Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (June 07, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (June 07, 2019)
- Just quit my six figure job going to start doing what I've always wanted to do
- Question for the Solopreneurs: what are your top 3 productivity habits or techniques
- Sidewalk chalk and the power of low budget guerrilla marketing
- I was all for bootstrapping until I raised 500k
- How to find a mentor?
- How could I make a Mac Pro Stand competitor?
- Entrepreneur who get into huge debt but turn them around, how did you do it?
- How do you become code “literate” as a non-technical founder?
- PSA for software entrepreneurs: your company doesn't have to start when you've finished the app
- How many years of specialized experience before becoming a consultant?
- Finding an investor for an established business
- Trouble hiring Laborers - How can I improve?
- How to handle business partner who has contributed little to nothing during startup
- Booming on Twitter, how to expand elsewhere...?
- Any suggestions for affordable general liability insurance (Small Business)
- 【Help】Do I set an organized Google Ads Campaign? Will I compete with myself? Could you please help me optimize my Ads?
- Your living expenses are paid off for 6 months. You have $1000 to invest. You want to start generating $1000/month digital income starting 6 months from now. What do you do?
- What are some startups that were created by college students that eventually sold for millions?
- Can I register a company but not trade under it? Looking to protect a company name/branding for the time being.
- Best online "tip jar" for multiple businesses?
- Whose name should be used on web registration forms for a corporation?
- I'm offered 1 million impressions/week instagram account for $130. Should I buy?
- I've 4000€ (4530$), what I can do to get 25% of that money per month
- Business website
- Looking for a developer / partner.
| Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (June 07, 2019) Posted: 07 Jun 2019 06:15 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]  |
| Just quit my six figure job going to start doing what I've always wanted to do Posted: 07 Jun 2019 09:52 AM PDT Something snapped in my brain this past week. The smallest little thing in the world but it made me lose it. On my current trajectory, I retire comfortably in 10 years but I'm dead within 15 years of a heart attack or stroke. I make (made) more money than most people dream of making. And I was absolutely miserable. This past week, I feel like I've been experiencing the world for the first time again in years. I made my dreams come true, I had money. I had no time though. A devil's bargain. The more money I've made and the more I've advanced in my career, the more miserable I've become. I couldn't figure it out for years, should be the opposite. I'll give you an example that hit me a few days ago. I own every video game system currently on the market. I don't know why, to say I do I guess. Before yesterday, I hadn't actually touched any of them since getting them (a year or more for all of them). Who gives a flying f if you can buy things if you can't enjoy things? I have a wife and kids to support and I'm the sole income earner for my household, not exactly like I can completely shit the bed. I am ADAMANTLY done with my career though. I basically have six months until the wheels completely fall off. I have a new goal in life. I want to make $50k a year working 10-20 hours a week. I'm going to spend the next six months driving towards this goal like my life depends on it. Despite my income, we do not live lavishly. $50k would allow us to continue life as usual if my wife brings in income to support anything she wants to buy. My plan is to spin up ~9-10 different revenue streams and then prune and refine from there. Luckily for me, I like to spin up websites and assets for a hobby to keep my skills fresh and updated so I have quite a few assets already that I haven't been doing anything with. The list I'm currently running with: Passive income businesses:
Number three has an expiration date of a year and a half so that will have to be replaced. Numbers one and seven are too close to my career. They're there because I know if I get extremely desperate, I can tap these for quick cash. I honestly want to remove them from the list, that is my secondary goal. I'm not expecting any payoff from number nine within six months. All of this means, I need to expand this list still. One more thing, notice the no blue links anywhere in this post? Yeah, I'm not trying to spam anyone. Not trying to generate money by pretending to be a guru or some crap. I'm sure I'll post follow up posts here but none of my posts will ever have blue links. I'm just an entrepreneur approaching this probably from a different side, angle, and situation than most people on this sub so just thought sharing some of my story and what I'm doing could be valuable. [link] [comments]  |
