- 8 years ago Mark Cuban said “following your passion is a bad advice. Don’t follow your passion, follow your efforts”... check out his article below, I think it has some gems specially at the end.
- Finally clicked with an awesome cofounder and it feels great!
- From conception to validation — How I came up with a side project idea, and sold 20+ AI Generated Art pieces to validate it.
- I'm a Web Designer, with an understanding of entrepreneurship
- Advice: Pay for an advertising expert but not too much!
- Business Name Ideas: Sound it out before you commit to it.
- How many people did you talk to in order to validate your product for? [ADVICE]
- I have a big problem that I need help with ASAP
- Does using a personal loan for business pierce the corporate veil of a LLC?
- How do i get a mentor
- Would you recommend clerky.com?
- Is there any way to begin to diversify assets/ money for a college student?
- Online T-shirt Shop Advice
- How can I ensure I am delivering excellent customer service?
- Having some trouble coming up with a name for my salon.
- I am looking to create a business as a parent coach. Early stage questions pre LLC
- Hot Tubs!
- How to form my own LLC despite not owning property?
- What should I do with my profits for a very small business?
- Seeking feedback - I made my first site that crowdsources fields across the global for others to discover
- First time....got the idea but not sure how to pull it off
- What are some essential things to know about getting investors for a new business?
- 5 best books to read.
- Life Sciences
| Posted: 26 Jan 2020 10:52 AM PST I hear it all the time from people. "I'm passionate about it." "I'm not going to quit, It's my passion". Or I hear it as advice to students and others "Follow your passion". What a bunch of BS. "Follow Your Passion" is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get. Why ? Because everyone is passionate about something. Usually more than 1 thing. We are born with it. There are always going to be things we love to do. That we dream about doing. That we really really want to do with our lives. Those passions aren't worth a nickel. Think about all the things you have been passionate about in your life. Think about all those passions that you considered making a career out of or building a company around. How many were/are there ? Why did you bounce from one to another ? Why were you not able to make a career or business out of any of those passions ? Or if you have been able to have some success, what was the key to the success.? Was it the passion or the effort you put in to your job or company ? If you really want to know where you destiny lies, look at where you apply your time. Time is the most valuable asset you don't own. You may or may not realize it yet, but how you use or don't use your time is going to be the best indication of where your future is going to take you . Let me make this as clear as possible
Don't follow your passions, follow your effort. It will lead you to your passions and to success, however you define it [link] [comments]  |
| Finally clicked with an awesome cofounder and it feels great! Posted: 26 Jan 2020 02:54 AM PST I met an awesome Redditor on this very sub that was posting looking to join a startup. We needed someone to help us with marketing and booking more meetings for the sales guy so I reached out. We totally hit it off! And more importantly, we started making some good money together very quickly. He was just really good at getting his foot in the door and booking meetings for our closer! I churned through probably 20 potential team members looking for a good cofounder. Typically within a few hours of working together but sometimes it took months to figure out it wasn't working. Keep looking /r/entrepreneur! You will find your awesome teammates. So far I have found two awesome people to work with and we totally crush it together! But it's all about how many great people you can meet. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2020 12:51 PM PST Last year I started working on an AI Art Generator app. This is the story of how I came up with the idea, decided it was worth working on, and validated the concept. All without building an actual app. Note: the original article is on Medium. I've stripped all the self-promotional links and references to comply with this subreddit's rules. Mid last year, my girlfriend and I had a house guest who commented that our walls looked a bit bare. It's not something we'd really noticed before, but once it was mentioned, we realised they were right — we needed some art. I thought finding some interesting art online would be a pretty quick, easy process, but I soon found that the sheer volume of available art turned me into a critic and I couldn't find a piece that had meaning to me. I wanted art that reflected something about me — even if that just meant a landmark from my city, or a subject based on one of my hobbies or interests. After scrolling through hundreds of pages of artworks on every wall-art store I could find, I was still left unsatisfied. Then I had an idea — one of my interests is technology, and in particular AI. What if I could buy some AI-generated art? Wouldn't that be a conversation starter! Even better, what if I could create some AI generated art myself? It could be ultra personalised — based on a photo from one of my holidays, or a picture of my dog, or a landmark from my city. Why didn't I think of this sooner!? AI generated art has been around for years now, there must be plenty of places I can generate and buy AI art. So I Google "Buy AI Generated Art". Hmm, I get one shop with a handful of pre-generated pieces, a heap of articles about AI and art in general, the guys who sold that AI generated portrait for $432k (a bit out of my price range), and Deepart.io — which is the closest thing to what I was imagining, but buying prints seems like an afterthought. Further searches didn't reveal any better options (although there are other art generators out there, none offer much in the way of buying your artwork as a poster or canvas print). To this point I hadn't been considering building my own AI Art app. I thought for sure it must already exist. But when my continued Googling didn't yield what I was looking for, the wheels started turning. I jumped on Slack and messaged some friends who are also into startups and side projects. The idea started to excite me. I've been working on side projects and startups my entire career, so I knew the first step wasn't to build the app (a mistake I've made before — more than once), I first had to validate the concept. Would other people want to decorate their walls with AI-generated art, or was it just me? Would they pay? How much? These questions all needed answers, ideally before writing a single line of code. So I started thinking about how I could answer these questions as quickly and confidently as possible. What I came up with was simple! All I had to do was find an open-source Neural Style Transfer algorithm on Github, generate some interesting art with it, throw it up on a Shopify store and point some Facebook ads at it. If people buy AI art that they didn't even create themselves, surely they'd buy their own personalised creations. I was too busy to do it right then, so I decided to sit on it for a while. I had to finish a contract job, then I had a holiday booked where I planned to propose to my girlfriend. I figured if I was still excited about the idea after all that, I'd throw the MVP together to validate the idea. If it showed some promise (I.e. if people actually bought some art), I'd think about building out my vision — an AI art generator focused on creating personalised art to decorate your house with. A few months went by. I finished my contract, got engaged (!!), added some features to another project, and suddenly I had some free time again. I hadn't forgotten about AI Art. I decided to go for it. I found some Neural Style Transfer libraries on Github and tried to get them running. I don't really know Python, so it was a bit of a challenge, but I eventually managed to run one on my Macbook. It took about 50 minutes to run and the result didn't look that great. I needed to be able to run them much faster to be productive. A bit of Googling led me to Google Colab — a Jupyter Notebook in the cloud that runs on GPUs. The library I'd chosen was written for use from the command line, so I needed to do some refactoring to get it running in Google Colab. Thankfully Python's syntax is pretty easy to learn, so I managed to get it working pretty quickly. On Google Colab it ran in 5–7 minutes, which was still pretty annoying, so I built a queue system where I could drop the inputs and styles in Google Drive, and define the jobs as rows in Google Sheets. That let me queue as many jobs as I wanted and leave them to run. It might sound impressive, but Google Colab made it really easy. With this system I quickly got a feel for what would work well and what wouldn't, and was able to make some interesting artworks that I thought had a good chance of selling. Now that I had some artworks to sell, I needed two things: a shop to sell them in, and a printer to print them. I found a printer that would suit, ordered some samples and was happy with the results, so the next step was to build a store. I knew from the start I was just going to use Shopify. I threw the products up on the default Shopify theme, added a few essential plugins, spent about an hour coming up with a business name that had a domain name available, and I was ready to sell. Because I'd visited every poster and canvas art store on the internet, Facebook had been serving me ads for artworks for months. I'd picked up on some of the tactics they used and noticed that I'd been flicking through a lot of the carousel ads to see if there was anything good, so I decided to make a carousel ad on Facebook to bring some traffic to the site and hopefully make some sales. I had to learn the Facebook ads manager and read about how to make good ads, but it didn't take long before I was serving carousel ads to people who were interested in art and artificial intelligence. It took almost a week — and a few hundred dollars of ad budget — to make the first sale. The sale didn't come close to paying for the ads, but it proved that people (well, at least one person) were willing to pay for AI generated art. Optimisation could come later. I spent about a month trying to optimise the website and Facebook ads. The most important update I made to the website was an exit-intent popup (those annoying popups that come up when you move your mouse towards the close-tab