Accidentally Starting A Business Entrepreneur |
- Accidentally Starting A Business
- I’ve got a shit ton of cantaloupes and I don’t know what to do...
- My 8 tips for wantrepreneurs
- Book Recommendation for entrepreneurs: Total Recall
- A list of ideas I want you to steal
- Please tell me a Clickfunnels alternative, I'm at my wits end
- USPS vs. FedEx vs. UPS during COVID (Are they all slow?)
- How to get things to work really well(marketing, product development)?
- Customer Discovery! Looking for people who own Smart Home Devices
- Has anybody done influencer marketing on Tik Tok?
- Cleaning Company Landing Page Feedback and General Advice.
- How much money did you make at your day job before deciding to start your own business?
- Why do you think startups fail? Let's discuss.
- What does your business need?
- How do I market a website which helps in finding a side hustle?
- What do you guys do when you feel overwhelmed or less confident then usual?
- Italic's Awesome Twitter Launch: Marketing, UI Design, and Copywriting Case Study - 47,000 views in 24 Hours.
- Is it okay to sell facebook group?
- I am working with someone (65 years old) that has a well established forum. How can we monetize it?
- How Early in the Business to Apply for Trademark?
- how do you dropship?
- Pretoria Entrepreneur Social Group
- About to purchase a drop shipping business for $5,000, talk me out of it
- What to do with with a good commercial space in a developing country?
| Accidentally Starting A Business Posted: 08 Aug 2020 11:31 AM PDT Thought this was kinda cool, ALWAYS KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED! My eCommerce brand has a warehouse that operates at about 50% capacity most of the time. I put out a feeler on my eCom twitter asking if any eCom owners needed fulfillment, we could tack it on to ours system and give you a good rate I was approached by someone who needs 30k packages shipped a month (about 5x what we currently do). Of course, I am not going to turn him down! We made sure we could handle the volume with some systematic changes, and gave him a quote (beating other 3PL's by around half... reason being his products are tiny, and there's not many SKU's). He accepted! I guess I own a 3PL now. Being conservative, this is already going to give us the same profit/month as my main business!! Always remember: Think about what resources you have that others do not. How can you FULLY utilize them? [link] [comments]  |
| I’ve got a shit ton of cantaloupes and I don’t know what to do... Posted: 07 Aug 2020 10:36 PM PDT Probably one of the more ridiculous posts to come about but... My dad has a garden/farm, and planted cantaloupes a few months ago. Now it's harvesting time, and we've got a about 30 cantaloupes on hand with more incoming. Currently he's just giving them away to family. Next year he plans on doing even more. We've thought about doing farmers markets and making some kind of salsas and jams but idk what to do with hundreds of pounds of fucking cantaloupe. Also about to have cucumbers, squash, and okra out the ass this fall. Any ideas? EDIT: Holy hell this blew up. Here's the ideas so far:
I'm not trying to retire off of my cantaloupe empire, just trying to help out my dad with some extra income. Thanks everyone! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2020 11:09 AM PDT I see a lot of lost people wantrepreneurs on this sub. I believe that they are just as important as the entrepreneurs who are executing on a plan and who think that they've found their path. This post it for them. Fair warning -- this post may offend those who have certain preconceived notions or those who may have already go down a certain path. I was (and until I make my first dollar in profit, still am, in my opinion) a 'wantrepreneur', but I'm also CPA, business analyst, full stack web developer, and owner of a B2B SaaS. In my years, I've learned a lot of what entrepreneurship means and what things to avoid. I'd like to share a few of these ideas for you to read about, think about, and argue. 1) Failure will happen. Plan around it. Most successful entrepreneurs fail into success. In other words, they keep failing until they don't. With this in mind, when it comes to your first business, invest hours, not dollars. You can lose dollars, but you won't lose the experience that you gain from hard lessons. Rather than paying someone to do it (product research, web development, marketing, accounting, etc.), do it yourself. These are the skills that you should be working on developing as you build your first business. If you fail to develop yourself personally during your first business, after it fails, you'll be starting at roughly the same point with business #2 and your odds of success will be no better. In other words, the #1 focus of your first business should not be millions of dollars, but personal growth. 2) Gurus only give you a fraction of the story Take the advice of gurus with a grain of salt. An entrepreneur may develop a product and use a particular strategy to find success. That same entrepreneur may wish to give back to the community by providing information on what strategy worked for them. In turn, others may use this same strategy in their own businesses, but fail. They question, then, will be "Why did this work for X entrepreneur, but not me?" What many may not realize is that it's not just the strategy or the execution of that strategy that brought the entrepreneur success – it's also the circumstances surrounding the execution. These are the bits that you don't hear or learn about from the guru. These are the attitudes of the founders, the personal connections, the timing, the luck, competition, and soft skills. 3) Avoid innovative products For god's sake, do not start your first business with an innovative product. As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, launching an 'innovative' product is entrepreneurship on hard mode. Your chance of success is essentially 0. Point number 1 indicates that success in your first business isn't the priority, but that doesn't mean that you should sabotage your efforts with a venture that is almost guaranteed to fail. There are two reasons why your 'innovate product/idea/service' won't work. a) Many innovative products don't have an existing market. This means that you have to create one. How do you create one? You have to build demand for your product. How do you build demand for your product? You have to teach consumers what is it and what problem it solves for them. This level of education is impossible given your level of resources. Not only do you have to teach people about what your product it, you also have to market it to them in a way that is memorable and cost efficient. Few start-ups have the ability to take on this mammoth task. b) If you have an idea that no one else has executed, there are two possibilities -- you're business genius who has stumbled on to a gold mine that millions of other business owners with billions of hours of business experience have somehow missed OR you're idea isn't good and no one else in the world believes that it's something worth bringing to market. 1000 to 1 odds says that it's the latter. 4) Business school won't prepare you (that much) for entrepreneurship Don't go to business school because you want to be an entrepreneur. Business school is unlikely to teach you many of the skills that you're going to need to run a successful company. Go to business school so that you can get a solid job that will pay the bills while you work on a business on the side. If you haven't been to business school and think that this is going to hold you back from being a great business owner, realize that this is not the case. Don't let your lack of formal education get in the way of your education. There are millions of videos on youtube teaching you how to do the things that entrepreneurs use to make money. I learn all my software development and design skills from youtube. 5) Marketplace ideas If you're looking to found a tech startup with a great marketplace idea, forget about it. 'Marketplace' businesses that seek to develop value by connecting people are almost impossible to bring to success. You need to focus on a business that has a stand alone product that, in of itself, has intrinsic value like a good or service. It's fun to think about marketplace ideas that would connect people and solve inefficiencies in the market, but getting both sides to your platform and in sufficient enough quantities is extremely, extremely hard. 6) Dropshipping Drop shipping is dead. Don't get me wrong – it still exists and some people make money from it, but it's not worth your time. Why not? Because, on the revenue side, you're selling the same homogeneous product as 1000 other people, which means that it's a race to the bottom on price. Also, many people assume that drop shipping is an easy path to entrepreneurship. It's not. It's the hardest. You're stuck with razor thin margins and even though someone is doing product fulfillment for you, you still need to handle marketing, your legal obligations, accounting, financing, customer service, etc. So, you've got all the hard parts of entrepreneurship while being stuck with a product that has razor thin margins that a million other people sell. It's a recipe that only self-serving 'gurus' will tell you makes sense. Abandon your dreams of quitting your job to sell a widget on a shopify store that you've setup in a few minutes. 7) Give your business the time it needs A relationship with a business is a give and take relationship. You'll give and it will take. And it will take as many hours as you have to give it. The more hours you give it, the more likely it is to eventually give you something (i.e. money) in return. What this means is that in order to improve your odds of success, you need to drop as many commitments as you can so that you can invest as many hours into your business as possible. 