Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (October 25, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (October 25, 2019)
- Re-Selling Non-Refundable Plane Tickets ~ 6,000,000 Flights Going To Waste Each Year
- The story of my digital marketing & web design company
- Create A Mail Order Mystery?
- How do I go about starting assembly factory in third world country?
- Where is the best education sources for someone just starting their journey as an entrepreneur?
- Please tell me what's wrong with my consulting business
- My One-Shot-One-Kill cold email; AKA the Zero Call Close.
- How to 3D Model a Product for 3rd Party Accessory Production.
- Looking to monetize my hobby of 6 years (procurement of rare/old firearm parts)
- Online Credit Card Authorization Form?
- Finding the right early adopters for your product is vital to its success.
- Female Founder Raises 1.25M in 30 Days for Convertible Shoe Startup
- Charge shipping or include in the price?
- How to produce a small batch of my non-alcoholic RTD tea beverage?
- Mailchimp keeps shutting down the account I use for my free newsletter without explanation. What is the best alternative?
- How do you overcome distractions and stay focused?
- Looking to Create A New kind of Makerspace Starting in NYC
- Second job/ side hustle
- How we developed a $10MM/month VoIP SaaS.
- Even when I'm not working, I'm thinking about work and it sucks.
- What new business would you start with $75k?
- Salary/Equity for a Product Manager at Series A
- How can I be of value to your business?
- My best converting ad image on Facebook ads is a low-quality photo randomly taken of me at a cafe with a $200 Chinese phone. Why?
| Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (October 25, 2019) Posted: 25 Oct 2019 06:11 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]  |
| Re-Selling Non-Refundable Plane Tickets ~ 6,000,000 Flights Going To Waste Each Year Posted: 25 Oct 2019 03:43 AM PDT We give people refunds for their non-refundable flights and hotel bookings! And we provide travellers with unique below-market prices for holidays. Curious fact - one of the most frequently cited reasons for the canceled holiday is relationship breakups. Have you purchased a non-refundable flight or a hotel room, only to realise that you can't go and lose all your money? It happens to millions of people every year. SpareFare solves this problem by connecting people who have bought flights or hotel reservations but can no longer use them, with people seeking discounted travel options. Sellers can now recover part of the money they paid for their trip. Getting half of your money back is still better than losing everything! And buyers get a true discount of up to 50-60% by not paying the current price of the bookings. It is a complete win-win for both sides. Like most startups, this one was created out of personal need. It was a lightbulb moment. It all started when my co-founder realized he would not be able to use a flight due to unpredictable work commitments. Full of misplaced hope, he ended up changing the outbound date two times, until he eventually gave up. None of his friends wanted the ticket and there wasn't a scam-free marketplace he could sell it on. He saw the need for a trustworthy service which salvages costly travel tickets and gives people the chance to fly when all other options dry up. I've had the same problem with canceled holidays and it was very obvious to me that this is a gap in the market which needs to be addressed. Who is your target demographic? Since we are a marketplace, we have two different types of customers – sellers and buyers. Our sellers are very diverse – everybody travels and plans change frequently. Our buyers are flexible travelers looking for bargain holidays. Students and self-employed freelancers make up a big part of that group. Of course, we are expanding and hope one day to be the go-to place for anyone looking for a genuine discount on their holiday! How did you fund the idea initially? I have two co-founders and we met while studying at the London School of Economics. SpareFare was and still is, funded by our own savings. This gives us the luxury of time to test ideas and fail on our own terms. The three of us were working as City professionals and had some savings we could use. Combined with that we also had to be very cautious about spending. We are based in London, but paying professionals and employees here is prohibitively expensive for a small startup without investor funding. I am Bulgarian and this has been a wonderful blessing because we outsource whatever we can to Bulgaria. The talent pool there is great and the hourly rates are a fraction of what we'd have to pay someone in London. For anyone thinking of doing something similar – you don't have to speak Bulgarian to do this, everyone speaks English. Our first employee was a friend who helped with customer service and marketing. She did this on an hourly basis and we only paid her for the hours she needed to work that week – some weeks were busier than others and it was difficult to predict at the beginning. She had a full-time job and fit the SpareFare work around that. Per hour, we paid her a sixth of what we would have had to pay someone in London with the same level of experience. Keeping her hours flexible, combined with the low hourly-rate was a very cost-efficient way to hire our first employee. Our developers are all in Bulgaria as well. When I hear fellow startup founders paying £100,000 for a website, it makes me laugh and cry at the same time! What motivated you to start your own business? Prior to SpareFare I was a solicitor (that is a British lawyer for the non-Brits reading this!) working for a big American law firm in London. The job is very prestigious, with high-profile clients and you are very well compensated. Understandably, when I told my family I was going to quit to work on SpareFare, they were less than keen. My grandma is still not able to understand why anyone would quit a stable career to pursue their dreams! :D I am sure this was the right thing to do and I enjoy working on SpareFare very much. It is hard and I don't expect it to get any easier anytime soon, but