Marketplace Tuesday! (July 07, 2020) Entrepreneur |
- Marketplace Tuesday! (July 07, 2020)
- made my first cold call an hour ago and still shaking
- How I quit my job to start a business and failed
- Want to start a business? Try not to do it alone
- What kind of lawyer/tax/accounting person do I need to work with?
- Risky business vs cushy job?
- A Freebie For You: A Way To Train Yourself To Overcome Obstacles
- Own a direct to consumer brand in music electronics. Retailers are showing interest but I know nothing about wholesale. Where can I learn more?
- Alibaba Seller Input Fake Tracking Number to Close Out $10k Order - Advice Needed
- In theory, what is the market for if someone standing on the median near a traffic light, could sell you through your few inches rolled down window, a near instant cooling of your car's air down to any chosen low temperature (such as 33 farenheight, just above water freezing, or as low as you want)?
- Does anyone have experience starting a third party medical billing company?
- Forming an LLC -Questions
- Looking to sell a unique craft item. Consensus here seems to be use Etsy, Shopify site, eBay, others all at the same time. Price should be exactly the same as well right?
- What are some businesses I can legally start at age 17?
- Any people had success building start ups in India?
- DTC vs Retail for my products
- I want to start inbound closing.
- I'm really losing hope in Instagram and thus my entire business
- How Do I Run Facebook Ads For my Business?
- Skincare brand as an investment
- I admit. I didn’t know what marketing is — confession of a tech founder
- How to not get demoralized when getting outreaching for leads?
- Question for setting up online payments
| Marketplace Tuesday! (July 07, 2020) Posted: 07 Jul 2020 06:08 AM PDT Please use this thread to post any Jobs that you're looking to fill (including interns), or services you're looking to render to other members. We do this to not overflow the subreddit with personal offerings (such logo design, SEO, etc) so please try to limit the offerings to this weekly thread. Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts. [link] [comments]  |
| made my first cold call an hour ago and still shaking Posted: 07 Jul 2020 07:16 AM PDT |
| How I quit my job to start a business and failed Posted: 07 Jul 2020 08:34 AM PDT I was lucky to get a job as a software engineer straight out of college. It paid a lot, but it wasn't fulfilling. I found Indiehackers, Startups for the Rest of Us, and other bootstrapper content. I devoured it. On November 8, 2019, I left my job. I had grand ideas for this side project I had been working on. I now had the time to pursue those ideas. I thought to myself, "I need to build a few more features, and it will be ready to show to people and validate my idea." I was able to generate a small amount of traffic to the website. The responses I was getting were indifferent. I kept believing that people didn't understand the vision. I needed to build more features, and they would understand it. I got trapped in a loop. Every time I met indifference as feedback, I would lose confidence. I'd think up what features were missing that would excite people. Excited to work on new ideas, I would bunker down and churn out a bunch of code. I'd get burned out. After a few days of recharging, I would try to get feedback. That feedback was almost always indifference. It's been seven months. I have shipped the app (https://polished.app), but it's nothing great. I was letting my ego drive my decision making. I thought I could build amazing features without doing the work of solving any real problems. I'm taking a break from Polished. I still have a few months of runway left. I'm going to reread and do my best to follow the lessons shared by others who have been successful at this. I'm going to talk to as many people as I can before diving in on an idea. I'm going to work in public and write about everything I do along the way. If you've had a similar experience or advice to offer, please share! [link] [comments]  |
| Want to start a business? Try not to do it alone Posted: 07 Jul 2020 02:05 AM PDT It is no secret that building and running a business is not easy no matter how small or big it may be. There are a huge number of obstacles that one has to overcome, but while building a business with my co-founder Preetam, I realised that all the obstacles become significantly easier to overcome when you are not in it alone. To be clear, I have tremendous respect for solo founders. These guys undertake a very lonely journey where nobody else can relate to their problems or achievements for that matter. When you have a bad day, you can't really explain it to someone because the feeling is unique to your situation and when you reach a milestone, you can probably celebrate it with your friends and loved ones but they would never truly understand how big a deal it is for you to have achieved that milestone. So I just want to give a shout out to all the solo founders out there and encourage them to keep crushing it in life. Having said this, I would now like to highlight some advantages of starting a business with at least one other person. Accountability It is safe to assume that a person who quits their job and lives off of their savings in order to take on the challenge of building a business is dedicated and driven but this does not make them immune from laziness. In fact if your business starts showing some amount of success, it is even more likely that you might slack off because you no longer have to worry about paying the bills or making rent because you have revenue coming in to take care of that. So that fire that kept you on your toes is gone. Even if you don't slack off for a single day of your life, you are still human and are capable of making mistakes. Mistakes that don't have any redemption because only you get affected by the mistake. Having a partner who is just as vested into the venture as you are changes this. You are now accountable to each other and have somebody to answer to when you slack off or make a mistake. This might sound very counterintuitive because the reason why people start businesses is to not have anyone to answer to. But I have found during my journey that this is not always a bad thing and it is actually essential sometimes. Productivity When you start a business there are many skills that you may have to learn based on what domain your business is in. For instance when we started our Shopify application, we needed to know Product design, Front-end tech, back-end tech, marketing and distribution, landing page design and customer support. Now obviously if you are a solo founder you could argue that you could hire people for doing all of this but the truth of the matter is that even if you hire people to delegate a job, you still need to have some amount of understanding about that job so that you can hire the right people for the job and gauge whether your employee is performing well or not. In other words you have to learn many skills from scratch. If one person were to learn all of these skills, it would take a lot more time and mental bandwidth than dividing those skills amongst two people who will then nail all the aspects of the business that they are responsible for. It is therefore very important to choose a business partner who has an affinity to the skills that complement your own. This is easier said than done but I would say it is worth spending time just to find a partner that compliments your skills instead of being of the mindset that it would be a waste of time to do so. Moral support Oftentimes founders might find themselves in a situation where they face a problem that only they can solve and they aren't sure how to do it yet. During such times it is very easy to go down a spiral of thoughts which might convince you that nobody is coming to help you and you are on your own so you are pretty much screwed. During such times it greatly helps if somebody that stands to lose the same thing that you do if you don't solve the problem tells you that it is going to be okay. This is what my dynamic is like with my co-founder. If he screws up or feels down due to some factor that we had no control over, I tell him that we will live through this and if I screw up, he tells me it is going to be okay. This simple aspect can actually help a lot with maintaining the morale and moving forward despite facing something that might seem like the end of the world at that point of time. Happiness multiplies when you achieve a milestone When you build a business the only way for the outside world to gauge whether you achieved a milestone or not is based on how much money you are making, but for the people involved in building the business, there are a ton of non monetary achievements that give you happiness. For instance when we started out, our product was free for a while but we were gaining a lot of users every day and collecting feedback on what features they would be willing to pay for. This process was a magical time for us and we were the only ones who were capable of deriving happiness out of it. This happiness cannot really be shared with someone not involved in the business because they would not be able to relate to the feeling of talking to a customer from another country using google translate and understanding what their needs were and how we can solve them. Closing notes Someone once said to me that life is all about the people you meet and the things you build together. I genuinely believe this to be true and I would urge aspiring Entrepreneurs to make a full hearted attempt to find a business partner that aligns with your vision. I would also strongly suggest not to be hasty while finding a partner because working with a bad business partner is way worse than working alone and this is something that I experienced with my previous failed venture. [link] [comments]  |
| What kind of lawyer/tax/accounting person do I need to work with? Posted: 07 Jul 2020 12:48 PM PDT Working on setting up a business, and getting the foundation in place - how to incorporate, taxes, banking, etc. Someone who can learn about my goals for the company, challenges that I face, and suggest the proper structure and approach to the incorporation, how/where to handle the taxes and accounting, etc. What type of professional is this I need to look for to help me? (e.g. is this a lawyer? if so, what type of lawyer am I looking for?) I realize "learn it myself" is an option, but I don't want to go down that path. I'm sure I'll learn plenty as I go through this. But I want to be certain this part is done correctly. Thanks... Crossposted in /r/SmallBusiness [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jul 2020 09:54 AM PDT Need opinions please. My side business is going very well and is making several times my high paying job. However the business income is potentially unstable and I'm at the beginning of the market where profits are high. Competitors could come in and everything could change. There's low barriers to entry and very little skillset is needed. The job on the other hand, I could work there forever and the benefits and pension is super generous. But I have ZERO interest in the field. My job is now costing me valuable time to work on the business, but I'm not sure quitting is the right decision because business changes come about so fast, who knows if I'll even have a business next year. What would you do in my situation? [link] [comments]  |
| A Freebie For You: A Way To Train Yourself To Overcome Obstacles Posted: 07 Jul 2020 10:23 AM PDT If doubt stops you in your tracks from time to time. Then you're at a crossroads. You have to make a choice between these two options:
If you can tell you've subconsciously chosen option 1: stop reading now. You WILL be stuck. Even if you read to the end and nod your head the entire way through. You're not being threatened. You're not being belittled. It's just an effect of how your brain works. Whatever you decide is true, whatever you put emotional weight behind, will find support in the way your brain processes information. The way you feel literally shapes what you're able to see about the world. If you chose option 2 then let's start from a constructive place. (Since we're not face to face, or talking via a video connection, I'll give you the most generic, but also highly effective piece of advice I can give you.)
This is useful because you're reclaiming an internal locus of control; literally listing out all the agency you have at your disposal. You can see, black on white, that you're not helpless, and all you have to do, it choose what you're going to try next. If you still don't now, then list all the things you COULD do to find out. You're still not helpless.
But here is the kicker... You have to imagine it's bitchin' hard! So see yourself struggling with coming up with ideas. Struggling with selling over the phone. Staring at a blank cursor, or a page full of the absolutely worst drivel you've written in your life. See yourself reaching out to 600 people and getting ignored 600 times. You have to replay the stories and doubt you're experiencing while you're in that situation and tap into your deep seated frustration. Since you wrote down what attitude you need in those situations, you know what thoughts and feelings those situations should trigger in you, so now you play the movie where you react like you'd like to react. And then comes the crucial part. Your absolute must-do when it comes to training your brain to take action in the face of doubt. See yourself pushing through all that hardship! See it coming. See your frustration, and your doubts, and then see yourself push through it. Over. And over. And over again. Play that movie inside your mind as real as you can possibly make it. If you imagine something vividly, and emotionally enough, your brain can't tell imagination from reality very well. You can literally brainwash yourself to push through doubt if you TRAIN yourself to see realistic challenges. It's a way to 'practice like you play' (almost). Connect with your determination, your focus on attitude and efforts, and recognize the kinds of stories you need to tell yourself to overcome all those obstacles. Play THAT movie inside your head. The struggling one. The one that goes on for MONTHS! The one where you finally accept that 'failure' is feedback, and feedback is how you get good. Until you improve enough to become self-sustaining. Here's something to notice right now. The horror stories your brain plays inside your mind when you're not watching, always end right when it's worst. You never to get experience any after effects, only the absolute apex of shit that's coming your way. Have you ever noticed that yourself? Although we try to imagine what happens on the other side of some imagined 'failure', the time horizon gets shorter and shorter once we approach the 'time of accident'. Break that tendency by seeing the minutes, hours, and days after something goes wrong. And by seeing how your attitude helped you push through adversity. Now... That kind of person. The kind that struggles, but still takes the first step. The kind that then takes the second step. And then a third. The kind that keeps on pushing from where they are now, rather than where they WISH they were. What do you call such a person? Is that the kind of person you want to become, eventually? If yes: you now have to first steps you have to take to get started. And as soon as you do that, you're in! You are becoming such a person. Then all you have to do is keep it up! I'm not saying it easy. It's not. Your brain will realize that you're trying to kill your ego by pushing towards yourself towards discomfort; and your brain hates discomfort. It wants you to do the same things over and over again because it knows those things don't immediately kill you. It'll play a million tricks on you. I guarantee it. So know this: It takes practice, but it works. It's free, and now you know to do it. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jul 2020 07:24 AM PDT I have created my own brand in music electronics, which I sell directly to consumers via a webshop. Some retailers have shown interest in reselling my products. However I know next to nothing about the B2B wholesale process and don't want to step blindly into negotiations. So I need to learn about how this works, what types of agreements are possible, what are realistic margins, what are pitfalls to look for in contracts, what about warranty, and so on. Might be interesting to know that I live in the EU and my market is also EU. Are you aware of any resources that might help me? For instance a course? [link] [comments]  |
