Thank you Thursday! - (February 06, 2020) Entrepreneur |
- Thank you Thursday! - (February 06, 2020)
- How i started a Managed Virtual Assistant Agency and got my first customers
- Made a deck/presentation tracking tool with a friend, thought it might be of use to some of you :-)
- Am I a Entrepreneur yet?
- people who make a living and don't have a job, what do you do?
- "Loving what you do"
- How do you plan your day?
- Starting my 1st company and have no idea where to start
- Crowdfunding (Rewards & Donate Based): Who Invests In These?
- Proper protocol?
- Do entrepreneurs want this?
- Coronavirus + Chinese Manufacturers?
- Why I became an entrepreneur, and what I learned from it. (Part 2 of 5)
- If you are going to open an online store with someone what banking solutions are there for making sure the payment gets split between both partners?
- Should a primarily Ecommerce business put more effort towards paid traffic (Facebook and/or google) or developing Organic SEO? (INFO BELOW)
- A love letter to every TikTok entrepreneur...
- Offering free writing services
- Money
- How I Made My First Sale (Digital Product)
- How do I pull the trigger on starting a business?
- Gift Card Referral Program for new Interior Design business
- Subcontractor payment services
- Small business owners, how important are positive reviews to your business?
- Struggling to open my business
- Excited about launching company new site today
| Thank you Thursday! - (February 06, 2020) Posted: 06 Feb 2020 05:09 AM PST Your opportunity to thank the /r/Entrepreneur community by offering free stuff, contests, discounts, electronic courses, ebooks and the best deals you know of. Please consolidate such offers here! 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]  |
| How i started a Managed Virtual Assistant Agency and got my first customers Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:23 AM PST Yesterday in my post ( Automation #9 - How one smart virtual assistant made a small fortune ) i talked about my new venture - A Managed Virtual Assistant service. Got quite a lot of people asking how i started & how i got my first clients so i thought I'd elaborate. But first, some background What is a Managed Virtual Assistant Service?Virtual Assistants are people that work over the internet. You can usually find virtual assistants for $5-8 an hour on websites like Upwork. There's a fair deal of advantages: They work for lower than minimum wage (There is a huge currency gap between developed and developing countries, what's minimum wage for the U.S is a fortune in the Philippines). You don't have to worry about tax deductions, insurance, Social Security and everything else that comes with hiring employees. But there's downsides too: You're hiring a random person on the internet for $5 an hour. They might ghost you randomly, they might try to download a pirated video game and get a virus that deletes your data and more. A managed virtual assistant service bridges this gap. My virtual assistants work in special, locked-down computers where it's impossible to even copy any data out of the computer, let alone download a virus. Instead of a random stranger on the internet, they are full-time employees with benefits & a family. They're not gonna ghost or be reckless. But at the same time the client still gets the benefits: They're cheaper than local labor, they don't have to worry about insurance & paperwork and they're flexible. They are all college educated, really smart people working for a good wage. Hence the client can easily delegate tasks without worrying about the safety of the data or the assistant's competence. And the best part? It's hella cheap. Most assistants cost between $7 to $10 an hour. Virtual assistants can do anything from admin work to customer service and specialized ones can even do copywriting, graphic design, accounting etc. How i got my first clientsIf you read my posts you already know that i have an automation business. I started by reaching out to all my past clients. But i didn't just cold call them. I went over my notes, identified opportunities where a V.A could be helpful, then E-Mailed them and asked them if they'd like to talk about something that'd be beneficial to their business. I spent over a hundred hours of work doing analysis, building websites, reaching out to contacts, scheduling meetings and pitching how VAs can help their business. The result? Nada. Not a one. 100 hours of work, zero clients. I kept going. Next month i signed on my first client. The month after that, two. The month after that i got more than four. PersistenceAfter my first month, i had zero clients. If I'd scrapped the whole thing I'd have been out 100 hours of work and not much to show for it. That's the thing about entrepreneurship: It takes patience, and it might simply not pay off. You might put in all the effort and have nothing to show for it. If you keep going, it MIGHT pay off. Maybe it won't. In my case it did. I've had other