Marketplace Tuesday! (October 22, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Marketplace Tuesday! (October 22, 2019)
- Using physical exercise as a way to get tough
- Who here is trying to balance dating with entrepreneurship? ��
- Advice on becoming a real life small scale "shark"?
- How do you come up with text copy for your business?
- Let me review your business and make a video on how to improve your social media and gain users
- Any good exercises to help brainstorm business ideas?
- $1MM per month selling custom socks
- How did you come up with the name of your business?
- I built a free teaching tool a couple of years ago and have barely touched it since. It's starting to get some decent organic traffic this school year. Any advice on how to turn it into a business?
- Starting an audiobook business - how to get in touch with authors for rights and what do they want?
- Changing the way the world drinks wine... Vino Novo. World first device that can 'age' red wine in under 10 minutes...
- Everything you need to know about Tik Tok marketing + Algorithm
- What program would you use if you wanted to lcreate a mock website with working buttons?
- Safe to Use Canva for developing semi-confidential business documents?
- Opening a company but...
- I have a great idea for a children’s toy that I want to sell direct B2C. What are some tips and suggestions from those experienced in this market? I am a successful entrepreneur in other consumer products markets but having never done anything in the toy space, I would love some input.
- Full-time entrepreneurs: How did you mentally, emotionally, and financially prepare to quit your job and go full-time in your business?
- Can you scale a painting business?
- Any recommendations for methods of receiving payments from our client instead of them mailing me checks? Usually about $1500
- Advice on a bootstrapped SaaS - pinnacle of "fake it till you make it." Any tips?
- How to approach businesses with new business idea
- Starting a cleaning service from the ground up (Help!)
- Freelance writer to create content
- Having trouble sleeping, Keep thinking about the startup and ideas How do entrepreneurs get a goodnight sleep?
| Marketplace Tuesday! (October 22, 2019) Posted: 22 Oct 2019 06:07 AM PDT Please use this thread to post any Jobs that you're looking to fill (including interns), or services you're looking to render to other members. We do this to not overflow the subreddit with personal offerings (such logo design, SEO, etc) so please try to limit the offerings to this weekly thread. 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]  |
| Using physical exercise as a way to get tough Posted: 22 Oct 2019 01:32 PM PDT Here is a practice that I use that might help other aspiring entrepreneurs. The basic premise is simply to use exercise as a way to push yourself and toughen up the mind. One of the main attributes we need to succeed as entrepreneurs is "stickability" or "perseverance" whatever you want to call it. When we exercise we reach a point where we want to quit. Learning to push past that point can help us learn how to keep going when we want to give up. Consistently exercising and pushing ourselves helps us to become comfortable with being uncomfortable and learning to break new ground. We will do things physically we never thought possible. Some food for thought as usually exercise is simply touted as a good way to keep energy up and stay healthy etc. However, I think the mental toughness of learning to push through is perhaps an overlooked benefit of exercise for entrepreneurs. It is kind of like exercising the "I don't give up" muscle. The more we train ourselves to be tough and not give up the easier business will be as we have already learned to push through adversity. [link] [comments]  |
| Who here is trying to balance dating with entrepreneurship? �� Posted: 22 Oct 2019 06:59 AM PDT Hey everyone, I'm currently trying to find out how one could make the lives of entrepreneurs a lot easier ;) Which is why I have 2 simple questions
Thanks so much in advance - looking forward to hearing your answers! [link] [comments]  |
| Advice on becoming a real life small scale "shark"? Posted: 22 Oct 2019 11:06 AM PDT I've always had a strong interest in entrepreneurship. I'm currently not working on any projects though for myself. I found my real interest lies in helping other entrepreneurs - I seem to get a lot more excited about other people's ideas than I do about executing my own. I have a good job and some spare money to invest. I don't want to throw it at some web investing platform where I own a fraction of a share of dumb money. I'd like to find a real life entrepreneur who needs some cash and help and advice to get rolling. So essentially I want to become a small venture capitalist, or angel investor, or "shark", small five figure type amounts of money. Has anyone here done this? Any suggestions on finding entrepreneurs who might be looking for this? [link] [comments]  |
