Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (March 22, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (March 22, 2019)
- I made an animated summary of "The $100 Startup" by Chris Guillebeau. I hope you can get some value from it.
- Where are you guys hiring programmers?
- I want to open an indoor drone park and I can't find an insurance company..?!
- Any working Instagram automation bots alive out there?
- Do I need a Resale Certificate for my online business?
- What's the best Country to found my Worldwide money making NGO?
- Does anyone have experience monetizing Facebook? I have a gaming page with 600,000+ followers and I'm trying to figure out if it's viable.
- What is the working day for a field salesperson?
- Selling videos
- Are information websites (blog/newspapers/journal) on a particular topic still worth doing?
- What do you look for in a personal assistant?
- Looking for criticism and feeback
- What is your best drop shipping method in the US?
- What’s in your creative toolkit?
- planning to launch a new line of shoes
- E-Commerce business in Laptop Stickers?
- Best solution for posting to multiple FB groups?
- Single Member LLC paying employees - Is this correct in handling tax plan
- $4,200/mo cuddling with people.
- What can I do with this land? (Part of it use to be for grapes for wine, and horse stable)
- [Entrepreneur advice] Odd jobs.
- An Idea for Product Names... How important is it?
- Moving your company to the United States
- 30 Day local SEO optimized service businesses--am I missing something?
| Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (March 22, 2019) Posted: 22 Mar 2019 06:14 AM PDT Please use this thread to share any accomplishment you care to gloat about, and some lessons learned. This is a weekly thread to encourage new members to participate, and post their accomplishments, as well as give the veterans an opportunity to inspire the up-and-comers. Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Mar 2019 07:07 AM PDT Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqa1LqahOLE Let me know if there are any other books you'd like to see summaries of. I've done summaries of other books like:
If you're interested and want to subscribe here's a link:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfbLDMh6uGOZePAfqqjVZ-g?sub_confirmation=1 If you'd prefer to read the script instead of watching the video, here it is: The $100 Startup By Chris Guillebeau About The Author Chris Guillebeau is a world-traveler (he has travelled to 193 countries—out of 195 countries in the world), a public speaker, blogger, podcaster, and bestselling author who, in addition to the $100 startup, also saw massive success with his first book publication, The Art of Non-Conformity. His books and blog focus on self-development, travel, and lifestyle (microbusiness) entrepreneurship. The Book's Main Idea "This book is for those who take action and those who provide the inspiration." Chris Guillebeau The $100 Startup is a business-centric book whose aim is to help prospective entrepreneurs become aware of the challenges that come with creating a successful small business that generates enough revenue to allow the entrepreneur to escape the 9-5 rat race and start living a 'rich' life. "The new reality is that working at a job may be the far riskier choice." Chris Guillebeau A look at the main ideas shared in the book The book shares the following main ideas: 1: Passion + good business sense is the magic formula "The missing piece is that you usually don't get paid for your hobby itself; you get paid for helping other people pursue the hobby or for something indirectly related to it." Chris Guillebeau The secret to all success is simple really: capitalize on your passions but do so with good business sense by looking into how you can turn your skills (or passion) into a workable and successful product/or service. Aim to strike what Chris calls convergence, a state where your skills or passions are valuable in the sense that they intersect with the things/elements other people find useful. If you can strike this convergence and from it, package your passion/skills into a service or product a specific audience would find invaluably useful—in that it serves a purpose such as helping solve a problem—you will create a successful business because: "Passion or Skill + Usefulness = Success Or "(PASSION + SKILL) –> (PROBLEM + MARKETING) = OPPORTUNITY" Chris Guillebeau For someone starting out in entrepreneurship—perhaps starting with $100 or less—to aim for this convergence, ask yourself, "Which skills or passions can I package into a valuable service," or "what am I good at that I can offer to a ready audience?" "Ask three questions for every idea: a. How would I get paid with this idea? b. How much would I get paid from this idea? c. Is there a way I could get paid more than once?" Chris Guillebeau 2: Where great business ideas come from If you have ever wondered where great ideas come from, Chris offers invaluable insight. He notes, "Great ideas are everywhere. They are seized opportunities from an emerging technology, or a solution to a hidden or glaring problem." To find a great business idea, aim for convergence of your passion and what is useful to others, but also cultivate a deep understanding of your target audience not based on conventional targeting wisdom—targeting audiences based on age, gender, income, etc.—but based on what matters the most to the people you intend to serve: "What do people really, really want? At the end of the day, they want to be happy, and businesses that help their customers be happy are well-positioned to succeed." Chris Guillebeau 3: Your success depends on the actions you take Success—business or otherwise—is not that complicated really. All you truly need to do is take action; yes, spend time planning—because failing to plan is planning to fail—but more importantly, spend more time acting. This is the secret to small business success. "There's nothing wrong with planning. But you can spend a lifetime making a plan that never turns into action. In the battle between planning and action, action wins." Chris Guillebeau We are fortunate enough to live in an age where all the information we could ever need to succeed in our lives and businesses is readily available to us. At the click of a button, you can test business ideas, launch a microbusiness, and grow it into a thriving business. Without action, however, creating any sort of business success is impossible because: "Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work." Chris Guillebeau Being an entrepreneur or microbusiness owner calls for what Chris calls, "planning as you go" or "bias towards action." This means finding that convergence and then getting started with implementing your idea right away by creating and launching a prototype of your product/service. With the product/service in play, you can "learn and plan as you go" and scale your business. Conclusion All business success comes from action taken at the right time. As long as you can create something a specific audience will find valuable, you can create a low-startup cost business around it. [link] [comments]  |
| Where are you guys hiring programmers? Posted: 21 Mar 2019 11:28 PM PDT Like the title says. Edit : Woke to find great responses. I'll respond individually to requests for more info. This is a great thread. Thanks everyone. [link] [comments]  |
| I want to open an indoor drone park and I can't find an insurance company..?! Posted: 22 Mar 2019 10:04 AM PDT I want to start an indoor drone facility to teach and experience FPV flight within an enclosed arena. The goal is to possibly have a solid after school program and introduce STEM projects and drone building classes to boot. I have been reaching out to insurance companies to get this venture started and they are declining due to 'not being in the market' or 'too much exposure'. How can I get insurance for this so I can get started? [link] [comments]  |
| Any working Instagram automation bots alive out there? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 09:11 AM PDT I got into Instagram a couple of months back and had started with 5 Accounts in the fashion niche. I was using them to promote products from my ecommerce store and was using JARVEE to automate the tasks. Everything was going kinda good until last month. Jarvee started facing a lot of issues. I was getting PVAs every other day and action blocks just after doing like 10 follows. I even replaced the proxies in hope that might solve the issue, but still no change. On top of that one of my 20k+ followers account got suspended. After that I totally seem to have lost faith on JARVEE and I'm looking for a new bot. Please suggest me an Instagram bot you're currently using and are not facing any issues with. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Do I need a Resale Certificate for my online business? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 10:04 AM PDT Just started a home-based online sales company (my first...) and am in the process of signing up with distributors. Some are asking for a Sales Tax Certificate/ Retail Certificate for my state. The guidance from the comptroller is, to my understanding, that they are not necessary unless you hit a certain number of transactions, or revenue threshold. Is this essentially correct, and do most wholesalers/distributors require this kind of documentation? [link] [comments]  |
| What's the best Country to found my Worldwide money making NGO? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 11:05 AM PDT We are going to assemble Unique, Viral, videoclipable, "3Dprinted" interior spaces to finance the World's first Economically sustainable Univercity! basically we are aiming to make Viral Spaces with laser etched cardboard or plywood that can be assembled on top of each other with added finishings to recreate any 3d model physically, at any scale, like a 3D printer but bigger. (smaller examples https://www.instructables.com/id/Fine-Art-from-Cardboard/ https://www.instructables.com/id/Cardboard-Statue-of-Liberty-Bust-using-123D-Make/) This places are aiming to be videoclipable and to go viral like no place on earth. We will sell interior redesign overalls of whole rooms and spaces. The Univercity will be the first that can be sustainable on its own, with a festival that the univercity makes each year. which place is best to found this type of for-profit non governmental org? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 21 Mar 2019 04:57 PM PDT So, I know it's not exactly popular to post "plz help me" posts, but I feel really out of my element here and I'm trying to see if there's anyone out there who knows the ins and outs of Facebook because I'm having a hard time finding good info on Google. I've been given the opportunity to run a video game related Facebook page that has 600,000+ likes/followers. This is not my page, I did not grow it. It's a long story, but in a nutshell, I met a guy who acquired the page some time ago. It had pretty much been dead/unused for years, but the following is still there. He's interested in resuscitating it and seeing if there's monetization potential. He's not much of a content creator so he recruited me to do the job, and I pretty much have free reign over the page. Unfortunately, it's been ages since I've been active on Facebook and I feel like I hardly understand the platform anymore. I'm interested in talking to anyone who's had success monetizing ANY Facebook pages, and I'd also be happy to hear about any ideas or suggestions if you have any.