the thrill of doing a job with a purpose is incomparable. SpareFare is a startup with a mission – make travel more affordable for everyone. I know that lots of travelers need our service and we are literally creating a new market in the travel industry, so it is very exciting! Do you have any advice for someone just starting out? Quite a lot! It turns out I was very naïve about some things in the beginning. And thank God I was, or I might have never started! As a rule of thumb, everything takes twice as long as you think. Always factor in extra time in your timelines. Also, it is much more emotional than just going to work and doing your 9-5 office job. Your business is your baby and everything is personal. Failures feel ten times worse and success feels a hundred times better when you are doing it for your own company! Get ready for rejections and people who do not believe in your idea. I know that SpareFare provides a much-needed service in the travel industry, as validated by our many clients and great user feedback. Naturally, I thought that everyone would see things my way, like the idea and want to work with us. In reality, I receive many rejections and no's. I don't take it personally and remember that it is just part of the game. If you enjoyed this interview, the original is here. [link] [comments]  |
| The story of my digital marketing & web design company Posted: 25 Oct 2019 04:46 AM PDT People often say that web design and digital marketing niches are too saturated and that it's impossible to succeed. Here's my story that might help someone out. I live in Central Europe, so things might be a little bit different in other parts of the world. Background: I've been in the internet marketing industry for several years. Had ups and downs, went from zero to hero and vice versa several times. I made over 200 sites in my life and because internet marketing is too shaky, I decided that it was time to start a more safe business that will generate constant revenue. I'm not getting younger, so IM shakeups might give me a heart attack someday. So I started a web design company in February this year. I had zero references and zero of my past work to show because those 200 sites that I've made prior were optimized for one thing only (CTR), so they look terrible from the design aspect and I can't show them to prospects. Because I needed the references and something to show to future clients, I decided to offer my web design services for peanuts: 150 to 200€ per website. At this rate, I'd need 10 to 15 clients to pay all of my bills and company's expenses, but I decided to risk it. It took me 2 days to create a website for myself. I created landing page packed with promises for advertising and bought reseller hosting with 80GB capacity so I could host my future clients. The hosting cost me 150€ for 1 year and I calculated that I can pack it with about 100 clients (most of them need 200MB of space, some up to 2GB). If I charge them all 30€ per year for hosting, I'll get 2850€ of pure profit every year which isn't bad considering that I don't have to do anything except sending them the invoice every year. Hosting 300 sites would get me 8550€ of profit per year. This would more than cover all of my individual taxes for the entire year which is something I found worth striving for. I immediately went on Google Adwords and started advertising. I used Adwords in the past for some of my affiliate marketing projects and I mostly made losses, so I was super nervous about Adwords. In about 2-3 days I started getting calls and soon I got my first couple of clients. A dog training company, a dancer, a fitness instructor, couple of alternative healers, and so on. Nothing big, but enough to start the ball rolling. The first few months were painful. I worked 10+ hours per day and dealt with all kinds of crap. Every client had different expectations and needs and I promised to fulfil all of them. If I didn't know how, I learned. Simple as that. In about a month I got a call from a prospect asking me if I can create a vector logo. Of course I said yes although I had zero experience with vectors. My logo design process until that point was finding an appropriate free stock image, adding text and that's it. The client sent me the drawing, I installed Adobe Illustrator and spend the entire day (about 10 hours) working on the logo, watching tutorials on Youtube and learning everything about Adobe Illustrator. I asked for 20€ before I started working, so I was paid 2€ per hour for this job which of course it's peanuts. However, I knew that the next logo will take me 2 hours, and the next 1 hour and so on. After a while I got another client asking me about Adwords marketing. I never launched a campaign for a client and I was completely honest about it. I offered them a pro-bono advertising campaign and it was a success. I contacted a couple of my past clients to let them know that I can help them with Adwords (pro bono, I was a good Samaritan) and after three campaigns, I had enough self-esteem to offer Adwords marketing to just about anyone. So it took me a couple of months to transform my web design company into a company with a full range of digital services, although the primary focus was still web design. I finished tons of different sites in the first couple of months. I redesigned my website and included references to finished projects. I increased the price of my services a little bit and decided to offer a logo design service in the package for free. It was a package no one could refuse because I was still dirt cheap. Somewhere along the way, this happened. I got an email from a prospect asking me to design a website. The prospect sent me 3 examples of what kind of website they want. All of them were terrible and easy to create. Top bar, header, simple footer and content area (no sidebars, no nothing). I could set up everything with a blank WP theme and a little bit of customization in 2 to 3 hours, so I asked for 300€. They seemed like a medium-sized company, but 300€ should do it. I'm kind of shocked that I didn't say 250€ or some other bullshit. In a few days, I got a call from that prospect, asking me all kinds of weird questions.
At the end, the prospect told me that they have doubts because they sent inquiries to several web design agencies and most of the others asked for 800€+ and even over 2000€. I was mindblown and decided that it was time to increase prices. I can't sell a website for 800€ to a small business, but I learned that I can charge more to larger companies. Things were looking good for most of the summer. I easily generated enough revenue to pay my bills, clients kept on coming, but the work started to pile up. Somewhere around the end of summer, I talked to several people. I told them what keeps me from working faster and what kind of crap I'm taking from clients. They helped me come up with a few solutions. I decided to change my mindset and approach to dealing with clients.
Once I've implemented these things, the work got a lot easier and faster. I might lose a couple of clients here and there because of it, but it's totally worth it. Right now I have much more capacity, I have more time and I could theoretically finish 5 sites in a week. Getting larger clients Because I have something to show for, I am occasionally getting larger clients with larger projects. I'm currently finishing two projects that will require me to work on them indefinitely for a couple of hours per month. I expect them to be finished in about 1 month if I get another project like that, I expect them to cover all of my company's taxes every month. The problem is that large companies don't search for web design services on Google, so it's hard to get them through Adwords. They pick web design agencies through word of mouth recommendations and I'm not an authority in the area. Yet. Getting off the Adwords Adwords has done wonders for my business, but it's costly. There are tons of web designers in my country and not many of them are using Adwords. Why? Because they are getting enough clients without marketing. I realized that the future is in partnering with other businesses. I created a free website for an accountant. In return, he's going to be my free accountant for the next 2 years. Hooray. But what's even better is that his services are 20€ to 50€ per month. This means that he needs tons of clients to make a living. And most of these clients have websites and they will need a renovation sooner or later. So he is dealing with a lot of clients who need or will need a website, and I'm dealing with people who will need accounting services sooner or later. We established a copromotion (he lets his clients know that I'm the guy for web design and I let my clients know that he's the guy for accounting services). I don't know how many clients I brought him, but he brought me two clients (with several more coming up) in the past two months. I also partnered with two other companies that have lots of connections. However both of these companies want the work to be done through them, so my company isn't mentioned anywhere. I don't even talk to clients. They send the questionnaire to their prospects, I set up the price, they charge their margins on top of that, and that's it. I get paid, they get commission and we're all happy. So far I got 3 clients from one of these two partners in the past two months and the other partner will start promoting soon. What am I doing now? I got 4 new projects last week and I temporarily canceled my Adwords campaign to finish as many older projects as I can before the end of October. I'm also redesigning my website for the third time this year because I want it to look like there's a full-scale agency behind it. In November I expect magic to happen.
Goals for 2020
The end So there's that. I wish I'd ask more people for advice at the start because my whole journey was a pain in the ass until the end of summer. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2019 02:04 PM PDT I am looking at creating something a lot like (but not exactly the same as) those mail order mystery products. If you have never heard of them, they are things like Hunt A Killer or Escape The Crate. But I have hit a wall in researching how the actual production side of things works. Does anyone know how companies like this go from idea to finished product? Is it all done in house, are there companies to outsource it too, or what? If anyone has any insight that would be amazing, thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| How do I go about starting assembly factory in third world country? Posted: 24 Oct 2019 06:34 PM PDT Hey guys, I have had my products developed in China and they were always stolen by the manufacturer after seeing my success. I am done with it, I want to own a small space in China/India/Wherever (not mexico, I want to stay alive) and have about 5 employees to assemble my current and future products. The only problem is that I do not want to live there, I don't mind visiting for a couple of months to get things running, but I want to leave someone there to manage the production and employees. Any ideas how do I go about hiring the right person to do this job? Is there a name for this kind of a job? Does anyone here have an experience opening a business in China? I should probably mention that I have no experience managing employees or production. But the jobs I need them to do are pretty simple soldering and packaging jobs [link] [comments]  |
