Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (April 26, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (April 26, 2019)
- AMA - We’re Dr. Marcel Muenster, and Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, experts on entrepreneurship and mental health issues who’ve advised the World Economic Forum, Dr. Oz, the world’s most successful and powerful individuals, written for the Harvard Business Review and been endorsed by Sir Richard Branson.
- "Only an idiot thinks they should be the smartest person on their team" -me
- My personal journey from the first $500 job to almost a 1+m net gain a year
- Anyone here NOT doing Saas, window cleaning, landscaping, dropshipping, or T-shirt business?
- How many of you guys started something on the side while working full time?
- Might buy an up-and-running pizza store in the Bay Area. It's profitable, the land lord is willing to extend to me a 15 year lease with options, and I'm already qualified for a good loan. Projected cap rate of about 20%. This seems too good to be true? I don't know what else I'm missing here.
- How to build a "frankenbusiness" by copying best practices from the biggest players in your space
- 19 y/o, guide me through the real world
- Lesson learned: autorenew your domains!
- Job apps and dating apps
- A lesson from my CIO
- Treating my podcast as a business, how to accelerate growth?
- Looking for a shirt website that prints on demand and gives you a link to share
- Show r/entrepreneur: Where to incorporate your business
- $20k/month membership management SaaS.
- I am introducing a new concept for an e-commerce platform. Greatly appreciate constructive criticism and feedback.
- I am too emotionally invested in an unmarketable "product"
- Feedback on my first marketing campaign
- Company name change
- From Struggling to Success: The Unusual Re-brand that Led to $4.7 Million in Sales and 487% Growth
- Does anyone have examples of customers buying from one business over another because of the business “story”?
- Rolling Trashcan Cleaning Service
- Soliciting lost contracts... tacky or ingenious?
- I'm interested in a ton of form of craft but can't make my mind about one project and keep at it
- What are good B2B SaaS ideas in 2019?
| Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (April 26, 2019) Posted: 26 Apr 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: 26 Apr 2019 04:56 AM PDT Ever wondered if your professional performance is being hampered by your anxiety, your stress levels, your substance use, your genetics, your relationships? If so, you're not alone. According to Drs. Hokemeyer and Muenster, internationally renowned experts on the unique issues that arise at the intersection of mental health and entrepreneurship, over 80% of entrepreneurs struggle with a mental health, relationship or substance use disorder. In our AMA you can ask us anything related to mental health and your personal and professional performance. Our work was featured by the following publications (selected): Startup resources (lexicon, youtube channel), and application page: We have started the world's first investment fund, The Gritti Fund, focused on the founder's mental and physical well-being. Our ultimate goal is to change the success rate of startups that fail due to founder burnout (65%) and therefore change the global investment paradigm for early-stage investments. Overview of our Fund
--> Apply with your startup idea here. How to contact us: Dr. Paul Hokemeyer [Email](mailto:drpaulnyc@yahoo.com) Dr. Marcel Muenster [Email](mailto:marcel@thegrittifund.com) [link] [comments]  |
| "Only an idiot thinks they should be the smartest person on their team" -me Posted: 26 Apr 2019 11:37 AM PDT Got a little heated at some of you guys. Quit telling people they'll fail if they're not an expert in the field they're getting into. Saw a post about a guy who was looking to buy a pizza joint and it looked like a pretty good deal on the surface. He was looking for more advice about the deal and doing proper discovery. (please link - on mobile) Everyone just bullied him in the comments because he didn't have restaurant experience and told him he would fail because of it. To those people, I say again: Screw off. "Only an idiot thinks he should be the smartest person on his team" If you think you have to know everything about every aspect in your business, you're going to hinder yourself. Hire the right people. Hire experts who will make you successful. You guys are giving some asinine advice to this guy. Dear God. Did you get a law degree the last time you needed legal council? Discuss below. I'm a bit heated, so feel free to get heated back at me. [link] [comments]  |
| My personal journey from the first $500 job to almost a 1+m net gain a year Posted: 26 Apr 2019 06:58 AM PDT This is a story of how I reached my personal ambition of a million dollars earned in a year's time. I've been working hard and it happened. There was a time when I've been a humble employee who worked his 9 till 5. I enjoyed my position, I liked my job, I liked my boss. However, once I realized, that I could spend my whole life working for someone, who is not, you know, me… So I've started to save half of my salary in order to start a small business. I understood I would still earn more money at my current job, at least for the first year. But I wanted to work for myself. And I had this idea to earn a million bucks. I don't know why this number possessed me. It looked pretty, I guess. So it became my company's net gain in 2018 for the first time. I guess that dream did come true. I've encountered a few difficulties, I've made mistakes. I wanna share some of the insights I understood during the journey. Or maybe, just maybe, I want to share my happiness with you guys. Some of those tips might not work for you. But it worked for me and I believe them to be more or less universal.
With the team members being scattered all across the country how did I manage to keep the workflow intact? I set a very firm rule and clear checkpoints for every staff member. Everyone knew they could do whatever they would, but everyone had to deliver the project on the set date and had to be on the team call no matter what. The software we used could handle many people and adjusted to the connection, so even if six of ten of my managers wanted to go on holiday that week, I did not mind. They still were on the team call-up. I loved how enthusiastic they were too, knowing there was no pressure. Rule of thumb: don't let your staff get bored.