| Question for the Solopreneurs: what are your top 3 productivity habits or techniques Posted: 06 Jun 2019 09:30 PM PDT When working alone on a business how do you manage your daily productivity. Master list This is my daily todo list that I fill out the night before with tasks from my project. This way in the morning I'm in execution mode and I get to work without making decisions on what to do first. I split my tasks into Urgent, Important and Extra. Pomodoro cycles Some people like Pomodoros others like time blocking but it's a similar concept, concentrating on one task for a set period of time. Before starting my cycle I answer a few questions about the task I"m about to begin like: - How will I know when the task is done End of day productivity journal At the end of the day I like to log my daily levels of productivity, mood and energy. I also try to write the reason for it and then review these at the end of the week. Because of this I started not eating after 6pm and that makes it so much easier to get up before 5am without an alarm clock, I go to bed around 11pm. What are your top 3 productivity hacks? [link] [comments]  |
| Sidewalk chalk and the power of low budget guerrilla marketing Posted: 07 Jun 2019 11:34 AM PDT My partner and I started a pickup and delivery storage company in 2011 while we were juniors in college. College students go home for the summer and we pick up their stuff and store it for them. Not revolutionary and we weren't the only ones doing it. We ended up growing it to about $3MM in annual revenue and its become a great little cashflowing company for us. But the early days... We didn't have any money and what little we did have we spent on a beat up cargo van (yeah really bad but thats me and I was proud) on craigslist for $1500 so we could haul the stuff to and from the farmer's pole barn we rented in exchange for farm labor a few weeks later. So how can we reach our customers? We had a major advantage in that we knew exactly where our customers were. We knew where they lived. We knew where they hung out. We knew where they walked to class. We thought about standing there and handing out flyers as they walked to class but that would be too time consuming and we couldn't possibly reach enough people. So we decided to go buy a few $4 boxes of sidewalk chalk and put some billboards all over campus. Like this. And this. And might as well advertise for employees while we're at it. Instead of drawing a big elaborate drawing in one high traffic area we took the simple bug volume approach. About 75 text ads all around campus could be put down in about 2 hours. So my partner and I did this ourselves. I literally wore out two pairs of jeans doing this because each time I knelt down to write one my knee would rub the concrete. April and May is the rainy season so each time it would rain we would go out and do it again. When we launched in Boston in 2013 we bought this beautiful truck on the south side of Chicago for $2200. Two days later I filled it with supplies and drove it to Boston and lived there on my (now wifes) couch for two months. I covered that entire city with chalk ads. Tufts. Harvard (they kicked me off in 2 seconds). Northeastern. Emerson. MIT. BU. Brandeis. I was everywhere with boxes of chalk on boxes of chalk. 4 weeks straight of chalking 8 hours a day. It worked amazingly. We got 1000 customers the first year in Boston and overflowed our warehouse and had to get more space at the last second. We filled that one up too. My wife even had to help. The next year we went to a few more locations and chalked the heck out of them too. Then a few more. People laugh when I include chalk in my little startup inspiration stories. But honestly I credit that tactic to really allowing us to grow and build up a fairly large customer base quickly. I hope this inspires you to get out and do some guerrilla marketing that your competitors aren't doing. It works. [link] [comments]  |
| I was all for bootstrapping until I raised 500k Posted: 07 Jun 2019 09:35 AM PDT I am bad at fund-raising. A backchannel source told me that I am uninvestable because I had I looked like a person who will rip my investors off. Then I raised half a million dollars for NuMoney, which is now LandX, and LandX is doing phenomenally well, mostly because we had cash in the bank. Success begets success, and cash is the seed of success. I intend to raise 10M more for LandX. But it wasn't always like that. I used to think the talent was all I need. However, after a few spectacular failures (Kloudsec, SilvrBullet, Javelin Browser), I figured it was mostly luck and plenty of perseverance that leads to success. My point is, don't be young Steven. I got rejected a few times, got butthurt and decided that I will build a great business without help externally. I'm wrong because I will always need help externally even if it does not involve fund-raising. Be it sales, or hiring, or a simple favor to ask from a friend, I will always need help. So to get good at business, I will have to learn how to ask for money. If anyone is serious about building a business, like I am, then he/she must learn how to fund-raise. I will figure out how to fund-raise better. If you are an entrepreneur, you should too. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 12:47 PM PDT Edited: Hey all, I'm an entrepreneur working on developing businesses in several industries, what I'm lacking is the "inside baseball" know-how and knowledge in specific fields. The (potential customer) feedback I've received on my ideas and the support on them have been positive and I have business plans ready to go for each of these ideas. My questions are: What is your advice on identifying and building a trusting relationship with a mentor? Are there websites/forums for this? Do you rely on personal connections? Where have you found successful, sustainable relationships? [link] [comments]  |
