home services:
The competition is weak. The market is growing. The costs and risks are low. The odds are good. You can analyze the market and make accurate decisions on where to enter. You can win. Start small. Start low skilled and low risk if you don't have any capital or experience. As the opportunities grow and you get momentum your business can evolve. If you have capital and are willing to invest the time and money you can find very profitable niche services. The more specialized you can get the better the margins and the better the chances of success. These are not commodities. You can always add more value and avoid competing on price and racing to the bottom. There will always be customers willing to pay a premium for better and faster services. The biggest gap in most of these industries is speed. Service providers are overloaded so they are booked out 1-2 weeks. They have more business than they can handle. If you can deliver a consistent service tomorrow you can charge 50%-100% more. If you have a tech background or can apply basic tech you have a huge competitive advantage in these spaces. The companies that currently dominate don't have the tech to get you quick quotes. They don't have the tech to manage employees or schedules or billing. Feel free to hang out with us over in r/sweatystartup if you are interested in service based entrepreneurship. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2019 06:57 AM PST I never knew for sure what I wanted to after high school and I could never find anything more than just a google search or a quiz thing online. That's where the idea of this podcast stems from. Occupation Nation is a podcast I have started to help people listen in on what it means to actually have a certain occupation and help them figure out if that is something that sounds interesting to them. I know a bunch of people who do not know what they want to do as a career and I want this podcast to help them maybe hear something that interests them and investigate more. Any feedback on the podcast would be greatly appreciated no matter what it is! And would also love to interview any entrepreneurs about their careers! Let me know below what you all think and if you would like to come on the show! Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/occupation-nation/id1449539222?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oNoEQkICUeRMXLxgsIgdf?si=S4B6lcTQRuezg-_ZBLQm0A Website: onationpodcast.com [link] [comments]  |
| Sweet Baby Jesus This Is How You Find An Audience To Target On Facebook Posted: 26 Feb 2019 05:07 PM PST I originally intended to write this as a response to this post https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/av4eqe/how_should_i_be_spending_my_time/ And thought. 7FM. Bro? What can YOU do for your Country? You've taken so much. It's time to give! This is it. I'm tossing this advice out into the wild and I'm using everyone's favorite, polarizing topic - religion! I'll show you in less than 2 minutes how anyone can find their ideal audience on Facebook even if (and especially if) you don't already have a FB page full of people that like you, AKA "An audience". Don't worry. You don't need it. You only need to know an interest. Any interest will do. As long as you know this interest relates to your audience, you good bruh. Ready? Let's do this, homies! First rule of Facebook Club? You need to be using Audience Insights in Facebook Business Manager if you really want to discover your ideal demographic. With this lovely tool you have access to aggregate stats on billions of people and how they relate to what they do on Facebook. We're not talking intimate details, or anything with personal info, but we are talking about Age/Sex/Location, Interests & Devices. Basically, all I need to know to get started! Speaking of, let's go! Just don't forget to actually be logged into FB because...well...um...that's kind of a requirement. On the initial popup click the box that says Everyone on Facebook, unless you already have a massive audience on a FB page you control. Which, if that's the case. Go away you're no fun. On the left-hand sidebar, under the Interests section type in Christian Music and hit enter. You want a nice, big audience to start with. You can use whatever you want, but this is a good interest to target when targeting Christians because if there's one thing I know about religious peeps, they love their music...and also the bible, so you can go ahead and target that instead if you like, I'm choosing to go the music route because it's more commercial in intent than the bible is. On the main page you'll see it refresh under the default Demographics tab and load up with pretty bar charts. Yay! Right away I know that 65% are female. I'm not even gonna mess with targeting males if I want to maximize my ROI. I might split test that 36% just to see, but my hopes will be low because the data tells me so. 52% of all people that like Christian Music are married. Done. I'd throw in the 29% that are single as well into a different ad set and test that, too. They just aren't married yet, ya know? Now, skip on over to the Page Likes tab near the top of the main page. This is where the gold is, and no, I'm not willing to go in order and I'll omit any that I've seen multiple times in other unrelated searches (they can't all like Mint Julep Boutique!)