tl;dr: I've been given free reign over a gaming page with lots of followers that has been dormant until now. I'm not sure how to evaluate how much potential the page has and I'm looking for anyone who has Facebook knowledge who might be able to help me get a reading on this thing. I'll be extremely grateful for any responses, and if you have any more questions about it, please let me know. [link] [comments]  |
| What is the working day for a field salesperson? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 12:56 PM PDT This question can be very challenging for a business to answer as the reality is that most businesses cannot be sure of where their salespeople are at any exact time. I am a great believer in having no set working hours and having trust in the self-management skills of salespeople. If a salesperson finds it acceptable to go missing or "skive off" then their problems will generally be much more wide ranging than a few missed hours. I have always encouraged my sales teams to ensure that when at work they work at 100% and if they need a break, even for a game of golf or a lie in, then they take it. As long as the targets were met and the customers were happy then I have always given huge amounts of flexibility to my staff. I am fully aware that the life of the field salesperson is very demanding. They don't get noticed when they leave home at 4am for an appointment 400 miles away or if they do not get home until 10pm because the motorway was closed. They do get noticed though if they dare to have no appointments after 1pm on a Friday! Good salespeople want to perform, want to be out in front of customers and they will almost certainly be awake in the small hours at times catching up with correspondence. I don't think salespeople respond well to the "where are you now?" phone calls. If the balance is right then there should be little need to ask this question and your salespeople should always feel at ease to tell you when they are not working. If a good performer tells you at 1pm on a Thursday that they are going for a beer with some friends then that should be great news for you as they will feel they have earned it and are comfortable with their performance. In addition, I have always tried to keep meetings with the teams to a minimum. Salespeople are impatient and often bloody-minded and sitting at a meeting room table for more than an hour listening to me congratulating their colleagues and offering high-fives is a sure fire way to bore them! A good salesperson will make sure their clients and prospects are well served. They will generally keep their mobile telephone switched on around the clock and will take the calls that really matter outside hours. It was rare for my salespeople to need to work at weekends and I was firm in avoiding all but vital contact with them between 5pm on Friday at 9am on Monday - I would not even send emails to my team during these times. An email received from the boss at 8pm on Saturday night discussing new targets etc is so demoralising and will receive much more interest if simply sent on the following Monday. By allowing my teams time to escape work completely they performed so much better when they were at work and this method was respected by all and rarely abused. However, as a boss, I will ALWAYS be available for my team - if they call me with a problem at 4am on a Sunday I will answer their call and they will get my complete attention. I have never insisted on holiday allocations for my sales staff either. They know and I know when they are in need of a holiday and with performing salespeople I have never been bothered if they take three or four holidays a year - the principle is always the same; deliver the targets set and what you do outside of that is up to you. There is little to be gained by setting levels of twenty days per year etc - some will need to take more and some will want to take less - go with the flow and all will generally be good. Whilst these methods will not suit all and will probably even prompt anger with some business owners they have always worked for me and created a very close-knitted team of dedicated professionals who consistently perform. The only problems I have ever experienced with this method have been with non-performers who have invariably promised more than they have the skills to deliver. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Mar 2019 11:00 AM PDT Hey, Anyone know of a website where one can upload videos and charge money for the download? I have a 10 part series of something. I want to put 2 on youtube, and have the other 8 be possible to buy individually on a website. It doesn't have to be remotely fancy looking, I want it to literally just be a list of the videos and the option to buy each one. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Are information websites (blog/newspapers/journal) on a particular topic still worth doing? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 09:28 AM PDT Does the success entirely depend on whether you can sell related stuff to your audience? [link] [comments]  |
| What do you look for in a personal assistant? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 04:21 AM PDT There's been a lot of posts lately about assistants, virtual assistants, and the value they provide. What actual tasks are you looking for in an assistant? I'm not so busy that I need a personal assistant, so I'm not sure what I'd use one for, besides maybe setting up my appointments. What tasks would you expect your assistant to take care of? [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for criticism and feeback Posted: 22 Mar 2019 12:31 PM PDT I was a *very* mediocre student in high school, and scored in the 50-percentile on the SATs and ACTs. However, while applying to university I stumbled onto a "back door" of sorts into highly competitive schools, and I ended up getting into every school I applied (4 Ivy League schools, and four tier 2 schools). Each schools' backdoor if different, and often super specific, the only commonality was that they were all (intentionally) poorly advertised. I've compiled a list of all the backdoors, and the specifics for each case. At the moment I'm thinking monetizing this information with a newsletter and website with a $125 paywall, and a tagline: "guaranteed admission or your money back". I have a $5,000 bankroll ready to go. What am I missing? Could this be feasible, or am I just dreaming here? Any criticism is most welcome. [link] [comments]  |
| What is your best drop shipping method in the US? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 11:43 AM PDT Hey everyone. This group is such a great tool. I have a question about drop shipping. I started a small Shopify ecommerce store a few months back and have been battling with shipping times. I started with AliExpress products and the shipping is out of control. I switched now to Oberlo which is pretty much the same times but a few that are doable. I now found an app for drop shipping Amazon products. Great app, only issue is drop shipping from Amazon, you have an Amazon box and receipt with nothing attached to your business. That won't work for long term customers at all. My question is, what is the best and fastest way to drop ship specific products for the US? What is a good company or app I missed? I want shipping times to be 7-10 days max. I have a camping, hiking, biking, and fishing niche. Any feedback helps. Thanks guys! [link] [comments]  |
| What’s in your creative toolkit? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 11:38 AM PDT What's in Your Creative Toolkit? • What three projects by other creatives have you looked at and said to yourself, "I could have done that; maybe even better!" • Which skills have you spent the most time learning? Rank your competence in each on a scale of 1 to 10. Which one would you love to master? • If you were to list all your technical and creative skills, could you pick three to focus on and leave the others on the backburner? • Which skills are effortless? Which are a struggle? Rate (on a scale of 1 to 10) your level of satisfaction when you take each of those skills to task. • When your peers observe your work, what are some of the words they use to describe your talent? Who do they compare you to? • What can you do tonight, next week, and next month that would increase your competency in one of your top three skills? Source: Book "Living The Dream: Putting Your Creativity To Work" [link] [comments]  |
| planning to launch a new line of shoes Posted: 22 Mar 2019 10:09 AM PDT How can I earn some cash on line? [link] [comments]  |
| E-Commerce business in Laptop Stickers? Posted: 21 Mar 2019 10:39 PM PDT Hey Entrepreneurs! I am obsessed with buying laptop stickers, and I've just thought about starting an e-commerce business which sells them. I am curious on how I should go about this? I'm not very creative or good at creating laptop stickers but I think there is a market for them. Any opinions or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Best solution for posting to multiple FB groups? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 09:26 AM PDT I'm looking for a solution to post to multiple FB groups - some I'm the administrator and some I'm not. I've tried several online solutions, but they don't seem to work (token problems), and they seem to be abandoned sometime between 2017 & 2018. Is there a solution today? TIA [link] [comments]  |
| Single Member LLC paying employees - Is this correct in handling tax plan Posted: 22 Mar 2019 09:15 AM PDT Hello, Sorry for the long post for a simple question I am about to sign a contract to become a companys vendor for and i will hire two employees to begin working the service soon. I have an LLC, im the only member and currently no employees ( not until the job begins), I have an EIN # for the llc and I will be depositing the money into the business bank account. I will do payroll from the business bank account along with business expenses and remaining profits will be rolled over to my bank account every month or quarter. The LLC will not file itself. I will Schedule C: Profit or Loss from Business and the net income from the business will go on line 12 of 1040. Ill have a business bank records of what was made, payroll from there and businesses expenses form there, and ill have my bank account to show the profit I kept myself from remainder. Am I wrong in my thinking process? I want to have a solid idea / foundation before I hire a cpa. [link] [comments]  |
| $4,200/mo cuddling with people. Posted: 22 Mar 2019 09:15 AM PDT Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Samantha Varnerin of Snuggle with Sam, a brand that sells professional therapeutic cuddling. Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi there! My name is Sam Varnerin and I created Snuggle with Sam, my independent professional cuddling practice, while I was still working full-time as a construction engineer. Professional cuddling is a one-to-one service, much like massage therapy is, that is rooted in two basic human needs: touch and connection. And touch is-- well, touchy-- in the wake of the #MeToo movement and the backlash of people trying to figure out if they crossed a touch boundary, so my service is useful because I offer my service so that there is room for people to feel emotions like love and arousal if they come up in sessions without feeling body parts to express those emotions, like the lips or the crotch. In short, I provide a place for people to come and be emotionally accepted and physically held while keeping a therapeutic cuddle instead of a sexual one. There are many reasons that someone might not get their touch or connection needs met other than anything related to sexual assault. These include but are not limited to: dealing with a divorce or death in the family, being a single man with few (if any) deep friendships, having anxiety or depression and needing a different kind of connection than what your therapist is able to offer (I'm seeing therapists and cuddlers working together a lot more now!), and high-performing executives that are praised by their peers but also put at arm's length physically and emotionally. I've been in the business for three years and have learned and seen a lot of things change and develop in the industry including the education available for cuddlers, but we still have a long way to go. This has inspired me to connect with the cuddle community at large by helping others start and grow their professional cuddle practices responsibly as a professional cuddling teacher. On my personal practice side, my flagship product is a 90-minute cuddle session. I usually recommend first time cuddlers do a 90-minute session so we're not rushing through the session for a 60-minute one (the minimum amount of time I cuddle), and oftentimes people that do a 60-minute cuddle wish we had more time. 90 minutes seems to be a good amount of time to settle in and not be waiting for the clock to go off. On the teaching side, my flagship course is "Sam's Snuggle School," a comprehensive course I open for enrollment for one week in June and September that gives a beginner the basics of getting started as a professional cuddler, even if just part time, with the focus on efficiency and finding the best way for you personally to get started and feel comfortable doing this work and to grow their practice. Since this is still a very new industry, most cuddlers are entrepreneurs-- I know of one practice in the US that has cuddlers on a W-2 form, so this is all still very new for most cuddlers. 