button) that surveyed the user about why they were leaving without buying anything. I usually hate those things, but they have their place, and I learned a lot about what people wanted through that survey. I also quickly learned that I was doing Facebook ads totally wrong — I should have made 20 ads and given them a budget of $5/day each, then kill the ones that didn't perform and slowly ramp up the ones that did. What I had been doing was running one ad with my entire budget. I started again from scratch and had a bit more success, making about 20 sales over the next two months. The Facebook ads still cost a lot more than the sales I made from them, but by this time I was convinced that there was a market for my vision — an AI Art generator oriented around creating art for your home. In the past I would have leapt into building something like this before doing any kind of idea validation. I've always known you need to validate your ideas before diving in, but it's so easy to make excuses, or trick yourself into thinking you've done enough validation because you just want to start building. It's taken a lot of side projects — and many failures — to really learn the importance of validating an idea before committing to building a product that no-one really wants. I'm happy with the process I followed this time. I've proven that people are willing to buy, which means the challenge now is to build a great product, and get it in front of the right people. I've since built the actual product, but that's a post for another day. Hope you guys found some value in reading about my process! [link] [comments]  |
| I'm a Web Designer, with an understanding of entrepreneurship Posted: 26 Jan 2020 10:12 AM PST So my dilemma is that I've got a marketable skill, about $10k usd in debt to pay off, and an idea of where to get started. The problem is, I've tried freelancing platforms but get severly undercut to the point the work wouldn't even pay a days wages at a minimum wage job. Let me explain, I tend to get undercut by people from places like india, pakistan, etc. And people tend to want to pay based on price rather than experience, and value on platforms like upwork, freelancer, and fiverr. So the question is, I've tried digging around search engines for alternative platforms, but almost everything is either a marketing ploy, or a companies SEO making finding appropriate information harder to weed out the gimmicks between finding a legitimate marketplace. I've tried searching forums, etc. But haven't managed to find a list of marketplaces that are so crowded. Is there any advice a mentor could offer a newbie when it comes to locating alternative marketplaces? [link] [comments]  |
| Advice: Pay for an advertising expert but not too much! Posted: 26 Jan 2020 01:21 PM PST I've heard one extreme or another in regards to this topic, but I rarely hear reasonable advice regarding marketing agencies. It seems as if 89% of this sub, and many others, hate marketing agencies with a passion and those who don't, usually end up paying upwards of $1,000 per month for horrible service! Honestly, I don't even blame people for being so untrusting on the internet these days. There are more scams out there than there are legitimate opportunities to grow your business. Most small marketing agencies don't have your best interest in mind and simply try to milk you for your money while you're still in business, because 90% of their clients are out of business by month 2! Of course, that wouldn't be the case if they were provided good marketing help in the first place... It's a catch 22. Anyways, the point of this post is to help some of you smaller and newer business owners have a more realistic expectation of what to look for when scoping out help for marketing. First of all, if you're unsure that you need help with Facebook ads, then you probably do need help! Only those with months or years of successful advertising experience should be handling that portion of their business alone. I'd say 99% of business owners DO need the help of a marketing agent. The issue is that there are very few marketing agents who are in the budget of 95% of business owners. Never sign a multi-month contract with a new agency! Go month to month, or even weeks to week if possible!! Secondly, don't pay over $500 a month finless you're getting MORE than just basic marketing services! $125 per week is an affordable and manageable amount for some small businesses though! Seriously, even if you're new, you should try to earn that extra $125 a week doing a side job and then pouring it all into a marketing expert who can take your existing marketing budget and maximize it's efficiency. After 1-3 months, you should feel comfortable with a marketing agency and understand whether or not they are of value to your company. Do not get stuck paying $1,000+ per month for a year on an agency who doesn't help and educate your business. Get a smaller agency and get their full attention! TL;DR: My advice to SOME small business owners is to find an experienced Facebook advertiser and pay them $500 a month. It will be worth it if they know what they're doing. [link] [comments]  |