ventures where it didn't. RiskYesterday i got maybe 6 messages asking the same thing: How did i get my first clients? I like it, I'm not afraid of people doing the same thing as me. There's enough fish in the sea for all of us. But are you prepared to take the risk? Like i said, i was hiring full time employees. What if the contract terminated? Would i just fire them on the spot? I'd decided that i won't. Even if the contract is terminated I'll 'bench' them for a minimum of three months. That's three months of pay & benefits while i try to find another contract suitable for them. If I'd signed on clients who terminated after a month, I'd lose more than twice what I'd be making. Are you willing to take that kind of risk? And to persevere even in the face of total failure? Lessons learnedI wanted to make this post for everybody that's serious about entrepreneurship and to talk about how it isn't all rosy. In my opinion, there's three things that matter more to a business than anything else: Process [Your process defines your business, period], Calculated Risk & Persistence. /discuss Let me know your thoughts. Do you agree that Process, Risk & Persistence are the three most important? Or what do you think matters more? PS: I'm currently in the market for partners/affiliates. If you'd like to get into the VA business, please feel free to reach out and we can discuss business! PPS: Or if you'd like a part or full time virtual assistant for your own business's admin/support/social media/anything else that can be done over the internet or phone, please feel free to message me! [link] [comments]  |
| Made a deck/presentation tracking tool with a friend, thought it might be of use to some of you :-) Posted: 05 Feb 2020 09:59 PM PST As the title says I started building https://sizle.io/ as a hobby project with one of my friends, and it ended up getting quite a lot of interest over the last few months. It is still ~ very ~ rough around the edges and in beta mode so just be aware of that lol, we have about 100 features and fixes that we're working on , but right now you can: - Upload or create a document- Send it to someone- Get notified when they open it- See how much time they spent on each slide- Add a custom survey form to the end of the document The idea is to help shorten sales cycles and help make better follow ups by giving you insights about how a recipient interacts with your document. It's mainly geared towards sales reps that are sending a lot of PowerPoint docs, but there seems to be quite a few use cases with tracking startup pitch decks being one of them. Mods please feel free to delete if it's not appropriate for me to post a link here, just genuinely keen to get some ruthless feedback from people I don't know :) EDIT: You guys are awesome, just doubled our signups in 8 hours :') [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Feb 2020 10:11 PM PST Just made my first sale and I'm pretty freaking happy, just had to share! Thanks for being a awesome subreddit my dudes, all your posts really helped. [link] [comments]  |
| people who make a living and don't have a job, what do you do? Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:36 AM PST I'm curious as to what people who don't have a job, yet still manage to make a decent living do. my question is, how is your current life compared to when you had a job, and what do you do? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2020 01:27 PM PST Hi, Lots of people say you should love what you do. Obviously being an entrepreneur is one of the toughest thing in life and you will suffer a lot. That means entrepreneurs don't love what they do but do it anyways. So does it mean that "loving what you do" is the wrong advice? For example, I myself love doing database and systems programming, but I also want to work on my own ideas that impact the world in a positive way. But that means going to do certain things I don't want to do like fundraising, customer acquisition, and dealing with the uncertainty of not having a paycheck, project failing, coming up with product ideas etc. So should I just suck it up, accept that I won't love the process but do it in order to get the necessary result? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2020 07:00 AM PST Hello, Right now I am spending at least 20 minutes a day planning what to do on the day. I will experiment with planning the next day, so I do not plan the day on the day. How do you plan your day? Do you plan your days once a week? Do you have a system so you do not need to plan so much? What is your system? [link] [comments]  |
| Starting my 1st company and have no idea where to start Posted: 06 Feb 2020 01:58 PM PST Hi everyone, i'll make this short and sweet. I'm planning on starting my first company and have no idea where to start. Some general guidance would be much appreciated. -I work a full time job and will be using income from my job to fund this idea. I Plan on running this during after work hours.
-this is a clothing company intended for a specific work field that will be 100% online. I am very involved in this field so I think a have a good opportunity for gaining customers. My biggest question is.. where to start? If I decide to have the clothes made in Mexico, for example, what are recommended ways of finding distributors/how does importing goods from Mexico work? This is all pretty new to me, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you [link] [comments]  |
| Crowdfunding (Rewards & Donate Based): Who Invests In These? Posted: 06 Feb 2020 01:42 PM PST Hi Everyone, I am doing a research project on crowdfunding. Specifically rewards based and donate based crowdfunding. I am trying to understand who invests in these types of crowdfunding projects. If you have invested in one of these projects (such as on Kickstarter or Indiegogo) did you do it as an individual, a business, or something else? If you ran a crowdfunding project (donate or rewards based) what types of people invested in your project? Where they individuals, businesses, people who invest for a living, for example? Much Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2020 12:04 PM PST So I'm trying to tell my story, hopefully so others can learn from it. I'm not selling anything, I don't have an online seminar or e-book. I was in the streets at 17 and have had some great success, failure and experiences along the way. Since I have been getting corrected as to proper etiquette, I clearly need some help with how Reddit works. My story is long, so I broke it up into 5 chapters thinking this is an easier read. Agree or disagree? I put it out on multiple subs thinking it would get to the largest audience. Yes/No? I put a quick note at the top of my second post with details about me. This was advice I received from one of the posts. I added what kind of margins I was making since that was brought into question. Like I said, I want to tell the story and hopefully inspire other people who come from where I do. So help me out on how to do this. I'm all ears! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2020 12:03 PM PST I have a new advertising service I would like to launch - but before I do, I would like your feedback... I am "borrowing" Gary Vaynerchuck's "advertising arbitrage ideas" and spending my own money testing them out on a variety of things I sell... (I have been in the internet marketing space since 1997.) I will then report the wins and losses within a private site that I would like to make available... For example, Gary V recently mentioned Spotify pre-roll ads. Great. I will use my "attention arbitrage" methods and see if Spotify is truly as good as Gary claims. In another example, iHeartRadio now offers data-driven ads - again, I will put my "attention arbitrage" methods to the test and report back my findings to my members. Similarly, we can now place billboards in a live auction (or as remnant space). I can go on and on... So my questions for you are: 1) Would you like me to launch this type of service and make it available to you? 2) If so, what is the most you would be delighted to pay for this service each month? 3) Finally, on a scale of 1 to 10, how valuable does this seem to be for you? [link] [comments]  |
| Coronavirus + Chinese Manufacturers? Posted: 06 Feb 2020 11:57 AM PST About to place a relatively large order from China, but then I started to think twice due to the Coronavirus. Is anyone else going to hold off on orders from China until the disease is more quarantined? Am I being totally paranoid in considering this as a risk? [link] [comments]  |
| Why I became an entrepreneur, and what I learned from it. (Part 2 of 5) Posted: 06 Feb 2020 11:38 AM PST (Please see part 1 in a previous post. I was a street kid at 17, started my first company at 28, and over the last 20+ years have bought and sold a dozen companies with revenues of $450 million+.) One of the first thing I learned about starting a business is: the timing always sucks! I can guarantee you that there is never a good time, and you just have to get started. I don't believe that there is an easy way to get started, i.e., setting aside two years of living expenses or making sure all parts of your life are in order. I would still be thinking about going into business 22 years later if I had waited until everything was perfect. It just doesn't work like that. The stars never align, the timing is never perfect. When I was a kid there was a high dive at the local public pool during the summer. It scared the hell out of an eight year old Jerry. Finally, one summer I climbed up the ladder, walked out to the end of the board, looked down at the water and...stood there. Scared shitless about what I was about to do. I wanted to turn around and climb down, but too many kids behind me were yelling at me. Some encouraging, some, let's just say, were not as encouraging. Finally I worked up the courage to jump. And surprise surprise, I didn't die! Not only did I not die, but I flourished. As soon as I climbed out of the water, I ran back to the board, up the ladder, and jumped without thinking about it. By the end of the day I was doing cannonballs on a dead run off that sucker. Obviously, the moral of the story is: when deciding to start a business, you have to climb up on the high dive, walk to the edge, take that leap of faith and huck yourself into the deep end. You have no idea what you're capable of until you are challenged. It is the risk that drives you to be successful. But you will want to try and minimize the exposure as much as you can. For me, it was the chance of failure that drove me. You cannot reduce the impact the fear of failure will have on you. That risk, be it mouths to feed or merely self-preservation, is powerful. You will never get over thoughts of possible failure, or regret at what you have done. However, and this is a mistake many fledgling business owners make, you cannot let the downside risk control the decision-making. If I did, I would never had gone out and started anything. Starting a business from scratch is, in my estimation, one of the hardest things you will ever do. It will be the hardest decision you will ever make, with the possible outcome being complete failure. You just never know. And all the planning in the world won't change that. I'm not saying that you don't do your homework, just don't let it freeze your decision making. (Look for part 3 of 5 coming soon) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2020 11:20 AM PST I may be opening an online store with somebody who I know, but don't know for that long of a time. I don't want splitting the payments we get to the store depend entirely on the trustworthiness of either of us, I wouldn't be comfortable with him handling the payments entirely on his own and I wouldn't expect him to be comfortable with me doing something that I'm not comfortable with him doing. So obviously we need a sort of joint account. From what I understand linked accounts just make it easier to send money to each-other and I want a little bit more than that. I read about this account thing where both people had to sign off on decisions, but that seems a little cumbersome there are stages in between that and linked accounts that decrease the requirement for trust. What options are there for dealing with this and how do you choose? We are in different countries (US an UK). I would also appreciate any other advice on managing trust with a new business partner when I have not done this at all before, since our working together is a pretty abrupt thing. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:49 AM PST I help run a small business in the health and wellness space that has existed for just under 14 years. We've built up a loyal customer base over the years by selling to doctors, good networking, and other "offline" methods of growing our business. Today the majority of our sales are made through our website and we now primarily exist as an Ecommerce business. We had good SEO for years but the Google Medic Update completely hit us and we have struggled to climb back. Right now we are deciding between bringing in a firm to help us with Paid Traffic or bringing in a firm to help us grow our Organic SEO. At this point we feel we can only choose one or the other. Both firms of course have argued that their service is more pressing which has brought me to Reddit to see any insight you all have. If anyone has faced a similar decision and has any insight I would really appreciate it. Thank you! INFO: We know enough about paid traffic to run our own ads and currently do but we are aware that they could be much better with outside help. Regarding SEO we don't know much other than keywords. ***Please do not use this as an opportunity to pitch your service. Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| A love letter to every TikTok entrepreneur... Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:36 AM PST Sorry for the fb link. But I think this is the he only sub on Reddit that will get the bit. :) https://www.fb.com/585104104989110/posts/1453168971515948/?vh=e&d=n [link] [comments]  |
| Offering free writing services Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:32 AM PST Hello to all you crazy entrepreneurs! I've used this subreddit in the past for building my portfolio, and I've always been very pleased with the results. So I am back once again to offer completely free writing services, on the condition that I can use you as a reference, and link to my work on your site. For the past few years I've worked on and off as a copywriter. I'm looking to beef up my portfolio in certain areas, so I will offer the following services if anyone is interested:
My writing style is typically comedic/joyful/positive. If that fits what you're looking for, please reach out. Last time I posted this service I got a lot of responses, so please be patient. Also, I'll only take on a project if I feel like it's something that I can do well. So, if I don't reply to your message.... We weren't meant to be. No hard feelings. When reaching out, please include as much detail as possible. Your website, what you would like me to do, your vision for this project, anything helps. The more detail, the more helpful I can be. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2020 02:05 PM PST |
| How I Made My First Sale (Digital Product) Posted: 05 Feb 2020 08:23 PM PST TLDR: Made first sale through FB group. Lessons learned: be genuinely helpful, test the market before soaking time and money into a product, and give your first customers VIP treatment. I can't believe I'm writing this, but I made my first sale! While it's still recent in my mind, I wanted to share my experience and thoughts to hopefully help someone just starting. I've loved reading everyone's success stories in this subreddit, and am happy I can finally share my own! A crazy thing: I made my first sale without a website or a product. Even crazier: I made my first sale on the night that I filmed a video on passive income for my YT channel saying that I hadn't made any sales but my goal was to make my first sale in February. I felt like that was fate and the power of putting your goals out there in the open. Since I'm sure you are curious about how I made a sale without a website or a product, I'll dig more into this and give you the