8) Source of motivation If you're comfortable in life, have a good job, and are relatively satisfied with your life, but think it would be neat to go into business for yourself, it's my opinion that you will fail and continue to fail until you acquire a reason that is strong enough to push you through stress that entrepreneurship is going to throw at you. Before starting out on your entrepreneurial journey, you need to find this reason. If you're "reason" has anything to do with money, forget about it. 9) Funding Do not ever, ever, ever borrow money from friends and family to start a business. It will destroy relationships. Also, don't ever borrow money from anyone to start any business. Only borrow money when you've build a product, proven demand, and need cash flow in order to support the orders that are flowing in. Any other reason = setting money on fire that you'll need to pay back. If you have any other general dos/don't for people who are thinking about getting into business for themselves, I'd love to hear them. [link] [comments]  |
| Book Recommendation for entrepreneurs: Total Recall Posted: 08 Aug 2020 09:49 AM PDT Arnold is an incredible entrepreneur and this book was highly motivating to me. It has nothing to do with his movie of the same title, instead this is his autobiography. I listened to the audiobook version. [link] [comments]  |
| A list of ideas I want you to steal Posted: 08 Aug 2020 01:15 PM PDT I used to have bad ADD when it came to coming up with business ideas and following through with them. I'm learning to get better and finishing every project I start, no matter if it's a success or a failure. Even now, I have a full time job at a tech startup, a side hustle with an agency helping ecommerce brands grow on IG and Snap, and trying to develop a brand for either an app or marketplace. Even before this, I was a freelancer, then started a marketing agency in college while coming up and starting new ideas every few months. But I know that if I don't focus on ONE thing, I'll never be truly successful at anything. So here's a list of all the business ideas I've had that I never went through with. If you find anything that sparks something in your brain, please feel free to take it and make money from it.
You can probably tell that most of these ideas are branched off from bigger platforms but for smaller and more specific communities. So if there's any big platforms that you know of, you can take the same concept and apply it to a group of people that you see have a need for something. Just a heads up if you decide to use an idea because you think it's a quick money. Every business idea is going to require day to day effort to actually build up. So if you're not somewhat passionate about something, don't bother going into it because it'll burn you out just like a normal job working for someone else. We want to be our own boss, but we want to enjoy the work we do everyday. Doesn't matter if you work for yourself or for someone else if you hate doing the work. [link] [comments]  |
| Please tell me a Clickfunnels alternative, I'm at my wits end Posted: 08 Aug 2020 12:54 AM PDT I've been using Clickfunnels for about a month and a half now. I've spent HOURS, and hundreds of pounds on sending traffic to funnels, hiring people to create pages there, moving everything over and getting things setup. I've had more technical problems and bugs with clickfunnels than I thought possible, And it's very clear this product (clickfunnels) is just NOT ready for public use. It's by FAR the worst software I've used, and here are the main reasons: Test mode on any funnel simply doesn't work. Like at all. It just doesn't reliably go into test mode, and support tell me all sorts of things like changing URL paths every time, having to change the funnel steps order, and all sorts of weird technical things to just get test mode to work. None of them work, and test mode is unreliable LIVE mode randomly doesn't work. Like I'll test it (finally), it will work fine and then when I send live traffic to it, days later I look back and see no sales. I go BACK into test mode and find that the funnel has randomly broken. Again. Support are some of the worst customer support ever, and take days to reply to urgent issues even when I'm paying the full $300 a month for 'premium support' (!). They also rarely if ever fix the issues Things like test mode not working, funnels breaking they just say 'we'll let our dev team know'. Weeks later, still not working. Nobody can run a business like this. I've even TWEETED many times to Russell Brunson, and he just doesn't reply. He replied once I think asking for a ticket number or saying he'll let his support team know. Days later, nothing. In short, Clickfunnels is just absolutely unuseable, and a waste of time and money. Please can anyone suggest a better alternative that can: Split test ALL pages on funnels (including sales pages, which clickfunnels CAN'T do despite advertising they can) Create sales funnels Allow custom order forms that integrate with stripe and other gateways Can actually track conversions and where they came from Actually have a good customer support team Actually WORK! As in, reliably and not just randomly break every few days I don't care about cost, I just want something that works. [link] [comments]  |