| Business Name Ideas: Sound it out before you commit to it. Posted: 26 Jan 2020 12:21 AM PST Picture being an average person, with no insider knowledge on your industry, products, or services. Sound out your business name idea. If you can spell it correctly just by sounding it out, you've got a name that will be easy to remember, which will make it exactly what you need: a necessary cog in your business which doesn't interfere with operations. If you struggle, or see yourself heading in a direction that doesn't match the real spelling, what you've got is a potential long-term problem. No one wants to deal with an obscure-name business when there are ten conventional competitors nearby, plus it'll interfere with SEO rankings and in general divert attention away from what you're actually offering. To be clear, culture and language are definitely factors in this. Sound it out by keeping your average customer in your target market in mind. A name that sounds great in English doesn't need to sound great in Spanish, for example, but you should know which one's important. [link] [comments]  |
| How many people did you talk to in order to validate your product for? [ADVICE] Posted: 26 Jan 2020 01:34 PM PST |
| I have a big problem that I need help with ASAP Posted: 26 Jan 2020 01:25 PM PST So I'm on the verge of starting a business where I set-up websites for small businesses and create/manage google ads for them but I'm having a problem with deciding what to do if my client decides to cancel my services. This is because to create the websites I want to use a great funnel builder like click funnels which will cost about $100 a month and my management service will cost $600 per month (not including ad cost) but let's say that same client wants to cancel 2 months down the line, what can I do about that? Be sue I wouldn't be able to give him the site or keep the website up because that will mean I would be spending 100 a month to maintain the site even tho I'm not getting paid back that money. So whet can I do about this? Do I make it clear to my client that if he cancels everything will be take away from him? Or Is there another way? [link] [comments]  |
| Does using a personal loan for business pierce the corporate veil of a LLC? Posted: 26 Jan 2020 01:17 PM PST Seems to be much easier to get a personal loan vs. business loan. But does it "pierce the veil"? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2020 12:05 PM PST Hey! So this is my first time posting here just getting 13 karma and i really want help. I come from Scandinavia and i'm a 15 year old who is eager to start but i need help. I have money and a good living with parents who is good with money but i need more to excell. I don't either know of anyone who has "made it" as an entrepreneur. Really the closest thing to a mentor now has been you guys in this really awesome subreddit. But i want to be able to talk private with someone who i feel safe with. So, how do i do this. I really have no clue. Thanks for all your answers :) [link] [comments]  |
| Would you recommend clerky.com? Posted: 26 Jan 2020 11:32 AM PST can you provide feedback on your experience using this platform to incorporate your startup? [link] [comments]  |
| Is there any way to begin to diversify assets/ money for a college student? Posted: 26 Jan 2020 11:04 AM PST Hi everyone, I wasn't sure where on Reddit I could as this question or to who I could even go, but this group seems like the best choice from what I can tell! I just would like to know if there's anyway a college student can begin to diversify money? I'm not a business major or anything related, but I want some solid financial grounding for myself as I have a long academic road ahead of me and I don't want money to become more of an issue than it already has. Any piece of advice would be really helpful! And just to clarify, I do have a part time job and I tend to budget to the best of my ability. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2020 10:26 AM PST I launched a new T-shirt shop on Teespring, Outcast Society. I'm simply just asking for advice on how to promote my shop, get people to buy it, reach new audiences online, through social media and even in person [link] [comments]  |
| How can I ensure I am delivering excellent customer service? Posted: 26 Jan 2020 10:23 AM PST I am a 1-man operation and work closely with customers via phone and email for short projects. I do my best to provide good customer service, but I often wonder if I'm doing enough, or doing it right. Time is a major limitation for me as I am at max capacity with projects and business development efforts to grow. How can I check in with myself to identify areas for improvement? What tools or tricks do you guys/gals use? [link] [comments]  |
| Having some trouble coming up with a name for my salon. Posted: 26 Jan 2020 10:22 AM PST Soon I'll be opening up my own salon. I understand for the perfect business name you need to have your target audience in mind as well as the overall vibe/atmosphere. I'm really struggling coming up with a name, so I was thinking y'all could help me out. So my target audience is women from the age of 15-40. I do a lot of extensions, balayage, blondes, as well as alternative haircuts. (Ex: shags, modern mullet, edgy styles) My salon is going to have a lot of black and gold interior design, plants, and artwork like KAWS. I want the vibe to be more like a barber shop that a normal salon. I want this salon to be a dope place to come and chill while you get yours hair done, but not the typical spa feeling. I don't necessarily want any words that scream "hair salon" in my name. Some examples I've thought of are; Black Opal, House of Thieves, and Sunday Punch. Any recommendations would be awesome! Thanks reddit⚡️🤟🏽 [link] [comments]  |