| How could I make a Mac Pro Stand competitor? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 01:25 PM PDT For the purpose of discussions lets assume this would all be legal, and you do not have to worry about getting sued by Apple. What would your first step be if you were to launch a "Mac Stand" competitor? Something that worked just as well with one of the new Mac computers for a fraction of the price. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Entrepreneur who get into huge debt but turn them around, how did you do it? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 08:22 AM PDT Just curious! I got into huge debt ($300k) either from investment or entrepreneurship, now going back to work and try to pay debt bit-by-bit, just wondering if anyone out there failed first but turn it all around! Being in debt is no joke! You feel like a failure and your hope vanished, especially when close friends who are entrepreneurs are all doing decently well (statistically improbable, but what do I know!). Yes I have ask for their help but their industry is completely different so what they can help is limited. Let me hear some story, good or bad! [link] [comments]  |
| How do you become code “literate” as a non-technical founder? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 04:56 AM PDT As a non-technical founder it is difficult to get your points across or ask the right questions when your thoughts dont come across as intended. Sometimes you spend hours working on the wrong thing due to miscommunication. So, I would like to learn able to "speak" code to developers, so that I can effectively communicate with them. Any tips on how to learn how to learn how to become code "literate" will be much appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| PSA for software entrepreneurs: your company doesn't have to start when you've finished the app Posted: 07 Jun 2019 10:53 AM PDT I see a lot of stories about entrepreneurs working for months (even years) on their app and saying things like "can't wait to get it to market and see if people will pay for it." No. No. No. No. NO. You are running a huge risk if you're waiting to finish your app to validate it in the market. Building apps are expensive and time intensive. The more code you've written, the harder it is to make changes and adapt to your customer's needs. The metaphor I like to use is that writing code is like laying concrete. You need a jackhammer to tear it up if you want to make any major changes. A technique that I often recommend is called The Wizard of Oz Technique. If you've even seen the classic movie The Wizard of Oz, the big reveal at the end is that the great and powerful wizard that strikes fear and awe into anyone who sees him, is actually just a guy pulling levers behind a curtain. And we can apply the same idea to our software companies. The technique is basically this: do as much as you can manually so you can start validating in the market. A great example of this is the story of Aardvark. Aardvark was a startup with a goal to create a social driven search engine to answer subjective questions. Back in 2010, search engines like Google were good at answering objective questions like "When was Einstein's birthday?" and really bad at answering subjective questions like "What's a good romantic novel to read?" The founders had the idea that they could connect a person asking a question with someone knows about the subject and can give them a good answer. Aardvark tested their idea by creating a beautiful interface with a backend that was actually a human googling their answer and putting together an answer. Basically, a man behind the curtain, pulling levers and making it all look like magic. It was crappy and slow, but it was enough to test if people were interested. They could have built an advanced social network that connects questioners with experts right away, but that would taken months, maybe years. And the whole time they wouldn't know if they're building the right thing or in the right way. One takes months of work. The other can be set up in a weekend. By using this technique, they were able to build a hacky prototype and start getting feedback immediately. They were able to take feedback and make changes immediately. The goal is to see if people find value in what you're making. If the feedback you get it "this is useful, but I wish it was easier to use" then you're on the right track and you can start creating a better user experience with a dedicated app. It allows you to understand what people need and you're nimble enough to make changes on the fly. In minutes, not weeks. [link] [comments]  |