| Alibaba Seller Input Fake Tracking Number to Close Out $10k Order - Advice Needed Posted: 07 Jul 2020 09:42 AM PDT Hey guys, really need your help here - any advice from the more experienced folks would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the somewhat long post - tried to be as concise as I could be while including all the relevant facts. Did a search for threads of ppl in similar situations but came up blank. I purchased $10k worth of goods on Alibaba (one of my first few orders on Ali) spread across 3 orders in mid-May, with the contract clearly stating that the seller would ship via sea freight within 20 days of pmt (by the beginning of June). Frankly I'm not in a huge rush to receive the goods (so I didn't raise the delay with the seller), and they didn't end up shipping the goods until the last week of June (or so they say), almost 4 weeks after the contracted ship date. The seller notified me accordingly via chat and updated the order details with (what I presume to be) the correct shipping details. However, today the seller revised all 3 orders with fake/wrong tracking numbers to show that all 3 orders were delivered via Express in late May (within 10 days of my payment date) to cities that are not my shipping address. So now, the following Ali order details are all wrong/fake: 1) shipping method (should be sea, not express), 2) delivery dates, 3) delivery addresses. And given that it's been a while since the fake delivery date (long enough to trigger Alibaba's automatic receipt confirmation), all orders automatically "completed" right away (Trade Assurance function closed, and transaction funds unfrozen for the supplier). However, I still have an option to apply for a refund. Being the cynic that I am, very low chance this was an honest mistake IMO. To me, the situation could either 1) be a complete scam (there's no actual shipment on the way), or 2) the seller was worried that I was going to dispute a partial refund on the grounds of the 4-week delay and wanted to close out the order officially with no delay (and the actual shipment is still en route). For what it's worth, the seller is Alibaba verified, 6+ year history, overwhelmingly well reviewed, etc. I have yet to confront/contact the seller and plan on doing so after I get a few of your thoughts on the situation. I guess as someone very new to Alibaba, my questions are: 1) Given that Trade Assurance has been closed: If I don't actually receive the goods, or if the quantity / specs are off, would I still be protected under Trade Assurance? 2) Should I apply for a refund now while the option is still active? After all, the tracking shows "delivered" to wrong destinations...And also because I'm not sure when the button will disappear, because based on my reading of the Alibaba rules, the refund window should be closed by now (30 days from delivery), as it's been almost 2 months from the fake delivery date. 3) Any advice on how I should approach this? Anything I should be mindful of? Frankly I'm pretty nervous, given all the stories I've read on here about how if it ever gets to dispute stage, Alibaba is notoriously seller friendly, even in cases that are cut and dry like mine. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jul 2020 01:31 PM PDT I'm not saying I could efficiently provide it, but it seems that theres alot of people on the road who are hotter than they prefer to be, and alot of power sources which could provide such cooling if strategicly placed, if people wanted to make such trades. Or a less extreme example, car air conditioners seem to cost alot more than house air conditioners, if only you could install a house air conditioner into your car's trunk and power convert it maybe with a larger alternator etc. [link] [comments]  |
| Does anyone have experience starting a third party medical billing company? Posted: 07 Jul 2020 01:25 PM PDT As the title suggests, I'm currently considering starting a medical billing company. I would love to hear from anyone who has experience with the hurdles and the pros/cons. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jul 2020 12:44 PM PDT I live in FL and will be doing business in the same state. Starting a business with a partner 50/50. Any advice? Will be considered from what i can tell a partnership by the state...any advice on IRS filings and tax implications. Also, whats a good way for each of us to protect ourself from the other if in the future one wants out of the business for any reason? Any other advice also greatly appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 07 Jul 2020 08:50 AM PDT I've wanting to start selling my unique crafted item for a while but wasn't sure whether to start with Etsy or my own website. I was surprised to find previous threads with the answers of both. Is it really best practice to start right out of the gate selling everywhere I can? If so, prices should be the same regardless of the different fees I'm paying in the back end right? [link] [comments]  |
| What are some businesses I can legally start at age 17? Posted: 07 Jul 2020 12:26 PM PDT Give me some ideas of a proper business I can start at age 17 that will grow as I age. Tell me your ideas no matter the capital, I have a good amount for my age. Not looking for those businesses everyone recommends to teens such as yard work. Looking for a proper one thats profitable and will grow with me. Thanks in advance [link] [comments]  |
| Any people had success building start ups in India? Posted: 07 Jul 2020 12:17 PM PDT |