Oh and practice what you preach. Coz one day employees will look around and realize that all those values were largely just words. Once you stop believing what you do, no one will.
Delegating important tasks to others is a great way to build up your employees self-esteem and boost their professional growth. Try to give at least one task out of five which you think they couldn't handle. You'd need to double check it of course, but this way your people will become better. Thus, your company will. Setting specific yet rare times to check in with your colleagues is plenty.
There is no way that by pressuring your team members to overwork you will achieve your marketing goal faster or better. Sending the message that work is the top priority may work for a little bit and then you'll find yourself on a hectic hiring rout, having lost all your valuable staff to burnout. Missing out on quality time with families will inevitably lead to less work satisfaction and habitually pour performance. Choose your way to speak to your employees on travel-focused benefits, that means total unplug from work, cell phones turned off. Promote new experiences for your colleagues, help them realize their dreams and reconnect with their inspired self.
I remember investing everything I had into the salaries each month. I felt it was the only way to foster fast growth. I believe this approach could work for 99% of businesses. Undoubtedly, there will be tons of niche-related issues. However, try to stick with these basics, use common sense and stand by what you believe and what you do. Good luck with your journey. [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone here NOT doing Saas, window cleaning, landscaping, dropshipping, or T-shirt business? Posted: 26 Apr 2019 09:00 AM PDT Not hating against it, I'm in the local service myself. However, I'm getting bored with it and want to venture into something else, something more hands on, maybe even more outdoors. Been thinking about starting into real estate, construction, etc Anyone else do something similar or anything different? [link] [comments]  |
| How many of you guys started something on the side while working full time? Posted: 26 Apr 2019 08:54 AM PDT To sum up a long story, I'm currently working at a tech company where I have a good amount of down time and my job is pretty easy, but I hate coming into work (old boss that I really liked got laid off and new boss is terrible, and during that transition company promised me a promotion that never materialized). I spend most of my time at work listening to podcasts, reading articles, browsing reddit, taking online courses, etc and I've been looking for jobs since I feel like if I stay in this "slack-ing" mode too long it'll have negative impacts. I caught up with an old college friend that started his own consulting business and he seems to be doing pretty well, and he said something that really resonated with me when I was telling him about my situation: "why go look for another job where you'll work really hard for someone else's benefit, you might as well work that hard for yourself so you reap all the benefits of your effort." So, I've been giving that some serious thought and I'm just curious about other people's experiences. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Apr 2019 07:14 PM PDT I just can't seem to wrap my head around this right now. I know the broker who has it listed. He's a business partner of mine, and one of his agents reached out to me. I don't necessarily trust him enough to just buy something from him off the bat, but there is at least some level of trust here. I'm worried because it's too good of an opportunity? It's simply too good. The area is very good, the lease terms seem to be promising (still need to sit down with the land lord), and the store is busy enough to consistently profit given good management. I got 3 years of taxes from the current owners. They're consistently profitable even tho their reviews on Yelp and Google are mediocre to bad (200+ reviews on both). I personally know that it's pretty easy to inflate gross revenue in preparation of selling. There are obviously some unsavory methods out there involving money laundering. Should I ask for more years? What else should I be afraid of here? I've never bought a pizza store before. I'm not worried about staffing concerns as I can manage a business fine. I've never bought a restaurant and have no idea what to expect. I have the money to keep it going for at least a few years if I have trouble in the beginning. [link] [comments]  |
| How to build a "frankenbusiness" by copying best practices from the biggest players in your space Posted: 26 Apr 2019 10:33 AM PDT The great thing about competing in an established market is that the moving parts are already out there ready for us to study. The customers are there. The competitors are one click and one phone call away. There are three factors in business on which we can choose to compete. The first is speed and responsiveness - getting the service to the customer faster. The second is quality - offering a superior service. And the third is price - offering the service at a lower price. Generally we don't want to be the cheapest option on the market. We want to be the fastest and the highest quality so customers are happy to pay us 2x more than our competitors because the value is there. So for now let's think about price in terms of efficiency and cost. If you spend unlimited money within your business it's easy to offer a service both fast and the best. But that's not an option. So let's think of competing on price as being able to offer a very low cost service because our costs are relatively low. So if we improve our speed and quality we increase value and can charge more for our services and if we improve efficiency and reduce costs we generate more profit. So if we can improve any of the three factors over our local competitors we will have a competitive advantage. Now let's talk about how we can do that by being a copycat. Remember the market study? We can use this same strategy to learn our competitors and use that information to design our website, pricing structure, marketing strategy, customer service approach and more. What we are going to do is build a franken-business. Take what we love about several different businesses and build the ultimate beast of a business that can thrive on a local level by doing all three competitive factors well. Emulating success is the best way to succeed. In school we are taught that copying is bad. Looking up answers online is bad. But in every other area of life that is the best way to get ahead. Want to get better at sports? Emulate the superstar in your field. Want to get better at guitar? Emulate the best guitar player you know. Want to get better at business? Emulate the businesses that are successful. The place to start