2018 in particular was a big year for me between going on a Cuddle Tour across the country to six major cities (blog on that TBD), being invited to consult and contribute for the Code of Ethics for Professional Cuddling, completing a 25-hour cuddle session with a client, co-speaking a highly successful talk at CuddleXpo in Chicago called "Connecting While Cuddling: Bringing Your Authentic Self to Your Clients", and having my highest earning month ever-- over $7k! Here's all of the contributors on the panel at CuddleXpo in Chicago presenting how we came up with the Code of Ethics for Professional Cuddling. Back left to right: Maryelen Reid, Madelon Guinazzo, Samantha Varnerin (me!), Samantha Hess, Jean Franzbleau, Fei Wyatt, Janet Trevino. Front left to right: Keely Shoup, Lisa Meece. Photo credit Rellian Chen Merrin What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I stumbled upon professional cuddling by sheer accident while looking at a newsletter from Jason Zook (during my work hours in my freezing office at my day job) where he mentioned it in passing but made a point to say professional cuddlers was a real job that people get paid for. I remember thinking, "No it's not. I'm gonna Google this right now and it's not going to exist because if it does I'd be so good at it." I was living paycheck to paycheck and getting burried in student loan debt, and since I found an agency that would have me charge $80/hour, I signed up with the first agency I saw on Google and applied, asking if I can do this around my full-time job (note: I do not recommend you do what I did). That company did a lot of things that made it a good learning experience at first, but they also didn't do much teaching. I didn't have a system to qualify clients, a process for checking in with a text-security service they had, a schedule to book clients, or a way to track sessions so I knew what I owed the company. I didn't have a clue what I was doing for sessions, and since professional cuddling was only in the U.S for a couple years at this point and little regulation in the industry (there still is), I got a lot of requests from people that were looking for a session thinking this was a front for prostitution! This was when my engineering background came in handy. After my first bad experience with a client, I started creating my own systems to make myself safe that the agency didn't give me. I made my own email questionnaire, things to look for that might indicate if a client might be an issue, confirmation process to make sure clients knew when and where to be, and other things I felt could be automated and make my life easier for before I see a client. This got tested as the agency gave me more leads and I saw how they responded to my qualification processes, and I started tweaking how I wanted the sessions to look. As I heard the same questions over and over again, I began to come up with canned responses. The following summer, I went to Chris Guillebeau's World Domination Summit and I talked about what I do on the side with someone. Word started to spread about me and my side gig, and one woman that approached me asked if she could interview me for a blog. I assumed it was her personal blog and said yes. A few days after the conference, she emailed me from her work account… the blog she was talking about was the Penny Hoarder. When it came time to get interviewed, they asked me how I'd recommend someone get started as a professional cuddler… and I didn't have an answer. I could not recommend someone to the agency I was working under because they didn't train me and I felt it would be irresponsible to send people there. I quickly put together a website for them to backlink to using Squarespace with two landing pages: one to apply to be a cuddler (I decided I would have people work under me in a company, which I no longer do), and the other one was to put in a request to work with me. About 300 people filled out the application form within a week of the article going live, and that was the starting point of what is now Snuggle with Sam, which about four months after the article went live I began to pursue full-time. Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.If my previous answers didn't hint to it before, I like the idea of taking action quickly rather than spending too much time testing out ideas. There are definitely areas that need more calculated and planned action to be effective and profitable, but more often than not if I'm working on something new I'll create Minimum Viable Products (MVP's), or the cheapest, quickest way to make a product for the public. Before Sam's Snuggle School, I had Snuggle Safety: Personal Protocols, a $79 course that consisted of one 45-minute video with my voiceover (which is no longer for sale but is now a bonus module in Sam's Snuggle School). I dragged my feet over making it for nearly a year. I originally made a manual that ended up being 35 pages of very dense content that I planned to sell. I could easily have sold it for 30-40 dollars to my email list and made bank, but I highly doubted anyone would read the whole thing (I barely wanted to read it once I finished it!). I decided to convert it into an online course to make it more digestible so I'd feel better about what I was producing instead of going with an inferior product. I used Teachery for hosting my course and OfCourseBooks to make workbooks to check for comprehension in my course, so all I needed to do was use Powerpoint to record my voice on each slide and save the powerpoint file with my voice as an mp4. From there, I uploaded the video to YouTube as an Unlisted video (which back then you could embed without making it sharable), and then it was just writing the sales copy and making a payment page for people to buy the course. Teachey automates login info and emails for students in a course when they buy, so I didn't have to worry about that. Me and my entrepreneurial friend were launching something for our businesses around the same time in December 2017, and she had access to a 24-hour coworking space with showers. Both of us were inspired by Nathan Barry's 24-hour launches he used to do when he was a freelancer and digital marketer, so we finished our projects by doing our own 24-hour work period together-- 9am Friday to 9am Saturday. It was a good way to light a fire under my butt when I was procrastinating on finishing a product that I already changed a lot since I thought of the idea. This course didn't make me a whole lot of money; it made me a few hundred dollars max. I'm glad I made this though because having this first course was what helped position me as a thought leader in my industry and got me invited to contribute to the Standard Code of Ethics for Professional Cuddlers and get more exposure in the cuddling community. Describe the process of launching the business.I got very, very lucky at first when I broke out on my own for three reasons:
But there were also some key things that were not to my advantage in this process:
It wasn't until a year after I went full-time with my business that I was getting back in the black for my efforts and not until May 2018 that I began consistently making a livable wage from cuddling, and I believe that I would have been much further along had I done a better job managing my income, presented myself as a cuddler better, and went where my clients were hanging out online from the getgo. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?I have my hands in many pots all at once, but these five are where I'm seeing the most results: Following up with leads until they say no. In 2018, most of my clients were from my lead list from 2017 and before that never replied to me or scheduled a session for some reason. I try not to go overboard with follow up, but I try to follow up until I'm told no because sometimes people are just really forgetful and want to book a session but need to be reminded. Especially in professional cuddling, I notice that many potential clients are really self-conscious if I don't take the initiative to schedule a session or make contact with them; they think I just don't like them! Google Adwords. My friend Ronnie Deaver helped me set up my first simple Google Adwords campaigns last year-- apparently no one was buying Google ads for "Professional Cuddler Boston," so that was a really quick way to get seen. Our ad was short and to the point since we assumed someone googling that was looking for a cuddler and already familiar with what to expect, so the ad was simple (and emphasized free parking, a hot commodity in Boston) and linked to my request form. It cost me a lot of money though and I saw some leads turns into clients but not that many, so I ended the campaign. Unintentional SEO. Shortly after ending the Google Ad campaign, I started getting a curious number of leads the next few months that said I was the fifth website on the first page of Google when they searched "Professional Cuddler Boston". Upon talking to Ronnie, he told me that when ads perform well for certain search words, Google rewards you with higher search results. I'm sure this would improve more if I put more efforts in this direction. I also got a popular article written about me on Student Loan Herothat got picked up and linked back to me on several other websites, so that was also a factor that I didn't plan on helping me do well in Google ranking. If nothing else, get backlinks to your website as often as possible! Coffee Talks. I was getting a lot of leads submitting a form and many had told me they wanted to do this but felt weird cuddling with a stranger. So I thought "Well, let's not be a stranger then!" And that's how Coffee Talks were born. Potential clients could sign up for a half hour time slot to meet me for coffee at the local Starbucks and talk about their cuddling needs. I posted the signup link on local Facebook groups to let them know I was doing that, which sparked some interest from locals and strangers. This is a very time-consuming method and not scalable. However, the quality of the clients I got from this method were the highest of any of the methods I've used. Prepaid packages for clients. My hourly rate is $100/hour (typical for the industry is $60-$80/hour), so I like to incentivize returning clients by giving them lower rates for paying in advance. This helps me by giving me money and cuddle hours scheduled in advance, it helps them by saving them money. Everybody wins. I have one package that incentivizes sessions to be less than $70/hour if they pay in advance (I do allow for payment plans upon request). As far as my cuddling teaching side of my business goes, when the GDPR law took place, I did the unthinkable: I threw away my list of 300+ subscribers for my professional cuddling business. Instead, I started it from scratch to create better reasons for people to join my email list so I had higher quality email subscribers. So I created things like a What it Takes to be a Great Professional Snuggler Guide for the beginning cuddler, webinar signup lists (there will be more webinars in the future!), the waitlist for Sam's Snuggle School, and One Week to More Cuddles Guide for the experienced cuddler. I write to this list every other week if not every week. This list was helpful for when I initially launched Sam's Snuggle School this past November. Over 25% of my new list bought my course! How are you doing today and what does the future look like?The past few months have been me planning out big grand plans for my cuddling community now that I've had a bigger stage, figuratively and literally, in 2018 than I ever have before. This January I started a three-month experienced cuddler course with my friend Peter Benjamin called "Cuddle with Your Whole Self" which is surrounded around bringing deeper connection not only into your client sessions but into your entire life. We get on Zoom calls and teach and do connection exercises live together to teach our students. As of writing this we're three classes in and I'm really happy with how the course is coming along so far. I'm already seeing a huge difference in our cuddlers' mindsets. Unfortunately after a wildly successful finish to my year in December and planning out how to move forward with gaining and retaining clients, I got a wrench thrown into my cuddling plans by tearing my meniscus! I currently can't walk or cuddle like this unfortunately, but it does mean I get to work on more projects for cuddlers like I've wanted to. I'm really thankful I started building that email list the right way back in May now so I can continue making income even without having to cuddle right now. For the most part I don't track too many parts of my business even though I have the data and Google Analytics set up for it to look into heavy technical things such as keywords, average time on site, and converstion rates. That's mostly because I want to model something doable for other cuddlers. Other cuddlers in their practice don't want to spend a lot of time on analyzing data or building a website or learning SEO; they want to get clients and cuddle! So most of what I do is centered around what a cuddler growing their practice would want to do. I want the actions I take to be duplicatable, especially since my main start on my own was from getting a massive website to backlink to my brand new website isn't necessarily duplicatable. As of right now I get an average of 1-3 new subscribers a day for my Cuddlers-in-Training email list and I have 450+ total cuddle requests from individuals (I have yet to pull in data from a few new platforms so the exact number is slightly off). This past year the average cost per client was just shy of $24 per client, but when clients were coming in for a session that cost between $63-90 an hour and half of them returning for more than one session, that cost per client is well worth it for me. My next step once I'm not injured anymore will be digging into the data to see what I can do to make my conversions better moving forward-- I want to get more people in the door for a first session in coming months. I mostly live off of the money I make from cuddling and the money I make from my courses and coaching make it so I can take bigger risks with trying new lead sources, optimizing parts of my business like getting some lifetime software through AppSumo, paying for my business coach, and funding other growth dreams I have for my business. My big projects this year are the following: advertising and enrolling aspiring cuddlers into Sam's Snuggle School), moving into more focused work in helping experienced cuddlers grow their practice including coaching and advanced coursework, and tying it all together with my baby by July with a dream of mine I conceived while on Tour this past year, Connection Community Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?I keep learning how much my health and wellbeing directly affects my business. The first year I was a professional cuddler was one of the roughest years of my life personally, which was the motivation to buying the URL mylifeisneverboring.com as my personal social skills blog. The first two weeks after I quit my full-time job I slept for 14 hours a day because I was recovering from some unhealthy habits around sleep, work and coffee I had developed from working at my job. I still look at pictures the months before I left my job and am appalled at how unhealthy I looked in those pictures even. Once I was back on a healthy sleep schedule and started eating more regularly I noticed the first of many dramatic shifts in my creativity, productivity, and client base. I always had an idea that I'd be able to make it work as an entrepreneur somehow even if I didn't know how the numbers would look on paper. I just knew that if I ever started failing I would find a way to make it through it and thrive. Between having clients last minute decide not to renew a big package the day before rent was due and trying to figure out how to make up for that loss, shifting gears halfway through my Snuggle Tour and trying to avoid a significant loss, finding out my hotel in NYC wasn't booked online properly when I have a client coming by in less than a half hour, releasing a course in 24 hours when I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to record it without a working microphone… I proved myself by getting out of all those situations. My strongest affirmation was forged through these trials and tribulations: "I'll figure it out. I always do." What platform/tools do you use for your business?Some of these links are affiliate links. Waveapps. Once I got a separate bank account for my business, I hooked up the bank account to this free accounting software. As a one-woman band that files a Schedule C, this software is easy to categorize and see my income and expenses at a glance. I like logging in and seeing that I'm making more money than I'm spending really quickly. SquareUp. This is how I accept credit card payments via card swipe or online invoice. You can also set up recurring invoices, use their free scheduling software, Squarespace. For the tech-challenged, this is a really easy way to set up a pretty website quickly-- or in my case since I had no design skills, an ugly website Mailchimp. Automation is on the free plan, something I rarely see, and that's really useful for sending my questionnaire to potential clients as soon as they fill out my form on my website. You can send email lists, make landing pages, and track opens with your list to see who's reading your emails and who's staying silent. Ecwid. It's really useful for using SquareUp on your Squarespace website and making items in your store way prettier than Squarespaces default sales pages. I use the free version because I don't need too many items, but the paid versions allow for more than 10 different items on your store and it's a very powerful tool to sell on social media in the paid version. [eachery. This is a really simple course creation platform where I host my courses. They also have a sales page builder for your course with Rick Astley placeholders that are perfect. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?Mornings with Mike Podcast. My friend Mike Goncalves makes a five minute daily podcast, and I've set up my Google Assistant so that when I turn my alarm off in the morning the latest episode of his podcast plays. He has some interesting thoughts on success, motivation, health, and a happy life. It's a really good way for me to wake up in the morning. Life's Golden Ticket by Brendon Burchard. This book is his only fiction book he wrote, but it's an amazing book about letting go and making the most of the life you have. Unlike The One Thing, I couldn't put this book down. It reminded me to keep sight of pursuing the things that matter to me in my life. My business coach, Stephanie Marino. I've worked with her on and off over the course of two years and she's been one of the most empowering coaches I've ever met. She's helped me move some big rocks like stabilizing my income for my business, shifting gears for my Tour when my first plan wasn't working, and not being afraid to run my business differently than other people. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Start with going on a platform or agency and give it three to six months. I've met new cuddlers that want to go straight to a therapist's office to do referrals and I've met cuddlers three months in that think they need to make their own website. Those are great things to do, but they'll be more effective you'll command more authority once you've gained some experience from a place where people looking for cuddling are gathering. Take the pressure off of you to market yourself right away and let the platforms that are pouring thousands of dollars into marketing do that work for you, and pay attention to the clients that are coming in and attracted to you because that will help you understand what it is that you offer people that has them choose you as their cuddler. Then you can use that to go to other people for referrals and build a website around that idea. Use pictures for your profile photos that reflect how you'll show up to your sessions. I see some women and men post really suggestive or misleading photos of themselves: women in bikinis, men shirtless, clubbing photos, using Snapchat or Instagram pictures, etc. Those are all nice photos, but they don't send a good message for who you want to attract to your professional cuddling practice. Take a photo of yourself while you're wearing your cuddle attire so people can see upfront how you'll show up for your sessions. Don't be afraid to talk about professional cuddling in public. When I was on Tour and met strangers I would tell them I was a professional cuddler. More than a few times I got replies like "I've heard of that but I've never met someone that does that." There's way more media coverage on professional cuddling than when I first started, but people need to see that it's in their communities as well in order to start normalizing the profession. Start talking about it like it's a real profession because it is. Educate yourself. I don't care if you're a massage therapist, a psychologist, or a high school dropout. If you're going to do professional cuddling, you need to be continually learning to get better and show up for your clients better. That doesn't have to be professional cuddling specific training, but it definitely helps to see how other people are doing it. Don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to like I did, but don't be afraid to pull skillsets from other areas if they'll add to your practice. For example, I use Authentic Relating Games and Circling to help understand my clients better and guide the way I communicate clearly with them. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?Looking for part-time VA for 5 hours a week to start. Mostly big projects such as converting spreadsheets of leads to a CRM program, putting social media-friendly photos from phone into an album, batch editing blog posts and newsletter emails, and able to do academic-level research for scientific sources. Native or fluent English speakers are welcome to reach out at sam@snugglewithsam.com and I'll have a test task for you to see if we're a fit. 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]  |
| What can I do with this land? (Part of it use to be for grapes for wine, and horse stable) Posted: 22 Mar 2019 09:03 AM PDT Hello, My uncle owns this property. His house is on it but he is old now and doesn't do anything with the land or horse stable behind it anymore. He use to grow grapes and make wine himself but never really did much with it, just kept the wine for himself. He also has a horse stable, which is not in use anymore as well. He said if I want to do something, I'm free to do so. Anyone have any adivce The little house to the left is the horse stable, and all that empty land is where he grew the grapes. The property is located in Europe in the heart of the mediterranean [link] [comments]  |
| [Entrepreneur advice] Odd jobs. Posted: 22 Mar 2019 08:56 AM PDT Im home for the week from College for Spring break and my regular job didn't want to schedule either for 1 week. Any viable options to get some extra cash this week. I've thought about walking door to door asking asking. Just trying to find a service I can provide. Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| An Idea for Product Names... How important is it? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 08:35 AM PDT Quick rundown because this is a 5 min coffee break and I don't need to procrastinate for 3+hours. Here's the deal: I'm about to launch an eCommerce business through Shopify. (I'm selling sunglasses, readers, sports, etc...) I have a bunch of products that all differ (different SKUS) and I'm running into a problem of coming up with names for all of them. We are a business that has existed for 28 years and just now getting into the digital age (better late than never I suppose). I am having trouble coming up with so many different names of the products and quite honestly I don't really care what they are called I just don't want to name them something dumb. I was thinking of doing a promotional launch/Charity drive to welcome our new digital platform. I want to partner with this non-profit that helps inner-city/underprivileged youths get fitted for corrective reading lenses. They have found that kids in poor areas are failing at school because they don't have proper access to optometrists or proper eye care. I want to donate a portion of proceeds of every sale to them. I was thinking that to kill two birds with one stone I could also name some of the products after the kids who the organization is helping. My question is: Would this effect the way a customer views a potential sale negatively? It would look a bit strange if you didn't know that the different lines of products were named this way, but I don't mind putting an explanation. If you have any suggestions on coming up with 50+ product names I'm all ears. Cheers! [link] [comments]  |
| Moving your company to the United States Posted: 22 Mar 2019 08:18 AM PDT For entrepreneurs who founded your company outside of the United States but eventually moved your organization to it and/or began targeting the United States market. 1) What made you want to do it? 2) What did you have the most difficulty with? 3) If you could it over again from the start, what would you have done differently? I would love to know, thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| 30 Day local SEO optimized service businesses--am I missing something? Posted: 22 Mar 2019 08:08 AM PDT I think this sub has a pretty strong love/hate relationship with these business guides and the businesses themselves. There's one thing that I consistently see skipped over even on the comprehensive walk throughs that some of you have put together, though: How are we supposed to find contractors, much less "two men teams" of them, that already have their paperwork completed and, more importantly, insurance? I've had a hard enough time finding actual contractors with insurance for jobs that I want done in myown home, so how is this such a glossed over item when looking for them to work consistently? [link] [comments]  |
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