| I am looking to create a business as a parent coach. Early stage questions pre LLC Posted: 26 Jan 2020 10:19 AM PST I have dedicated over 11 years predominantly working with children and young adults with diverse learning needs including those with emotional and behavioral challenges. I have a background in Occupational Therapy and a couple of years ago I completed a coaching license to support parents who have children who are more intense but I never acted upon it. When reviewing ways I can make an additional income I've begun thinking that I should use the training I have previously received and start as an independent parent coach. Couple of questions:
Thank you for your time and consideration. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2020 03:58 AM PST Hi All, recently we have set up a business just outside Stroud (UK) providing customers with high quality hydrotherapy spas. We are 6 months in and although business has been ok, it could always be better. We are struggling mostly with a lack of footfall into the showroom. Has any one got any great ideas how I can generate more business. I currently am running a referral programme offering £500 to any one that refers a customer who buys a hot tub, but that hasn't really taken off. Id appreciate any advice! [link] [comments]  |
| How to form my own LLC despite not owning property? Posted: 26 Jan 2020 09:54 AM PST Hello, what is the work around for forming your own LLC when you don't own a physical address? PO boxes are not allowed when filing LLCs in Massachusetts.. every place I have ever rented at there is a clause in there about not forming a business at the address where you rent / live.. How to form a LLC when I don't own property??? [link] [comments]  |
| What should I do with my profits for a very small business? Posted: 26 Jan 2020 09:18 AM PST A few years ago I started a small business and it has grown slow and steady. Then I got married and had a kid and my wife's career took off so I slowed down to be more available for child care. Things have changed and this year I expect to make somewhere between $20-30k. Already have $10k of business booked for the year. For the first years I would make $5-8k in profits which was a nice bonus since I have a regular W-2 job as well. So this is entering new territory for me now. I am setup to pay quarterly taxes since I estimate I will make more money. Should I start something like an IRA? My wife has a 403b that she contributes 12% on plus the employer match. I would love to do a complete shop makeover which depending on how crazy I get would cost somewhere between $10-20k but that would most likely put me in the red this year. Basically I want to use the money in the most advantages way whether it be for retirement, growth or tax advantage. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2020 08:48 AM PST Hi r/Entrepreneur! Here's more info on the project: I recently moved to a new city where it is hard to find local sports fields to play on so I made a map where everyone can add their local sports fields to. When added, different markers ⚽️for the sport will display on its location allowing others to explore their new city and find where they can play their favorite sports. Check it out at https://www.discoverfields.com This is my first complete website so let me know your feedback! Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| First time....got the idea but not sure how to pull it off Posted: 26 Jan 2020 08:34 AM PST I've started a small side handyman business. I've marketed myself as CleanHousesohio. Website, Facebook page all that. I'm not comfortable asking people to write a check to me directly. I feel like the reason they use me is because I seem legit. If I sign up for square am I going to have a hard time getting the receipt to say my biz name but then getting that money over to my personal banking account? If they make checks out to my business name is my bank (usaa btw 100 percent online) going to reject the checks? Could I just add my name to the check after the fact and hope for the best? Or could someone charge me with check fraud? Can I just endorse the check to myself on the back? I'm making like $200 a month right now so I don't want to register for like an win or sole proprietorship or any of that jazz. I'm also not cool with asking for cash only or making a check out to cash. Confused. Little help? Ps I've tried research and I've gotten no good answers. [link] [comments]  |
| What are some essential things to know about getting investors for a new business? Posted: 26 Jan 2020 08:31 AM PST |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2020 08:13 AM PST Hello! Can you guys please name the 5 most interesting and informative books to start a sucessfull business? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2020 08:12 AM PST Looking for a co-founder who has experience in Life sciences and/or Health sector. [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Entrepreneur. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment