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    Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (June 03, 2020) Entrepreneur

    June 03, 2020

    Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (June 03, 2020) Entrepreneur

    Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (June 03, 2020)

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 06:10 AM PDT

    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.

    submitted by /u/AutoModerator
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    Landscaping business from 0 to 23k service appointments in 4 years

    Posted: 02 Jun 2020 07:58 PM PDT

    This post is mostly for those who're thinking about starting a landscaping business. If you have one, there may still be some values in it.

    Industry

    $99B on lawn care spend in 2019. Average ~$800 annual spend per household. Over 500k landscaping businesses in the US, over a million workers.

    Why & What

    We started a yard care business (southwest US) 4.5 years ago because we couldn't find one that'd pick up our calls, or show up to see our yard, let alone do the work. Got frustrated and decided to build a business for it. We wanted to make the process of hiring a landscaper easier, so we built a website to let people book lawn service online. They search their address, see the instant quote, and can book the service. We can change the pricing anytime with a click. The day we launched we had our first online booking. A young professional booked our first appointment and he's still a client to this day. On the business side, when a new booking comes in, we assign our crew to a new client. Send out auto-reminders the day before the service. We built lots of features to automate the workflow (scheduling, invoicing, payment, clients, crew's login). We have a feature to charge all houses by clicking a "Charge" button. We do 30-40 houses a day. This saves us hundreds of manual clicks. You're building a business, not a job. Ideally, money should come in with or without you around. It won't be 100% no involvement but you want to be as hands-off as possible. Automation is your friend. Try to automate as much as possible.

    Numbers

    Revenue comes mostly from recurring yard and lawn maintenance, weekly, biweekly, monthly. We had no prior landscaping experience, learn the trade on the go by tagging along with the crew. We grew to 420 recurring clients as of today. ~23,000 appointments served since launched. The instant quote, booking feature of our site really help fuels our growth. Service ranges from $40-$300+ per yard depending on how large the yard is. Plenty of add-ons services (irrigation repair, install, tree trimming, removal, planting, grass reseeding). Tree removal, installing a new irrigation system could be in the thousands. NET margin's roughly 20%. If you apply good business practices, $500k+ annual revenue is very realistic. As for pricing your job, we use our site to set the maintenance pricing. If you don't have that, some use hourly rate. Some quote by the job. Use what best fits you.

    Hiring

    This is probably generic and applies to any industry. Our first hire was our own yard guys. His brother also does work for us. He knows someone from his church. One leads to others. We now have 6 crews. We tried indeed, craigslist, have a job application page on our site. We never had luck with them. We're lucky all our current guys are great. Very little turnover. They are the most hardworking people we know. Good crews are hard to come by. Pay them well above the average. If you had to fire someone, do it fast. It hurts all sides if you fire slowly.

    Operations

    Send clients service reminders at least a day before the service. Your crew should have access to all service info. Group all the houses in the same area on a specific day. It saves travel time and gas. Our maintenance service doesn't just mow and go. We trim bushes, remove weeds on gravel (majority of yards here have rocks). Check the irrigation system, help clients set up irrigation timers. Look out for leaks, broken sprinklers (add on revenue), report to clients if you see any. They will appreciate your attention to details. Crews will forget gate code, when they ask, tell them, don't let them wait. Your job is to make their job easier. Clients will have special requests, how much to remove this bush, how much to trim this tree. Get the quote out asap, best to do that on the same day of maintenance. Crews may miss things. Forget to trim a shrub, left the debris at the corner. You need to be ready to fix the mistake, put out the "fire". Maintain good communications, always. New leads will call to ask you to come out to see the yard, we direct them to our website that has an instant quote or have them send you the most recent photos (not the photos on Zillow that's 6 months ago), if they want an accurate quote. If mowing only, you can ask how tall the grass is in inches, go to findlotsize.com to measure the area. You can give them some rough estimates that way. You will get one-time cleanups often, try to turn them into recurring maintenance. We charge more on the one-time service and discount the first service if they sign up for maintenance. We tell the clients something like this:

    There's no contract on the maintenance service, you can cancel at any time. However, if cancel right after the first service and before the next maintenance service. The difference between the one-time service ($300) and the discounted first service ($250), will be charged." *Maintenance $50.*

    Clients cancellation

    Ask them why anything not happy with. Don't make the same mistakes if you're in the wrong. Many clients won't tell you unless you ask. If they move, make sure to let them know to leave your number to the new owner. Ask them to leave you a review if they haven't yet. Many new owners end up signing up with us.