| How do you come up with text copy for your business? Posted: 22 Oct 2019 06:31 AM PDT How do you guys manage to come up with text that you need for your websites. Do you get a brand agency, marketing company, copy writer? Who does this sort of thing. What in particular do they do? [link] [comments]  |
| Let me review your business and make a video on how to improve your social media and gain users Posted: 22 Oct 2019 10:48 AM PDT I made a video about a year ago, talking about how to market a particular start up and it got some decent traction from you guys and got around 380 views. It's pretty cringe in the way I deliver, but this is it, but it got a lot of positive reactions, especially from the entrepreneur herself... Anyways, I'm looking to start up a consistent youtube channel again and want to 1) create a video on your overall business and how you can increase revenue or gain traction, 2) go over your social media and tell you ways on how to improve it. It'd be cool if I can talk with you at some point for the video. What qualifies me to do this? I built a niche business 2 years ago, and currently at 30K instagram followers (averaging organic 1.5-2K followers a month), and consistently getting on the 'explore me' page on instagram resulting in some posts getting 100K+ likes! I just want to provide the content that I wish someone told me about my business when I was starting up. Just be an active, running business! So, anyone want in? [link] [comments]  |
| Any good exercises to help brainstorm business ideas? Posted: 22 Oct 2019 11:22 AM PDT I've always dreamed about starting a business and I have a few ideas but I feel like I haven't hit that one idea that feels like a lightbulb went off in my head. How do I brainstorm business ideas and come up with good ideas? Are there any tips and tricks? [link] [comments]  |
| $1MM per month selling custom socks Posted: 22 Oct 2019 09:01 AM PDT Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview. Today's interview is with Dane Jensen (u/dreamscientist) of Sock Club, a brand that makes custom socks Some stats:
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi, Dane Jensen here, my business partner Noah and I run Sock Club. Our flagship product is socks of course. We started Sock Club as a monthly subscription where we would deliver a pair of unique socks to our customers every month. As we've grown we've developed a manufacturing supply chain here in the United States. Having the ability to make our own socks made it possible to enter the new market of custom socks. Now making custom socks is 90% of our business and the subscription 10%. Last year we did $12M+ in revenue and we plan to do more than that this year. What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I was living in Austin, TX running and biking around being a twenty-something-year-old working as a web developer. At the time when I started Sock Club, I had a few failed startups under my belt. I built Camm Security Inc., a cloud camera company, and GitHire, a software developer recruiting service, with co-founder Rhett Creighton. So, I had acquired some software development skills and some sense of what's important in starting a company. I built the website for Sock Club over a weekend in kind of a flash of inspiration. Birchbox had been a big subscription success and I thought that socks were an item I wouldn't mind receiving monthly and having more of. After I built the website,I kind of forgot about it for six months. When I checked back in, people had found the site and tried to sign up. The page after you signed up just said something like "we aren't shipping socks yet but we'll let you know when we start". From my previous experience of starting companies and trying to get customers, I knew this was rare. So, when my friend Noah mentioned he would be interested in starting a company with me, I told him I had this idea that we could run as a side project. He was working at a finance company in Austin and I was still working as a web developer, so we didn't quit our day jobs, but we would work on Sock Club on nights and weekends. Sock Club grew gradually and now we're 30+ professionals in Austin designing and selling and manufacturing socks. Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.My business partner Noah Lee could definitely talk about this in more detail than I can. When we first started we would buy wholesale from other sock brands but we quickly got to the scale where we needed to manufacture our own socks. North Carolina, where Noah is from, has a rich textile history, and having this connection was a huge advantage. Noah pounded the North Carolina hills and built our supply chain. Manufacturing quality socks is a long process. Here's a simplified view of what happens. Cotton grown in the southeastern United States is shipped to our spinning facilities which spin raw cotton into yarn. Our yarn is sent to our dyehouse which dyes our 40+ unique colors. Our dyed yarn is sent to our knitters which uses modern Italian knitting machines to knit the yarn into a sock. The knit sock is sent to our fulfillment center to be boarded (washed in very hot water, etc.) and packaged and then shipped to the customer. Describe the process of launching the business.Launching Sock Club has been a super gradual process. I feel like we are still launching Sock Club. Jeff Bezos has a great saying: "it's always day one." You have to be as hungry and competitive for an opportunity as you were on day one. I try to think about that every time a new opportunity comes across my desk. If this was day one, would I jump at this opportunity? Noah and I have also become experts at convex optimization (a stolen term from Nassim Taleb), which basically means making improvements that can only help your business and definitely don't have any negative impact. When we launched Custom Socks by Sock Club (the custom arm of our business which is 90% of revenue now), we didn't give up on the Sock Club subscription. We made an effort to make sure it took a little of our time as possible so we could focus on custom. Sock Club was completely bootstrapped and has always been profitable (excluding the cost of our time). We did everything we could ourselves. We packed socks for shipments. I designed, wrote the copy and built our website: We did our own product photoshoots and product photography. Noah handled our finances and taxes and built our supply chain. Often we did stuff ourselves that we weren't good at. It could have been easy to find someone better to do it for a reasonable price, but we learned so much by doing everything ourselves it was definitely worth it. Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?We don't do the best job with the analytics of our traffic so I can't give you hard facts about where our traffic comes from but I think the marketing channels that have been best for us our SEO, Google ads, Facebook ads, email newsletters, radio ads and trade shows (not necessarily in that order). Most of the acquisition comes from the free channels of SEO, past customer reordering and word of mouth. When starting out to gain distribution (aka customers/market share) you really need to pound the pavement and do things that don't scale. On the internet site, to get customers and SEO distribution I used my favorite free tactic a lot which is posting good content to content aggregators like Hacker News, Product Hunt, and Reddit. It takes some work to make something that those communities will like but if you do you get a big return on the content. To learn more about this I think priceonomics.com made the best resource on content marketing -> The Content Marketing Handbook. We also pounded the pavement in the person going to tradeshows and getting on reps in on perfecting our sales pitch. It worked perfectly for us because our product is made for tradeshows. Also, I think understanding when you need to sell harder than normal is important. Our business is super seasonal because, for the most part, we sell gifts so we run email campaigns, radio ads and lots of promotions around the holidays like Father's Day, Valentine's Day and Christmas. My advice for marketing would be to do all the free stuff you can, and Google and Facebook are the main avenues to buy customers. How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Sock Club has been profitable from day one. Most of our distribution is from Google and tradeshows. For our custom socks sales, we use the Hubspot CRM with a lot of custom modifications to fit our industry. Our operations department is constantly changing the software to keep up with our growth. Operations at Sock Club has the super difficult job of managing our supply chain and making it easy for our sales and design team to enter orders and know the status of their order. When we started custom, we were only doing a few orders a week and could keep track of everything through Trello. From Trello, we grew to try Airtable and then built a custom app in Zoho. The next step for operations is custom software built off the popular open-source application Odoo. Right now, Sock Club is focused on being number one in custom socks. When people see a custom sock or want to order one, we want them to think of Sock Club first. After we win custom socks, we want to see if we can bring the processes we use to design and manufacture socks to another product. Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?I've learned so much by starting a business. I believe business is the best way to put theory into practice. Business, unlike anything else, will weed out the ideas that don't fit reality. I think Warren Buffett or maybe it was Patrick Collision talked about business being applied epistemology and that's how I think about it now. Here's a subset of the things I've learned from Sock Club that might be useful to your readers:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1MSxoLAZVP/ What platform/tools do you use for your business?
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?Shoe Dog - if you want to go far, focus on building a team. Everything Ycombinator puts out - That community just has a very rational approach to business and cuts through the BS and figures out how to build something people want. Derek Sivers blog - Importance of customer service and execution. Creativity Inc - We went through a tough period last Fall/Winter of exponential growth that we weren't necessarily prepared for. I got this book for all of the Sock Club employees as a Christmas gift. It includes great advice about scaling a business and investing in your employees. Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?I think the internet is such an echo chamber the pressure to cargo cult and do the things that you think successful startups do instead of doing the things your customers want is a mistake everyone makes from time to time. You have to think from first principles and listen to your customers, which is easier said than done. Speed is so important. And the trick to being fast is focusing so hard on a few things that you don't do much at all. Everyone talks about focus, but no one talks about the other side that being fast means not doing too much. I learned this trick that being fast is about not doing much from Hacker News. I remember someone posted a blog to Hacker News about how they spent a year trying to make a faster grep (one of the most important Unix commands) and he/she just couldn't do it. In the comments the creator of grep commented that the trick to making a fast program was to make the pro not do much at all. That kind of stuck with me. I think the same idea can be applied to business. It's related to the idea that Steve Jobs talks about where good design is about saying no to a million good ideas to get to a great idea. Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We're always looking for great people. We're in Austin so if you're around come see us. Right now we're looking for Web/Software Developers, Designers, and Account Managers. 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]  |
| How did you come up with the name of your business? Posted: 22 Oct 2019 11:30 AM PDT |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2019 04:32 PM PDT Weekly traffic over the past few years. Traffic from one day last week. I don't know much about Google Analytics - do these numbers seem promising to turn into a business? My main idea for now is to turn it into a membership site by offering a premium version of the currently free tool. Any advice at all would be appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Starting an audiobook business - how to get in touch with authors for rights and what do they want? Posted: 22 Oct 2019 10:45 AM PDT Hi, I'm starting an audiobook business in my country. I can do it illegally and probably get away with it, but I want everything to be legit from day 1. How do I get in touch with authors (rights holders) for creating derived work from their property? Anyone done this? What do authors want in return? A cut, a fix price per book sold, nothing? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2019 07:18 AM PDT I shared this a few weeks ago.... got some good feedback and some very positive PMs. This is something I've worked on for a few years. I'll let the Kickstarter page speak for itself. Link to original thread here. [link] [comments]  |
| Everything you need to know about Tik Tok marketing + Algorithm Posted: 21 Oct 2019 06:31 PM PDT Hey all! I'm a small business (print shop) owner and, having established my business locally over the past few years, have decided to spend 2019 studying and immersing myself in online marketing- Facebook/Instagram/Youtube/Tik Tok... I spent the past few months studying the Tik Tok alogrithm, figuring out what makes videos successful and best practices are when using the platform. Below is a rough draft of a write-up I'm planning to release on Linkedin in a few weeks. I think it's got some very useful info for those new to the platform and am open to debate with anyone who has successfully built a following and disagrees on any of the points :) Thank you! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What is Tik Tok: If you haven't heard of Tik Tok yet, it's time to start familiarizing yourself with the social networking platform. With over 500 million active users and a higher organic reach than every other social media app on the App Store, Tik Tok is well on it's way to overtake instagram (just like instagram overtook Facebook) as the must-have app for millenials and gen Z in the next half decade. I was put on the app by my younger brother, now twelve, who started using Tik Tok over two years ago. Back then the platform wasn't as popular in the US, with most of its user base being centered in China and India. It also went under a different name- "Musically". In 2017, the company was bought out by ByteDance and rebranded. Since then it has seen explosive growth in the United States, mainly among kids A strange shift has occurred. Rather