Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (November 06, 2019) Entrepreneur |
- Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (November 06, 2019)
- GO GET IT
- Today's odd side hustle you didn't know existed: I've resold 7 figures of bras as a guy on Amazon. AMA
- Catch22 (Name Pending)
- What we learned from enabling social logins to our app
- New to the group - any feedback in SCORE mentors? What free resources have worked for you?
- I FINALLY made some money writing on Medium!!
- [JOURNEY] In the process of growing a blog for some additional income.
- lol make sure your paypal links work (duh moment)
- Do Your customers NEED or WANT it?
- How and Why We're Entering the (Potentially) $43B Powdered Food Market
- Choose “Slow/free shipping” shopping online to save up to 35% and even help fight climate change. We are building our startup on this value prop. Thougths? Are we missing something?
- 9 years in and changing things up. Need help with figuring out the vision of my company.
- I think that all ads providers are stealing our money because there is a big difference between the numbers of clicks (I tried them all)
- Sustaining motivation
- EO Group or Vistage?
- How long did it take you to get over fear of cold calling? (aka how many calls)
- Group Chats
- What's holding you back from being a successful Entrepreneur?
- Interview with Director of Product Management at Twitter: what we learned
- I work for a tech start-up in Toronto. We are seeking a CFO type person to secure VC or Angel Investors- what other job titles would be relevant for a fund raising focused job role besides a CFO?
- I quit my Mastermind Group...
- Process to make CBD product
- How understanding funnels well allows you to ad spend profitably
- 0% APR Business Credit Cards with High Likelihood of Approval?
| Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (November 06, 2019) Posted: 06 Nov 2019 05:10 AM PST Please use this thread to ask questions if you're new or even if you haven't started a business yet. Remember to search the sub first - the answers you need may be right at your fingertips. Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 07:04 AM PST I just wanted to say, from one entrepreneur to another, go get it. Get that deal, sale, whatever business & industry you're in! Go get it. It's very tough being an entrepreneur. So if you're starting off & struggling. It will all be worth it (: Have a wonderful day [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 09:00 AM PST Hey guys! I've got some time today so I'm doing a few AMA posts around the web :) Our out-of-the box story --> My wife and I have an interesting way of paying off debt and retiring early - We starting a side hustle 3 years ago with $100 reselling stuff on Amazon doing what's called "Retail Arbitrage". Basically we buy something on clearance at Walmart or Kohl's and then resell it on Amazon with Amazon doing all of the fulfillment. We've since both quit our jobs and now just do this full time! We've sold over a million dollars now with the majority being clearance bras from stores like Kohl's. It's not easy, or fast money! We didn't pay ourselves for over 15 months (we had day jobs still) so we could get everything rolling... but now we can both stay home with our kids full time and enjoy their childhood. I still go to Kohl's about every other week and spend 5-10k on mostly bras (that I then resell on Amazon). Let me know what questions you have! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 03:43 AM PST Catch22 is a digital platform that aims to solve the catch22 problem. In order to get a job, one must have experience, in order to get experience, one must have a job. We're trying to solve this by getting people to come together to create projects around competitions, contests, awards and other opportunities, so that they can showcase their experience and work to build their digital portfolio, around what they have actually done. More than just work positions like LinkedIn. Network + Exposure. [link] [comments]  |
| What we learned from enabling social logins to our app Posted: 06 Nov 2019 06:41 AM PST When we started Cruip we weren't sure if we wanted to offer traditional email/password signup, or social logins to authenticate our users! In the end, we opted for just social logins (via Google, Twitter, and Facebook), and 30,000 users later, this is what we learned: Google, Twitter, or Facebook, what do users prefer? According to our stats, users prefer Google (70.97%), followed by Facebook (19.69%), and then Twitter (9.32%) to sign in to Cruip.com. Here are the numbers:
These numbers can be different if you have a different product and target, but overall, what we discovered is that users tend to not login with their favorite social networks, so that's why Twitter ended up being as the less popular option on Cruip.com — our target (startups, founders, and developers) love Twitter and use it on a daily basis. So, are Google and Facebook the best options for our users? Certainly for the users, but not for us. Why? Unlike Twitter, Facebook isn't very popular among our target, so they choose it as the "safest" option to sign in to Cruip.com. The result? Approx. 1 out of 10 users who sign in using Facebook has an absent or invalid email — basically, they haven't used the social for years. Users without email (numbers):
On-boarding a user without an active email is useless, so Facebook is safe for our users, but a problem for us! In the end, Google is the best option for both of us Regardless of whether your app is offering Facebook, Twitter, or both, your users are going to sign in using the social they care less, so 30,000 users later, and looking back we would have used Google as the unique authentication option on Cruip.com! Last, but not least, Google provides 100% accurate data, in comparison with Facebook and Twitter. Final notes
I hope this post has given you some pointers if you're considering to enable social logins to your app :) If you're more questions or curiosity, please let me know by replying below! [link] [comments]  |
| New to the group - any feedback in SCORE mentors? What free resources have worked for you? Posted: 06 Nov 2019 12:57 PM PST I'm looking to start up an official consulting/ marketing freelance Company and want to take advantage of free resources. I'll be operating a minority, female owned company. Any feedback on SCORE mentors as a resource? What free resources have worked for you? I'm looking for basic ground up company information - business plan, legal elements, and best practices. [link] [comments]  |
| I FINALLY made some money writing on Medium!! Posted: 06 Nov 2019 07:51 AM PST I Finally Made Money on Medium - And I'm Super StokedMedium just changed how it pays authors, and that's great for lesser-known writers like me. Note: This is the text of a Medium article I wrote (with pictures) here: https://medium.com/@douglas.life/i-finally-made-money-on-medium-and-im-super-stoked-ebbcde82f84b When I started on Medium, I was gung-ho on carving the blocks of my imagination into beautiful sculptures I could rocket through the tubes. It was great. I could write anything I wanted, and even get out all my poetry that I had spent years cleverly disguising as rap lyrics. And I was going to get paid for it? No. Freaking. Way. There was one problem. I didn't. Nothing I was putting up was getting many views, let alone claps. A few of my friends got to read some of my poems, so that was a win, but it wasn't making any money. It figures, I thought. Seemed too good to be true. Was too good to be true. I gave up on making money. I was afraid no one would read my poetry behind a paywall, so I disabled it. --- Fast forward to tonight. [Picture of my 2.65 earnings] You have no idea how happy $2.65 made me. I'm still buzzing.So what changed? Medium's new payment systemI know it. I'm not a popular writer. Does that mean my writing is sub-par? Maybe. But probably not. Probably my marketing is. Probably my follower account is less than the number of times I laughed since dinner. I'll keep that. Anyway, Mediums old payment system was based on claps. Claps are easy to come by when you build a follower list. When you are known for something else. When you write about the hot topic. When you have klout. But not when you're a nobody. Not when you're putting you heart and soul into something because it's what you really care about. Not when you don't care what people are searching for, but only what your soul is searching for. But you know what? That makes great content. Content people want to read. Now, medium finally pays people who make things people want to read. Their new model pays by reading time. This is much better in my opinion because it sticks to the core of what writing is about: arranging words people want to absorb with their retinas. Here's the official word, straight from Medium's email: "Here's what's changing: We will calculate earnings based on the reading time of Medium members. We will include reading time from non-members too, once they become members. Your earnings will be updated daily, not weekly. Your story stats will show new metrics to explain your earnings." Improving how we calculate writer earnings In Medium's Partner Program, writers earn daily through a new model to reward quality writingblog.medium.com Since I want us all to profit here, here are a few tidbits of info I gleaned from my momentary astronomical success. --- Things I learned that can help you make $$--- Non-member reads mean nothing. My A Brief Introduction to Alien Races article on Aquarius Academy has become hugely popular, but not on this site. Only 2% of our 28k views have come from Medium. Most of the rest came from Google search results. Unfortunately, if the Google referrers aren't members, you won't get squat. Unless they buy a membership, which if they are coming from search traffic, isn't likely. Claps still mean $omething From what I can tell, claps aren't dead. Medium doesn't say it directly, they say: "Instead of paying based on claps as the main signal, we will now reward stories primarily based on reading time…" Primarily means that it isn't the only way you are rewarded. I suspect claps are still worth something, as you can see from this evidence. On November 3, I made $0.71 on 12 minutes read. Pretty good! That's almost exactly what I make on Skillshare, which has been my main source of online income. On November 5, I made 1.94! That was huge for me, someone who has written more than a dozen articles and not seen a cent. The only difference? I got some claps this time. This makes me believe that, unlike some early speculation, claps still make money. Authors can now get paid without Klout Klout-driven money has been the dirty little secret of Medium's old model. Not that there is anything wrong with that, authors that are known for great stuff should be rewarded. But that makes it just a little harder for us guys still on the block after the gun is smoking. While I certainly hope Aquarius Academy has plenty of friends in the future, for now we are pretty underground (or shall I say in Pisces). Anytime people don't know you and don't see a social cue to tell them your word's are important, they probably won't be as motivated to clap for your article. But they will still read. Oh, will they read. Beautiful words pouring through the eyeholes, satisfying the inner cravings like steak to a junk-food eater (Or açaà to a vegan). Now, who cares if I have 20 followers on Twitter, and my last Facebook post got three likes. I have a voice. And, for the first time, my voice pays. --- In Conclusion The cornerstone of writing is now being rewarded. This is the first time in history a writer can be paid in a provable way by the read time of the publisher's subscribers. This is huge for writers; bigger than claps, maybe even bigger than Medium itself. I, for one, am stoked. --- All the love, Douglas James Butner P.S. If you have a Medium, I invite you to follow me, I will follow you back!! Original Article Link: https://medium.com/@douglas.life/i-finally-made-money-on-medium-and-im-super-stoked-ebbcde82f84b [link] [comments]  |
| [JOURNEY] In the process of growing a blog for some additional income. Posted: 06 Nov 2019 12:44 PM PST Hi everyone at entrepreneur, I started this project about one month ago and I've been throwing everything at a wall to see if anything sticks. I would like to share some statistics and things I am doing to see if there is anything I can improve on and if I am doing everything correctly. Site: https://coffeeinformer.com/ I want to take you all on the journey with me. The goal for this site is to allow me to quit my 9 - 5 and start a coffee roasting business or cafe. However, I know I have to learn to walk before I can run so I will appreciate any criticism! Currently, the site is not monetized other than some amazon affiliate links in the posts. I am getting anywhere between 10 - 50 visitors a day. I am making Facebook and Pinterest posts and have the tailwind plus. Please let me know what I can do to get traffic and build up my blog. [link] [comments]  |
| lol make sure your paypal links work (duh moment) Posted: 06 Nov 2019 07:33 AM PST Got something like 15k visitors on my website in the last 30 days.... Only yesterday night a friend tells me... yo... Your paypal processing thing doesn't work. Sales EXPLODED this morning. Duh. If people like me can succeed... so can you hahhaha. Live and learn. Edit: I did not want to put the link but I've been asked so nobody complains. Boom [link] [comments]  |
| Do Your customers NEED or WANT it? Posted: 06 Nov 2019 10:12 AM PST Do your customers NEED your product or WANT it? This is an important question to ask yourself before you launch your business or band. Depending upon the answer, you have two very different approaches to reaching your customer and making the sale. Here's what I've learned selling my product. What is your customer saying... "I NEED THIS!" If your customer NEEDS your product they are specifically looking to solve a problem or fill a NEED. Think toothpaste, compression socks, back brace, eyeglasses, dog food. These are things that a consumer is going to purchase whether it is from YOU or someone else. If you sell it, it's your job to fulfill the NEED and convince them to buy from YOU. NEEDERS want to see features and benefits. Why is your product better? Why is it different? What will it do for them? How will they get it and what does it cost? Sure, you can share your story - but they were not looking for a story, they were looking for a solution. How?
"I WANT THIS!" If your customer WANTS your product - likely they found you by looking for something else. Prior to seeing your brand or product, the customer had no intention of visiting you and making a purchase. Think all lifestyle brands or any other white label products. They don't NEED your product so its your job to convince them that they WANT IT. Since you are not selling them a predetermined need - don't focus on features to solve a problem they didn't have, focus on telling the story of your brand and make them a fan. This sales process will take longer than the NEED products - you are working to make an impression, build a fan, and convince them that they WANT what you have. How?
MY STORY I run a direct to consumer sock brand. Exciting right? I design and manufacture Top Quality Merino Wool socks. I have 100's of 5-Star reviews. These things are going to FLY off the shelf! When I launched I assumed I was a NEED brand. People NEED socks. I was dead wrong. It turns out people don't get in front of their laptop in the morning and say, I'm going to buy socks today. If they need socks, they go to Target. Fast forward 6 months. I started to engage in the outdoor niche (I love the outdoors). I had a fun brand and people would follow, comment, and engage with me. They would subscribe to my newsletter to get my Weekly Digest of Outdoor stories and content. My customers WANTED a great brand and NEEDED content - so now that is what I deliver. Business is booming. Every month I'll send out a promo and my true fans will jump on it. The moral of the story is to ask yourself - "Do your customers NEED your product or WANT your product?" How you answer will dictate your success. [link] [comments]  |
| How and Why We're Entering the (Potentially) $43B Powdered Food Market Posted: 06 Nov 2019 04:15 AM PST Our story roots itself in my childhood, where I grew up an obese kid. I quickly learned that kids are mean. My name wasn't Cody to them, but instead "fat boy" or "fatty". The treatment from my peers made me hyperaware of physique early on. I remember the teasing being so bad from one student that the principal of my school had to sit down with both of us and explain the importance of respecting people different from ourselves. I consider myself lucky. My parents saw my pain and made it their job, as parents, to put nutrition at the forefront of my childhood. I remember at age seven, I read nutrition and ingredients labels to understand the products I put into my body. Keeping this mindset throughout my life, I found comfort in weight training. While weight training I began to meal prep, planning out all my meals throughout the day. However, once I decided to start law school, I found that I no longer had the time to prepare my meals. As a result, my diet--something I spent my entire life focused on— suffered. I thought to myself that there had to be an easier way. After my first semester of school, with an entire month off, I decided to explore an idea to create a single powder with all of my nutrition. So, I created this powder. After drinking it at lunch for several days, I quickly found my fellow law school students looking for something similar. Then, something I never even considered had happened, I student asked if he could buy some. Next thing I knew, I was regularly selling to a number of law students and even a couple of professors. I remember routinely carrying 50lb bags of corn up to my apartment only to run back down to carry up another 50lbs of protein powder. I did this all while maintaining a strict studying schedule to make solid grades in law school. From there, I received a peculiar invite from a law professor I sold ilixer to. The professor forwarded me an invite to a pitch practice event. I thought "why not?" and went to create my first deck. Fast forward to the event, I got my first taste of the entrepreneurial journey, and I was hooked. From there, someone really resonated with my pitch and connected me with The Brandery accelerator. I spoke with The Brandery and participated in their summer, local companies only, gBETA Cincinnati preaccelerator program— cohosted by gener8tor and The Brandery. After participating in gBETA I applied to The Brandery's full-time accelerator program, a nationally-ranked accelerator that leverages the expertise of the Cincinnati region, namely branding, marketing, and design. The Brandery pairs startups with world-class creative agencies. The Brandery runs its 12-week accelerator program once a year for five companies. All five selected startups receive $100K, a year of free office space, and over $200K in additional benefits. At the time of my acceptance to The Brandery, I knew ilixer needed a Co-Founder. To fill this position I tapped into my undergraduate resources and brought on a friend of mine with an impressive career trajectory post-college, Joshua Schuman. Joshua spent the last 3 years with Amazon as