    Problems

    Stolen tools. We've had $600 blowers, $800 lawnmowers stolen multiple times. Need to lock them in the trailers.

    Our city doesn't rain much. If it did, we had to reschedule that day's appointments. Fixing an irrigation leak could take much longer than expected. Finding the source is much harder than fixing it sometimes. This will mess up the day's schedule. Rescheduling could be a mess just to check what days to reschedule to. Notifying the clients, make sure they're ok and the crew's route is optimized so they don't need to travel far from one yard to the next. Limit the number of houses to no more than 12-15 per 2-3-men crew daily. For any automation experts, we'd like your feedback on how to automate the rescheduling.

    There's often gravels on the lawn. We've broken 2 sliding door glasses, a van's glass parked on the driveway when we weed eat the lawn. We lived up to our mistakes. Told the clients immediately and always pay for the damage in a timely manner. A sliding door glass easily runs $500 and up. Having liability insurance that has good coverage is very important.

    Bad clients

    We're fortunate most are nice people, but some are absolutely unbearable. One client always wanted us to do free work. Got mad if we don't do it even though we stated clearly what's and not included in the maintenance. Threaten to leave us bad reviews. Fire these types of clients quickly, you won't regret it. We do a little bit of free work here and there for clients sometimes cos we're nice people, but a line should always be drawn, business is still business, we're here to make money. We've had about 5-10 clients who straight out scammed us from not paying us (mistakes we didn't get their cards first). All big cleanups. If it happens to you, after a few invoices, don't spend more time on it, send them to collections. Your time should be spent on taking care of your clients, crews, and getting new business. Always in your best interest to get their credit card info. Tell them: The card info is for reserving the appointment only. It'll be posted as a pending/authorized transaction, however, it won't be charged until the service is completed.

    Marketing

    We don't do printed ads, never printed door hangers. We do have business cards that we give out to new clients. Not a big fan of traditional marketing. Maybe we're missing a lot though. Yelp is downright terrible. Hide good reviews and always call to get us on their ad platform. We never bite. Any bad reviews we respond professionally. Smart consumers can see who's in the wrong. We do get Yelp's new lead message from time to time. We check the lead's profile. If you only see 1-star reviews they give everywhere, don't respond. Chances are, they will give you a 1-star too. Wait for a few days, yelp will email you to remind you to respond, then click don't intend to reply. This way, it won't hurt your response time and rate. We focus more on google review. We tried fb ads, google AdWords, thumbtack, HomeAdvisor's initially. Never had good results. You must set up your GMB and Bing business page. Add photos, posts regularly. Use their analytics to narrow down the search keywords. Use them to optimize your site SEO. Our site traffic and people calling are mostly organic search through google. Send an auto email to clients after each service with a simple review link at the end to increase the number of reviews. We have some CRM in place though not systematically. We have thousands of old and existing clients in our database. Trees need trimming once a year; lawn needs fertilizer regularly. Reach out to them. More reason to have repeated clients than a one-off. You should have add-on business regularly either you reach out to them or they ask for it. You need a CRM plan if you want to grow to the next level.

    Social Media

    We're present, but not active as in having daily scheduled posts. It's very time-consuming to post, follow others, be engaging, just to hope others will retweet/share or follow back. We aren't sure how much more effort we should put into it. Currently, no ad spend. We're open to it. Just need a plan. If you're spending $$ on ads, good to know your client segments so you can target them.