| How many years of specialized experience before becoming a consultant? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 01:56 PM PDT Consulting seems like the optimal way to go to increase income and decrease hours worked. My question is how much experience is generally acceptable to become a consultant? I feel like the imposter syndrome could technically carry on indefinitely depending on your mentality. [link] [comments]  |
| Finding an investor for an established business Posted: 07 Jun 2019 01:35 PM PDT I'm going into my 8th year, and my business is doing so well that I'm not able to keep up. I'm turning away customers. I need money to hire more people. I run a service business, so more employees means more business, but I need to hire first before I make the money off of them. Also, I would like to open my business in the next city. I don't know where to go to find an investor. I don't know anyone that has money either. Where do I go or who do I ask? [link] [comments]  |
| Trouble hiring Laborers - How can I improve? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 01:04 PM PDT Hey guys I'm having hella trouble hiring laborers for my car detailing company this year. I post jobs on job boards and get a ton of applications. Most of them are not qualified however out of the 10 phone interviews I successfully scheduled, 5 out of 10 will not show up (ie. pick up the phone) when I call them. Is this normal? [link] [comments]  |
| How to handle business partner who has contributed little to nothing during startup Posted: 07 Jun 2019 01:02 PM PDT A very close and long time friend of mine and I decided to go into business together. We split the responsibilities down the middle between operations and finances. He has a banking background so he is responsible for sales and anything to do with finances. I am the one who holds all the knowledge in regards to our specific industry hence I am the operations guy. As we are still in the startup phase, the business does not bring in enough revenue for us to sustain ourselves hence we both still have full time jobs that we are juggling along with getting our business off the ground. The dilemma is this, I have been taking on everything. I've set up all our internal processes and systems for day to day workflow as part of my role in operations. But I have also taken on finances and sales responsibilities. I've been the one staying up late setting things up, marketing and bringing in business. I have practically single handedly taken this business from just a concept to an actual tangible thing. I brought in our first client, I've setup our bank accounts, I'm learning Quickbooks myself. All this while still handling the operations tasks, fulfilling service requests and so on AND still doing my full time job. Simply put I have been doing everything. I see this going in the direction of me doing everything during startup which is the hardest part, and then he will finally jump on board and take some of the load once I've already gotten us some momentum. As it stands the business is registered as an LLC and we are both listed as members. There has not been any kind of operating agreement signed but there have been verbal agreements that the business is split 50/50, profits and all. At this point I am not feeling like that is very fair. My options are to speak to him and pleasantly request that he remove himself from the LLC leaving me as the sole owner at which point I can carry on doing what I've been doing. However I fear this may cause a long time friendship to end. Or I can speak to him and ask that we revisit the 50/50 agreement as I am no longer ok with that arrangement but this may have the same result on our relationship. I'm very conflicted and not sure how to proceed. [link] [comments]  |
| Booming on Twitter, how to expand elsewhere...? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 12:55 PM PDT I had an idea for dropshipping custom made products and tested the water on twitter, as the target audience in the niche are pretty active on there! A month later, I'm $2,500USD in profit. Each order contacts me via DM, we discuss the requirements, draft a design, they pay, I arrange the rest, done. It feels comfortable working like this, as I have the control of making sure a customer is happy with the design prior to ordering, something that may be tougher to do on an 'off the shelf' shopify style website. I still only have 1,500 Twitter followers so know I have growing room on there but Twitter isn't really set up as a marketplace so I may be missing a trick. Any ideas or experiences would be hugely welcome! [link] [comments]  |
| Any suggestions for affordable general liability insurance (Small Business) Posted: 07 Jun 2019 08:58 AM PDT Looking to see if anyone has any suggestions for companies to get quotes from. Hartford is increasing my rate by 16% (no claims or anything) so I'm just wanting to shop around and looking for any suggestions. Thanks! I run my own tutoring business. Insurance is required by my landlord [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 08:51 AM PDT Hi, Reddit. I'm new to Google Ads, this is my first search Ad Campaign on "car wireless charger". I really need some professional advice about my campaign, thank a lot! I set a campaign with 5 ad groups like this.