is by studying big franchised companies that offer services in several cities. None of them compete on price. They all charge more and (sometimes) offer faster and better service. These companies thrive with their online presence, branding and sales oriented customer service. They answer the phone every time with a smile and follow up 30 minutes after you reach out and keep following up every day. They have hiring and training systems in place. They simplify the job so average employees can deliver a consistent service to the customer. The big players have a proven scalable model. So get on the horn and find the largest looking and most highest volume company in the entire country and call them up. Devour their website content. Write down their sales lines on the phone. Ask them about their volume. Ask them about the way it all works from the viewpoint of the customer. We ask them about the quality. We ask them about the speed and responsiveness (turn around time). We ask them about the price. We ask about volume. We ask about experience. We ask about crew size. This is a really uncomfortable thing to do at first for a lot of people. It feels almost as if you are spying or stealing from your competitors and in a way you are. But rest assured that you likely aren't going to take much business if any Knowing this information we can easily get a feeling for how hard it will be to compete. We'll likely find a lot of things we don't like about the competitors. A bad website. A rude customer service rep. Several weeks before we can get an appointment. Get a quote from each of the top competitors. Its free to do this and gives you a look directly inside the competitor's business. It can often get you an in person visit to really dive in and ask a bunch of questions and learn a lot. Make a list of key questions beforehand. Feel out how the conversation with the reps are going and don't be afraid to ask direct questions about volume and size of the company. How many crews do you have? How many customers do you service each year? Are you generally busy in the winter as well? As a business owner I get similar questions from legitimate customers all the time - they genuinely want to know about volume because they want a company that has experience and runs a legitimate operation. If other customers trust this company I can trust them too! Ask the rep if they like their job. You will be very surprised at the doors this will open up in the conversation. Max Maher did exactly this when he did his 500 business connection experiment. Employees really start to open up and vent about what they like and dislike about the company and its inner workings! Follow up with Build your own website the same way. Answer the phone the same way. Charge your customers the same way. It's easier than ever to get the legitimacy of a large national company in a very affordable manner. Use wordpress to get an awesome website built. Use Jobber to make your notification, quoting, scheduling and billing processes seamless. Look at and call a lot of different companies. Take what you like about each one. Ignore what you don't like. Before you know it you'll have a system for customer service, billing, quoting and a website just like the big profitable players. You know there system is working and you now have the same system. Use ahrefs.com to study their local keywords and content marketing strategy. Find out how they title their articles, pages and videos. Digest this information and mimic it! The big kicker is you can do this now at a fraction of the cost. The one thing we don't want to copy from the big dogs is the cost/efficiency side of things. You can offer your service much more efficiently and at much lower costs than they can. You don't need a full time office staff. You don't even need an office. You don't need a full time accountant. You don't need to spend $50k on a website. You get the point. This is where tech comes into play. 10 years ago we had to have an office. We had to pay big bucks to get custom software built. We had to hire full time employees to take care of a lot of things that we can now outsource. Nowadays we can get software out of the box for $100 per month that is twice as good as what the big franchises spent $500k to have built back in the day. As a franchise owner of a service business you likely pay 20-30% of your overall revenue in the form of branding and franchise fees. This all goes to the franchise to support the company overhead and generate shareholder earnings. In some situations you can offer a service right on par with the big dogs without all the overhead and have a much better profit margin. Even as you grow and years after launching make a habit to study your competitors on a consistent basis. Always keep an open mind about making changes even when things are working. Be the first person to adopt new ideas that other competitors are implementing to offer better and faster services or more efficient, lower cost operations. Hang with us over in r/sweatystartup or tune into the podcast if you are into this sort of thing! [link] [comments]  |
| 19 y/o, guide me through the real world Posted: 25 Apr 2019 09:07 PM PDT Straight to it, So I've nearly finished making the prototype; here's some key things that set me apart Lower cost - Everyone else is design firms / qualified architects with overheads, I can undercut and make good margins without selling myself short. Creativity - I've come up with a few ideas that could add more value to the product with very little cost, also the agent claims they've never heard of any open homes using models, so no one is trying/thought of selling these to agents directly, yet. So I was wondering, what would be some pointers during my first meeting? I plan on taking the finished model, and a portfolio-style presentation outlining some benefits, along with printed photos and floorplan - my model is based on one of their real houses that has recently sold. Appreciate any tips, I know this isn't the most unique idea, but hey atleast I'm not doing a dropshipping post? [link] [comments]  |
| Lesson learned: autorenew your domains! Posted: 26 Apr 2019 01:12 AM PDT I just learned a painful lesson that I think some of you might find useful. I use Namecheap as my domain provider and bought a .ch domain for my business. What I didn't know is that there are some domains that enter redemption period 12 days BEFORE the domain expires. What happened is that my website and e-mail stopped working for couple of days and I had to pay $200 to get control of the domain back. The alternative was to wait until the domain expires and then wait 40 days until it is out of auction (assuming I were lucky enough that no one bought it). via namecheap website:
I hope you can learn from my mistakes! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Apr 2019 02:10 PM PDT I constantly keep seeing new Job apps and dating apps being released. Almost every week or month I see ads on Insta or Facebook for job app and dating app. Why people keep making them? Are they really that profitable and easy money?? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Apr 2019 02:09 PM PDT No details but a fuzzy view of what happened is basically our company needed a supply and our CIO set up [link] [comments]  |
| Treating my podcast as a business, how to accelerate growth? Posted: 26 Apr 2019 02:00 PM PDT Hello /r/Entrepreneur, my wife and I have a super awesome podcast together and we are really having a great time. However, we want to expand and improve our podcast and treat it like a business. We have gotten to the point of meeting all our costs in just a few short months. We have some wonderful patron supporters keeping the website up and the hosting fees paid. Next up I want to expand our presence putting everything we make into marketing to capitalize on our momentum. We have been on the books for a couple months so we have put an end to our "shareholder" funding so my budget is low. I have been running a few ads on Facebook and Instagram to the tune of about $2 a day and we are getting some success as I drill that into the correct demographics. Now on to what I need help with. So we have enough retained cash each month to either double our daily spend on Facebook and Instagram or broaden our strategy. I have thought about maybe google ads or even posting flyers around town and recruiting some of our patreon fans to help. We could also invest it into a weekly giveaway, we have some merch available mostly T-shirt's that could be both a draw and free advertising. Any thoughts on what to do with our limited budget for greater impact? [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for a shirt website that prints on demand and gives you a link to share Posted: 26 Apr 2019 01:34 PM PDT Hey there, excuse my bad english but I need to find a site I saw a year ago or so. People were selling their shirt design on this plattform and it had like a countdown (for example 48 hours left) and they only print or sell it if it reaches a minimum. They also only print the shirts that everybody purchased. anybody know what it was called? or the site/service? [link] [comments]  |
| Show r/entrepreneur: Where to incorporate your business Posted: 26 Apr 2019 01:17 PM PDT Hey all, i am making a list of pros and cons of countries to incorporate mostly focused on international / digital startups / solo entrepreneurs and nomads. I would appreciate the feedback on what it should include: https://projectilo.com/rankings/ Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| $20k/month membership management SaaS. Posted: 26 Apr 2019 09:15 AM PDT Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Mitchell Colleran of Join It, Inc, a brand that sells membership management software. Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi there! My name is Mitch Colleran and I'm bootstrapping Join It -- a SaaS platform that helps organizations sell and track their memberships. Previous to starting Join It, I spent 6 wonderful years at Eventbrite -- where I got a broad 'tech education' through roles on the Sales, Marketing and finally Product Management team. At the end of 2016, I left to start Join It, 'moved' to Spain for 3 months, and have been working full-time on Join It since then. As of March 2019, Join It is making $20,000/month and growing! What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?My last role at Eventbrite was the Product Owner of Eventbrite's API and Developer Platform. While looking after the platform, we built integrations with 100s of popular SaaS applications like WordPress, MailChimp, SurveyMonkey and more. During this time, I identified an opportunity to serve customers of Eventbrite by creating a Membership plug-in for the Eventbrite platform. Initially, I tried approaching several incumbent membership platforms to build the connection with Eventbrite, as this was my primary goal. But after being turned down by all of them, I decided "this needs to exist" and started the work of building Join It myself. And eventually leaving Eventbrite before the completion and launch of the MVP. Take us through the process of building the product.I used to build basic websites when I was in High School, but when I decided to start Join It, I knew nothing about developing web applications. So I started teaching myself how to code (JavaScript / Node.js) while building the initial product. It took about 9 months of late nights and weekends to build a simple service that allowed folks to sign up an Organization, define their 'membership levels' and sell memberships. The length of time to build the product is probably a really poor signal for folks hoping to learn from my experience. It's worth noting that again that I was a beginner dev teaching myself to code and had a full time job -- if I were to re-build this today, the initial product would take about a month to build. That's more representative of how few features were in this first version. My personal belief is that you only start learning once you launch, get your product in front of customers, and start getting feedback. Everything else is just guessing. In hindsight, I was right to launch the MVP because I was so wrong about so many other features that I initially included / excluded. And the quickest way to figure that out was by putting a product in front of customers. After launching the MVP and going full-time on the product, it took another 3 months of incorporating customer feedback to get to something that I could really sell and be confident about putting in front of customers. This feedback often came in the form of incremental improvements, rather than anything radical. A lot of feedback centered around how our Organization's (our primary customers) members' interacted with Join It. I had developed a solid understanding of the organizations that would use Join It, but I needed feedback to get us to a point where I understood how Organization's wanted us to handle their members' experience. This was the time that I spent in Spain -- and a typical day would be 10-hours building the service and 2 hours talking directly to customers (phone, chat, or email). Two massive benefits from moving to Spain:
This was a pretty intense 3-month period, but it was fundamental in building the service. And the end of this phase, I finally had a product that I was confident in and our first 10 paying customers, so I felt like it was time to focus on growing the business. Describe the process of launching the business.In my case, the launch was more of a 'phase' than an 'event'. As soon as I had a product that was hosted and publicly available, I started trying to drive traffic to the service using Google AdWords. At this early stage, there was consistent feedback that the Product wasn't ready -- but this feedback was invaluable because it allowed the potential customer to define what needed to be in the product. So during this launch phase, we were prioritizing the next feature based on conversations with actual customers. A lot of times, these features were very incremental rather than revolutionary (e.g. "I wish the purchase ended with a confirmation page, rather than a notification") -- and we ended a lot of customer conversations with "Great! If we built this, would you purchase a subscription?". And by the end of a short launch phase (~3 months), we had a small handful of customers paying for our service. Talking to customers as early as possible (even before what some would call an MVP) was incredibly valuable to shipping a product that customers will pay for as quickly as possible. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?As of March 2019, we have about 700 paying organizations that use Join It and we're still in the phase where it seems like we have to individually fight for every single customer. Our price point is relatively low (our most popular plan is $29/month), and at this price point, most SaaS companies won't engage directly with customers on the phone/chat because it's not profitable at this value of customer. So for us, engaging prospective customers at our price point is a classic example of " do things that don't scale ". And if you assumed that by $XX,000 in MRR, you'd have customer acquisition/onboarding/success figured out … Not. Even. Close! We're still trying to build our acquisition channels. To date, our acquisition is spread relatively evenly across multiple channels: Google Ads, Organic Search, and Word of Mouth. Three channels that specifically have not worked for us:
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Our customers consistently affirm that we've reached Product / Market Fit -- but I think we're still looking for our ideal Business Model / Market Fit. Essentially, this means that we have a product that customers want to use and we've found our market -- however, we're still searching for the ideal economic fit in that market (which could come from changes to existing pricing, changes to service model to reduce overhead, changes to monetization, etc.). As I mentioned, we'll be changing our pricing with the goal of charging more for larger organizations that use our platform. By increasing the average value of customers, we'll be able to invest more into customer support / customer success and grow faster. However, even at our current price and growth rate -- we're on a sustainable and healthy path. We just added a full time hire to the team and we'll be expanding further before the end of the year. More broadly though, my goal is to build a sustainable company that's around for the next 25 years. I'm having a lot of fun and feel like we're just getting started. :) Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?When it comes to SaaS, it's been incredible to see how product development and revenue compound. With respect to product development, it's been so powerful to observe how much value we're constantly creating by continuing to build the right features for our customers. Our customers are still using the features that we built in 2017, and years later, we're still adding new functionality. Similarly with revenue, because we have a relatively low churn rate, we're able to benefit from compounded revenue growth. Jason Lemkin summarizes this a lot better than I do: Want to Understand SaaS? If Nothing Else — Understand That It Compounds What platform/tools do you use for your business?My favorite platform/tool has definitely been Stripe. We incorporated our company through Stripe Atlas, we sell our subscriptions using Stripe Billing, and our organizations sell their memberships through Stripe Connect -- my business literally wouldn't be around today without the folks from Stripe. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?Twitter has been a huge resource for me. It's where I've found a community of other folks who started their own companies, and are rewriting the rules of SaaS (especially when it comes to bootstrapping). A few of my favorite follows:
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Get started today! I've found that a lot of folks don't start a journey until they think they have the entire route mapped out. Which often means they never begin. If you're trying to go from step 1 to step 100 -- just focus on how to get to step 2. And only once you're on step 2, figure out how to go to step 3. And again, just get started already! Where can we go to learn more?If you're interested in chatting more about SaaS, bootstrapping, or non-profits -- then definitely slide into my DMs on Twitter: @Colleran 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: 26 Apr 2019 11:33 AM PDT (New-ish) Idea is to build smaller, targeted, community focused shops for a specific demographic / buyer persona (location , age group, gender, interests etc). Example:
Community First
What makes it different:
Platform's Target audience:
Advantages:
Feature Set:
What Does Brand Get? Relevant prospects, leads, referrals, market research, goodwill, social proof, higher customer retention and loyalty, sales from in-built shop. What Does Customer Get? Members only offers, like-minded community who share aspects of their lives and potentially meet new people. Relevant content they connect with that can better their lives Link: https://clubsio.com. Currently in early beta. Landing page is mobile friendly. Examples are not fully mobile ready. I'll greatly appreciate any feedback, constructive criticism [link] [comments]  |
| I am too emotionally invested in an unmarketable "product" Posted: 26 Apr 2019 10:53 AM PDT Hey all, Wannabe Entrepreneur here with an unusual kind of problem. TL;DR for starters: I need people to tell me to get over myself and drop a "product" that's virtually worthless. I "create content" as a hobby, and I wanted to turn that into a job. I have taken some steps in that direction. Started adding ads to the blog, tried some affiliate marketing. In generally, things went better than expected given that I never really made an effort. I feel that there is potential to generate revenue. From the blog (A tech blog), writing tutorials. Maybe start a YouTube Channel. I have my own style and people seem to respond to the content well. However... I am getting these great responses (traffic, customer feedback, ...) for content that was supposed to be "filler" content. My main goal was to build content around a website product I used intensively, but if I'm being honest it's a dead end. The market, end user of the product, seems to be dead or just unwilling to invest their time and money in anything. Statistics don't lie. Most of the people using the product come to my site to find a specific fix, then instantly leave. They don't interact, open another article, follow on social media... And this is a general trend. I have looked around, and all my former "competitors" last updated three years ago. There's a single YouTube channel making videos about the product. This makes it sound like the most amazing niche opportunity but I honestly believe the market is just... dead. My problem is that I have been involved in the community to the point where I got ondoctrinated. Where I keep believing making content for those people will one day become an awesome opportunity. With no data to support that. So, bottom line... I need a stern "What are you doing, idiot, write about anything else" from you guys to move on. I think. Apologies if this isn't Entrepreneur material. I'm aware that my "emotional attachment" getting in the way of 100-??? recurring revenue is peanuts to what you guys are dealing with. Maybe just writing this post wil already help. :D [link] [comments]  |