a Site Leader and Subject Matter Expert in Operations and Logistics. Joshua led the creation and establishment of standard operating procedures for Outbound Docks and Delivery Estimation Accuracy across the Amazon Robotics Network. Joshua led process improvement and execution efforts in sites ranging from 900,000 to 1.2 million square feet, with volumes eclipsing 300,000 Units fulfilled in 10-hour timeframes. As a Site Leader in Amazon Logistics Joshua assumed full ownership of the largest site in the DC Metro area and achieved record-breaking internal logistics fulfillment volume of 85,000 shipments per day. So far we've raised $100k through the program and recently opened our Seed round at $750k with a significant portion of the $750k verbally committed. What is your target demographic? We're targeting the busy professional that's looking to maintain a healthy diet on a hectic schedule. We take all the guesswork out of meal prepping or grabbing a quick meal by creating nutritionally-complete, powdered meals, providing an optimal ratio of macronutrients and micronutrients. ilixer combines organic, plant-based ingredients, fruits, vegetables, and other 'superfoods', to create a nutritionally complete powdered food. Simply put, it's one powder someone can drink on a busy day and receive all their nutrition from actual foods. We estimate the average consumer will consume 260 meals (one meal each workday) of ilixer per year at approximately $5.10 per meal. There are 33,040,000 professional occupation employees in our target age groups, resulting in 8,590,400,000 meals served annually. This results in an initial Total Addressable Market of $43B - $51B. How did you fund the idea in the early stages? Initially, I funded ilixer myself, bootstrapping the business 100%. It was only since September that we've been able to operate off of the investment. My co-founder and I met in an undergraduate at The George Washington University. For finding a first employee my route was a little biased since I tapped into my undergraduate friend group. However, it worked out well for ilixer so I'd say to definitely see what college friends are up to and if there's one with a particularly impressive career trajectory. What were your family and friends first thoughts on your company? My family and friends were at first confused about the product. They considered it a protein powder or meal replacement, an extremely crowded area and something that ilixer is not. It took some educating to show the difference between a powdered food, such as ilixer, and from protein powders or meal replacements. What motivates you when things go wrong? When things go wrong, I find it important to reflect on the journey of ilixer thus far. I think about all the different steps along the way and the challenges I faced on that road. If I combine them all together, whatever went wrong pales in comparison to what I've already accomplished— this mindset pushes me forwards. Do you have any advice for someone just starting out? For anyone starting out on their own entrepreneurial journey, I can give a couple of pieces of advice. First, set up your legal entity and bank account properly (including your 83(b) tax election for the IRS). You'll spend a ton of money on the backend if you don't get this stuff set up first. Second, for those in the ideation stage, just start! This doesn't mean quit your job and commit 100% to this idea, but do some work on it. Feel out the idea and gather feedback from friends and peers. If you're uncomfortable tapping your own social network, go online to Reddit or a forum, but always seek feedback. Do you have any trademarks/IP/patents? The name ilixer is trademarked. It's fairly simple for entrepreneurs to do it themselves on the USPTO's website. What apps could your business not run without? We could not run without Shopify (our ecommerce platform), Recharge (provides subscriptions for Shopify), Google Enterprise Drive (provides our file storage in their high-speed cloud that also links to our email and the rest of the Google Suite), and Segments (used for syncing all of our data to the right places so that we can make informed decisions). What are you working on at the moment? Forthcoming we have an improved formulation of our original recipe. This new formulation improves the consistency and delivers a more well-rounded sweetness profile, without using any added sugars. We're also developing a Complete Meal Bar and a Complete Waffle that could be sold in retail. In five years I see ilixer becoming a staple brand in the nutrition space. Whether someone wants a waffle, shake, oatmeal, or even chili, if they buy ilixer, they know that food will be nutritionally-complete. If you enjoyed this interview, the original is here. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 08:58 AM PST Our Hypothesis: There is the "I need it now shopping", and there is the" I need to start looking at" shopping. The latter is mostly on high-priced products or products that cost $300 or more. We want to help with those "$300 or more" products. Bid "Smartly" for these products with discounts up to 35% with a 35-day or more delivery. After all, savings are more significant on those products as well as those are the ones consuming the most of natural resources. "Slow/free shipping" makes products more affordable by reducing inventory levels, using more efficient manufacturing processes, optimizing the use of natural resources, reducing transportation, and implementing more efficient shipping and handling alternatives. "Slow/free shipping" = Smart Shipping. Would you change shopping habits? OUR START UP Please help us test our MVP. How to bid "Smartly"? Using the Price Analysis tools we built for over 300 million products with our extension. Mandatum.co is a free tool that enables consumers to bid for any product that is available online and get up to a 35% discount as long as the delivery date is at least 35 days or more. Right now, we are testing consumers' behavior: Product price-to-"waiting time"-to- savings. i.e. $100 price to 45-day delivery to $35 savings. $1,000 price to 6-month delivery to $350 savings. So please: 1- Make a list of the most expensive products you may need in the next 18 months. 2- Install the Google Chrome Extension in your Browser. 3- Pick the product you want online: Initially works on Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Lowes. 4- Make a bid with a Mandate: Name your Own Smart Price and decide the Future Date for the Delivery (45 days or more.) 5- No shopping needed. Sign-Up with just name and email to save your bid and create your personalized shopping plan. It is free. No commitment. Just testing. 6- Visit your personalized shopping plan, we help you get your price. When you get the price, you decide if you want to shop. More information:: https://www.mandatum.co/ Give us your feedback. How do you like the Price Analytics? The chart? Any thoughts about the price predictions, price history, pricebot? Is it useful to have 2 recommendations: Historic and predictive? How easy was to make a Mandate? Did you look at your shopping plan? Any feedback is very welcome. Thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| 9 years in and changing things up. Need help with figuring out the vision of my company. Posted: 06 Nov 2019 02:33 PM PST I've been working over the last 5 months rebuilding my company that I let slide for a few years. Everyday I feel all over the place with vision and strategy. When I started it I just threw it together and it worked! This time around I want to plan but I need help! No idea what I'm doing haha. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 02:00 PM PST I run several ads on different ads platform (G FB RED) and I noticed a huge difference on the number of clicks between the platform dashboard and what I receive to my wordpress dashboard, the difference is for exemple like this 167/87 or 17/1 but me, I will pay these clicks and it cost me money for nothing because it's obvious that people haven't see my offers or my pages. I wan't to add something is that I trust the wordpress stats more because when i visit my website from another location I found exaclty the posts visited. What do you think about this? did you had the same experience? what is your advices? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 06:05 AM PST I'm 26, run a small construction biz that will gross 1.35M and net 400-500k this year. My business is 2.5 years old, I am a 50/50 partner with a 33 year old. We are pretty profitable and growing but I'm seriously struggling with motivation to continue to grow. I own a second (non-profitable) corporation that has been a side project for over a year. The basic premise is to enable homeowners to buy a roof online, similar to the carvana model. I need to advance my web dev and programming skills to make this a reality but I can't force myself to code lately. What is your advice to force motivation & discipline to grow as a person and entrepreneur when no one is looking? Thx all [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 01:31 PM PST Thinking about joining one of the two. Any preference? Although in an ideal world, I'd create my own that involves golf [link] [comments]  |
| How long did it take you to get over fear of cold calling? (aka how many calls) Posted: 06 Nov 2019 07:22 AM PST How long did it take you to get over your fear? How long did it take you to get used to cold calling? How long did it take to start seeing yourself improve? And was there anything you did that had significant impact? I am about to start my first sales job and looking for any advice and what I should expect on the journey. I want to really master sales. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 01:19 PM PST As the title says, I'm based in the UK and I make money from Instagram pages. Is anyone in a daily group chat in Facebook or snapchat etc?? [link] [comments]  |
| What's holding you back from being a successful Entrepreneur? Posted: 06 Nov 2019 01:12 PM PST |
| Interview with Director of Product Management at Twitter: what we learned Posted: 06 Nov 2019 12:55 PM PST Few people get to experience product management at large, successful tech companies and decide to share their expertise and outlook with others who want to get started in the field. One of them is my good friend Anna Buldakova, a seasoned product manager. Anna sat down with Scott Eblen, Director of Product Management at Twitter, to discuss if technical background is a requirement for Product Managers, what is the difference between Google and small startups, and how to create a good vision and strategy. About skills for Product ManagersWhen you were in the university, were you focused on your studies or also trying to find entrepreneurship opportunities? I played in a jazz ensemble and in a marching band; I conducted a pit orchestra for a musical comedy that was written by the students. Those were all great experiences and opportunities that are hard to pursue post-university. I see a ton of new-grad candidates who already have a startup under their belt but I'd really encourage people to experiment with what would be hard to do later in life: play sports, do theater. You're going to have a chance to work later, starting two years earlier with a company isn't something you necessarily should be doing. What were your favorite subjects in the university? I studied Computer Science at Princeton but what I really liked is that it was a liberal arts curriculum, not just engineering, math, and science courses. I was required to take a diverse set of classes. The one I really loved was Art 101. I distinctly remember the exam question where we were asked to compare a modern painting by Piet Mondrian to a Bernini sculpture in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It was all about finding analogies and connections, and in some way product managers are doing the same by saying "we are the Uber of x" or "the eBay of y". Which part of your education you think was the most beneficial for you, creative one or the technical one? I really value the creative part, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Technology has changed so much since I graduated and it will continue to evolve, but creative & soft skills are enduring. At that time computer science was required for a lot of the roles so I'm glad I did that because it got me into product management. Thankfully, now a lot of companies don't make it a hard requirement which is a good expansion of the pool of applicants that we can appeal to. Do you think product managers not having a technical background is a good trend? I would say having a technical background is a good thing; but not having a computer science degree isn't a bad thing. With a product manager, I want to find someone who can debate in a healthy fashion with engineers, and I think they can acquire those skills by doing some development themselves, by having worked with engineers in different capacities. Having done specific coursework doesn't always qualify them to do that. Makes sense. I hear more and more from senior people that technical education is not a requirement anymore. One of the reasons is that you realize that product isn't the hard part; people are the hard part. With the diversity of backgrounds, you're more likely to find people who can bring unique and creative solutions to those problems. Finding ways to motivate and inspire people or align groups of people to solve problems has nothing to do with computer science. One of the most important things for aligning people is a narrative: having a clear and compelling story that people can rally around. If you can tell a story that people can then tell to their friends, family, coworkers, then it makes them excited, they feel like they can convey why they are doing what they are doing. How do you develop such a skill as storytelling? I think it's really important to read fiction and non-fiction on a regular basis because it's a good opportunity to understand new mindsets and spend some time on thinking how to tell a story. Empathy is another essential skill for a product manager. You can only do so much user research or data analysis, but you simply can't understand what that person was thinking when they were using your product. Reading fiction can give you a glimpse into other perspectives and doing things in a different way that you haven't considered. One more thing to say here. I often hear product managers asking "what book should I read". There are a couple of really standard books like Ben Horowitz's "Hard things about hard things", which give you a very narrow perspective on what you should do. Reading non standard books is the only way to get ahead. It allows you to find other solutions that your peers don't see. To find your next book to read you should talk to people, especially outside of technology, ask what they found interesting or thought-provoking. And then just get recommendations and look for new things to try. What was the most inspiring book that you read last year? One really interesting one from the product perspective was Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton where Lin-Manuel Miranda got his inspiration for the famous musical. It was a really interesting insight into first principles thinking as the founding fathers were trying to craft the government, and there were few resources to suggest how it should be structured. If you don't have Wikipedia to consult with or two dozen peers you can call on the phone, what are the approaches to build something that will last? I also enjoyed the book called "How to do nothing" by Jenny Odell, a Stanford professor and an artist; she talks a lot about some negative aspects of the attention economy. About the difference between being a PM at a large company vs startupWhat was your first job? After university my first job was at Microsoft, it was called "a Program Manager" which is essentially a Product Manager. I spent two and a half years there, and during this entire time there was only one launch. Anyway, you learn a lot of good processes at a big company: seeing how to do annual planning, triage bugs and features, work with different stakeholders — it gives you a really great foundation for subsequent roles. After Microsoft, I joined a startup called Library House, and it was a great contrast. At Microsoft I never saw a sale firsthand, while at Library House I was involved in pitches. Being in the room when a sales manager was closing a deal, seeing what the buyer's concerns were and how to overcome them was really useful for my career. Do you think that Product Managers should have an understanding of the sales process, especially if they work in b2b? An understanding of disciplines outside the product is incredibly valuable. When people get more senior in their careers, they have more interactions with other functions so your understanding of marketing, PR and, of course, engineering will make you a more effective product manager. Imagine that you are in a startup, and a CEO needs to make resource allocations across product and other disciplines. If you can't argue the pros and cons of other disciplines' requests, your work is at a disadvantage. Thinking about your experience in startups vs. Google and Microsoft, what is the key difference in terms of PM responsibilities? In big companies the function and the process are well defined. I've seen opportunities to tweak both of those but there's a little more constraint in terms of what you do, whereas in startups you just need to do whatever it takes to make the business successful. When I was a Head of Product at Nutmeg, an online investment platform in the UK, there was a week in a year when we had a ton of sales coming through, and everyone from developers to our CEO and our founder were actually on the phone supporting customers. It obviously would never happen at Google or Twitter. How can a startup compete with a large company in terms of talent? I think it's really about spending time with the job candidates, understanding their motivations and seeing if you can match them. It's not worth shoehorning a candidate in if they're not a fit for the business. The other thing is mission. This is actually something I saw in Twitter when I first joined. There were a lot of acquisition rumors, the stock was way down but the mission that Jack Dorsey articulated and the notion of building a platform that could really connect people helped to still attract and retain great candidates. About transitioning to a Director roleHow did you start transitioning into more senior roles? One of my first managers at Google said: "Always make sure that you're feeling a little bit uncomfortable as you move, it means that you're challenging and pushing yourself". When I talked to Nutmeg about the Chief Product Officer role, there were a lot of things that were uncomfortable, there were disciplines that I hadn't managed before but embracing and just going with that was a big step forward. When I came to Twitter, this experience helped me feel much more confident. You were an individual contributor at Google, how did you persuade Nutmeg that you will be good at managing people? At Google I had a lot of different managers, and I'd seen things that worked really well and things that didn't, and I tried to write up my thoughts about that on a regular basis. So when Nutmeg reached out to me, I was able to articulate ideas about the good and the bad in organizations, organizational design and process. And how did you find this opportunity, or did it find you? I was headhunted into that role. I think it's helpful to have conversations with recruiters occasionally. They give you a pulse of what's out there and a sense of "Am I doing what's best for me?". As a people manager, your reaction might be "no, I don't want my people talking to other companies" but it is useful as it reminds your employees what is good about their current role. And if they really want things that your company can't offer, you ultimately want to help them find a role that is a better match. What was the most difficult for you in this transition? One of the biggest challenges I had was working with other disciplines. When we sat down with the CFO or the Head of Marketing, these were the disciplines that I hadn't had much firsthand experience with. Trying to figure out how to both explain and sell our product team's efforts to these disciplines and understand how they were interacting with each other was not so straightforward. We had people who worked in old-school banks for 20 or 30 years, their mindset was quite different, so I had to spend a lot of time with them to understand how they think about business, product and my discipline. It was difficult but also critically important. For example, when the budget decision comes up about "do we spend a million pounds on a TV campaign, or hire more researchers or designers", it's not just about my role, it's about how those things work together and what's best for the business overall. When you transition to a more senior role, sometimes you might feel under water. How did you deal with it? Process. People often think of it as some sort of bureaucracy but it can be incredibly beneficial if done well. One thing that I distinctly recall is that I initially overfocused on making product decisions as opposed to setting up and enabling the team to make product decisions of a certain quality. I thought a lot more about this at Twitter. One way to make a team really effective is to be very clear about what metric they are trying to move and what are the guardrails or certain principles that you care about, and then give the team the autonomy to achieve those goals within the guardrails that you set up. And, of course, this should all align with the product vision. How does vision relate to the strategy? Strategy has two pieces: one is how your business is going to evolve — what you're doing, how you're doing it. The second one is the understanding of what's changing in the world. The clearest example is Nokia in 2007: if you were just focusing on your phones and how you're going to change them, but you weren't thinking about how the iPhones were changing the market, that obviously made a huge difference in the strategy. A part of our strategy at Nutmeg was thinking how payments were changing, how banks were changing, how attitudes towards cash or talking openly about money were changing. Those were really important things that we needed to think about when we were setting the strategy. An interesting exercise is to look back 3 to 5 years in your industry and ask "who were the competitors, what were the trends that everyone was talking about back then". And then try to extrapolate some of that forwards because it gives you a little bit of perspective about what that time frame was like and what were some of the differences over that time frame. How do you align your team on the strategy and the vision, how do you make sure that everyone feels heard? Roadmaps are bread and butter for product managers to align the team. Have two or three key problems that the team is working on, and focus on the narrative of solving that problem. At Nutmeg our goal was to sell confidence in financial choices, instead of selling investment products. So there was a "confidence" work stream in the roadmap that covered, for example, transparency about what was happening with the investments. To make the vision more understandable and concrete at Nutmeg, we created a deck of vignettes which were single screenshots accompanied by some narrative about customer feelings and outcomes. This was compelling and memorable but avoided unnecessary detail which would have been time consuming and distracting from the overall message. To the second part of the question, if you are listening to everyone, they are more likely to buy into your vision and strategy. Twitter started doing a lot more of silent meetings where we'll start with a document, spend the first 10–15 minutes reading it, and everyone will leave a bunch of comments. You will see specific places where people left comments and then follow up with specific conversations. This allows for much more equitable discussions. What if you hear everyone but as a leader don't agree with what people are saying? That's tough. I think at some point it's important to let the team make decisions and have some autonomy. If you always step in to override, I don't think you set that team up for success. It also depends on how bad you think the mistake is. If it's two slightly different approaches or two relatively small features, give the team the chance to try. Maybe you're wrong, maybe they're wrong but it can be a learning experience for everyone. Obviously if the team is doing something that you believe would imperil the business then it's your responsibility to step in, but it's important to have some self-awareness and ask yourself: "Am I doing this every single time or is this once a year occasion where I'm stepping in to alter the course of things". If you do step in, to the earlier point about goals and guardrails approach, you should think if there is a different guardrail or a different target that could have helped us avoid this problem. To your point about self-awareness and reflection, how do you find the next opportunities for professional growth? Speaking is a great opportunity provided that you're actually taking the time to think and write some new ideas for these talks. It's a chance to get feedback from a large crowd of peers, and it also exposes you to other perspectives because usually after you speak, people will come up and ask you questions. Writing is similar, I wish I did more of that. Twitter is a nice micro opportunity: there's a ton of product leaders, and just engaging in a conversation gives you some exposure and feedback. Finally finding opportunities to meet and talk to other product managers is helpful as well. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 12:46 PM PST |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 12:46 PM PST So for the past two years, I've been part of a bi-weekly mastermind group. A group of entrepreneurs (mostly creatives) coming together to discuss challenges and get some inspiration. It's a nice community and the group is lead by a coach that definitely has some good ideas but I was starting to feel trapped in the coaching loop. People in that loop seem dependent on the coaching and the conferences etc. At the same time, I think there is some value in meeting with people in the same industry to help grow and polish skill sets. So my question to you is, what community/tribe have you joined to help you continue and grow as an entrepreneur? Are you paying for it? If so how much? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Nov 2019 08:45 AM PST Anyone here have any experience creating a CBD product? I haven't been able to find a really straightforward way to go about purchasing in bulk from a supplier, manufacturing and labelling. Thank you in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| How understanding funnels well allows you to ad spend profitably Posted: 06 Nov 2019 08:35 AM PST It is vital – and I don't use this word lightly – to know how random people become purchasers, in order to understand how to advertise to them. Let's take this example of a successful ad, which gets you sales: Someone who doesn't know your store, sees your ad. They click on the ad, go to your store, maybe even add a product or two to their cart. If you've done things well, they buy your product. Sometimes people get distracted and forget to buy the product, in which case they just need a reminder to buy it. Or sometimes they need a little push. What we've described is a funnel. You could also think of this as a customer acquisition journey. Basically, every customer has to go through a series of steps before they buy a product. In the famous book Breakthrough Advertising, which can be considered the bible of marketing, Eugene Schwartz clarifies this journey. From stranger to buyer: Unaware – no idea of problem or your product. Problem aware – knows they have a problem that they want solved, but don't know what is used to solve it. Solution aware – knows there is a solution, but don't know a specific product to solve it. Product aware – knows about your product. Most aware – someone who just needs a little push to buy your product. In terms of Facebook advertising, we can therefore simplify this to: Understanding TOFU, MOFU, BOFU
A little more on the specifics types of audiences of funnels: ❄️ Top of Funnel (TOFU) (Cold Audience) - is targeting a cold audience ie. people who haven't engaged with the brand/visited the website in the last 30 days. We're simply trying to drive 'new' visitors to the website and/or create a positive first touch point with the brand. This is where we use our Lookalike audiences and Interest targeting to find 'new' website visitors/customers. These are typically the lowest converting campaigns but the most volume as they feed the rest of funnel as visitors progress further down. ☀️ Middle of Funnel (MOFU) (Warm Audience) - targeting slightly warmer audiences ie. people who may have viewed a video or engaged with page content or an ad but haven't yet clicked through to the website. Our objective is to now push them to the website to view a product and convert. This is where we use our PPE engagement and page like audiences, while excluding the website visitors (typically last 30 days) to drive these engagers to the website and pixel them to retarget if they don't convert into a purchase on this attempt. 🔥 Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) (HOT audience) - Retargeting website visitors and leads who didn't purchase to return and complete the sale. There is varying levels of 'intent' based on various actions for eg. someone who has added to cart is generally more likely to convert to a sale more than someone who just viewed the product and left. So, the the further down the funnel/closer to the purchase event - the higher the intent. ✅ In terms of audience quality/intent from lowest to highest: Homepage visit Only ⏬ Category Page View ⏬ Product Page View (ViewContent) ⏬ Add To Cart ⏬ Initiate Checkout ⏬ Add Payment Info ⏬ Purchase ...and within each of those you have different levels of intent again that you can create custom audiences to target for eg. someone who viewed 4 product pages is probably higher value than someone who viewed one product and bounced Or someone who has added to cart 3x and not purchased is much more likely to purchase than a visitor that added to cart just once... ✏️ Now, you can create specific ad copy messaging to cater to these people depending on the actions they have taken. 🥊 POST SALE (Customers) - Here we are simply retargeting our customers and trying to extract as much LTV (Life-Time Value) out of each customer we acquire as possible. While also just adding value to their experience to build brand loyalty. Thanking them for the purchase, putting additional relevant products and offers in front of them, asking for UGC, rewarding them for referrals etc etc -- Hope you find this useful! I wrote this post because it would be helpful for other people, but also wanted to be transparent and say I'd like to plug this guide I wrote as well about an A-Z approach to Facebook marketing. If you've ever wondered about what types of audiences to target, how much to spend per ad set, what sort of ad creatives work best, and those sorts of questions - then this is pretty much my brain dump to all of the above question after spending thousands on Facebook ads myself. Nonetheless, I do hope this post in and of itself to be useful and value-packed regardless of whether you check that guide out or not. [link] [comments]  |
| 0% APR Business Credit Cards with High Likelihood of Approval? Posted: 06 Nov 2019 12:06 PM PST It sucks that there aren't many pre-qualified credit card checks for business like there are for personal cards. I just opened a money market account for my business so I'm interested in a 0% APR credit card to improve cash flow and keep making interest on my business capital. Does anyone have any recommendations? I have good personal credit and two business cards already but the business was incorporated less than a year ago. No missed payments either business or personal, ever. [link] [comments]  |
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