    • Homeowners: Most clients of ours are younger crowd, professionals who don't have any time to do yard work or wait for someone to come out to give quote.
    • Investors: Out of state, snowbirds, send them after service photos, they will appreciate it.
    • Property managers: We work for a property management company that manages over 2,000 investment properties in our city. They give us constant stream of work. Many are large ticket one-time cleanup. Find yours in your city. Contact them. They may be looking for landscapers.
    • Realtors: Got some work from them here and there. Most we know don't give us much work. We don't actively reach out to them. Not worth our time.
    • Apartments, shopping center, HOAs: We avoid this type of business although we do have a few. Net 30 payment is too long. We understand it's a large amount but it ties up our resources. A good size apartment landscape maintenance could take 3 guys half a day. Residential homes are quick, excellent receivable, job done, click charge, get paid the next day. You just need a lot of repeated clients. With lots of smaller clients, you reduce the risk of losing big clients. If you have too many large commercial clients, what if they cancel the contract next year, it'll crush your top line. You lose a residential client out of hundreds or thousands, no big deal.
    • HOA, city violations: Depending on the HOA, cities, and states, they send our violations to residents if they don't maintain the yard. Many only find help right before the fine kicks in. Those are very good business. If you pick up the call, you most likely will get it. Convince them to sign up for maintenance, more recurring, add-on revenue.

    Templates

    We have many message templates for generic questions, to save time communicating with leads and clients.

    Examples: "If you have recent photos of the yard, please send them to us so we can provide a much narrower price range. Thank you!"

    Please refer to our ongoing maintenance service details here for your reference. >> "link to your site's page that describes the maintenance work"

    You can see some of our work here for your reference. "Link to your photo gallery or IG page of your work photos."

    These are some irrigation, tree trimming work of ours for your reference. "Links to your photo gallery"

    You can also login here to view the service schedule and details. Thanks. "Link to the client login page."

    Refer to your friend and family to get a 10.0% discount on your next appointment if they book with us. >> link to your referral page <<

    We have a few spreadsheets we created to calculate fertilizer, weed/feed, new sod, reseeding price. Plug in the area, give you a price. This makes it quick to send estimates.

    Final take away

    Anyone can start a landscaping business. You don't need to have much knowledge or invest thousands of dollars to start. We didn't even have a truck, a lawnmower when we started. This (https://imgur.com/a/W0XsHuD) is what we have. You just need a system that can run your business efficiently and a crew who has the experience and know what they're doing. Have the vision to set the business up so you're not the one who does the labor work, instead, you're the one who manages, markets the business. As you build up your client base, you can invest more into trucks, equipment, and hire more workers. Our model is working. We have online booking almost daily with no ad spend. it can work for you too. Focus on smaller clients instead of big HOA, commercial clients. You'll be glad when hundreds of recurring clients constantly give you additional work. Many will say don't start a landscaping business, it's bottom of the barrel, you're competing with low wage folks who charge nothing. If you are reliable and dependable, you will get business, and people are willing to pay more. Use good business ethics. People can book online on our site but there are still many prefer to call you. Pick up the calls. I can't tell you how many times we heard on the other side of the phone saying, "OMG, you're the first one who picked up my call!" There's no passive income in all of these. You're active if you want to succeed. Crew, client questions, complaints, new leads requests. It's non-stop. Don't low ball any quotes, don't use words like cheap, low cost in your marketing message. Use reasonable, competitive pricing instead. If you follow good practice, your business will grow, it won't be a candlestick growth but it will grow. It happens to us. It will work for you too.

    Photo gallery:

    https://imgur.com/jxz4JyT

    https://imgur.com/a/c59MMiu

    https://imgur.com/a/BG7eswH

    Any comments, feedback, questions, let us know. Thanks!

    EDIT: WOW!! thanks for all the feedback, questions, and upvotes!

    submitted by /u/HouseOfYards
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    Should I spend money on this online business?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 12:22 PM PDT

    Hi All,

    I'm about to drop almost 5K on a developer to create a web application for me. It's a subscription based service that I've been thinking about, researching and writing requirements for for a year. I had a graphic designer create a professional design and I have a developer who understands everything I need done.

    I'm just about to pull the trigger but I feel a little sick. I'm a late mover in terms of the market. There are other sites out there that serve their community well and have lot's of users. I've chosen a successful site that I love but believe needs significant improvement so I've taken their idea, reviewed what their customers say and I'll build a site that is (in my opinion) far better than theirs.

    But I'm nervous. Will people like it? Will they sign up? Will I earn my money back? I'm taking a risk.
    I believe the market is there and I should probably just back myself.

    Does anyone have any wise words for me?

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/NinjaBoy123456
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    I've failed 3+ dropshipping stores. Revealing everything. Any advice is appreciated.

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 05:41 AM PDT

    Hi everyone. So for the past 6 months, I have been trying to build a dropshipping store and scale it. Unfortunately, all attempts have failed, but I have learned a lot along the way. I hope this post helps others as I will be revealing all my stores and everything that I have learnt. I'll try and make it an interesting read/case study.

    What bothers me though, is I don't understand how I have failed. I have followed the exact advice of so many professionals and now i'm all burned out. Any advice would be MUCH appreciated.

    Professionals strategies that i have followed: Gabriel St-Germain, KING COMM, Verum, Kevin Zhang, Kevin David, lots of Facebook groups and Reddit recommendations. I've also completed the entire Facebook blueprint.

    HOW I FIND PRODUCTS: - Ecomhunt/Aliexpress Dropshipping Center (40+ vol per day)/Facebook Video Search ("shop now", "free shipping" etc./ Facebook Turbo Ad Finder/ Instagram feeds etc.

    FIRST STORE: BONIRIS

    Link: https://www.facebook.com/bonirisglasses/ (website is dead)

    Launch Date: December 2019

    Sales: 2

    Ad Spend: ~$500

    Reasoning and what I learned: I tried to solve a problem. Simple as that. People get sore eyes when they look at screens all day. Blue light blocking sunglasses help solve that problem.

    I was new to Facebook ads and didn't manage the process correctly. I ran too many PPE campaigns to try and generate social proof. I spent too much money on professional photo designs. This left me with a low conversions budget and ultimately I gave up due to a lack of sales.

    One point to mention is that my creatives were good. I also experimented at the end by taking a winning competitor video, slapping my own logo over it, and judging the results. No sales.

    Fast forward 4 months later I was back in the game and was determined to learn everything possible before trying again.

    I also had to try and make this work during COVID-19.

    SECOND STORE: WAGGY PRINTS

    Link: https://waggyprints.com/

    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/waggyprints/

    Launch Date: March

    Sales: 18

    Ad Spend: $1,600

    Reasoning and what I learned: I launched a personalized print on demand / dropshipping store after about 2-3 weeks of planning it. This store took the most effort out of all of them so i'll talk about it a bit more. I also drafted a full business plan for it.

    I figured print on demand would be less of an issue during corona as POD merchants weren't positioned in China, therefore shipping times wouldn't be an issue. POD is also becoming increasingly popular, so I tried to capitalize on it. I could also make a decent margin per print with Gooten fulfillment ($20-50) and I figured i could take on the big players. I was wrong.

    My website looks amazing and the mock-up designs look good. For anyone interested in personalized print on demand, I recommend Chris Conrady and Wholesale Ted (Youtube) to learn from.

    Okay, let's get straight to it. Facebook Ads!

    I blew $100 on growing the page to 900 likes. Don't do this! It is completely useless. Next, I ran multiple $5 adsets with 8 creatives per ad set. Don't do this either! Experts suggest a minimum of $2.50 per ad creative. I then tried 2 creatives per $5 ad set.

    Next, i tried to copy Verums strategy and run $50/day CBO campaigns with 2 creatives in each adset. I got 1 sale after 2 days and turned them off. I then changed the interests, changed the creatives, and tried again. This time with a $100/day CBO budget for 2 days. Same result.

    This is when i introduced a custom dog harness to the website. I ran this over multiple campaigns with lots of testing and only got ~12 sales.

    Facebook Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/2ERCPU4

    The only reason why "Pets At Home" has 3 sales is because the same person purchased the same product 3 times over the following weeks. All the other sales are basically from the pet harness.

    Facebook testing:

    • Narrowing with engaged shoppers

    • Top 4 countries only (UK/US/AU/CA), or US only

    • So many different interests (found through audience insights, google search, suggestions etc.)

    • I tried to scale interests that showed some value after 2 days

    • I tried targeting different volume amounts (1m - 80m) and excluding dropshipping/aliexpress/printondemand interests.

    • I tried running identical ad sets with slight changes such as mobile-only, facebook feed only, etc.

    • Went to the breakdown tool and tried to target exactly what was working from old adsets, into new ones. E.g. Women only, 40+, Mobile only, US only.

    • Tried Conversions set to purchase, conversions set to add to cart, and set to view content

    • Different thumbnails

    • Tried to retarget website visitors over 180D

    • Always single interest testing. Sometimes tried with multiple interests but it made no difference.

    After the Verum method failed, i tried normal ABO's and same result. I then tried a paid instagram promotion and got no results ($50). I also tried growing the instagram page by posting memes but it didn't provide results and was too hard to grow. I know how to grow a page as i have a different meme page with 20k followers, and also used that to try and promote this one.

    I also made an Etsy shop and tried to sell on there. Got 0 sales ffs.

    Anyway. enough of this business, onto the next.

    THIRD STORE: NAPANNA

    Link: https://napanna.com/

    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/napannajewelry/

    Launch Date: April

    Sales: ~15

    Ad Spend: $1,100

    Reasoning and what I learned: Thought i'd give personalized print on demand jewelry from aliexpress a go for the same reasons. I could claim that there would a 1 month delay due to the personalized nature of the product.

    Facebook screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/iuDF7vY

    2 ads per creative. I work out which one performs best after 2 days and kill the bad performing one, while doubling the budget. Nothing scaled properly though. I also tried all the different creative options such as slideshow, carousel, image, video, etc.

    FOURTH STORE: Home Life Deals

    Link: https://homelifedeals.com/

    Launch Date: May

    Sales: ~2

    Ad Spend: $400

    Reasoning and what I learned: I got sick of creating a new store everytime i wanted to test a niche or a product so i created a general store, only for testing, and to target products that people need for their house.. If a product was successful in the testing phase, then i'd create a new website around it.

    Unfortunately, every product failed... My products aren't bad though, the couch covers look great. They are also proven to sell as the aliexpress dropshipping center reports constant 50+ sales and competitors have hundreds of thousands of views per video.

    For these, i mainly just tried video ads. I found ads that were already working and stole them for testing and slapped my logo over it. I also found 5 or so videos from competitors, aliexpress product listings and more. Then i cut them up and created my own. Nothing worked though. The videos were good as they were proven to work by competitors. I also tested with different thumbnails.

    I also tried finding products with a US warehouse. So everything would take ~2 weeks to arrive.

    As i was much more experienced with Facebook ads, i tried to sell blue light glasses again on here. Still didn't work smh.

    Facebook screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/L8jtz0k

    submitted by /u/someone3245
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    What would you do, if you notice that your business idea already exists?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 04:31 AM PDT

    This happens actually often to me, that I have an idea to solve a problem, but after searching in internet I notice that the solution is already there. Most of the time, the existing business is not exactly the same as my idea but similar.

    My question is what would you do in a similar situation? Do you give up or do you see it as a good sign, as someone already tested the idea.

    submitted by /u/nielwimo
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    Sick of the 9 to 5 life

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 08:06 AM PDT

    Any small business ideas to start? I know this is a repeated post and I'm sorry lol. I'm so tired of the corporate life I'm ready to start something up. Any small business ideas you'd recommend? Pressure washing is on my list as a possibility. Also want to start an online store but don't know the step by step process of going about that. There's a lot online about it but mostly everything I read doesn't give a step by step breakdown of what I actually need to do!! Lol I wouldn't mind an online store of pet products. I know people love their pets and that business isn't going anywhere. Any advice on what I need to do and where I need to start would be appreciated! Have an awesome day!

    submitted by /u/B_Mac90
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    What are the cheap things you still do even or buy even after making a lot of money?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 11:47 AM PDT

    I know that money changes people, but there are those humble things to hold on to even with all the money in the world. What are those things?

    submitted by /u/Rouuaaz
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    Marketing OKRs

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 11:18 AM PDT

    Hi folks,

    I created the article with 21 marketing OKR examples. It includes examples for main marketing areas: SEO, SMM, Content marketing, and other.

    OKR is a goal-setting framework that is used by companies like Google, Netflix, Twitter, and others.

    If you are interested I will drop the link.

    Do you use OKRs in your team? If so, how does it work for you?

    submitted by /u/Aworkerman
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    Are any of you relocating away from NY or CA? Where to? Why?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 02:22 PM PDT

    I'm curious how many entrepreneurs are relocating away from business hubs because of the new age of WFH, geopolitics, taxes, etc....

    submitted by /u/kumarovski
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    Software Engineer for Delivery Service Start-up

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 02:06 PM PDT

    Hello my fellow software engineers, Can you please spare me 10-15 minutes for a Zoom Meeting regarding a backend system problem I am currently having with my last mile delivery start-up ? Any experienced software engineers or graduates who could share some light would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

    submitted by /u/s_sethey
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    Starting at 16????

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 02:01 PM PDT

    I'm 16 years old and would like to know what you guys think would be the best way to start off making money. Flipping items or starting an online store to sell things? Just wondering

    submitted by /u/smithy1046
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    My 60-day journey from agency newbie to aspiring marketplace analyst

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 01:34 PM PDT

    In 60 days, I have gone from not knowing what an agency even was to running one myself, and learning the fundamentals of picking a niche, attracting clients, and getting them results.Prior to this, I did own a local PC repair business out of my garage (and still do) – but the last 60 days have taught me invaluable skills that I'll be able to capitalize on for a lifetime. Here's a quick timeline:

    1. Early April: Started my new business, and picked a niche out of the sky and started rolling with it
    • 1. Basic setup of new business, legal stuff, bought some software packages for invoicing/banking, etc.
    • 2. Sorted through many contractors and picked one, ready to roll.
    1. Late April-Early May: Completely ditched that niche ( because it wasn't scale-able), and picked a new niche based on solid market research instead of guesswork & intuition
    • 1. I literally rolled a dice to pick my market. Why? Because your offer is all that matters, and your offer depends on your problem-solving skills, not your market. Hook, story, offer. Pivot if needed, and repeat.
    • 2. Began vigorous market research and talked to some of the leading brand owners in my market.
    • 3. Identified 5-6 really big issues that weren't being addressed in the market, and eventually narrowed down to one niche.
    1. Rest of May: Started a "test-run" business with that niche. Ultimately led to a pivot, but not because of a lack of leads.
    • 1. Job posts didn't attract anyone which was crazy to me - because this niche was brand new and no one had tapped into this service yet.
    • 2. I bought a couple of Udemy courses on how to provide the results myself
    • 3. Used a revolutionary new organic attraction method I've been taught…I had inbound hot leads coming my way without paying a penny for ads – even though I didn't know how to deliver on my service yet!
    • 4. Ultimately, I had to drop this niche as the platform I was providing services on temporarily delayed accounts from advertising on the platform. The hook, story and offer were on point (the attraction process) but the results process wasn't working out. Simple – time for a pivot, keep my head up and keep rolling with a new hook, story, and offer from the same core vision I hold.
    1. June: Pivoting & starting a new "test-run" business
    • 1. Over the past couple of weeks, I'll admit that I've been at somewhat of a loss of where to turn. That's when it hit me – many of the challenges I've already overcome can be used to assist others following in a similar-type journey to mine. Excited to see where my journey continues and what my next niche will be as an agency owner. Maybe I'll pivot, maybe what I'm doing now will turn into a 6-figure/month business. I'm ready to find out and keep everyone posted!

    Tl;dr Find what your people need, and give it to them. I know it sounds simple, but it's truth.

    All that said – let me know, what are your thoughts? What sparks your interests? Do you have any questions? Would love to share everything I've paid to learn for absolute free with all of you 😊

    submitted by /u/jlwip
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    Would anyone be interested in this?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 01:32 PM PDT

    https://leadsavage.co

    Hey guys - looking to sell this site I made for a client but they never paid me. It's basically a branding/digital infrastructure for a white labeled lead generation software D7 Lead finder. Sale would include: domain, website (squarespace), subscription payment system (stripe or paypal), branding/logos, email (google), fb and IG, pixel and Google Analytics. You can basically take this over, add moduals and sales videos to upsell VA's and consulting etc. and drive traffic to get subs. basically SAAS in a box looking for $1500 but negotiable. squarespace is about 250/year and D7 lead finder is about $7/user per month so overhead is very low

    submitted by /u/hbdubs11
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    Where do you research "exits"?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 01:27 PM PDT

    Aside from Crunchase, is there anywhere that you research which companies have made exits, by sector, and by size of exit?

    submitted by /u/teachMe
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    17 year old; how to expand my webdesign business?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 08:47 AM PDT

    Hi everyone, first time posting here.