than gen Z following in the footsteps of millenials and adopting Facebook and Instagram as their platform of choice, zoomers found their own place on Tik Tok. Stranger still, month by month, I see my friends and peers downloading and using the app, and the older demographic on the app growing. For those not in the loop, Tik Tok is an app that allows users to take short, 15-60 second videos and share them with followers and strangers. The in-app video editor features a host of features, including fun filters and effect (like those seen on Snapchat and Facebook Messenger) and an audio embedding feature that plays a pre-recorded audio loop behind you clip. Users can borrow each others audio clips and record their own video over them sort of like a template, fostering as meme sharing culture. It's really much easier to understand simply by hopping on the app and spending a few hours watching videos. Personal Experience: As I mentioned before I first heard of the app through my brother, Jimmy. He has been on the platform for about two years now and makes at least a video a day without fail, sometimes more. Most clips are shot in his room and the content ranges from short, highly edited, silly dances to 60 second videos of him talking about his day. He averages about 50 views a video and, on a good day, may get 15-20 likes. I made myself an account over a year ago but have only been a lurker up until last week, when I decided that I understand the ecosystem enough to throw my hat in the ring. I shot my first video on my iphone 8, made some minor edits on my computer, and posted the clip. Within the first 48 hours the 16 second video had over 200 thousand views and 30 thousand likes (edit: now 300k+ views and 50k likes). What's even more impressive is that the clip wasn't a random dancing video or funny skit, it was a product video. Specifically, it was a short montage of me printing a tshirt at my home studio, a tshirt I sell online. I've since posted several other clips with various success and hope that Tik Tok will be a viable marketing platform for my business and my personal brand in the coming years. (feel free to check it out at @this_is_jonjon on TikTok) The success of my first post was not a fluke but a function of proper search engine optimization and my familiarity with the Tik Tok algorithm. While the video itself was nothing out of the ordinary, everything else- the caption, the thumbnail I chose, the hashtags used, even the backing track in the clip were all vital to it's reach. Below is a more detailed explanation of the Tik Tok algorithm and a list of the factors I believe made the clip go viral. The Algorithm: I'll mention right off the bat that no one other than ByteDance developers know exactly how the Tik Tok algorithm works, however, while minor points can be debated, the overall idea of how Tik Tok distributes and "rates" content isn't a secret. When you first load the app, you land on the "For You" page, similar to the discover page on Instagram or Facebook/Linkedin news feed. This is where you, as a consumer of Tik Tok content, will spend most of your time. The app will show you videos in all sorts of random categories- car videos, funny videos, dancing videos.. And will decide based on view time (how long you continue watching each video before clicking away) and interactions (whether or not you like/comment/ or follow the creator) whether or not you have any interest in said category. Despite only working with these limited variables, Tik Tok very quickly figures out what you're interested in and begins feeding it to you, still occasionally throwing in unrelated content to see if you'll "bite". You don't need to tell Tik Tok anything about your interests, they figure it out for you, and they're almost always right. The content that ends up on your "For You" page isn't content that's made by your friends like on instagram or creators you subscribe to like on Youtube, it's completely random content. Whenever someone uploads a video, regardless of what category the video is in, Tik Tok will try to show it to 50-100 people to gauge the viewers' reactions. If the video has a good engagement rate, Tik Tok will continue showing it to random users, and if it has bad engagement, it will be swallowed by the void. About a quarter of the videos on my For You pajjge are these "tester" videos, made by unknown creators and with (usually) less than 50 impressions. Tik Tok found a perfect balance between showing you proven content you're genuinely interested in and showing you "tester" content to figure out whether that content is worth sharing with more users. If the app senses you're getting bored, it will feed you less "tester" content and more videos with proven positive responses, and visa versa. Gaming the System: Your first video) There is one final detail I failed to mention in the previous few paragraphs. The first video that any user on Tik Tok posts gets an instant spike in impressions. As a new user, Tik Tok metaphorically "throws you a bone" and will in most cases show your video to more