and on and on. The lower down on the list, the less relevant as a whole it is. These are the pages that are most liked as an aggregate, and now, you don't just have to target Christian Music, you can target married females that like country music, or CMT or Paula Deen, .etc. Just so we're clear here, we're gathering these demographics to target later in our ad campaigns. So don't just look at them and say "wow, cool, so that's who they are and where they hang out!" - you have to actually use them in your ad targeting. Now let's go to the Location tab. Well, well. What do you know? The great state of Texas is home to BBQ, High School Football & a good percentage of our core audience! Cities like Dallas & San Antonio stand out as heavy hitters in this report. Do I trust it? Meh. It's a good baseline to work with. We can start there. I'm not saying ignore other cities, just make a special attempt to focus here or even regionally. NOTE: Up to you if you want to make Texas specific ads or not, that's your call. (it would be more relevant and would lead to higher CTR in most cases. The tradeoff is that they're more labor intensive to create) I wouldn't say treat Location with a grain of salt, however, I will say that it's best not to ignore certain locations just because they're not on this list. Maybe NYC isn't home to a bunch of country music fans, but does that mean there aren't millions of Christians? Probably not. Just because the results skew South doesn't mean you should ignore the other directions on the compass. OK. Let's go to the final tab, Activity. As you can probably guess, the world is mobile. They went mobile years ago and never looked back. So, don't be surprised that 64% of your entire audience is mobile! NOTE: If you don't have a mobile-responsive website and funnel that's on you. You've been warned. Now, let's check those device splits! Ah, yes. Nearly 50/50 iOS & Android. Figures. Well, here's a little tip from your boy 7FM. You need to split-test both of those OS's, because they don't perform the same and they never will. I see dramatically different results when targeting one OS over another and it really varies from product to product. I've found that free products, free signups, free anything will get that Android crowd going. If it requires paying for something, iOS typically wins out. Without going into crazy conspiracy theories, Android devices are cheaper. People who own Android devices (as an aggregate) have less money. I'm not talking about feature devices like Galaxy's, Note's and Pixels. I'm talking mass-market Android phones that you impulse buy for your entire family at Walmart. Android users get a lot of apps for free and as a whole, typically don't have the purchasing power, nor intent of iOS users. iOS users have a 2x higher AOV than Android users, and it's technically closer to 3x. Wait...I just said phones. What about tablets? "Lord, please tell me he didn't forget about the almighty tablet!" you say. Ahhhh, man I don't want to give too much away here but PAID PLATFORM Tablet users in almost every case are dead money. Your gameshow network loving grandmother uses it to play Scrabble online and mass-click ads that get in her way. Test it, try it, absolutely never take my word for it; but, just know I told you so ;) There you have it. You've found your demographic like a boss and all you had to do was know one interest that your desired demographic might have. Quick Tip: When you're done with this try it again for a different interest and see if you can cross match. You want to find the overlapping results to know you really hit it. [link] [comments]  |
| Building my first business by myself. Finally going to do it. Posted: 27 Feb 2019 09:24 AM PST I am going to start my own cleaning company (follow my dads footsteps) and prove to myself that I can do it. I know it's not "sexy" but right now just looking for experience, and if I do it right, more income. I am 23 years old, always worked in sales and did pretty good at it, but building a business is a whole new adventure I want to try. Unfortunately my dad passed away 2 months ago and left us with nothing, but I saw how much of a great business person he was. So my family and I are basically "broke" which is why I am determined to grow this business to where I want it to be, to a point. To get over my grief and emotional struggles right now I want to set on a big project: building a business. But as a newbie, i would like some of you guys to help me and see if my plan is "good"! I live in Utah and I noticed that the market isn't as competitive because no one wants to do it. But as I went around and talked to project managers or business managers they told me they do their own cleaning. But as someone that does sales sometimes there is ways around it. My Plan: Build a proposal (to show what we do), build a website (free?), and presentation Call/Personally talk to managers/project managers 5-10 places. Not limit myself with small businesses around my area but schools, constructions, clinics, restaurants? I read that the best way is through real estate? Anyone experience that route? For first 3 months have me, my mom, my sister, and someone else that I know who is great at cleaning as a team (until I build more income) Expand my services (look at local competition and see what we services we can provide better) I have a business license, but what other licenses and insurance do I need? Learning doing invoices, track of time while working, supervising. Honestly the getting contracts part is the hardest part i've noticed but then again, haven't knocked on enough doors yet. What other advice do you have for me? I am willing to do and learn anything at this point. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2019 10:52 AM PST Starting a business in the service industry (specialized pest control) and wanted some info on how to pick a name. How did others in this industry pick a professional sounding name? [link] [comments]  |