    So since the beginning of the last year I've started my webdesign business. The main thing I'm currently competing on is price, my websites are about 400 each. By now, I have four clients and one prospective client, which I got through various connections like my parents (mostly my parents actually). If you're interested in what I'm doing, you may check out my websites I've done so far, with most clients I'm still in the process of developing a website. The websites are in german though and aren't relevant to my question tbh.

    My main question is how to acquire new clients. For reference, this is what I already tried in order to get more customers:

    - Setup my own website, make a GMB profile. No ads because I don't really have the budget for that.

    - Spread the word, tell my parents so they can maybe find prospective clients

    - Print business cards and distribute them

    - Cold calling businesses which don't have (a good) website, didn't work well

    - Today I went to a business in person, they weren't interested

    As for now, only the networking through my parents worked. All the clients I have are through that method. Also, one existing client referred me.

    Currently, I'm totally fine with the number of clients I have and I've got plenty of work, but I want to know how to get new clients after I'm done with these clients, especially since all of the other methods haven't worked. Thanks a lot!

    submitted by /u/__master
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    I automate things for small businesses. AMA.

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 12:13 PM PDT

    I am a software developer but recently I have helped some small business automate all kinds of processes using Python. Most had no idea these things could be done.

    1. Update accounting system from changes in booking systems
    2. Automate emailing and marketing
    3. Moving files around (from FTP, across systems)
    4. Automating internet browser tasks

    Would love to hear your ideas as well.

    submitted by /u/bideenet
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    Just got approved for a 16K SBA loan - need advice

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 11:36 AM PDT

    As the title states, I just got approved for a sizable loan. My industry got obliterated (live music) and with not much hope in site, I am looking for ways to make a living. I have been a professional musician all of my life and looking for a new career at 49 is something I was not planning. That said, I applied for and got approved for an SBA loan. Payback is a year from now, with a 3% interest. I would like to find a way I can some how make this money work for me or at least get the ball rolling. Would love to get some ideas.

    submitted by /u/picardy_3
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    Are any of my projects profitable?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 11:19 AM PDT

    1. A cryptocurrency and alternate dns root for marginalized communities

    2. Gig economy data cleaning and preprocessing service

    3. Online steganalysis tool (the only one of its kind)

    4. Multiplayer, competitive, fast-paced educational math game (exactly like Tron lightcycles, but to move, you need to solve a math problem)

    Up until recently, my goal was to drop everything and work on #3, in hopes that I'd be noticed and would be hired as an ML engineer (the project uses ML heavily). But I've learned it's near impossible to get an ML job even with a master's degree (I don't even have a bachelor's).

    So I am rethinking my goals.

    Ultimately I want a general web/software dev job making $80k+, but if any of my projects are profitable, I'd like to focus on it instead (or at least work on it as a hobb.

    Can anyone help out?

    submitted by /u/Mjjjokes
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    How did you become a winner and overcame your barriers and excuses?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 11:17 AM PDT

    Today I've had my best day so far with my business and if it keeps going like this I might be a millionaire in 2 years or so.