| Feedback on my first marketing campaign Posted: 26 Apr 2019 10:42 AM PDT Hi everyone! I run a 20-devs development shop, we build complex mobile and web apps. We are good at delivering MVP fast. We've released several products last year and our average timeline was 6 weeks from idea to MVP. I want to focus people's attention on this and later we intend to provide other services needed to launch startups. I've talked to several marketing agencies and outbound sales service providers recently and got two mainstream advices: I think there is a third way: I like to talk, I used to talk publicly very well back when I was a student. I intend to start giving public talks again about our experience in Holacratic management. But this is another topic. I would like to hear your feedback on how I intend to convert leads into clients. I want to help people transform their Ideas into feasible plans. We will not require upfront payments for this. We'll offer to go through 2 to 5 planning sessions with potential client, each 1 hour long. At the end he/she will have:
Here is an example of the final "Concept": https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OEi7fF-OSdoOfXC7TW6EJzILV5qojqrn/view?usp=sharing [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Apr 2019 09:35 AM PDT Hey guys! So I'm new here. But I think is the appropriate place to post. I'm assisting my uncle with some stuff and he gave me the task to research some things to make his company run a bit more smoothly. I don't know much about this stuff so I'm trying to learn fast. My uncle is wanting to change the name of his company. After that he wants to issue shares to one of his partners equaling 10% of the company. And then open a bank account under the new name of the company l. So my questions are 1. What are the best databases to check if the new name is available 2. What is the process of issuing shares to his associate after the name change. Is it any different than normally issuing shares? 3. Is opening a new bank account under the new name different! Thanks! I realize it's very specific but I wasn't sure where else i could quickly gather the information [link] [comments]  |
| From Struggling to Success: The Unusual Re-brand that Led to $4.7 Million in Sales and 487% Growth Posted: 26 Apr 2019 09:02 AM PDT Hi r/Entrepreneur this is my first post in this sub-Reddit. I hope it is okay to post such a long form story. I am the editor of the Ecommerce community Capital & Growth. It is from our How We Made It in Ecommerce Series. We will eventually do one a week and also publish the resulting podcasts. The pictures can be viewed on the original article. What do you do when you suspect the skincare companies you trusted are actively harming your health? For Trina Felber, the answer was obvious: start a skincare company of your own. "I'm an all or nothing kind of girl," she says. "When I jump in, I jump in with two feet and two hands, 120 percent. So I literally ditched all my skincare and just started making my own products from scratch." Her brand, Primal Life Organics, boasted a $4.7 M revenue in 2017, with a three-year growth of 487 percent, earning her a spot on the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies. Felber now has more than 20 employees. But she never imagined that life would lead her here. Humble BeginningsFelber spent most of her adult life working as a nurse. At age 40, just after getting her Master's degree in anesthesia, she discovered a welcome surprise: she had unexpectedly gotten pregnant in record time while on her honeymoon in Fiji. She headed back to the States with her husband, excited to face this new chapter in life. But her future was not going to be that simple. "I was seven weeks pregnant," she says, "and I suffered a miscarriage." Thanks to her nursing experience, she knew there could be a biological reason behind it. While some people might have simply tried to forget such a devastating setback and move on, Felber was determined to find the cause.
When she was seven weeks into a new pregnancy, at the same point when she'd miscarried before, something on the label of a skincare product caught her eye. "I glanced down at my moisturizer that I was getting ready to put on my face, and I started reading the ingredients," she recalls. Although it was a natural, organic skincare line -- a brand she trusted -- the ingredients list was filled with things that sounded toxic. Suspecting that these skincare products were the cause of her miscarriage, Felber immediately trashed them all and started making her own. When she researched the suspicious ingredients on the Environmental Working Group's website, she found that her concerns were valid. The "natural" skincare products she'd once used contained hidden endocrine disruptors, neurotoxins, and carcinogens. 📷 Trina's twins--the inspiration for starting her line of non-toxic products. From Nurse to CEOFelber's commitment to sharing what she'd learned made entrepreneurship the logical next step. She was the quintessential bootstrapper, starting in her kitchen with no outside capital, making just one or two products at a time. "I was smart enough to put on the website that it's made fresh when ordered, so it could take two weeks to ship your order," she says. She invested her own money in her website, products, and ingredients. However, not having capital also meant that every dime the business made had to go right back into the business. "For probably the first year and a half to two years, I didn't pay myself," Felber adds. Instead, she used the money to do things like upgrade labels and buy new inventory. 📷 Trina in the early days of the business. She made each product after it was ordered. Felber's relaxed confidence when she talks about her brand makes building a company sound simple. However, her entrepreneurial journey wasn't such a straight shot.
When she initially launched the business, in 2009, she named it Olive's Organic Botanicals. However, she soon realized that the skincare market was already flooded with organic options. "I was out there in this big blue ocean of organic skincare -- and I did pretty good," Felber recalls. But the brand didn't quite take off the way she'd hoped. About a year later, her husband introduced her to the Paleo diet. First designed in the 1970s, this diet strategy maintains that eating the way early humans in the Paleolithic age did is the key to health. Paleo eaters avoid processed grains, dairy, and anything else developed after the rise of agriculture, sticking to meats and unprocessed plants instead. In 2010, these diets were just starting to become popular again among health enthusiasts. Like many budding companies, Felber's brand had struggled because it didn't have a focused niche. Realizing that she had a Paleo product, Felber did a quick Google search for Paleo skincare. Nothing came up, except a brief thread on a single website, which suggested using coconut oil. "A lightbulb went off in my head," Felber says. "I said 'You know what? I have the answer for you -- my skincare's Paleo.'" She'd finally found her niche. Rebranding Changed EverythingAs soon as she could, she relaunched her business as Primal Life Organics. Her first employee was actually the nanny she'd hired to help out with her three young children. When the kids went down for their daily nap, the two worked side by side to build the brand. 📷 "I basically created my own ocean," she says. Instead of swimming in the vast pool of organic skincare, she now had a specific focus: people who wanted Paleo products to fit their Paleo lifestyle. "And that is what turned my company around." At the time of the rebrand, Primal Life Organics was the first and only Paleo skincare line on the market -- and it remains the most popular one to this day.
As the brand grew, Felber started learning how to better focus her marketing tactics. At first, she reached her customers using organic strategies, like podcasts and emails. But in just a few short years, the methods for building traffic became drastically different, with the rise of paid posts. "Things have changed," Felber says. "You have to know what you're doing -- you have to have the resources to put money into it in order to get money out of it." Luckily, Felber's husband has the marketing expertise to run her social media campaigns. In addition to Facebook ads, the brand uses Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest; email marketing; and a few sales funnels. Although Felber isn't doing the marketing all by herself, she still takes a very hands-on approach. She writes content for her website's blog, speaks at Paleo events, and even published an international bestseller: Beauty's Dirty Secret, available on Amazon. 📷 She also does a lot of podcasts, interviews, and Facebook Live videos, where her warm, gregarious nature shines. "I like [Live videos] because, of all the skincare companies in the world, I don't see any other skincare company's CEO -- the owner of the company -- getting on Facebook Live and answering questions for people," Felber says. Even in the age of ecommerce, the importance of personally connecting with your customers remains. She recognizes that her nursing background strengthens her ability to build trust with customers. "The way I was brought up as a nurse was to be able to communicate to the patient in a way that they can understand." These communication skills carry over into her entrepreneurial career, as she teaches people how to use her products to live their best lives. Streamlining for Success📷 For Felber, connecting with customers was always the easy part. But nailing down the best tools and technologies for her brand posed a bigger challenge. Today, she names using an inventory management system as one of the keys to success. "I'm a products-based business," she says. "It's the life or death of my company." Another key for success is maintaining focus. "When I started, I made a ton of products -- I wanted to solve everybody's problem," she says. But when Primal Life Organics streamlined its offerings, the brand became more successful. "We actually cut about half of our inventory, because we couldn't focus." Felber notes that about 80 to 90 percent of a brand's income usually comes from just 10 to 20 percent of its products. She recommends focusing on those products that truly generate the income, and getting rid of the rest -- even if a few customers miss those products.
Streamlining has allowed Felber to invest in new brand goals, like retail and local marketing. With its shorter list of products, Primal Life Organics will soon appear on the shelves of some big-name stores. However, the Shopify store remains the core of the business. The original website required HTML coding, but Felber found that Shopify did everything she needed with a lot less work. A user-friendly platform that minimizes setup time helps aspiring entrepreneurs get off the ground. Felber also recommends taking the time to hire the right people, so you can minimize the need for outsourcing. "Bringing it in-house has its own value, because [your employees] know your culture, they get to work side-by-side with you, as opposed to outsourcing something." She loves hiring people who have healthy desires to learn, instead of only hiring those who already have certain skill-sets. Even as the owner of a thriving brand, Felber still turns to her community of fellow entrepreneurs for camaraderie and problem-solving. "Sometimes [the] answer just isn't black-and-white, it's more gray," she says. Fellow entrepreneurs can often suggest the right solution or someone who can help. Lessons Learned📷 Felber herself has plenty of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. She strongly recommends getting the trademarks or patents needed to protect your products and company. But the biggest challenge faced by new entrepreneurs, Felber believes, is building the brand itself. It's simple to start a Facebook page or build a Shopify store, but the hard part is figuring out your message. How can you nail down that message? She recommends taking a couple hours to ask yourself, "What is my mission? What is my message? And how can I convey that to my people?" Once you attract a few people who get your message, they'll bring in even more people who that message resonates with, she adds. "But you have to know who you are and what your message is to attract those people." For Felber, Primal Life Organics is more than a skincare brand -- it's a community of like-minded people who love helping each other out. "I always say that this is an extension of my nursing career," she says. "I loved nursing because I got to take care of people and help them get better. And by providing healthy products, I'm able to do that now across the world."