| College Student Business Partner Posted: 27 Feb 2019 01:20 PM PST Hello All, I am a current junior in college and I am extremely interested in owning my own business. I have a few ideas but all of these ideas rely on technical knowledge which I lack. I do however have Silicon Valley fundraising connections along with experience in a business startup incubator. I would love to chat with anyone who is serious about starting a business. I am open to anything! [link] [comments]  |
| Lost Interest In Successful Business, What Now? Posted: 27 Feb 2019 06:13 AM PST Hi Everyone, A few years ago I left my 8-5 and started a business. One of my life goals out of school was to eventually find a way to run my own thing. After several years I took the jump and after clawing my way up I now have a successful business. Great, right? Well, as great as it is working for myself and having built the reputation I needed in the marketplace I've almost completely lost interest in the work I do. I've come to realize that what drives me is the challenge of succeeding (and excelling) at something I haven't done before, not money or autonomy as I had thought. So I'm looking for ways to branch out into new endeavors. I hadn't thought much past this point when I was younger - the dream and challenge was always getting to a point where I could start my own business and have it succeed. Now that I am at that point as I define it I find I want a new challenge. The business I am in is one of technical expertise, and not scalable beyond where I am now. So my question to this community, once you find yourself successful how do you discover a new challenge to take on? Any advice or recommendations? [link] [comments]  |
| Here's my unpopular advice on Social Media for your business. Posted: 27 Feb 2019 10:42 AM PST I'm going to recommend something a bit unpopular. Spend less time on Social Media. I see a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs who spends 99% of their time on their "content strategy". These are the people who post lengthy video updates daily, who always have a once or twice daily Instagram post, or you've even seen them trying to write lengthy "story-posts" (aka please hire me posts) with the perfect copy. Maybe you've even seen them on this subreddit, where they tell the long story about how they went from a total loser to now raking in the big bucks, with a convenient link to their services at the bottom of their post. Maybe you're even one of these people. Let me be clear I have zero issue with Social Media -- I recognize that it's great for conversion and I'm not denying that. But if you're doing these things and not seeing results, the answer isn't to "just do more". The answer is to slow down and solve the real dysfunctions in your business. Three things that every prospective customer cares about:
I've found that when a customer doesn't go with you, it's a dysfunction in one of these three areas. What you need is to solve these problems here… You don't need 5 different posts a day, a new podcast, a new E-Book, or your free .pdf on the 5 steps you wish you knew when you started. Don't be this person. Social Media can and does work… when you have your foundation straight. To give credit where it's due, my version on something said by u/sweatystartup, "the following comes after the success. Don't get it backwards." I'm not a marketing guru by any means, nor am I a mega-millionaire or a super successful person. But as someone in a highly competitive field (coaching), I did 250k in sales last year without a single social media post. Zero. When you offer something of real value… people notice. All that to say, keep your priorities straight, and build your foundation from the ground up. Good luck everyone! [link] [comments]  |
| Help! I think my wife is holding herself back! Posted: 27 Feb 2019 01:39 PM PST Idk if this is the correct sub. My apologies if it isn't. I just need some advice. If you know of somewhere else that is more appropriate please let me know!! Last summer my wife left her job doing digital marketing in-house at a law firm so she could start her own business. She has done two free websites, had one client she worked nearly for free with, and taught an Instagram class to a hair salon for very little. She has one reoccurring client for a interior design firm, she does SEO and makes minor changes to the website. IMO (although an admittedly limited one), she isn't charging that firm enough. Like at all. She is considering just getting another job somewhere because she wants more money. She claims that she doesn't know enough about SEO to do it yet and needs to lean more. She says bc she is spending so much time learning SEO that she doesn't have time for another client running other types of campaigns she has a ton of experience with. However, even before she started SEO stuff she was not putting much time into getting more clients. Should I just back off? Should I encourage her to shift