    Yet all day I've been feeling paralyzed by stress, anger, tiredness and with all the complaining I barely got a thing done. I'm realizing this is all just excuses and me stepping into a loser mindset. Me feeling tired instead of taking a 10 minute break, me complaining I'm hungry instead of ordering something quickly, etc.. Gotta turn this around, start feeling grateful, and start getting into a winner mindset

    What's your story, and what are your tips and tricks on fighting the excuses, the "I cant do it", and acting like a winner?

    submitted by /u/AtlasAstronomer
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    It is highly recommend that you ask people about your idea before implementing it to save time, efforts and money. BUT how do you guarantee that no one will steal that idea from you if you start asking questions about it?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 10:56 AM PDT

    It is highly recommend that you ask people about your idea before implementing it to save time, efforts and money. BUT how do you guarantee that no one will steal that idea from you if you start asking questions about it?

    submitted by /u/jaiga99
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    How Automation Can Save Your Business a Ton of Time and Money

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 10:28 AM PDT

    ​

    Hey guys! I have founded a Software Automation Consultancy that aims to help businesses save time and money by building cyberbots that would take care of the manual, day-to-day manual computer chores that are plaguing your business.

    I'll get straight to the point. In the age of Corona, companies are looking to become more efficient and cut costs. How can I help? Below are case studies of a few companies I've already helped and how I've helped them. If you see yourself in them, please reach out to me via chat or DM.

    Case Study abstracts:

    Pulling bank account balance information every morning for a client with 100 sub accounts and saving them onto a web application. This saved the client several hours a day of manually checking the bank wesite and copy/pasting the data onto excel sheets.

    Data-mining email addresses from a given list of websites. My client used to wake up at 4 am and do this manually till 9 am. Now she sleeps during that time.

    Automating resume critiques using AI to analyze each bullet point and generate suggestions (Resumator, a startup I founded, was built on this).

    submitted by /u/Fiiqiii
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    Do I need to register an online SERVICE business?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 10:25 AM PDT

    Hey guys!

    I've been wanting to start my own social media agency for a while now but I still have a lot of questions. I'm Canadian (from Quebec), and I haven't seen much information about online service businesses on the Canadian government website.

    I plan on selling my services to WORLDWIDE clients, not just Canadian clients. Therefore, do I have to register my business even if my clients are not going to be only from Canada?

    Also, what happens if I make my first sale without having the business registered? What are the legal repercussions?

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/mlayy
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    How to get products in stores?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 10:00 AM PDT

    I want to start making cleaning products and hand sanitizer. Every store around my area (San Diego) is practically empty of all of these things. I own and operate a cleaning business now. Once I have my products manufactured, how do I get them to distributors and on store shelves? Do you have any good resources that I can learn more about the nuts and bolts and real world knowledge on these things? Thank you.

    submitted by /u/z7zark7z
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    Wouldn't it be great if freelancers could get notified of perfect opportunities?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 09:52 AM PDT

    As a freelancer, a large portion of my time goes into manually searching for jobs. Plus, there are tens of platforms to constantly look into. None of the platforms has personalized recommendations for perfect opportunities. From a UX perspective, the filters don't work well and leave too much work to be done by the user. The noise to signal ratio is just too high.

    Wouldn't it be great if job opportunities suited to our skills could arrive straight to our inbox as soon as they're posted?

    I am building this product to help freelancers cut down the hassle of manual job searches and ensure that they don't miss out on opportunities perfectly suited to their skills.

    Would love thoughts from the r/Entrepreneur community on the strength of the value proposition, potential roadblocks, and other areas of opportunity if any.

    If you're a freelancer reading this, please consider spending 2 minutes to fill this quick survey out. I promise it won't take more than 2 minutes and would help me get your valuable opinion on the challenges freelancers across the world are facing. Link - https://forms.gle/FzejpZFBh6WotDQV9

    submitted by /u/wandering_tsilihin
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    How much capital do I need to create a payment gateway business like Stripe?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2020 09:51 AM PDT

    Background Story:

    I was creating an ecommerce website for a client. While searching for payment gateway, I was so shocked that there's no payment gateway available in my country only PayPal.

    It's amusing because things like that should be easy and accessible to access and setup on a website yet there's none. You just create a Stripe account, verify it, setup integration and that's it.

    My country is not eligible to payment gateways like Stripe, etc. but they can process payments from people our country when we buy online. We can't just use it for business.

    While there are options like 2Checkout, I feel like they're not a significant player yet in my country. I also tried using it in my ecommerce website. In Wordpress for instance, the support and update itself is outdated. They haven't update it in 2 years and it's important in security.

    I can't let this opportunity slip away.

    submitted by /u/alygraphy
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