| Posted: 07 Jul 2020 12:17 PM PDT I have an online shop selling religious jewelry. Retail price of jewelry ranges from $60 - $175. I take the cost of material and mark it up by 50%-60%. I've been getting a lot of interest from boutique shops across the US who want to sell my jewelry. The problem is most of these boutiques want a 50% discount to purchase wholesale and unfortunately my current markups don't allow for that. Is it worth marking up my jewelry even further to allow for resale at boutiques or should I focus on the ecommerce business only and keep the prices where they are? I know this is a tough question to answer but wondering if anyone has been in a similar situation and how you handled it? [link] [comments]  |
| I want to start inbound closing. Posted: 07 Jul 2020 12:09 PM PDT So I heard about it a couple days ago and wanted to try it out with quarantine still going on cause America is stupid. The salary I saw seemed too good to be true (probably cause it is), but I want to know if anyone has done it before. I started a free course on HubSpot and ill finish that tomorrow probably. If anyone has please give me insight on how to start it. [link] [comments]  |
| I'm really losing hope in Instagram and thus my entire business Posted: 07 Jul 2020 12:01 PM PDT Before I start I want to break down this post into several components. 1.) I want to know if I can "grow" on Instagram WITHOUT Instagram ads. 2.) I just need general advice on using Instagram to get people to click on my website and buy my product. I am writing this in large part because my organic Instagram engagement has completely plummeted and I get almost no engagement from hashtags. In the very beginning when I had 100-200 followers I would easily achieve 1000+ reach and 100+ likes, with some going well above 5000 reach and getting in excess of 500 likes, and I now have a 750 follower account (that is steadily decreasing in followers) that can get an absolute max of about 120 likes with nearly 100% of it being from people who already follow me. Ok blah blah a lot of numbers. I ran Instagram ads in the past but I had so many complications with my Facebook account/page that I want to know if I can stop doing ads altogether. Facebook would ask me a for a photo of my face, then a moving video of my face, and then government issued ID, and all of that is something I do not want to do. Even after I gave them a photo of my face they still disabled my account/I cannot get into it. I made another account and they asked me for the same thing. Even after I sent a photo, they wanted a video, and I just kept making new accounts every time I promoted a post, which was obviously not sustainable. So how the hell do I show people my business if I don't want to (basically can't) run ads? Is it even possible to make any progress without running ads? It seems I HAVE to run ads because organic growth is no longer an option. I am about to give up all hope on Instagram, and because of that, I am losing hope in my business altogether. At first I thought this would be a brief drop in engagement or a temporary "shadowban", but my account has been essentially nonexistent to new people since late April. It is extremely difficult to go on when I consider that no new people will be seeing my content. I am losing about four followers a day and gaining three to four, meaning my 750 will be at 650 before I can make a single sale. Please help me. I know I didn't offer very much info on my business or Instagram specs so please let me know if any of that would be helpful in determining a solution. Thank you... [link] [comments]  |
| How Do I Run Facebook Ads For my Business? Posted: 07 Jul 2020 11:50 AM PDT I saw in Some advance videos for facebook dynamic products ads and i learn very much how to run ads for your products. But i want to know those videos are working for run facebook products ads? [link] [comments]  |
| Skincare brand as an investment Posted: 07 Jul 2020 11:38 AM PDT Hi all, I want to build a skincare brand with an approach that's really different from existing brands. I've seen people who work at VC commenting on the posts here, so wanted to hear your perspective. Tech start-ups are "hot" investments now and skincare industry is getting ridiculously saturated, but the pie is getting bigger every year. I also see Glossier claiming itself as a tech company to get more vc money. Yes, I know it's hard to get investments for any company, but given the saturated market, what do you think is the possibility to get the investments for a skincare brand from an investor's perspective? I am developing products with money out of my pocket, but definitely will need investments to scale up. What do you think the best approach is for a skincare/cosmetics company in terms of scaling up the business? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| I admit. I didn’t know what marketing is — confession of a tech founder Posted: 07 Jul 2020 11:32 AM PDT Last week, after feeling burned-out sitting on my chair for WEEKS without breaks (other than sleep and meals), working on my product Goals, I decided to stay away from my chair for a week to recharge. I'd been working on Goals for exactly a year by July 1st, 2020. I've got it to $900-$1,500 MRR (fluctuates because of churns). It can be seen as a success if I had lived in a place with lower living costs, but it's still far from paying my monthly mortgage payments. The product is valuable and unique, according to its core users, but I've struggled to communicate the message effectively BEFORE users download the app. In other words, I didn't know marketing. Well, how could this be? In my past life, I've worked closely with marketing people and solved their problems, built tracking systems, implemented hundreds of A/B tests, and overheard lots of tips about marketing. They see me as one of the rare dev friends who understand them. I thought I'd be a marketing genius when I started. Well, clearly I wasn't. So, I bought 5 marketing books (one of them is @arvidkahl's new book (zero to sold, very timely) and decided to read them during my break. 50% into these books, I admit, I got marketing completely wrong. As a product engineer who has worked on hundreds of projects activating users (onboarding, growth) and retaining users (valuable features, great UX, email campaigns), I realized I didn't spend nearly as much time on acquiring users, and even LESS on the step before that: understanding users/niche. When I joined companies as an employee, most of the time, someone else (founders) has already done the work of identifying the niche and target market. So I always took it for granted. As a result, since I started last year, I spent most of my time building features for power users. I had nearly 0% focus on the technological stack for attracting, capturing, nurturing, and converting prospects. To correct this problem, I've come up with a new mental model:
It's clear. I've got 10+ years of experience in Product Engineering, 3+ years on Growth Engineering, and 0 years of experience in Market Engineering. Market Engineering is the ultimate "Front-end" engineering. We all know that all users experience an app through its Front-end; they don't care about how well your backend is written as they will never interact with it directly. Similarly, all prospects experience a business through its marketing message, and they don't care about how good your onboarding is unless they see you, and in a short period, are convinced that you can help them. It's fascinating to identify my shortcomings because it means I can finally put a conscious effort to nail it. I'll come back with a marketing architecture like how I designed software architecture after I finish reading the 5 books and will test it out in the following months. [link] [comments]  |
| How to not get demoralized when getting outreaching for leads? Posted: 07 Jul 2020 01:09 AM PDT I started a web design agency two weeks ago and have been working on it regularly since. It is based off a monthly fee and is very affordable for small business owners. My first cold email actually turned into my first (and only) customer. Since then I've had people interested in my service, but no one has bought anything since. Every day I'm outreaching to people who have outdated websites and I create a side by side comparison of their current website and a mockup website I make for them. I get around 95% open rates but very low response rates. I'm also running and testing Google ads at the minute. (Is this worthwhile?) How can I stop feeling so demoralized when I'm getting no responses and not many leads. Even writing this down I understand that im being irrational as its only been two weeks since I started, but I can't help but feel it. Does anyone have any advice for me? [link] [comments]  |
| Question for setting up online payments Posted: 07 Jul 2020 10:44 AM PDT Hi there, first time poster so I apologize if this question belongs in a different subreddit. If it does belong elsewhere, please direct me and ill re-post there. Myself (American citizen) and my business partner (Belgian citizen) will be creating an online educational course. We also have "guest authors" who will contribute to our course content. We plan to pay these guest authors a % of all revenue sales. Ideally we have a third party platform where someone purchases the course and this third party app automatically distributes the revenue percentages to all parties involved. For example: If someone purchases the course, 30% would get sent to me, 30% to my partner, and 40% to all guest authors (in 10% increments) all automatically. Please note that there will be several international payments going out. Also, no need to really discuss tax issues here as I'll leave that up to my CPA. Does this exist? If this is super simple and exists through paypal or something alike, I sincerely apologize for wasting all of your time. Please be specific when recommending a third party app/platform. Thank you in advance! [link] [comments]  |
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