to getting more clients doing what she already knows instead of learning more SEO? How would I even go about talking to her about it? The SEO she has done has taken that client from no leads to 10-15 in the span of 4-5 months- is that even good? I have no idea. Is her assessment wrong or is mine? Idk, maybe she doesn't know enough and I'm being unreasonable. I don't know what to think. I'm trying to be as supportive as possible. I'm working and am in school. Things are tight money wise, just like many new business owners. I want to be patient if that's the right thing. I can't tell if I'm being unfair and am just getting nervous bc of money. She generally takes too long to take action (her words) and get bogged down in details. I'm worried this is the case. Please help me gain some perspective. Idk what I'm doing and I just want her to do what she ultimately wants in her life- be free. I know I have my own biases and motivations and I want to check them. TL;DR I think my wife should get more clients, but she doesn't. What should I do, if at all?? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2019 12:49 PM PST This might be a little long so I'll enter a TLDR at the bottom: As the title states, I was able to get accepted into a fairly decent graduate program (Top 50, not top 20) to pursue a MBA. I have no undergrad degree. Not even an associates. Yes this is possible. If you want to know how that can be a different post but probably doesn't belong in this subreddit. Anyways, I went to community college for a few months after high school but dropped out to join the working world. I've worked in sales for the last ten years since.. Still do work a full 9-5pm and then on top of that go to school two nights a week from 6-10pm. I've always had the entrepreneurial bug and have always had some type of side hustle going on. My dream has always been and still is to be self employed and own my own successful company. I also would love to become involved in Non Profit management, such as a community development manager or fundraising manager. I'm someone who likes to stay busy and I like the idea of multiple streams of income. This is where I thought the MBA might come in handy. Last spring, before I discovered the possibility that it was even possible to get into an MBA program without an undergrad (I had to bite my tongue when I argued with my husband that it was in no way possible to do so) I had started working on an e-commerce business that I honestly was really excited about. I think it has the most potential out of all of my "side hustles" to be something that I could scale and eventually be my full time job (and hopefully more). Getting accepted into the grad school kinda put launching the business on hold. That wasn't the plan at first, although I knew it would probably slow down, but I wanted to continue to work on it while also going to school 8 hours a week AND working 40-50 hours a week and then doing homework for 10-20 hours a week. I think I bit off more than I can chew. 😅 I could handle it all if I was just working my day job and going to school and had no other dreams and desires.. but now I feel like I'm dying a slow painful expensive death when I'm not able to have enough time to work on what I feel is my "real thing". The classes actually have been educational and this particular program takes a non traditional approach to business and I think is actually useful... also, since I do not have any other degree and can earn a masters in two years while working full time still... I'm just thinking it's kind of silly for me to quit that right? Especially when I'm 6 months in and $30k deep already? 😓 I guess I'm thinking, what if I never truly get a business off the ground and I'm stuck working in a sales job I hate for the rest of my life? Kicking myself that I had the perfect opportunity to at least have a masters to get some cush management job. Honestly tho, the thought of working for "the man" the rest of my life is depressing (even in management). I've caught the bug again the last few weeks to work hard on my website and launch it soon. I have a really good feeling about this and have done a lot of research. It is a competitive market .. and while I'm not reinventing the wheel I'm definitely coming at it with a completely different angle then I have seen and to a very niche market. I do believe I need to put some serious hours into gorilla marketing to get it going.. which I am totally willing, able, and ready to do. If I just don't know if I can keep my grades up to graduate and also have the time to do so.. So my question is this: would you quit the MBA program and just focus on spending all your time outside your 9-5 on your start up business? Or stick it out and finish the MBA program (I graduate summer 2020) while scraping together the little free time I have to slowly launch in the mean time. TLDR: 6 Months into 2 Year MBA program that I got into without an undergrad. Trying to launch a business at the same time and work 9-5. Should I quit the MBA to focus on my business? Or stick it out till next summer so I at least have a masters degree to fall back on the rest of my life. [link] [comments]  |
| Dashboard for investors? Basecamp? Posted: 27 Feb 2019 12:47 PM PST We're lucky enough to get our first angel investor in our SaaS business. I'd like to proactively provide transparency: finances, current activities, challenges, plans. The best off-the-shelf solution I know about is Basecamp. I've used it to communicate with clients in several scenarios. But I'm also contemplating coding it myself (ugh), pulling data from e.g. GitHub via APIs. Anyone have something they like? [link] [comments]  |