backstory. To me, actually the best way to validate that there's actually a market for your product is to sell before you even have a product (when possible). All too often, I see entrepreneurs sink so much time and money into something they think people want, without actually validating that people actually want it. As an example, it's a terrible idea to spend 3 months writing an e-book before even validating that there's a market. I never assume that I know what people want. That's naive. I need to test it first. My first sale came really organically and was unexpected. Backstory is that I'm working on an online legal business. My goal is to provide affordable legal templates to small business owners and entrepreneurs to legally protect their businesses. Tag line: law firm quality without the law firm prices. I think that 95% of the time, people do not need to pay a lawyer to draft a customized agreement for them. A DIY template drafted by an experienced lawyer will work just fine, and you'll shave off hundreds (if not thousands) in costs. So anyways, I thought my first product would be a package of everything you need if you have a website: DIY Terms and Conditions, DIY Privacy Policy and DIY Disclaimer. Especially with GDPR and the new California Consumer Privacy Act, a privacy policy on websites is legally required. So while I knew that I wanted to create these legal templates and knew a lot about privacy laws, I still hadn't created the actual product. Fast forward to the night I filmed the passive income video. I was scrolling on facebook. On one of the business-focused facebook groups I am in, a guy had asked a question to the group about privacy policies, so I gave a really thorough and helpful response and just mentioned that I'm a lawyer and an expert in privacy policies for websites. A woman in the group then responded to my comment asking if I sold privacy policy templates since she needs one for her website. *Boom* The first sale was made. I didn't have the product, but didn't mention this, and just told her I would deliver in two business days. That gave me the weekend plus two business days (4 days) to create the DIY Terms and Conditions, DIY Privacy Policy and DIY Disclaimer. So that's how it happened! A few takeaways from this:
I read a post in this group maybe a month ago about a virtual assistant who used FB to get clients, and because of that post, I was inspired to join a lot of FB groups (which I had never previously done). So, thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| How do I pull the trigger on starting a business? Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:10 AM PST I've been underemployed for 2 years. I've been applying for jobs forever and I'm not getting any traction. I've worked in IT administration, project management, and management for 10+ years. I've always had this idea of starting my own business. Recently moved from a small city to NYC in hopes that I could land a job. It's been 6 months and I can't find anything. I keep hammering out applications and talking with recruiters. It's always you have an excellent skill set and you're a great communicator, blah blah blah. Nothing has converted. How do I get over this fear of failure and pull the trigger? My confidence is shaken given my inability to land a job. I'm not certified in anything, but I'm very technical and understand technology. I can figure most anything out. Looking for genuine advice. I'm afraid if I do this then I'll no longer have the dream to "fall back" on. I have a masters in business - not that it matters. Just saying that hasn't helped me in my field so really in essence I have nothing to fall back on. Please don't comment entrepreneurs are born not made. Looking for genuine encouragement, stories of success, the "f*$k it" I had nothing to lose. [link] [comments]  |
| Gift Card Referral Program for new Interior Design business Posted: 06 Feb 2020 10:05 AM PST I'm helping my wife get her Interior Design business off the ground. We are putting together a list of family and friends to send the initial email letting them know that she is open for business. I was thinking about offering some type of gift card program, like $25 for anyone that refers someone who ends up becoming an actual customer. Is it tacky to send this to family and friends? Is it wasting money before trying without it? Any particular brands that are better than others (was thinking Amazon)? I understand that friends and family should be motivated to help without any monetary incentive, but was thinking this could help make them want to be a little more aggressive about spreading the word. Thanks for the advice! [link] [comments]  |
| Subcontractor payment services Posted: 06 Feb 2020 09:47 AM PST Hello all, I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations for a service that they use to pay subcontractors. I'm often on the road a lot and it's not always easy to print off a check in the office. I know I can setup bill payment with the bank and they will mail a check. I would like to see if anything has any input on services that can also do ach/direct deposit. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Small business owners, how important are positive reviews to your business? Posted: 06 Feb 2020 03:41 AM PST Across industries, online reviews have become pretty standard. How directly do your positive views affect your business? Are they a main source of traffic and revenue for you? [link] [comments]  |
| Struggling to open my business Posted: 06 Feb 2020 03:35 AM PST |
| Excited about launching company new site today Posted: 06 Feb 2020 09:11 AM PST |
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