📷 She also loves the other perks of being a business owner, like having the freedom to travel, attend new events, and work from anywhere. Her children and husband often travel with her, and they're attentive to health on every level, from diet to meditation to, of course, skincare. "We really do live the lifestyle that we have built, that I talk about, and that I try to help people achieve on their own." Her final words of wisdom for aspiring entrepreneurs? "Don't give up! It's tough out there sometimes." But even if she knew ahead of time about all the challenges she'd face, Felber says she'd go back and do it all again. "My life is better serving the people that I serve right now." By the way, for the entrepreneurs looking to raise capital, we also did a series of investor interviews in the past (here) with folks like Y Combinator's CEO and TechstarsFounder but have since refocused on ecommerce entrepreneurs. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Apr 2019 08:47 AM PDT I've been thinking of how to make my business stand out and get more eyeballs. A big thing I keep reading everywhere is how your business needs a good "story" that will make customers buy. This concept has baffled me for years. Articles like this: https://www.inc.com/craig-bloem/all-strong-startup-brands-have-a-great-story-heres-how-to-tell-yours.html It all sounds nice and romantic. But most customers I've interacted with buy from whatever comes up first on google or has the best reviews on amazon. When I need a ride, I could care less what Uber or Lyft's story is. I check both apps and use whoever has a better promo discount that day. Same for booking flights, hotels, food, clothing and I would say 97% of the purchases in my life. Am I missing something here or does anyone have some insightful case studies that shows otherwise? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Rolling Trashcan Cleaning Service Posted: 26 Apr 2019 08:37 AM PDT Has anyone in this sub looked into this and, better yet, anyone on here have direct experience? With the number of HOAs near me that require cans to be stored inside garages, I think there's a relatively ripe opportunity. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Soliciting lost contracts... tacky or ingenious? Posted: 26 Apr 2019 02:08 AM PDT I had a baby last year and both during and after my pregnancy, I suffered horrible PPD. Just before I found out I was pregnant, I signed several new janitorial contracts. However, with being utterly exhausted from being pregnant and then dangerously depressed after delivery, I lost those new contracts. Thankfully, I have several established contacts who were extremely understanding because they knew my lack of quality was temporary after working with me for years. As for the contracts I lost, I essentially worked for free because I felt so guilty. For the most part, my brain is better now and I've slowly started expanding again. I really want the contracts I lost back and I was considering sending funny postcards saying how even though we broke up, I still think about them and wanna get back together. I would offer a free month of service or some other discount doe signing a new contract. Is this idea super cringey? Would you rehire someone who did a subpar job for you if they approached you asking for another chance? [link] [comments]  |
| I'm interested in a ton of form of craft but can't make my mind about one project and keep at it Posted: 26 Apr 2019 07:40 AM PDT Hello reddit I'm a 20 year old french male. I work as a chemist in a research facility but the ecological problem the earth is facing makes me feel a lack of meaning in my work. I know I'm not made to have a normal life , i want to be creative and to work with a lifestyle that correspond to me ! The thing is ... i have a lot of project to create my own company to sell the things i create but i have difficulty staying on one project. In general i have a project and i go for it in a very passionate way , using all my energy to gather information, make prototypes etc... but evry time , after one or two month I'm no longer motivated and i never succeed in making money out of theses. The thing is ... if I must continue to have a normal work and having a side job as my company i don't think it's worth it. My goal is to be free of non creative work. I don't want nor need to gain huge amount of money , i want to be able to live doing things i like. My last buisness plan is a company that produce and sell organic and local sourced soap and hygienes product in the most ecological way possible. I have an attraction for soapmaking since 3-4years but it comes and go... also in france it's very difficult to start a company as half of your income goes in some kind of tax (but at the same time i don't have problem like student loan wich is a huge plus) Do you have advice for people that have trouble keeping the same idea ? Sorry for the english ,this is not my native language [link] [comments]  |
| What are good B2B SaaS ideas in 2019? Posted: 26 Apr 2019 07:32 AM PDT Hi, I own a web development studio and want to productize my business by developing a B2B SaaS software. What are some of the niches and industries that can benefit from a SaaS solution nowadays? What market is not already saturated? Some of my first ideas: A marketing software for vacation property owners, an ERP for cleaning businesses, a sentiment analysis app for crypto traders, etc. [link] [comments]  |
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