| How to tell if it's your MVP or your idea that sucks Posted: 27 Feb 2019 12:29 PM PST When I build an MVP for a project, and it isn't generating much interest, I often assume that my MVP just sucks. It's ugly/incomplete/broken, and I feel like this is driving people away even if it theoretically provides value. Conventional wisdom says I just need to build it enough to provide that value, but I have a hard time believing that. I see something horrible that I've made and I just know people would like it more if it were better polished. Does anyone else have this problem? And how do you deal with it? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2019 12:28 PM PST I'm currently a leader in small business operations, having helped turn around over 20 small businesses in the community. I've done this primarily through coaching, revamping operations and looking at their financial statements and providing solutions, and working one on one. As I sit down and gather my thoughts on the tools and material I've created over the past 5 years, I'd love to put that in an eBook, and better yet, into a $499 weekend course that provides entrepreneurs with the tools to break through an invisible ceiling of their own mind and market. No motivational fluff, but actual MBA lessons condensed and applied to your specific business. The $499 course would include 15 hours of video material with plenty downloadable worksheets. It would include a 3 hour one on one private consultation with me, over the course of a month if needed. One big question I ask myself... How do I differentiate to compete against professors who've been doing this on Udemy for years, especially with a $499 (or $49/month for a year) price tag? [link] [comments]  |
| Monetizing a property rental management system Posted: 27 Feb 2019 12:19 PM PST Where I come from, there has been abuse by landlords not being transparent with tenants in terms of property costs, like utility and cleaning bills, and what not. Additionally there has been other abuse like sudden contract terminations because a landlord found a higher bidder etc. So recently, the government is enforcing some minimum contract lease period, and bills should be transparent by giving receipt to the tenants, etc. I was thinking of building a SaaS that keeps an audit of what does on between a landlord and the tenant, including photos of before and after of property in case of damage, log of rental paid, utility bills paid, including photos, etc. However I have trouble of monetizing the system, since I cannot foresee neither the landlord not the tenant to fork money to use the system. Can someone give me some advice? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2019 11:59 AM PST Wanted some feedback on my current website. My business is pretty straight forward so the website is pretty lean. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Best slack and facebook groups Posted: 27 Feb 2019 10:17 AM PST What are the best slack and facebook groups you're all a part of? [link] [comments]  |
| Entrepreneurs that went to China for business, what did you wish you knew before going? Posted: 27 Feb 2019 09:48 AM PST I'm going on my first trip. Visiting a few factories with product ideas I have. More experienced importers... what did you wish you knew before going to China to visit suppliers? [link] [comments]  |
| Need genuine mentoring as I venture into the import/export business Posted: 27 Feb 2019 06:00 AM PST I really want to get into the import export business but am finding it is definitely a field that is hard to get a grasp of. Looking for someone that can actually help me figure it out without trying to to do shady things behind the scene. I mainly want to import from central/South America into the states and have been successful in connecting with some great leads but want to make sure I know my way around the process before pulling the trigger Any veterans willing to point me in the right direction? Kindly pm me if you are willing to help, thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2019 09:42 AM PST I have a family member that runs a popular Instagram page (he Photoshops photos) with over 150k followers, but he doesn't do anything to monetize it. Are there any resources anyone could recommend to help make the most of this popularity? I was thinking of things like selling canvas prints, t-shirts etc but wasn't sure of the best medium for this. Maybe opening and Etsy shop and linking to it from new posts? It seems a waste that he's had all these followers who clearly love his work for a couple of years, but he still doesn't make any money. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2019 09:26 AM PST Every company wants credit references, seems like a catch 22. It's not like I can give them the main number to AMEX. Do you basically get on the phone and plead with them for something small? [link] [comments]  |
| Supplement Manufacturing: Small Batch Tablet Manufacturing? Posted: 27 Feb 2019 09:22 AM PST Hi entrepreneur community - I figure this is the best place to ask this question. Recently, my partner and I created a propriety formula for a niche supplement market, a flashy brand, and created a national sales force (I have an extensive sales background so once I had the idea down it wasn't hard). Now, we have to get this made. Does anyone on here recommend a solid CGMP certified manufacturer on the east coast who would do small batch tablet manufacturing? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2019 09:16 AM PST |
| $36k/month selling backpacks to music festival-goers. Posted: 27 Feb 2019 09:15 AM PST Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Tom Worcester of Lunchbox, a brand that sells anti-theft festival hydration pack. Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?I'm Tom Worcester, founder of Lunchbox, the first anti-theft festival hydration pack and the last festival bag you'll ever need. After conducting hundreds of interviews on a hunch that there was an underserved market, my team and I identified the top issues facing festival attendances - , theft (in the form of pickpockets), security bag restrictions, and time-consuming water lines. With these issues in mind, the Lunchbox was born. To address theft, Lunchbox's inward facing anti-theft zipper system is specialized to prevent against outside access & pickpockets. This means that the main access points are located against your back versus the standard outward facing zippers. The bag is also constructed out of a coated ballistic nylon, making it next to impossible for thieves to slice it open to steal its contents. Furthermore, Lunchbox's EasyFill hydration method allows you to refill your bag 3 times faster than standard hydration packs. The bladder compartment is also fully insulated, keeping your water cooler for longer. We founded Lunchbox in April of 2018 and launched our Kickstarter in December of 2018. We recently concluded our Kickstarter on January 15, 2019, exceeding our funding goal by 170%. With the business generating revenue as of December, we're now operating at $36k in monthly revenue and climbing quickly. What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?While I didn't know it then, the idea behind Lunchbox started when I was four years old. As a kid I lost 70% of my hearing due to a pre-existing condition and an unfortunate accident with the kitchen table. Growing up, song lyrics and high-frequency sounds were almost impossible to detect. However it was at Ultra Music Festival in 2013, my first music festival, when I first felt the vibrations of the heavy bass, reverberating off of the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami - the ultimate low-frequency sound (which I could hear!). Not only was I able to finally hear the music, I could truly feel it. While certainly life-changing, Ultra Music Festival was also eye-opening. At Ultra Miami 2018, long water lines forced me to miss the act I was most excited to see, security took my bag at the gate for being questionably oversized, and pickpockets targeted many of my friends, putting a damper on the whole event. Inspired by these unfortunate events, I made it my mission to provide a solution to these top festival issues. Within a week, I began to research, conceptualize, and engineer what would eventually become Lunchbox. We interviewed hundreds of people to fully understand how they experience festivals. We asked questions about how they think about theft, water lines, and everything in between when at an event. We went through prototype after prototype, never truly satisfied in our relentless pursuit of a perfect product. We worked with the same design team that previously handled the Burton Ski&Snowboard line release, and visited factories all over the world to discover the best partners to bring this dream to life. Lunchbox may have been born in April 2018, but it really came to life in November when we held our first ever factory prototypes from Vietnam. Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.I designed and tested prototype after prototype of the Lunchbox using a three-stage method we internally call Test, Iterate, and Kill or Live. Using the results of our interviews from festival attendees, we took all the proposed ideas and chose the most essential to create a theoretical Lunchbox. Then we tested new features out on different prototypes, going back to the market over and over for to get user feedback on what they liked and were interested in, all before deciding whether we would kill the feature or it would live onto the next prototype. In addition to on the ground testing, we researched macro industry trends to be as nuanced and focused as possible in the design of our product. The first 'manufacturers' were barely that. I found an old Italian guy to help me cut the first samples out of a cheap canvas, with rough outlines of a side fill and inverted zippers. We went through three rounds of prototyping to quickly discover which features were practical (zip-on skins) and which were not (a solar panel nested in the top of the fabric). The total cost of those three prototypes, in addition to material discovery and breakdown of other product samples, came out to around $4K. We then cut our fourth round of prototypes in time for Firefly, where we walked around the campsite to get feedback. People loved the idea, but hated some aspects (how the straps fit, how the back bounced off the skin, the rough material). It gave us something to use, but it took a week to recover from the chafing of that rough prototype material! It was time to really level up - so we hired a CAD (computer aided design) designer to mock up the entire bag in tech pack format (the format readable by manufacturers), and worked to really iron out what worked and what wouldn't. Cost of 4th round and CAD Designs? $3.5k. Even pretty far along I still wasn't happy with where we were. After months of searching, over 50 interviews with production teams all over the world, and countless phone calls, I finally found the design team of my dreams - a small studio that had just broken away from one of the best bag design firms in the United States. They were expensive, but I knew exactly what I needed. Sure enough, they revised the computer designs, connected me to a trusted partner overseas, and we started sampling back and forth. Cost: $10-20K We went through SIX rounds of prototyping with our factory, with our design team in the middle of the process, before reaching the final product for sale today. Factories generally pay for samples themselves so we avoided expensive costs along the way; factories recoup cost in inventory production. A quick note on legal...our trademarks cost less than $2K, our initial provisional patent filings (which I wrote myself over an insane three day weekend sprint in July) were less than $1K, and converting those provisionals is estimated to cost around $10-15K (most of which has already been incurred). Takeaway? Get to a point of learning as quickly as possible. The early prototypes looked terrible , but the whole point was learning - learning whether a feature, idea, or concept worked or not to quickly move on. Describe the process of launching the business.In the beginning, our website was mostly just a way to build up an email list. I created and edited a video in the style of festival recap videos that lived on our home page as well as a subscribe function. We also started our Instagram, which at the time was mostly festival related memes to build an online following. Neither had much information about the product, but we wanted momentum before our final prototype was ready to go. We started by bringing our prototypes to events and started a viral referral campaign to generate excitement from as close to inception as possible. Our initial funding came from a very successful first Kickstarter campaign -- we managed to raise 170% of our funding goal in a little over a month. While in many ways the launch of our Kickstarter was just one step in a long series of steps to make this product and company a reality, it was our first opportunity to show our consumers our product and hear feedback from the community. The response was incredibly enthusiastic, and that momentum we built up early on has just continued to grow. Even after our Kickstarter closed and we waited to direct customers to our pre-order site as we set it up, multiple orders continued to come in every day as our exposure grew through press and social media. Our pre-order site is now up and running and receiving tons of traffic every day! I think some of the biggest lessons learned from the starting and launching process were that it's important to make sure to take the time to really build the foundation of your company before you share it with the world. Make sure you have the product in an iteration you are proud of, make sure you have all the legal protections you can. But most importantly make sure you have a team of people around you that you trust, that are good at their jobs, and that love and believe in your company as much as you do. The startup world moves incredibly fast. Every day is do or die. When it comes to motivation there's no substitute for passion, so you better build a team passionate about the product you guys are creating. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Right now we're selling direct to consumer. We sell reserved pre-order spots on our website (going really fast), and we have feet on the ground at all of the relevant industry events and festivals. We also have driven an immense amount of traffic through social media and customer email lists. Our authentic and genuine communication with our community and audience is also one of our biggest drivers in sales. For us, that means being active members of the same community we're releasing products too, which might mean sharing our favorite music, organizing meetups at our favorite festivals, or recommending other brands that might complete that outfit you've been working on. We emphasize the important of customer service and actively ask the community for feedback. We communicate one on one with people over social media, we have guerilla marketing campaigns ready to be deployed on the ground at festivals, and we really emphasize making our customers feel like part of our family and our journey. Channel Wise - We focused on email, social, paid social, one-to-one, press partnerships, and PR. We began to accumulate an email list with "we're launching soon" landing pages, engagement on online forums, and activating at two events before launch with "Lunchbox from Mom" flyers in the basket of festival attendees. Email was crucial to reaching our first $10K in sales for our Kickstarter. Social Even when we had no content, we posted festival content that was engaging for the Explore page on IG, before deleting it and replacing it with countdown content. Towards and through launch, we drove traffic to our #linkinbio and engaged with our biggest supporters so they knew how festival-family oriented we are. We still put social media engagement at the top of our list. Paid Social Our dirty little secret? We only ran paid social for the