| Where is the best education sources for someone just starting their journey as an entrepreneur? Posted: 24 Oct 2019 04:06 PM PDT Could be books, degrees, courses whatever. I would like to focus on learning what needs to be learned and eliminate unnecessary information overloads. I just realize the potential in being an entrepreneur vs working a JOB. Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Please tell me what's wrong with my consulting business Posted: 25 Oct 2019 01:40 PM PDT Hey all. I've been working as a fractional CTO for the past two years now. I was fulltime CTO of a tech company, but I decided to quit when my baby was born to focus on family. I'm now running my own consulting practice as a fractional CTO, product strategy consultant, agile coach, and executive leadership coach. Over the past two years, I've tried many different things in terms of services, marketing, and networking to grow my business, but I feel like nothing seems to really stick. For my services, I offer myself as a fractional CTO to provide some strategic support to growing tech companies. So non-technical founders who are managing or outsourcing a dev team can hire me to provide some strategic oversight and mature the development process. Otherwise, if the company has a junior CTO who is more like a senior dev, I can coach the CTO to gain maturity around building and leading a team, building scalable architecture, and adopting agile development best practices. With regards to marketing, I attend local networking groups, I connect with people on LinkedIn and do many coffee/lunch meetings a week, and I post regularly on social media. I've built relationships with dev shops in town as a mutual referral agreement. I've got a vlog, blog, and podcast that I run as well. I even went so far as to write a book on product development to establish myself as an authority. I have yet to find any reliable source of referrals. I've asked clients point blank for referrals, and the answer is always "Sure! I'll keep you in mind", but then nothing comes of it. I get the occasional client online from my content marketing, but it's not as much as I need. Is there something fundamentally wrong with my offering or my marketing strategy that perhaps I'm not seeing? I feel like my service is something every tech company could use, a mature technical leader who can teach maturity and best-practices to growing companies, but it seems people may not realize they need me. I'm also unsure why I'm not getting more referrals, since everyone I work with seems to like and respect me a lot. I may be grasping at straws here asking strangers on Reddit, but I feel like I may have some sort of blind spot or misguided assumptions that's preventing me from gathering a reliable stream of clients. [link] [comments]  |
| My One-Shot-One-Kill cold email; AKA the Zero Call Close. Posted: 25 Oct 2019 01:12 PM PDT There's a lot of myths about cold email. I see all these ideas about putting people into 8 step sequences with overengineered cadences and truth be told I can't see it as anything other than an advertisement for the software that lets you do it. Nobody wants to get 8 emails from somebody they've never heard of, and if they finally get on the phone with you do you think they're even a hot lead? Anyway, I think it's all BS. I have a one sentence totally cold email that converts about 2-3% of people I send it to an appointment. Which is actually not bad. And what's really cool about this email is that it can work for any B2B company that has any sort of track record of success at all. if you've ever knocked it out of the park with even with only one customer you can use this email to scale that success. In order for you to read this email and have that "A-ha" moment, let me lay out what makes it so powerful. First, there's 4 steps to the buyer journey. There's awareness, findability, reputation and conversion. People have to be aware of your value, be able to find information about you, assess your reputation and they will buy. This email takes them right up to step 4 in one sentence. It also includes the commonly touted cold email necessities like personalization, segmentation, and a clear call to action. It's a message about enabling the customer and not about how awesome we are. Lets pretend I'm a restaurant franchising expert and you're Bob of Bob's Burgers.