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
Group 5
Is it ok to set a search ad like this? I feel something wrong with it but I don't know where.Please give me some advice! Thank you very much! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 12:29 PM PDT Got tired of the corporate grind, so I left the US and went to stay with family overseas. Where I am right now sucks and I hate it, but at least got my living expense covered and I have fast internet. I'm hoping to make this my launching pad into something greater. I have intermediate knowledge in HTML/CSS and WordPress. I have basic knowledge in JavaScript and social media marketing. Tried a quick stunt in drop shipping that didn't go anywhere. Same with affiliate marketing. Tried freelancing WordPress development and found mild success at first, but that quickly crashed down because all I can find are clients that want $3000 websites for $300. What would you do if you were me? And please no tutorials. I've been watching tutorials for the past two years and I'm so tired of them. I want ACTION. I want something to sink my teeth into and grow. Anyone been in that situation before? Any suggestion? [link] [comments]  |
| What are some startups that were created by college students that eventually sold for millions? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 12:27 PM PDT Read an article similar to this 6 months ago and can't find it now. Any ones you can think of or stories of people you went to college with? Besides FB. (Didn't sell but is worth a lot now). [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 12:26 PM PDT Hey Guys, I'm quite lost with this issue and have no idea who to talk to about it so I thought id post here. I'm a filmmaker and I work mainly freelance in the UK film industry. I have some branding/a production company name that I would like to protect (I wont say it here, but an e.g would be Flip Coin Films) and I don't know what my options are. At the moment it's simply branding for my personal projects, as I will continue to work freelance. However in the future I would like to run my own small production company with this identity. Is it possible to register this name to protect it? What are the costs and downsides to this? I know a lot of you are probably US based, but id still love to know your thoughts on the matter, as I have no idea who to talk to about this. [link] [comments]  |
| Best online "tip jar" for multiple businesses? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 12:24 PM PDT So I currently run a couple of YouTube channels, and two websites, none of which generate hardly any revenue, and I was looking at setting up some sort of tip jar for all of my businesses and linking them all to the same thing. For instance I would have everything linked to one account saying "This was brought to you by ThereGoesJoe, please feel free to donate here" but I would have that on every website and YouTube channel. I was looking at doing a business PayPal account, but wanted to see what everyone else suggested, so what are your suggestions? [link] [comments]  |
| Whose name should be used on web registration forms for a corporation? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 12:01 PM PDT If some friends start a business, it doesn't really matter whose name is used for the registering the company PayPal or AdWords account. But what happens for a company with chief executives and departments and such. Whose name is suppose to go on all of those forms? The CEO? The CFO? Some random person working for the CFO? [link] [comments]  |
| I'm offered 1 million impressions/week instagram account for $130. Should I buy? Posted: 07 Jun 2019 04:19 AM PDT It's a gaming meme account in my niche as I run a gaming news site at Sipreadrepeat.com. I'll update for more info if I get any, The Question: Should I buy it? [link] [comments]  |
| I've 4000€ (4530$), what I can do to get 25% of that money per month Posted: 07 Jun 2019 11:45 AM PDT Started with 300€ (340$) February 2018. I used to sell merchandise from Alibaba on eBay, but I have to stop this and need to bounce into something else. Any ideas? I'm also in college too [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jun 2019 11:42 AM PDT So I'm in the process of starting a company, my wife will be the main employee for now until more are needed. My question is about a website. I am aware I will need one and am looking for any suggestions or how you all went about it? I can't make one myself short of using wix or a similar service but is that a bad idea? Paying someone better? Any input is appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Looking for a developer / partner. Posted: 07 Jun 2019 11:37 AM PDT Hi, I'm looking for a developer to partner up with and build a platform. The platform is going to be a marketplace for videographers and editors. I have the design, list of requirements, mock-ups with explanations for every phase etc.... The "project" is already "live" and it's making $800-2k per month in profits. its a bit special, but 'm doing everything you need from a marketplace through mail / WhatsApp / PayPal as a middleman right now which is time consuming and very slow. What's needed in phase 1?
The platform (phase 1) will automate most of the repetitive work I do and help with getting more clients. We can build those from scratch or use a script like ShareTribe, MarketplaceKit etc... About me: 26, full time videographer/editor and based in Denmark. I'm passionate about this project, so I'll have time everyday (mostly evenings / after work + weekends). You: Experienced with building marketplaces or similar sites and you have time. SEO / marketing experience would also be great, but I have experience with that. Interested? Please send your website / portfolio and availability over PM or here in the comments. [link] [comments]  |
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