people right off the bat than it would a video by a repeat poster. This means that it's vital to make your very first post on Tik Tok engaging. Unlike Youtube, for example, where you can feel free to post tons of crappy content as you get comfortable in front of the camera and find your voice, Tik Tok will literally punish you for having a bad start. The app will rate you based on your first video, and while it's possible to climb back up after a bad start, it's better to just hit the ground running. Consider making a "tester" account to try out a few different video formats before having an official launch on another account, or simply take several videos and save them all as drafts until you find something that's worth launching your Tik Tok journey with. Whatever you do, don't open your account and launch with a boring "Hello World" style video, it's instant death. Follow general video guidelines) Your videos need to be engaging, so it should go without saying that they should be of decent quality. If your video is grainy and pixelated people will click away before even hearing your message (I'm calling you out, Android users!). The majority of Tik Tok creators are teenagers filming on the cheap, front-facing camera on their smartphones. Simply using the back-facing camera on a newer model iPhone and finding good lighting is enough to set you apart from the competition. I mention iPhones for a reason, by the way. It's not because I'm an Apple fanboy, it's simply because apps like Tik Tok and Snapchat are better coded for working with Apple hardware. Make sure not to go the opposite extreme, however. Tik Tok culture values authenticity, high definition videos filmed on 4k DSLR cameras come off as too professional and almost feel like advertisements. Tik Tok users want to see you filming on a handheld device, they want you using the in-app filters and sounds, and will click away instantly if they sense your content is fabricated and ingenuine. Trend hopping) In my personal experience, understanding the culture of Tik Tok is the most vital part to anyone's success on the app. My viral post used an audio clip that had just become popular a day before, and therefore rode on the success of about a dozen other viral videos using the same clip. Just like a musician can gain their first small group of followers by doing covers of trending songs, many Tik Tok influencers gained notoriety by jumping on trends that were already proven to be popular. Much like Tik Tok feeds its users popular videos and interjects "tester" clips every once in a while, many popular Tik Tokers post mostly trending videos- clips of them lip syncing popular songs and copying current memes, and interject personal skits and less popular content within. There is no way to explain Tik Tok culture and current trends in an article like this, especially since new memes and trends appear literally every day. The best advice I can give to aspiring influencers is to download the app and spend 30-60 minutes a day over the course of the next two weeks browsing the For You page. You'll quickly begin to recognize common themes and motifs, and will get an understanding of the culture I'm talking about. Ask for the close) Even at only 20 years old, I find a lot of the content on Tik Tok cringy and childish. This is likely because, though the user base is growing, gen Z'rs still make up the majority of content consumers on the app. Regardless of the reason, attention-seeking behavior tends to do fairly well on Tik Tok. Actually, very well. Simply adding "I worked super hard on this vid pls like" at the end of your clip is enough to boost conversion. My biggest mistake in my first post was not asking for the close. I didn't embed my Tik Tok username in the video, I didn't have good profile picture or bio on my account, and I didn't ask people to follow me in the description. As a result, no one followed me. After the first 24 hours or so the video had reached over 100k views and 15k likes but I had about 50 followers on my account. Upon realizing this I quickly changed my profile picture to a clear photo and changed my bio to something along the lines of "follow me for more cool content". My follower count more than quintupled within the next few hours. Though this may seem in-authentic to the average marketer, it really isn't. Tons of kids on Tik Tok pour their heart and soul into their content and genuinely want people to follow them. These creators, as well as most of the audience, see nothing wrong in asking for likes or follows. Asking for the close, in the Tik Tok community, is seen as more of a friendly reminder than a pushy sale. Thanks for reading! Hoping this helps some people launch/grow their account. I haven't seen a decent writeup on Tik Tok best practices yet so I'm hoping this can serve as a foundation. Please debate/add on points in the comments. -Jonathan. edit: Link removed [link] [comments]  |