last 5 days of the campaign, because our email and social component was so strong. When we did run paid social, we advertised the campaign ending soon with enough existing social proof where we knew it would convert (reaching a 2X ROAS on a 5-day basis), and testing out how paid social will operate for us later down the road. Press partnerships We earned a significant amount of media by virtue of authenticity. We aren't selling a product as much as we are championing a new solution to some real problems. When you attack real problems with a passionate, authentic team, you earn a significant amount of press from people who rally behind that story. We're extremely fortunate to have been in touch with some incredible groups with similar missions, including MixMag, TrendHunter, ThatDROP, and many others that told our product story. Long story short - paid digital will work with the right audience and right product , but it's a crutch. If you're solving real problems and can't put a pre-order list together, you've got a bigger issue with your product at large. Our entire product will be closed-loop: no wholesale, no Amazon (no data control over customer profile), and no lossy funnel. Our customers want a Lunchbox-quality guarantee, and we'll maintain that relentlessly. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?We just completed our Kickstarter and are in the pre-order & rollout phase. We're focusing on direct-to-consumer through our site and boots on the ground at festivals and shows. Full product rollout will begin in May 2019. Short term our main focus is infiltrating this market, spreading the word, and showing consumers why the Lunchbox is the last festival bag they'll ever need. It's not a hard pitch - it's true. In the long term, we see so many more vertical markets the Lunchbox has viability in, including travel, outdoor activities, and other live events. Our product margins average out to between 65-70%, but our pre-order margins are far below that as we're mainly trying to deploy product into the marketplace. Everything will be sold via our online store or our partner vendor booths on site. Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?The #1 skill it takes to be an entrepreneur is being resourceful. The second? Being insane enough to do whatever it takes. There's a certain underlying level of crazy that all entrepreneurs possess. You have to be willing to take the leap knowing anything can happen and you only have control over a small percentage of the outcome. Constantly be analyzing and re-analyzing how to make your product or business better, how viable it is in the market, and how you are spending your time. Make sure no matter what you are doing you are learning, you are growing your network, and you are gaining skills to make you a more effective and competent entrepreneur. What platform/tools do you use for your business?Shopify for eCommerce. Find a third party logistics (3PL) supplier you trust for fulfillment - I've used Sweetwater Logistics in the past. We've used MailChimp for email, Zapier for workflow automation, Airtable for CRM building, NeoReach to find influencers, Flume for cross-team Instagram activity, UpWork for outsourcing (my #1 secret weapon), Trello to assign tasks, and Google Suite for organization and documents. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?I read a book every two weeks, but a few standouts are* *Zero to One, Shoe Dog, and Lean Startup are all books that have informed my journey and given me a new perspective on entrepreneurship. I'm constantly striving to go deeper into different contexts, so that list is always growing. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Get started. Fail fast. Learn faster. Have a vision. Be so passionate about your product that you can't sleep at night. Don't ever give in to your doubts. A lot of people are blind to what the market actually wants. That's the truth - the thing you hold most true above ALL else. Will someone pay for your product? Will they pull out a card and initiate checkout? Will they buy it off your back? Is the answer no, move on, or find a different customer. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?Lunchbox is built upon a culture-first mantra. We don't actively search to fill positions, but rather let the allure of the company and our team bring talented people to us. It's that sticky, because everything we do channels the passion of the industry we find ourselves in. Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below! Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 27 Feb 2019 08:48 AM PST App Description This app is a clipboard app for everything. You can save & organize photos, videos, gifs, websites, articles, social media posts, notes, music, dropbox files, and anything else you can think of. Basically the app is what you make it. If you're all about dogs you can fill it up with adorable dog photos and videos. If your all about shopping you can save clothing you find on apps and websites. You can also see what other users are saving on the app Currently Used Methods, the most effective was social media and app store advertising and they didnt get that many downloads. Putting stickers around my campus with the app on it Putting business cards around my campus with the app on it Social Media Advertising App Store Advertising Telling Friends & Family App and its website [link] [comments]  |
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