| USPS vs. FedEx vs. UPS during COVID (Are they all slow?) Posted: 07 Aug 2020 04:01 PM PDT Due to COVID, our relationship with USPS is wearing thin. Packages are being delivered extremely late right now which is hurting our business. In your experience, do you see any point in switching to UPS or FedEx right now to solve this problem? What's been your experience? [link] [comments]  |
| How to get things to work really well(marketing, product development)? Posted: 08 Aug 2020 01:35 PM PDT after first getting success with basic marketing, and a basic product, how does a person assemble a really good marketing team, and a good marketing strategy? do you simply hire good freelancers that can do the job and help formulate the strategies? do you additionally hire someone to help set up and manage the marketing strategy? what does it take to get a really solid marketing system together? [link] [comments]  |
| Customer Discovery! Looking for people who own Smart Home Devices Posted: 08 Aug 2020 12:50 PM PDT Hey all, I am currently doing a program that teaches Customer Discovery. I am hoping to start my process here by talking to people online about Smart Devices (Amazon Alexa's/Echo's, Google Smart Homes, Samsung Smart Toasters, etc). If you own a device like these, and would be willing to help me out with a 5-10 minute casual interview, that'd be fantastic! I am hoping to hold these interviews over voice (Skype/Zoom/Phone), but I am also willing to do text-based chat if you're not comfortable with the other options. Thanks for taking the time to read this! [link] [comments]  |
| Has anybody done influencer marketing on Tik Tok? Posted: 08 Aug 2020 12:37 PM PDT I'm curious if there's an opportunity for a climbing chalk to benefit from the platform. [link] [comments]  |
| Cleaning Company Landing Page Feedback and General Advice. Posted: 08 Aug 2020 12:17 PM PDT Has anyone worked with cleaning companies before? Current conversions rates are 20%~ at a cost per lead of around $30. I want to try get this to a 30% conversion rate with a CPL or around $20. If anyone has worked with a cleaning company before or has any criticism or advice for the Landing Page that would be great. All traffic is generated with Google Ads. LP: https://dashmaids.com/cleaning-quote-feedback/ Normally a form submission redirects you to an instant quote on a different platform - But this LP is just a duplicate for feedback purposes. The other issue we're having is leads actually converting, so any tips on that would be great. [link] [comments]  |
| How much money did you make at your day job before deciding to start your own business? Posted: 08 Aug 2020 11:34 AM PDT I'm just curious as to how financially stable you were before taking a leap of faith. [link] [comments]  |
| Why do you think startups fail? Let's discuss. Posted: 08 Aug 2020 11:30 AM PDT Startups fail. Not all of them, but a high percentage of them disappear 20 years after their founding. The reasons can be varied: the company hasn't found the right market for its products, the founders can't decide how to divide the pie, etc. I recently wrote an article on what I think is the main reason startups fail (and what to do about it). Mainly, failure comes from the Build Trap. Founders get so caught up in building, they forget about the customer. As long as you don't speak to customers regularly and in the right way, you could well deliver an expensive product after a year of building agile, but have no customers to speak of. Those are my thoughts, but I'd love to hear what you think about this. Why, in your opinion, do startups fail? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2020 11:13 AM PDT Hello, I am wondering, what niche is your business on, and what would you like in the future as a Tool to help improve company productivity? PS: I am more looking to find good SaaS ideas :D. Thanks in advance :P [link] [comments]  |
| How do I market a website which helps in finding a side hustle? Posted: 08 Aug 2020 10:55 AM PDT Its a very simple website which leads you to make income on the side. Its not a blog btw. How do I get the traffic?? [link] [comments]  |
| What do you guys do when you feel overwhelmed or less confident then usual? Posted: 08 Aug 2020 10:25 AM PDT I'm running a start up and I'm starting to feel less confident then usual. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2020 01:17 AM PDT A couple of weeks ago I saw a company launch on Twitter with the founder posting a thread. I thought the launch was perfect, and the thread needed to be broken down because I'll be damned if I don't launch like this one day. This was the thread, and this is what I loved about it. 1 | Concise and cool story.
2 | Clear product description.
3 | Clear value proposition.
4 | Differentiation and perspective.