| What program would you use if you wanted to lcreate a mock website with working buttons? Posted: 22 Oct 2019 01:55 PM PDT I'm building a website and need to submit ideas to the developer to show my vision. To do that I want to create a draft of my website design that works insofar that it goes to different pages when I click buttons. Think like a PowerPoint but more like a mock program or visual medium. Would some sort of java or flash applet work or what? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Safe to Use Canva for developing semi-confidential business documents? Posted: 22 Oct 2019 01:17 PM PDT Canva is a great tool, but legally just wondering if there is risk. I know they had a breach last year. I don't plan to use it for highly legal or confidential documents, but maybe just some business plan related things. Anyone here use it? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2019 04:58 PM PDT Hi guys, Since my last two older post I've moved on opening my own company and managed to found out two other co-founders. But I'm now facing a really tricky situation. Our company is growing slowly but steadily (Expected and normal), I even finished to develop our MVP two weeks before the date that we planned and I'm now working on our V1 based on these roots. I finished to formalized our 2019-2021 development roadmap. We already have a few leads with interesting customers (Big retailers) and a friend of me which opened its own company almost a decade ago and now is in need of a product such as the one we're working on. But an unfortunate series of even is currently worrying me. First one, I met with a local funding company that literally told me that they were ready to give me 250k$ if I was ready to ditch my two associates and went to work for them as they were looking for profile such as mine but not really interested in the company or the products that we're developing, TBN they didn't even asked for what's our products or any demo etc. That make me upset but didn't showed it and just politely refused the deal by telling them that I'm not looking for such deal and rather willing to grow my company and ideas. Second one, one of my associates is literally slow as fuck, it took him more than two weeks to mobilize it's capital funds were it barely have a third of what I have to mobilize, each time I need him to work on a topic he's having something that prohibit him to work on it, his wife is pregnant, his first child need to go to bed or eat, and he literally missed our two last online meetings because of public transportation issues and his own job is actually pretty time consuming. What's really upsetting me with that situation is that I feel like is not really engaged but yet when I manage to get him on board he's having really clever ideas about our situation and additionally our company was created from a discussion that we had a long time ago and so I know it's something that really interesting him. Finally, I got a phone call from my former employer (different service than my previous one) that is offering me for a position that we could consider as a unique opportunity as it's a full time remote job (I moved back to my family's region when I quite my job) on a higher position with a bigger package that I had before. Soooo, I'm kind of lost and overwhelmed about that situation where everything is good opportunity and where there are no clear bad choices. I would really appreciate your thoughts about such situation. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2019 04:07 PM PDT I know the basics like creating the brand, business plan, marketing plan, website, packaging, etc., but need some input on things like patents, regulations for toys, importing/exporting, etc. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2019 04:02 PM PDT I'm in a decent place with my personal finances (almost 1 year of minimal expenses in cash savings) but my business cash flow is 0. I think I'm especially risk-averse because I have a cushy 90k/year remote job with benefits that I'm not...quite...ready to give up. I have an SO with a similar income who is willing to support me if necessary, and we already live on half of what we make. But mentally I am just not there yet and I am realizing that I need to start working this out soon. Part of me is of the mind that I shouldn't quit until I'm making enough to cover my bills, the other part of me thinks I'll benefit from having a fire lit under me. I'm curious about your transition stories. Did you have money in the bank? Was your business making money? Was your departure intentional or unplanned? [link] [comments]  |
| Can you scale a painting business? Posted: 22 Oct 2019 11:41 AM PDT I hope this isn't a stupid question, but is it possible to scale an interior and exterior paint service company efficiently? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2019 02:55 PM PDT Hey, I'm trying to optimize our business and the next step is getting with the times when it comes to accepting payments. Right now we charge a few customers with credit card, but the majority just sends us checks and it's quite inefficient. I was wondering if there were any venmo equivalents for business to business transactions. Something quicker than checks, and easy to do as most of my clients aren't too tech savvy. The checks vary from 500 to 4000 but avarage about 1500. Edit: I should have clarified, all my clients are repeat customers who I have worked with for years. Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Advice on a bootstrapped SaaS - pinnacle of "fake it till you make it." Any tips? Posted: 22 Oct 2019 02:51 PM PDT Hello, all. I'm a non-technical single founder of a SaaS company targeted towards large companies. I have the wireframes, but I still need to hire or find a solid CTO, as well as developers. That isn't my question, however. I need capital for this hiring process, and I don't have it. I'd like your advice on how to go about raising money in the form of pre-launch discounts. Right now, I have an MVP designed (clickable mockup), and I'm showing it to potential clients. My overall strategy is to demonstrate the overall vision, narrow down on the MVP, and explain that because I'm in the prelaunch phase, I'm selling the MVP for a 75% discount. That discount will apply from implementation for two years, enough time to roll out the rest of the features. Implementation will begin once I've raised enough money to hire the developers and build the MVP. After the two year period, a 10% discount will apply in perpetuity. I'm doing this in order to incentivize companies to buy during the pre-launch phase. I should mention that a full contract (no discount) will be worth 50k/year for an 1000 person company, so each company is important. I would need 10-15 1000 person companies to sign up (with the discount applied) to complete the funding round. breath Any advice on how to go about this process? Am I doing this totally wrong? Did you do something like this? I would truly, truly, appreciate any and all feedback during this stage. Thank you in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| How to approach businesses with new business idea Posted: 22 Oct 2019 02:44 PM PDT Hi guys, I've had this idea for a new venture for some time but have no idea how to get it off the ground since I'm a virgin entrepreneur. My idea will basically aim to help small retail businesses with loyalty/rewards program, however the idea will involve some technology infrastructure and mobile software via a mother app. I don't feel like I should divulge too much at this time but any general tips would be greatly appreciated. How would I even begin? I not only need software, some hardware that is aready widely available, but getting businesses onboard? Do I just approach business owners first with a pitch before knowing if it's viable? I realise reading through this that it is far too vague but hopefully some basic advice would be out there! [link] [comments]  |
| Starting a cleaning service from the ground up (Help!) Posted: 22 Oct 2019 07:06 AM PDT This will be long post, so tldr if you just want the short story. Ok so I got laid off from my job. I am also waiting on getting admitted to the NYS Bar, so I can't legally work as an solo attorney yet. I got a severance package that runs out in December. I figured now would be a good time to build up a business while I apply for other jobs and have this free time while still getting a check. I decided to start a cleaning business. I got the license for the LLC and insurance. I then started out using marketing tools, such as bark and thumbtack, to pick up jobs. I created a website through squarespace and then eventually a Yelp page. Overall the business has made $800 but I am expected to bring in $1,000 by the 31st. However, I am running into problems with several things and I need help. 1) What should be charged as extras? 2) How to find and retain good cleaners. - I've had three women quit, one quit before even starting. This has cost me alone $400 in profit. I am just trying to bring on two reliable people. Should I do a mass hiring session so if one person quits I already have a back up? 3) Training employee - I've several complaints from clients that things were missed while cleaning or they could have done better in certain areas. Though this could be highly subjective, how do I got about training my employees to avoid this? 4) How do I market better and not find clients who are cheapskates? 4) This is a highly subjective business and I just want to know how to succeed. Any tips or advice would be excellent. TL:DR Started a cleaning business. Trying to figure out how to find reliable employees and train them. Also look on ways to better my business practices. [link] [comments]  |
| Freelance writer to create content Posted: 22 Oct 2019 02:18 PM PDT I'm working on adventure company. It's at least 6-8 months from going live. In the meantime my plan is to create useful content on my website. I'm not the greatest writer so thought of outsourcing this effect. I haven't done this in already 5-6 years and wanted to get your feedback on some questions
Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 22 Oct 2019 01:56 PM PDT |
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