So here's the final part of this that wraps it all together. Remember the four steps of the customer journey? We're leading with our reputation and results in our hand ready to go. And more importantly we're walking up to the bar with the ID in our hand - it makes you look 21, right? We're not begging them for their time. We're not asking them for it in return for nothing either. We're not even bragging or hard selling about how we've done this before. It's really a solid deal - If you need X I can prove that I can do X and if you feel like I've satisfied that proof then we'll talk. So onto the Zero Call Close... You know how normally when you get a lead you have to educate them, sell them on the value, etc? Leads from this email already know what they are getting into. They know your results, pricing, process, and value from the cold email and the case study before they even get on the call. I find that at this point the leads get on the phone for less than 10 minutes, ask the same 3-5 questions and then either buy, give me a time to reach back out, or pass me on to a decision maker. By the time I get them on the phone there really isn't even much left to talk about. Anyway this has gotten a bit lengthy, but would you be interested in me breaking down how to write a high converting case study for something like this? [link] [comments]  |
| How to 3D Model a Product for 3rd Party Accessory Production. Posted: 25 Oct 2019 12:46 PM PDT Hi, first time posting in this sub Reddit. I want to know how should I go about 3D modeling a product to produce 3rd party accessories. Should I 3D model it or get a draftsman to create a CAD file? I plan using this 3D model to create a mold in China for accessories production. Has anyone done this before? [link] [comments]  |
| Looking to monetize my hobby of 6 years (procurement of rare/old firearm parts) Posted: 25 Oct 2019 12:37 PM PDT Hello all, New around here and I'd just like to say I'm glad resources like this exist. Any input is greatly appreciated. I have always been keen on international procurement when it comes to very niche items like rare automotive parts from Japan or Soviet-era gun magazines. I have been doing this as a hobby for about 6 years now. I have connections in different parts of the world for old/hard to get firearms components and accessories and I would like to monetize that. There would not be any sales of functioning firearms as that requires the use of specific licenses and such. I would like to purely provide components and accessories. I have formal education in marketing and enjoy the profession. I feel as though this could lend well as a niche product may require a well thought out marketing plan. The idea is rough at the moment and I am looking for some insight to move forward. Does anyone here have experience in this industry? What would be some common pitfalls to avoid? If anyone has any additional questions feel free to ask I'd love to explain in more detail. [link] [comments]  |
| Online Credit Card Authorization Form? Posted: 25 Oct 2019 12:35 PM PDT Hello, I use Braintree and PayPal Payments Pro as my payment gateways. Are there any online form services I can use to securely collect credit card information? Essentially, I want to make an online credit card authorization form, but I recently learned that my current form provider (Wufoo) does not allow this as part of their terms of service. Any suggestions appreciated, thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| Finding the right early adopters for your product is vital to its success. Posted: 25 Oct 2019 12:27 AM PDT Finding the right early adopters to your product are crucial to its success. These early adopters will have a huge impact on how your product actually grows. Narrowing down this list will help you get the first real customers who are willing to spend any money on your product, this is important for one basic rule of economics - people won't consider your solution unless you show them actual customers who benefited out of your solution. A very helpful article that I came across, when doing my own market research on the topic. [link] [comments]  |
| Female Founder Raises 1.25M in 30 Days for Convertible Shoe Startup Posted: 25 Oct 2019 12:11 PM PDT Found this article interesting! Who would have thought convertible shoes would raise such a round. [link] [comments]  |
| Charge shipping or include in the price? Posted: 24 Oct 2019 08:28 PM PDT I recently started an online business and ship smaller items to my customers that I design and make. For example, one item is a machined titanium pocket tool to use while traveling. For this example, I charge $70 + $5 shipping in the USA and calculated shipping worldwide. My question is is it better to keep or how it is or just put the $5 in the price of the item? Then I would have a $75 item work free shipping within the USA. Thanks for the advice as I start this amazing journey. [link] [comments]  |
| How to produce a small batch of my non-alcoholic RTD tea beverage? Posted: 25 Oct 2019 12:00 PM PDT Hello fellow redditors and entrepreneurs~ I will dive right into it—I am in the process of launching a ready-to-drink tea company. I have a website built out, along with four digital product mockups for our launch variations, a business plan, a 3-yr financial plan, and SAFE investing documents. While I am happy with having accomplished this much, I feel like I am in a strange state of limbo, as it is difficult to onboard investors or have "intent to purchase" agreements signed without a minimum viable product for them to hold and taste. I have kitchen formulations and approximately $20,000 in private funding, and am looking to use it in the best way possible. I am thinking to use it towards properly formulating my recipes for production and having a small batch made for retailers to pilot. The small batch can also be used to gather testimonials for investors and for future crowdfunding. Is there anyone who has experienced a similar predicament, and if so, what advice would you have for finding a co-packer who is willing to work with a startup? For reference, I am based out of southern Arizona, so anywhere within a single state radius would be preferred (eg: AZ, CA, UT, CO, NM, or NV). Looking forward to hearing your guys' thoughts! PS—if you are a prospective investor or copacker, I encourage you to please PM me ;) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2019 11:33 AM PDT This has happened twice now. It's some kind of automated system that detects violations of their policies. I run a free newsletter that alerts people in Northern California of cheap flights from our local airports, ala Scott's Cheap Flights, but only for my area. I'm ready to move on from Mailchimp. My newsletter is free, I have under 1000 subscribers and I don't make money from it, so I'm only looking for a free alternative to mailchimp. Any recommendations? [link] [comments]  |