This was fantastic, I understood what the product was, I understood where the value was coming from, and it didn't seem like "brand-speak." The coolest and probably most effective thing in this launch was that all of this carried over to their website. Their website was designed exactly like the thread or vice versa. The 2 things that impressed me the most: 1 | The one-sentence explanations
Nothing special, just a very clear explanation of what you're getting. Surprisingly effective when most sites, regardless of whether they're a SaaS landing page or product sites, will use weird jargon and broad crap where you're wondering what the hell they actually do. 2 | Their infographics, comparison boxes, manufacturer profiles I talk about it heavily with snippets, pictures, and examples in the 4th section of the full article. But basically, they show they know their audience well. Just this infographic on the twitter breaks down the subscription costs using Starbucks coffee, New York subway rides, and Uber rides for comparison. Then on their actual website, they have manufacturer profiles.
All of this comes together in managing the customer's fears and objections.
They do this perfectly throughout the entire site, and throughout the whole twitter launch. The takeaways I got from going down the rabbit hole and exploring this launch was very much worth it for me. It's good to know that you don't need to go hyper viral or become the talking point of an entire country or state to be successful. I thought I'd share the learns with you guys too :) Cheers for the read and I hope it was helpful! Thanks, Sah PS. If you want more things from me, you can follow me on Reddit, or find some more of my stuff on Medium, which is where the full article link will take you. Cheers again! [link] [comments]  |
| Is it okay to sell facebook group? Posted: 08 Aug 2020 09:51 AM PDT As the title says is it oka to sell facebook gaming group with 45k members? Just want to know the price, [link] [comments]  |
| I am working with someone (65 years old) that has a well established forum. How can we monetize it? Posted: 07 Aug 2020 09:50 PM PDT I'm working with a guy that has been running a forum for 24 years that gets about 7000 views daily. The niche is high school/college wrestling (Wisconsin), and he does a phenomenal job at running it, but is older and has had trouble monetizing it. He pretty much just does google adsense which is enough to run the site, but I feel like there has to be better ways to get the most bang for his buck considering how many people use his website. Any ideas on where to start or different directions we can head that are better than adsense? [link] [comments]  |
| How Early in the Business to Apply for Trademark? Posted: 08 Aug 2020 09:40 AM PDT Hello everyone, I started an instagram/social media handle after offering my services (food&beverage) here and there and it seems to have moderate success (people are not really getting/catering/beverage entertainment at the moment). But I do have a few clients (recurring, but with big gaps in service needs) 1.How soon should I trademark the name which I want to use for the business name and instagram handle (website, other social media, etc)
Thank you for your help! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2020 08:47 AM PDT How does anybody dropship on ebay or amazon i'm wondering because everytime I've tried selling anything on ebay including my 3ds it never sells so i can't understand how somebody could use ebay for business purposes Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Pretoria Entrepreneur Social Group Posted: 08 Aug 2020 08:44 AM PDT Hi! I'm looking for fellow entrepreneurs located in or near Pretoria, South Africa to hang out with (video calls only for now). Basically to:
Please do not respond if your goal is to sell anything. I'm trying to create a space where like-minded people can hang out, get/give support and have fun. DM me if you are interested & send short bio. My short bio: [link] [comments]  |
| About to purchase a drop shipping business for $5,000, talk me out of it Posted: 08 Aug 2020 08:33 AM PDT The purchase comes with an organically grown Instagram with 80k users and a shopify account already set up that is purchasing from AliExpress. Everything about this seller checks out, all the posts are personally posted with engagement between him and his users. The account is 3 years old, and is targeted towards a very niche market. He's only made $1,000 in sales after posting his shopify account in his bio, only selling 5 different random items that we could obviously add to. Talk me out of it! [link] [comments]  |
| What to do with with a good commercial space in a developing country? Posted: 08 Aug 2020 08:17 AM PDT Any ideas of what business I could start? I inherited this little building from family but the place had been rented out for decades. The tenants are leaving this year and I think there's good opportunity here to start something new. The area is packed full of restaurants (fast food and cheap local food) and sees heavy foot traffic even in times of covid19. Is opening a restaurant the best choice? Any other ideas on how to take advantage of the location? [link] [comments]  |
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