| How do you overcome distractions and stay focused? Posted: 25 Oct 2019 07:44 AM PDT This is a question I had recently when I would sit down and try to work on a project, but start to feel overcome by distractions, and not end up getting things done. I made this video talking about some things that worked for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVEgDST_4jA I'm sure a lot of you have had to overcome this challenge as well so I'm curious what methods seemed to work for you. [link] [comments]  |
| Looking to Create A New kind of Makerspace Starting in NYC Posted: 25 Oct 2019 10:44 AM PDT Hello, I will admit I do not have business training, but I am looking to create a team of individuals with business skills and craftsmanship skills to create a new makerspace/ social environment. I've lived in Maryland all my life, and I have realized all social venues are centered around consumerism and ad-placement. "Well obviously" you might be thinking. Some people are just comfortable with that. I however am not, and I want to create a social venue centered around creating things from wood and clay, promoting and sharing ideas, and solving puzzles. The place would be less engineering focused than your typical makerspace, but more intellectually focused than your typical bar. What do you all think? I would love to start developing a team to work on this project. Please let me know if you would be interested in being a part of this venture. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2019 09:15 AM PDT Hello everyone! I am subbed and lurk often. I am a single mom of 3 currently working full time and looking to bring in more money. I am a nurse working 5 days per week. Kids go see dad on the weekends. I am trying to decide if it would be better to work 12 hour shifts on Saturdays as a nurse or find something else that I could work on here and there, which would amount to more than 12 hours per week altogether. Realistically, after taxes, I could expect to bring home about $300/shift depending on where I get a job but I am limited to one day per week and I am stuck there for a full day in addition to the 40 hours I pull during the week. Does anyone have any recommendations or ideas for something that would bring in more than $300/week (net)? I am in the Atlanta area. Saturday and most of Sunday are open. I could work from my laptop in the evenings. I was thinking of maybe trying my hand at the copywriting that pops up frequently here, but I need to start bringing in money sooner than later if possible. Thank you in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| How we developed a $10MM/month VoIP SaaS. Posted: 25 Oct 2019 09:00 AM PDT Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Yaniv Masjedi (u/nextiva) of Nextiva, a brand that makes business communications tools. Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi, Everyone! My name is Yaniv Masjedi and I'm the CMO of Nextiva, a leading business communications company based in Scottsdale, Arizona. I've been with the company since the very beginning (spring 2008) when we signed our first customer. Our co-founder and CEO, Tomas Gorny, came up with the idea for Nextiva after experiencing a ton of inefficiencies in the business phone service and business communication market. He wanted to solve for those and create a company that was focused on continually innovating and delivering the best customer experience the industry had ever seen. It's been a really fun ride. We've actually evolved within the last year from a business providing primarily business phone services to one that solves all communication challenges for companies. Now we combine CRM tools, team collaboration tools and business communication tools all on one platform called NextOS. We've also grown exponentially since those early days in 2008. While we started with a few people in a windowless conference room, we now have more than 1,000 team members spread out across offices across the world. What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?The idea for Nextiva came from Tomas. He is an amazing entrepreneur, and after founding several phenomenal companies over the years, in 2008, he decided to take a crack at reforming the inefficient and antiquated business communications industry. He and I had worked together previously; I actually started in sales roles at another one of his companies. When he told me of his idea for Nextiva, I jumped at the opportunity to join him and the team. The team was so small at the time -just a few of us- and there was a need for marketing right away. Even though I'd never worked in the business communication industry, I dove right in. Now, more than a decade later, I've loved what I do every day. Marketing is such a dynamic field; it's been fun to come up with ideas to help Nextiva grow and work with some of the brightest minds in the business. Nextiva itself launched as basically the tiniest player in the VoIP industry. We were surrounded by giants, and those giants were highly skeptical of our ability to stand on our own and compete with them. We welcomed this challenge and decided to do things differently. We never accepted outside funding; Nextiva is entirely self-funded. We focused on listening to our customers, developing solutions customized to their needs and moving forward. We developed authentic relationships with customers and designed a customer experience model we were so excited about that we even trademarked the term Amazing Service. It was a confluence of all of those things that have helped us grow as fast as we have. Amazing Service has been the backbone of everything we've done -every product decision, every interaction, even how we treat one another on the Nextiva team. Instead of only focusing on delivering excellent service externally, we've made it our mission to also deliver service internally by treating our team members as well as possible. This has helped us earn many awards for company culture, and keep our retention rates high. Some of Nextiva's early employees are still with us today. Beyond our Amazing Service and the delivery of great business VoIP products, as time went on we started to notice our customers struggle with their business communications as a whole, beyond phone service. Customers were sharing stories of struggle around customer relationship management, of not being able to afford the same tools available to massive corporations, of missed opportunities in team collaboration, of their inability to track various forms of communication, and their constant struggle to keep up with dozens of communication applications that would monitor everything from phone to email to text to social media to chat. Tomas saw this as an opportunity to deliver better service than ever, and over the course of several years, our engineering team worked to create a never-before-seen software tool that would be both affordable and take away the need for so much communication confusion. We named that tool NextOS and launched it in spring 2018, right around our 10th anniversary in business. The announcement has changed the game for Nextiva. With it, we've transformed from a business offering VoIP services to a business communications company that, while still offering VoIP, is now helping businesses more holistically. The reception from the industry has been overwhelmingly positive, and it has changed our company in profound ways. I think Tomas speaks to this transformation best, saying, "VoIP is to Nextiva as books are to Amazon." That quote captures it all. It also illustrates that even 11 years in, we are still just getting started. Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.Our process of design to prototype to market was pretty simple. We knew of many VoIP services out there and knew the types of phones required to deliver that kind of service. The founding team, as part of other companies, had been VoIP customers previously, so we were aware of what worked and what desperately needed to be improved. This helped a lot when designing our first product. Really early, we partnered with a company that made technology for cloud phone systems. Our engineers worked closely with them to create the design we had in mind, and then we were off to market. Describe the process of launching the business.Launching Nextiva was incredibly exciting, especially since our small team knew what kind of potential the idea had and how much the market needed what we would offer. The issue, though, was that no one knew we existed. I remember our team-building nextiva.com (we did it by ourselves) and then brainstorming as to how to get the word out to potential customers. Facebook was tiny back then; digital advertising had hardly taken off in 2008. But Google was big, so we created a few ads on Google. What's amazing is that the first day we posted an ad to Google was the same day we signed our first customer. That fast of response was an early sign of things to come; that the market needed what we were providing and that customers were ready to jump ship from some of our larger competitors and take a chance on us. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?There are so many factors that have gone into us attracting and retaining customers. First and foremost it has been our commitment to listening to our clients and responding to their needs; to really caring about their challenges. Our innovative products and Amazing Service promise had also gone hand-in-hand with this. I believe that happy team members attract happy customers. Our commitment to serving our team members and making Nextiva a really fun, inclusive, supportive and positive place to work has also been integral to retaining customers. This also goes back to hiring. We are very strategic when it comes to bringing on new team members to make sure they are both cultural fit in our offices and have the drive to move Nextiva forward. This has been a huge focus for us, and it has paid off. On the marketing side, we've done some fun things to bring in new customers, too. I remember a few years back when we were invited to exhibit at a major industry conference. All of our biggest competitors were there, and tons of potential customers were going to be walking the expo hall. To stand out, we hired former basketball star Dennis Rodman to shoot hoops for a few hours in front of our booth. It was a spectacle (check out the video here). I mean, he's a character as it is, which added a ton of flair to the experience, but people also love him and wanted pics and selfies with him. It was a huge hit; I don't think the other booths got a single visitor for the time he was there. A few years into our business, we wanted to thank our customers personally for their business, so we created short (5-10 second) videos and posted them to social media (here's a fun clip from 2018). A team member would call out a customer by name in the video. Customers ended up sharing these videos widely with their networks, thereby spreading goodwill about Nextiva and attracting even more great customers. Speaking of goodwill, I think our customers also appreciate that Nextiva is civically minded. We have an entire philanthropic arm to our company called Nextiva Cares. This arm is dedicated to empowering our team members to volunteer at non-profits that serve our communities. We also give money to worthy causes on a regular basis. During our yearly NextCon conference (this year scheduled for Nov. 3-5, 2019 in Scottsdale), we've initiated hashtag/social media challenges in exchange for donations to amazing charities. During our NextCon conferences alone, we've donated more than $50,000. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Things are going great right now. We've grown so much since our early days and have a ton of growing still to do. We started with just a few people in a small room and today we have more than 1,000 team members across the world (most of them based in our Scottsdale office). I think we've built an amazing foundation, and we have an incredible group of people on board with us. We also have a ton of opportunities to expand and really change the world of business communications. It's an exciting time. Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?We've learned so many things! I'll focus on some internal topics, here, though. We've learned a lot as it relates to company culture. Starting out, we did like many tech companies do and provided free snacks and a game room in the office. Our team members loved these perks, but as we grew we realized that company culture isn't built on snacks (I wrote about this learning for Entrepreneur a few years back). While people appreciated the free food, what they really wanted was a career path and a listening ear from their supervisors. People wanted to have the freedom to give the company feedback, talk about their motivations for coming to work and develop authentic relationships with their colleagues. We took this to heart and have shifted our culture accordingly. Now, team members will regularly meet on-on-one with managers to discuss their career trajectories, how things are going for them and provide ideas and honest feedback. It's been a profound shift that our team members have appreciated. Hiring has also been a big learning. I'll say that from day one we knew we wanted to mindfully build our team, but like many other companies in high-growth mode, we of course made some missteps along the way. We've learned from them, and now hire people who are doers, who have amazing attitudes and who are fun to be around. Our hiring process is very in-depth, and we've found that that increased attention has resulted in tons of fabulous new team members on board. What platform/tools do you use for your business?It might be a plug, but it's true: internally we use NextOS on a daily basis. Just like our customers, we've found it to dramatically help our team track, manage, collaborate and analyze all communications. It's significantly helped our internal processes become more streamlined, and has helped in our customer relationship management. We also use Asana and Jira to help with project management. What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?I'm a fan of the Marketing School with Neil Patel & Eric Siu podcast. I've actually become friends with those guys; I'm continually amazed at their depth of knowledge in the marketing field. The episodes are great and super informative. Two books I'm loving right now are The Power of Noticing: What The Best Leaders See, by Max Bazerman; and Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed and How We Can Stick To The Plan, by Francesca Gino. Both authors are professors at Harvard Business School. I've found the takeaways in each book so powerful that I come back to them over and over. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?Nextiva has been experiencing double and triple-digit growth over the past several years, and with that growth has come tons of open positions. We are always looking for great people to join our team. The best places to find open positions are on our careers page and on our listings on LinkedIn. 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. For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily. Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM [link] [comments]  |
| Even when I'm not working, I'm thinking about work and it sucks. Posted: 25 Oct 2019 08:55 AM PDT I do feel good when I'm working, but once i go out and hangout with friends i be thinking about work and what i could've been doing instead of going out. This happens all the time I just want to take a little break like cmon brain ! I hope someone who has been through this share tips to have fun without being anxious/worried about not being home working. [link] [comments]  |
| What new business would you start with $75k? Posted: 25 Oct 2019 08:52 AM PDT A friend of mine is getting $75k from a sale of his portion of a business and is looking for interesting ideas on a side business he can start to work on. If you had $75k and wanted to start a new side business what would you do? [link] [comments]  |
| Salary/Equity for a Product Manager at Series A Posted: 25 Oct 2019 08:31 AM PDT Hey all. Two parts here: I am a product manager at a F50 company, and I have a phone interview for a similar position at a Series A funded Startup. Part A: What are some questions to ask about funding, burn rate, reasonable salary expectations, reasonable (if any) stock options? Part B I have a particularly interesting background/licenses that gets me in the door/insight to with a large handful of clients and use cases and even new market segments that could be a significant help as they push towards revenue. Is this something worth negotiating into my scope? Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| How can I be of value to your business? Posted: 25 Oct 2019 08:28 AM PDT Hello guys, We are building a design service and looking for ways we could add value. I would like to ask; apart from initial logo designs for your website...
Thanks in advance [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Oct 2019 08:27 AM PDT A lot of entrepreneurs / advertisers are trying to find the perfect ad image, add a lot of text overlay, make it too professional, banners, etc. According to my tests, this actually reduces conversions. My best-converting ad image is a quick photo of me chilling at a cafe with my low-quality $200 Chinese phone. HERE it is. I have other photos like this and they always out-perform photos that are more professional, high-quality, or have text overlay, etc. My hypothesis is that people prefer to be marketed to in a more vulnerable, authentic way. In the photo I come off as a friend saying "hey I can help you get leads" instead of a business trying to make a quick buck. Actually, to clarify the above paragraph, I believe that the best ads are ads that don't come off as ads. I typically write my Facebook Ads blog-post style, long form, lot of value, etc. with a BIG emphasis on story-telling. I've ran a few other tests and they all have the same results. Low-quality images that look like your long lost University friend seem to perform best. Note: this particular ad ran with the objective of collecting Email leads from realtors, the ad copy being a story about how I can solve the lead gen problem. Here's how this applies to you if you're running ads or interested in running ads: First, take more personable photos of you and your business. Be prepared to tell a story in some way. For example, let's say you have a yoga studio. Instead of taking those IG-perfect poses, try a silly photo of you hanging out with your crew or even making a mistake in a yoga pose. Or just a basic bad photo of a class. Or if you have an ecom business, you could take a picture of you demonstrating your product, or a video briefly revealing it. Instead of more random examples if you comment your business I will reply with a quick ad image/text idea you could implement. As with any form of online ads it's extremely important to test, test, and test some more. You should split test professional photos with low-quality ads, and several different variations of ad copy (the text) also. I'm not an expert, this is just what's worked for me and I hope this helps someone. Again if you want a quick image/text idea I'll reply within a day or so. [link] [comments]  |
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