Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (September 09, 2020) Entrepreneur

I work for my family business that has been open since 2002. The company designs and builds trade show booths and other branded environments for companies that want to show at large trade shows such as CES (Consumer Electronic Show) and SEMA ( Specialty Equipment Manufacturing Association), our company website is www.teamoneexhibits.com.

Unfortunately due to COVID our business came to a halt in March and our revenue pretty much went to $0 overnight. We were optimistic, as an effort to keep the company afloat my parents, the owners, sold their house and a lot of other personal property to try and pivot into a new venture. We started building prefabricated backyard studio kits and backyard office kits (www.mod-shed.com). We thought it would be an excellent idea especially in an era where everyone seems to be working from home, but big surprise; no one is spending money at the moment due to the pandemic. We sold a few of them but not nearly enough to keep the company going and cover overhead experiences. Additionally, the PPP money was barley substantial enough for us to keep going for another month. My parents stopped paying themselves months ago to save some of their cash reserves for materials, labor and product marketing, which has essentially got them nowhere.

Now, we are at the end of our rope. If a miracle doesn't happen they will be filing for bankruptcy for the business as well as my father has to file personally by the 1st of next month. They will lose their car and most likely the house they are living in now. My elderly grandmother lives with them and will essentially have nowhere to go. It's been so hard- my parents tried everything they could and it is killing me to see them in this state of mind. Because they stopped paying themselves months ago their unemployment has run out and my mom has resorted to working for FEDEX at $10/hr handling packages. I'm trying to not to see the worst in everything, but what will they do for healthcare? They are in their 50s and will have a very hard time finding a job in all of this, especially since their experience is only in trade shows, which are non-existent at the moment.

I'm not sure, maybe I'm typing this because I'm hopeful the right person might see it, or maybe I'm just typing this because it feels good to tell just someone how i've been feeling the past month. I hate it. I hate every bit of it. They don't deserve this after being in business for 19 years and they surely don't deserve to be left destitute after the fact. If anyone has any advice I'm all ears- even if it is just some helpful information coping with this sort of thing. I can't take it- I hear them crying every day from their offices and it is killing me. I would literally do fucking anything if i could. Thanks for allowing me to vent.

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7 years ago I started my own design/CRO agency and went on to sell 6-figure projects that transformed our clients’ businesses. All of it while building a SaaS on the side that got #1 on Product Hunt last week. Not a walk in the park. AMA!

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 06:22 AM PDT

Hi r/Entrepreneur,

My name is Quinn Zeda and I used to do an AMA on this subreddit every year. Then, things got crazy for a while and I stopped.

I'm back here today to answer all your questions. As long as you leave a question or send a DM today, I will answer it.

Here's what I can help you with:

Tearing down your website to improve UX and increase conversions, for free
Running an agency and dealing with its ups and downs
Building a creative team and communicating with designers/developers
Anything user experience design and conversion rate optimization
How to craft a brand that goes viral and that clearly communicates your vision
How to sell 6-figure websites and make clients throw 2-6x their stated budgets at you
Digital nomading and traveling with your dog (shout out to my Zulu)
Building a SaaS on the side and dealing with investors
Processes & systems (mostly creative ones, I'm shit at operations)

My story:

I started my business straight out of college 17 years ago. I was freelancing doing graphic design, production work, illustration, video editing, you name it - I did it. Eventually, I found my place with building brands and websites that get real business results.

For the last 7 years I have been running some version of what is Zeda Labs today. An agency focused on helping 7-figure online businesses scale by making websites that make people say, "Shut up and take my money!"

We dive into businesses to research, audit, and rip them to shreds so we can find gaps and opportunities. Then we create a strategy based on what we learn and where the business needs to go, and we execute on that vision.

We do literally everything:

research
branding
illustrations
design
development
business strategy
operations

We go deep into businesses that think they reached their full potential but want more, and we transform them. Like we did for 16 Personalities (helping them get from 5 to 300 million tests taken), Live Lingua, and Video Husky.

The way we managed our work at the agency was to sell one big 8-month project at a time, with smaller audits here and there. Our bandwidth was completely saturated and I couldn't spend time on personal projects.

That is how I paid for my team. I used the rest of the time they had, to work on my little pet project, Conversion Crimes.

Usability testing was one of our secret weapons at Zeda Labs, but as an agency and with SME clients, existing solutions didn't fit our needs. The idea for Conversion Crimes was born to kill the useless busywork with usability testing and be so easy anybody could do it.

Zeda Labs ran at a small profit or a minor loss each year. So don't ask me about profitability. It was shit.

It was really stupid to have all my eggs in one basket, but my goal was not to be super profitable, it was to use the agency to build Conversion Crimes. A product that is mine. As long as we performed, our contracts were safe.

Since clients were paying the bills, their work always got priority and Conversion Crimes was pushed to the side. It was picked up and put down more times than I care to count.

This constant and inefficient juggling between projects was frustrating.

It left me wondering what we could have done with more time, if only we could have focused on Conversion Crimes.

There were so many false starts and stumbles (i.e. our developer disappearing 2 weeks before our beta launch in 2018 - not fun) But no matter what, I always pushed forward. Brick by Brick.

When quarantine happened, my life did not change much besides the fear and emotional panic at the beginning and not being able to go places. I'll have travelled around the world, working online, and living out of my suitcase for 10 years this December. I'm used to working in my apartment alone - it was not a big shift.

However, I felt a sort of energy around all of it that made me rethink my priorities. Kind of like there are no rules anymore. And no better time than now.

Deep down going all-in on Conversion Crimes was my strongest desire and I knew it was the desire of my team too - they were also frustrated.

So no matter what it took, I decided to jump and I began winding down the agency without really having a plan, just a vision.

And a blind faith that I could make it all work out.

During this time I was also introduced to a person who challenged me to really think bigger and taught me that there are opportunities available to me, if I simply look.

Huh.

I realized that what got me here wouldn't get me there.

So the team and I crunched our 3 month timeline into 2.5 weeks to get to Minimal Marketable Product (MMP). I can't even believe we did it. It was a fuck-ton of work, 18-hour days, and non-stop of being, 'on.'

We wrote, designed, and built a new website plus launched a huge feature update to get us prepared for a launch on Product Hunt - on top of fundraising which is a full-time job in itself.

With a remote team in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. I barely slept. I had to be there when they woke up to give instructions, slept while some worked, and ended their day with them in my morning. I worked from 7AM to 3AM with maybe an hour break most days.

Totally not healthy. Or sustainable.

But we did it because when opportunities come your way, you seize them. We needed to launch in order to have a chance - so we did what it took no matter the cost.

We launched on Product Hunt last week to get #1 for the day. I was pretty stoked on that.

Once I got a taste of working on Conversion Crimes full-time, there was no going back. I decided to just fuck it and shut down the agency by publicly announcing it to my lead flow.

That was really dumb.

My advisor tried to convince me not to do it for weeks because it's a safety net and a strategic asset for fundraising. 😬

I had to. It's who I am. And that may be the very action that makes dreams come true. I'll find out soon enough.

It was time to put my energy into my thing. And when I really thought about it, the worst case scenario really wasn't that bad. I had tested the product at every stage, I knew I could make money with it and we already had customers.

When you let the universe know what you don't want I believe it conspires to give you what you do want.

In my experience, it's always arrived, not always in the way I expected, but better.

So it feels good to be finally working on something I really believe in and have complete control over for myself and the team rather than it being owned by a client.

And I think that's something to celebrate. Yeah?

From agency to product.

Ask me Anything. I'm here to help and give massive value!

As always, I'll prioritize public questions, but I'll also answer DMs if you prefer privacy.

If your question is posted by the end of today, I'll answer it. We also need sleep, so just give me time to answer. As you can see by my previous AMA's I always answer.

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The Billion Dollar Blog

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 08:55 AM PDT

Hey everyone, in the past you've all enjoyed some of my blog posts as reddit threads (15 lessons from our first $15 million and The ladders of wealth creation) so I thought I'd share my latest essay, the billion dollar blog.

This is the result of all my research in trying to build a massive company myself and I figured it's better to share it than just keep it in my private notes. I'd love to hear what you think in the comments!

The Billion Dollar Blog

In the summer of 2010 Emily Weiss, a fashion assistant at Vogue, had the idea to start her own fashion blog. She bought a used camera, the domain intothegloss.com, and a couple months later the site was live. Into the Gloss showcased the real-world beauty routines of fashion influencers and celebrities. The blog was an immediate hit and by 2012 it received more than 200,000 visitors per month.

Eight years later, what do you think the site is worth? Millions? Tens of millions? While that would be an insane success for a blog, it's not even close to the correct answer of $1.2 billion.

From Into the Gloss Emily created Glossier, the groundbreaking beauty brand now valued at over $1 billion. That's the power of an audience.

At first Emily's story seems like an incredible outlier: a billion dollar company born from a blog? How many times has that really happened? More often than you might think.

After digging deeper into the research I found example after example of creators building a traditional audience and then using it as a launching pad for a massive business.

MY JOURNEY

In 2011 I started my blog, nathanbarry.com, to write about software design and development. While I didn't have instant traction, I was earning a living from my blog in just over a year. A year later that turned into a great living from selling ebooks and courses on design. I quickly exceeded my wildest dreams, earning over $250,000 a year blogging and teaching design.

But like Emily, I wanted to turn it into something bigger. From the blog I built ConvertKit, an email marketing software company for creators, that now earns $24 million in annual revenue and is valued at over $100 million and counting. It required a ton of time, persistence, and a completely new mindset on business, but I was able to also turn an audience into a business with massive upside.

In my own quest to build a billion dollar company I've studied dozens of creators who have made this transition. This post is for my readers who are thinking about following a similar path.

Let's dive in.

THE 5 RULES OF A BILLION DOLLAR AUDIENCE

RULE #1: BUILD MORE THAN A PERSONAL BRAND

When Mark Sisson started his blog, Mark's Daily Apple, in 2006 he didn't think he was taking the first steps towards a $200 million business. At a time when blogs were mostly considered hobbies, Mark was about to build an empire.

As his blog grew, Mark earned a great living through all the traditional methods: paid products, sponsorships, and advertising. He continued to scale with a bestselling book and more products.

Then in 2015 Mark launched Primal Kitchen, a company selling paleo-friendly mayonnaise, dressing, and other sauces. They started just online, but then were able to get distribution in Whole Foods and other retail stores. Just two years later food-giant Kraft acquired Primal Kitchen for $200 million.

Jessica Alba has more name recognition than any blogger ever will. Despite that fame, her wealth doesn't come from her name or movies, but instead from The Honest Company, a multi-billion dollar consumer goods company she founded.

In every example I looked at I found that personal brands are great for getting started, but this next level nearly always involves moving beyond a personal brand. Creators like Michael Hyatt and Marie Forleo will always be held back by their desire to build a brand around their own name.

That doesn't mean creators aren't a figure-head or their name isn't a part of it—Air Jordan or Kylie Cosmetics come to mind—but the company or product brand is #1.

The Disneyland of quilting

After nearly going bankrupt during the 2008 recession, Jenny Doan and her family moved from California to the small town of Hamilton, Missouri. Her kids set her up with a sewing machine and helped her start a quilting business. After the first year when sales were slow, they helped her turn to YouTube to create tutorials.

In the years since then Jenny turned that tiny YouTube channel into The Missouri Star Quilt Company—which turned Hamilton, Missouri into "The Disneyland of quilting" and now employs over 400 people. Seriously, they own half the town. Forbes estimated their 2019 revenue at over $40 million.

Today Jenny is still putting out a video each week and her channel has grown to 680,000 subscribers. It would have been natural for her to build her online profile under her own name, but by naming it The Missouri Star Quilt Company she pushed her entire business far bigger.

RULE #2: SELL PRODUCTS, NOT ATTENTION

Kylie Jenner was one of the least famous Kardashians, but now she's the wealthiest. Rather than chasing more fame or influencer status she channeled what she had into Kylie Cosmetics. She was so successful that the entire entrepreneur community wasted time arguing whether or not she was actually a billionaire.

Creators are better than anyone at capturing attention. Attention has value. Brands understand this and pay the creators to redirect that attention towards their own products through advertising and sponsorships.

In a perfect market that attention is worth more than the brand is paying for it. If the brand pays a creator $10,000 for a promotion, they do it because they believe the attention will drive more than $10,000 in product sales and long-term brand value. If that additional value is worth $5,000, that is the value gap that the creator missed out on.

That doesn't mean the creator should charge $15,000—a brand won't do something if they don't get value—but instead the creator should sell their own product to capture the full value.

Ryan Reynolds understands this better than anyone. He could make a ton from endorsement deals, but he realized that's giving up too much upside. Instead he became an owner in Aviation Gin (which he just sold for $610 million) and wireless carrier Mint Mobile. Each hilarious ad he records drives more sales and builds the brand.

A common misconception

Often creators with an audience will start selling products, but rather than a full product line, it's branded merchandise. Like Casey Neistat selling branded hoodies and shirts. While these likely sell well to his millions of subscribers, that's not the same as building a clothing brand.

On the other hand, Candice Poole (Casey's wife) is truly building a clothing brand with Billy!. It's important to understand the difference: selling branded products can be a step towards another revenue stream, but it's not the same as building a brand that can stand on its own outside of the original audience.

You should do sponsorships when it raises your profile

If you are lending your name to another brand it's likely selling your own product would have more long-term upside. But there are some times that a brand deal raises your own brand. For example, if an up and coming photographer does a deal to be featured in an Apple marketing campaign their own profile and brand will increase significantly.

Capture all the value

None of these companies used affiliate revenue, partnerships, or sponsored posts to drive their revenue. Instead they realized that they already had the most valuable asset that traditional companies were clamoring for: attention. They redirected their loyal following from buying other people's products (for a small fee) to buying their own products to capture all the revenue and all the brand value.

RULE #3: DRIVE HIGHER CUSTOMER VALUE THROUGH RECURRING OR REPEAT PURCHASES

Justin Jackson made the switch from selling books and courses (which are sold once per customer) to selling Transistor, a subscription software product for hosting podcasts. Like all software as a service, customers pay every month for access to the product.

Katie and Seth Spears built the massively popular blog, WellnessMama.com earning a living from affiliates, digital products, and sponsorships. Then they leveraged that audience to launch Wellnesse, a personal care product company that I believe will scale to millions in revenue (I'm an investor). Wellnesse makes money from repeat purchases as fans buy more toothpaste, shampoo, and lotions.

How often can your best customers buy from you? If it's only once or twice, you'll struggle to scale that company. But if you sell a product they can buy over and over again, you'll have a much higher customer lifetime value. George Clooney did this with Casamigos Tequila: if you love it you buy more when you run out. He sold the company in 2017 for over $700 million.

ConvertKit follows a similar model where not only do our best customers pay us every month, but as they grow their email list they spend more and more with us (and are thrilled to do it!).

RULE #4: CHOOSE A BETTER BUSINESS MODEL

Vani Hari built a massive audience for her site The Food Babe, where she led a crusade for healthy food with clean ingredients. She monetized through cookbooks, meal plans, and affiliates. She then focused that audience into Truvani, her own health supplements company with Derek Halpern which is now well into 8-figures of annual revenue.

As independent creators we've seen the incredible value of ebooks, digital products, and courses, but the traditional business community doesn't value them. It's not because traditional investors are foolish or snobby, but because that's not how companies are valued.

Companies aren't valued based on current revenues, but instead on projected future cash flow.

A company may lose money now, but if investors believe it has the ability for high margins on significant revenue in the future, they'll pay a premium to own a share of it now. So what product lines have the potential for the best revenues at a solid margin?

Buying higher quality revenue

Andrew Wilkinson used the profits from MetaLab, his design agency, to buy an empire of companies through his investment firm Tiny Capital. Services revenue isn't highly valued by the broader market (because long-term cash flow is capped), so Andrew used the profits to buy and invest in businesses that are highly valued (software, communities, etc). Effectively trading up for higher quality revenue.

OptinMonster made this move when they rebuilt their popular WordPress plugin into a SaaS platform. Not only could they build a better product that's easier to maintain, but now they exist in a category (SaaS) that is trusted to deliver great long-term returns.

Better sound

When you think of how to earn more as a hip hop artist the ideas are probably scaling the audience and more endorsement deals with brands. But would you expect a rapper to create one of the most iconic hardware companies of the decade?

In 2006 Dr. Dre said to Jimmy Iovine, "Man, it's one thing that people steal my music. It's another thing to destroy the feeling of what I've worked on." Referring to the low quality sound delivered by Apple's basic earbuds that came with every iPod.

Two years later they debuted Beats by Dre, their own premium headphones. Through product placement and endorsement deals the headphones became iconic. In 2013 Apple purchased the company for $3 billion.

Vani, Andrew, and Dr. Dre all saw that while they could earn a great living in their current paths, they could trade money or attention for a better business model with an even higher upside.

BUILD A BUSINESS TO BE ACQUIRED

These 5 rules could all be summed up in one phrase: build a business that is desirable to acquire—even if you don't want to sell. A powerful brand, recurring revenue, a great product line, and a quality business model will drive significant value long-term whether you sell or run the business yourself.

NOT EVERYONE MAKES IT, LET'S STUDY WHY

I just shared a ton of examples of creators who made the decision to graduate to bigger upside and pulled it off. This is insanely hard, so we can learn just as much from those who I think should have made the move or tried and failed.

THE WRONG BUSINESS MODEL

In 2015 Automattic, the makers of WordPress.com, acquired WooCommerce for "more than $30 million." That's a massive success and the founders never have to work again…but it's nothing compared to what they could have built. Before Adii Pienar left WooCommerce he tried to push the other founders to build a hosted version to compete with Shopify directly. His co-founders didn't want to. They bought him out and then later sold to Automattic.

It turns out selling themes and plugins can be a great business—earning the WooThemes/WooCommerce crew millions of dollars per year—but it can't be a giant company. The real money is in building platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WordPress.com. WP Engine did this and now earns over $100 million per year as a hosting company.

The higher leverage move for the WooCommerce team would have been to build two things:

A user-friendly, hosted competitor to Shopify
A hosting platform for the broader WordPress ecosystem

The WooThemes team turned a huge early hit into a solid exit, but it could have been two separate billion dollar companies.

ONLY SOLVING HALF THE PROBLEM

In 2015 I sat down with Pat Flynn in a San Diego coffeeshop to discuss working together on ConvertKit. Since then he's become an invaluable advisor who helped rocket ConvertKit into what it was today. But there was another part of that conversation: I tried to convince him to turn Smart Podcast Player, a WordPress plugin that provided a beautiful podcast listening experience, into a full-fledged podcast hosting platform.

At the time Libsyn was the number one player and they had an absolutely terrible user experience. Everyone hated using them, but there wasn't anything better out there. Pat solved 50% of the problem (the user facing side) by making the listening experience great. I was encouraging him to build it into a SaaS app and solve hosting as well. He had a ton of other great projects going at the time, so he decided not to.

While Smart Podcast Player was a great business, it doesn't have the same trajectory as Anchor or Transistor.

In talking to Pat before publishing this article he pointed out that the biggest issue was timing. Back then he didn't have the right team to build a full software platform. But now he does and he's built Smart Podcast Player into a full podcast site platform called fusebox.fm.

SELLING THE WRONG PRODUCT

While I don't know official numbers, I believe at one time Ramit Sethi was over $10 million in annual revenue with more than 50 employees. All focused on selling high-end courses.

Being in the personal finance industry there are plenty of startups or products Ramit could have created. But I think he wisely realized that creating the next Mint or Wealthfront is an insane amount of work and would require learning new skill sets. But if he wants it, the opportunity is there for him.

Marie Forleo could do the same. In fact, her audience—along with Tim Ferriss and others—was key in helping to launch Shopify's Build a Business challenge in 2010, which they used to grow. Marie is doing amazing with her business, but if she wanted to take it to the next level she would need to pivot from selling information (her B-School course) to a traditional product for the mainstream market.

INVENTING A NEW CATEGORY

Casey Neistat leveraged his YouTube audience to provide initial traction for Beme, a new social network and video sharing app. Casey and the team worked hard, but ultimately couldn't get traction and the company was acquired by CNN in 2016 for $25 million. The product was shut down and the team was assimilated into CNN.

While he still got his payday, Beme didn't turn into the hundred million (or billion) dollar success that it could have been. Here's the problem: Beme was trying to create an entirely new category. It had no competition, which also means there wasn't built up demand. It's a trap to think that no competition means an easy path to profits. Usually it means you'll struggle to get initial adoption.

That said, Casey took his swing and I have a ton of respect for him in that! Interestingly, through starting Beme he actually kicked off his daily vlog which made him far more famous. As his audience grows I think Casey will continue to take big swings beyond Beme and 368 (his next venture). His massive audience will be a growing launch pad for each new idea.

TOO MANY GREAT OPPORTUNITIES

In January, 2019 Caleb Wojcik and Pat Flynn launched a Kickstarter for SwitchPod, their new tripod designed specifically for vloggers. Nearly every vlogger used the Jobi GorillaPod bent into a makeshift monopod to extend your arm and get the camera further away. The GorillaPod worked, but was clumsy and difficult to use.

The SwitchPod had great marketing and quickly raised $415,000 from over 4,000 backers. YouTubers with early access loved it. Creators like Levi Allen and Peter McKinnon recorded rave reviews. Even after launch it has continued to sell well. Caleb and Pat were able to use their audiences and relationships to launch this to initial success, but then… well, they mostly went back to their other (very successful) businesses.

I wanted Pat and Caleb to go all in—to turn SwitchPod into a camera gear company run by creators who really get the audience. I believe in this market they could beat out Gorillapod and build a company worth at least $10 million. They have other ventures that are doing really well (and there's nothing easy about this), so I don't fault them for choosing a different path.

THE WRONG PLATFORM

Copyblogger built a large audience through teaching content marketing. Rather than just selling courses or other content Brian Clarke partnered with Brian Gardner and others to merge together the content machine with Studiopress WordPress themes and Synthesis web hosting. It was a brilliant move to sell a higher value product to the same audience.

Later they bundled further to launch Rainmaker, an all-in-one marketing platform for bloggers. I believe this was a good move, and it was certainly an attempt to graduate to even more upside. Ultimately it failed and the company was divided up again and sold off in pieces.

It's hard to say exactly why Rainmaker failed, but I think it was a combination of building as a bundle of WordPress plugins rather than a custom platform, the team coming from the marketing world and not building a true engineering culture, and the founders gradually losing interest.

The Copyblogger team had the right idea to use their audience to sell products with more long-term value than content, but were unable to truly execute.

DREAMING BIG

We've learned from both the wild successes and the missed opportunities. So let's cement our learnings with a little fun: pick your favorite creator with a massive audience. How could they make this transition? I'll start by speculating with a few:

James Clear — James built the fastest growing single-author blog of all time writing about habits with a blend of research and storytelling. His book, Atomic Habits, has gone on to sell millions of copies and he's running a great business. Nearly 2 years after launch Atomic Habits hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. James also delivers a couple keynote speeches per month for significant fees.But what if James had to build a company worth $100 million in the next 5 years? What should he build? What first comes to mind is building an app like Calm for habits. Or if James were to acquire a company I would look for what types of businesses he could double revenue immediately because of his massive audience. What would you suggest?
Taylor Swift — Taylor is one of the most popular artists of my generation and she's earned an insane amount of money with every album. She owns two private jets and has a net worth of over $350 million. But she isn't going to become a billionaire through albums and touring. It's going to take smart investing (she's got plenty of time for compound gains), brilliant endorsement deals (think Yeezys or Air Jordans), or creating a product company to bring in that extra 2/3rds of a billion.
Joel Runyon — I've been friends with Joel since first meeting him at The World Domination Summit in 2012. He's built plenty of businesses weaving in his brand Impossible as the parent company for some of them. It's been fun to see Joel start to make this transition to building Impossible into a fitness, lifestyle, and achievement brand. I imagine Impossible as the next Red Bull or Onnit.
Ben Thompson — Through Stratechery, a subscription newsletter covering all things tech, it's estimated Ben earns more than $3 million per year. That's absolutely incredible, but if he had to build a $100 million business, how should he do it? Software is what immediately comes to mind, but what specifically?

YOUR NEXT STEP

For those who are just getting started, the most important thing to understand is that an audience is key. If you're looking for step one on this massive journey it's to get good at building an audience.

If you have an audience, focus on scaling it. What will get you in front of the most people? If you want to go big it probably isn't the time to focus on monetization, but instead creating incredible content that will really spread.

For those that already have that massive audience, it's time to look at selling your own products and driving that attention to build a brand.

If you're already selling your own products and building a real brand, keep at it. This will take a long time. I've been working on ConvertKit for 7 years. I think that it will take me at least 5 more to build ConvertKit into a company worth $1 billion.

Compound interest is the most powerful force on earth. Build a product and brand that can experience compound growth. Then work on it for a really long time.

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150+ SaaS Tools to Accelerate and Streamline Your Business Growth

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 02:46 AM PDT

Hey everyone,

After going through a ton of resources and surveying many SaaS founders, we put together 📌 a list of 150+ SaaS tools to accelerate and streamline your business growth: https://www.natalieluneva.com/saas-tools/

This list includes tools to improve productivity, conversion, invoicing, tracking competitors, employee management, etc.

For those founders who are just starting out, you can also save big with this list, because many of the SaaS tools listed here are completely free to use 👌

Want to add your own product to this list? Drop the link and short description in the comments.

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Free Tool to Build a Fundraising Profile & Invite Investors from a Database of 20,000+

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 11:15 AM PDT

A small team of friends and I have spent the last six months building out a tool from scratch with a singular mission: make fundraising more efficient and effective for founders.

Here's a little more info on WHY we built WHAT we built:

WHY WE'RE DOING THIS: It seems crazy to us that the high-tech world of startups and VCs never graduated from attaching a PDF pitch deck to an email so we set out to build something better. OnePager is specifically built for founders. It's easy to share across Twitter, LinkedIn, email, or text. It has enough security to control who sees your private information. Most importantly, it gives founders actionable data to track how their current fundraising efforts are going by detailing click-by-click sessions.

WHAT IT DOES: OnePager makes fundraising more efficient and effective by allowing founders to share all of the information relevant to their fundraising efforts through a branded URL (think your LinkedIn link), with privacy settings (think Google Doc share features), and a click-by-click analytics dashboard (think DocSend engagement tracking if it was built specifically for a fundraising founder).

We were originally planning to do a big launch on here, Product Hunt, Beta List, etc. a few weeks ago, but OnePager was still not addressing a major issue: finding who to share your OnePager with. So, we decided to delay our launch, scrape the internet and add an investor directory 20,000+ strong so that founders can invite people directly to their OnePager.

Today is our first day pushing it out to the public so thought you all would be interested! Would absolutely love any feedback on our Product Hunt page .

submitted by /u/lucky_se7ens
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Increasing companies linked in following

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 02:48 PM PDT

Hi everyone. First time posting here..(apologies if it's the wrong Place )I am an intern and have been tasked with managing my companies linked in page for the past couple of months. So basically posting articles daily and stuff like that. Of course the goal is to gain a certain number of followers by the end of the year if possible . So it's going ok I guess, but very slowly. Now I have been given the permission to create one of these follower ads.

I have been reading up on the dynamic ads and I guess I know enough to create one but I was just wondering if there are any tips that can improve the reach and effectiveness of the ad(target audience) and translate to as many new followers as possible.

Company is an it consultancy(agile practices, business process dev etc)

Thank you

submitted by /u/NeXuS6197834
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I recently learned what I've been doing for a little over two years now is "corporate restructuring"

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 02:30 PM PDT

Hello,

For the past two years I have been helping organizations "corporate restructure" their IT budgets. I never knew this was what I was doing or a term used in the consultation world until I watched a video by Andrei Jikh. He has an absolutely amazing Youtube finance channel.

I have been working for MSPs the past two years, exceeding expectations and providing the best customer satisfactory experience I could I was able to get involved into projects that impacted the big budgets of these companies. I have done everything from regularly being the peon changing the password for people who seem to forget it by the hour to the right hand man for IT directors of companies as large as fortune 2000 companies. The kind of exposure into the world of C-level executives was so transformative to my mindset especially after rotting away at a dead end job for almost 12 years. With this new mindset I have been able to become a different person from my younger self and land a position as the sole IT manager of an entire organization with 50+ employees. I have been able to save this company just over a quarter of a million dollars a year in their IT budget within six months.

Until I watched Andrei's video I would of never known what I did for this company from a consultant's perspective would of been "corporate restructuring" that more than likely pays three, five, ten times more and likely providing a better work life balance.

I've come to ask for help from those that have been successful in leading in their own. I have direct experience now and I know it can work as I've done it. I am unsure how to successfully work for myself as a consultant or how to get clients. I have already built a website. Thoughts?

submitted by /u/shirtharmony
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Cost vs. Expectations. The Agency Experience.

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 02:07 PM PDT

I'm a PPC specialist and it has become a trend for more and more companies to look for that "cheap" $300 a month digital marketing strategy but demand to have the "agency experience" ( preferably North America) and highest ROAS. Invest a $1 make a $1mil, right?

So for all business owners out there that have the same idea let me break this down for you so you would understand what a marketer can get out of your $300/month if they would give you the agency experience.

Monthly budget of $300 and hours required for each task on average

Initial setup:

auditing existing account and identifying issues - 20h
strategy proposal per channel ( KPIs, goals, market analysis) - 30h
media planing & budget management - 10h
campaign creation and setup per PPC channel ( structure, ad copy, ad extensions, keywords etc) - 50h
conversion tracking review/setup - 15h
reporting/data analysis - 15h
client meetings/communication - 40h

Monthly management:

ongoing optimizations - 10h
reporting - 5h
client meetings/communication - 10h

Now let's do some math!

Setting up a paid advertising marketing strategy would come to about 180 hours on average per project. That would come up to about $1.6/h salary for you freelancer/agency.

Don't forget that they need to pay taxes out of that hourly rate and benefits so let's say it comes up to $1/h.

After the initial setup has been done, now they need to take care of your "baby". They need to make sure everything runs properly, they need to report on the performance and constantly find ways to optimize the account so that it can make more money for you.

Let's say it takes about 25h/month to do all this and that's if you are a nice client and you don't want the impossible and call your marketer at night because you have an idea. They're still making less than $12/h which is under the minimum wage in most places in North America.

Also, most digital marketers have at least an undergrad degree, several marketing certifications and years of experience.

So please remember this whenever you ask a marketing professional to make you a profit on a buck.

P.S. I haven't written this in anger or to be disrespectful towards entrepreneurs, but simply to show the situation from my perspective.

submitted by /u/digital_unicorn_ca
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Watching Montreal's live Demo Day for FounderFuel

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 01:59 PM PDT

Some interesting pitches, thought people might be interested:

https://hopin.to/events/demo-day-2020

submitted by /u/Arbawk
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Guidance to make 20k for urgent surgery

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 01:46 PM PDT

Hello, recently I've been researching ways to make money independently online. So far I've comes across dropshipping, print on demand, and creating advertisements for gigs. I've been experiencing pretty devastating changes like hearing loss in my left ear, loss of vision, and an inability to sleep/eat/get enough oxygen through breathing. I am on the clock to get an 20k alternative treatment to 100k (50k with a PPO I couldn't get) double jaw surgery.

I thought it could only help to ask for guidance. My current plan is to start a dropshipping site and offer a service for Amazon listings (pictures/graphics/etc.) Any resources, tools, skills that I can learn I would be so appreciative if you let me know about. I have 5k to my name, I'm skilled at photography, cinematography, audio/music production. I'm a novice at graphic design, color grading, editing, social media. I'm curious about programming, website design, business, and marketing.

I know no one personally I can borrow money from and am in the 3 month process of establishing initial credit with my credit card for a loan. Not to be dramatic but I have chosen suicide over starting a fundraiser like gofundme. I've been contemplating a lot of things but begging isn't something I can do.

submitted by /u/_Uplus2E2E
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Why aren't there many Solar digital marketing agencies out there?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 01:31 PM PDT

Hey guys,

I'm currently in the middle of my feasibility study to set up a solar digital marketing agency. The main focus will be to help solar sellers/dealers/installers to obtain quality leads via adequate online marketing channels.

I've looked worldwide (and more especially West Coast USA and Australia) to find out if Solar digital marketing agencies existed and to my surprise I just found a few them. Hence these 3 questions:

Do solar companies still not believe in digital marketing?
Are solar companies still heavily relying on so called "exclusive" leads bought via Solarreviews/ Homeadviser or door to door knocking?
How to deal with conflit of interest (I'm already not too keen on the "a client within a radius of 10km/miles" rule).

Thanks

submitted by /u/Piccoleti
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Multiple brands model

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 12:57 PM PDT

Hi,

I'm interested in starting a business which will own multiple brands. The issue is i have no idea how to structure this concept.

For example let's use Genflow.com which operates in LA. I came across their business model on YouTube and liked how they partner with influencers to create brands.

Now upon doing some research the brands that are created are owned by the influencers on the companies house UK mainly, and Genflow isn't a shareholder.

Which is now confusing me has they claim that they partner and own the brands with the influencers.

Can anyone help me unravel this mystery and so i can come up with a good model for my business startup.

Thank you

submitted by /u/soundextv
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How to approach company for selling my software

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 12:50 PM PDT

Hello everyone, I made a website/app which will be helpful for investigating agency for finding criminals.

Anyone have any idea how to approach then to sell my software.

Any links / connection will be very helpful.

Thank you.

submitted by /u/harsh52
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How do you structure your day?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 12:49 PM PDT

Curious to get others' perspectives. Personally, I split my time up into 3 categories

Back-end - CRM upkeep, accounting

Project management - following up on quotes, developing quotes, ordering etc..

Marketing/sales - self explanatory

I always try to do my backend outside of 9-5: Early morning or in the evening.

I spend my mornings drafting and scheduling project management emails, then get to work on project management tasks.

In the afternoon, providing project management doesn't interrupt, I plan out social media posts, analyze online activity and schedule leads in e-mail sequences.

Lately my project management load has severely increased and I'm finding it difficult to maintain cognitive space for sales... wondering if its a matter of how I manage my day or if its simply a symptom of being busy with current projects/projects I'm fighting to close?

submitted by /u/Janel_a
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Is the premium boost listing worth it on Flippa?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 12:37 PM PDT

I'm going to sell a starter site on Flippa and I wanted to know if the premium listing is worth it or should I purchase the regular listing? Thanks

submitted by /u/ashley_20
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What are some online service businesses I could start?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 12:09 PM PDT

I'm disabled with a cognitive disability and I want to pick up a high income skill and start an online service business or freelance. What are some high income skills I could learn and what are some examples of online service businesses?

submitted by /u/cinnabun8145
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Investor stole business idea - what do I do next?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 11:47 AM PDT

So I was speaking with an investor who has their own company/HR product. Today I found out they pivoted to my market and now are implementing my solution. The idea I had discussed with this person and they copied much of my website and landing page stuff for their own purpose. I know it's common that this shit happens but what can I do to deal with it?

submitted by /u/okaybutwhyfam
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Side gig idea(s) for a 19 year old college student with a lemon

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 11:23 AM PDT

Hi there! So i'm a sophomore at university, I'm paying rent and all my other living expenses working a part time job while going to school full time. Ya know, the average life for a college student like me. I'm having problems with my car and it's probably on its way out pretty soon and i'd like to buy one cash and save up a decent amount of money for one and other things like my student loans. I have been toying with the idea of housekeeping, I love cleaning and thoroughly enjoy it. I want to make a business out of it for myself but am a bit hesitant only because the idea of being in a strangers house cleaning it alone makes me a little nervous, any advice for how to go about this or perhaps another idea?

TLDR: I'm 19, in need and want of extra money and want to start housekeeping but am nervous to do so alone in a strangers house. Any tips or advice?

submitted by /u/shaylamarie811
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Ali Express Sample/Shipping

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 10:57 AM PDT

I'm in dealings with a manufacture on aliexpress for plates. I have picked out the one I like and before purchasing 1000 plates from them I asked for a sample. I of course was expecting to pay for the plate and shipping so like $25 USD, however they told me it would be $50 USD. I'm from Canada so supposedly this sample is going to cost me $75. This seems like a ripoff to me and I feel like they're trying to hose me because my Ali express account is brand new and has no history.

As crazy as it seems these plates are for personal use (My wedding next year...much cheaper to buy off aliexpress than rent them) and not re-selling on amazon. I have never done any ordering from aliexpress before nor any selling on Amazon so I am completely clueless as to how this all works. Figured you guys might be able to help me out since I assume some of you have ordered samples for your online businesses before.

I fully understand its a $25 difference which is honestly no big deal but its more so I don't like getting taking advantage of cuz people just assume I'm an idiot and dont know better.

submitted by /u/Suyneej
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How to set Google Analytics Properly for Marketing Campaigns.

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 10:51 AM PDT

Entrepreneurs put a lot of work into digital campaigns, assuming the analytics will report back glowing success, thousands of engagements and sales through the roof. However, there are set-up tasks that have to happen to track the data. Forgetting to do them can leave the marketer with little to show for their work. To avoid this anxiety and heartbreak, here is a really-short checklist you can follow to ensure you have basic website tracking in place:

Check for Google Analytics (GA) code on every page; assuming account exists. If the GA script has changed and if you have determined that you need to upgrade, arrange with your webmaster to change your Google Analytics script. This, plus many other script changes are easy if you put Google Tag Manager in place.
Ensure the Google code on your site supports any of the following if used: cross-subdomain tracking, CRM data integration, marketing automation platform Implement filters to exclude your internal office traffic.
If Internal site search used, ensure it is activated
Connect Search Console if not done
Setup Heatmaps on highly-trafficked pages, using a tool like HotJar
Confirm on lead gen pages that Events/Conversions recorded in Google Analytics
Create a backup copy of GA data to safeguard against loss by a team member through improper use of a filter
Check Property settings for timezone/currency, demographic and psychographic flags, Data Retention settings (GDPR)
Connect retargeting pixels from any social platforms used
If you are creating any offsite links pointing to one of your pages, create UTM parameters so your Google Analytics reports properly credit the original source.

submitted by /u/AlKarakhboy
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Health Insurance Dilemma for the Self-Employed

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 10:44 AM PDT

Hi Everyone! I need some advice. What are all the self-employed people doing for health insurance? I am a single male, very healthy with no dependents. I've been self employed for 4 years now and uninsured pretty much the whole time. I do not have employees and my business profits are not much after taxes. I don't visit the doctor often as I'm pretty healthy. Last i went was maybe 2 years ago after my health care provider ended under my parents due to age.

First, I am wondering if it's. possible to just pay out of pocket 2x per year to get my health examine (see if i have cancer, if there are any ailment, etc. I'm entering my mid 30s and it'll be foolish to think my regular exercise and right diet will keep me healthy forever without seeing. any underlying medical issues i may have, especially for medical emergency in case i injury myself,etc

Secondly, what is my deductible looking like by the end of the year if I am able to do this without paying month by month insurance contract.

thirdly, I want to also get my teeth examine 2x a year as well as fix up some cosmestic like getting braces. IS there an option for pay out of pocket as well? and what is my deductible for that?

I am NY state if anyone is wondering

submitted by /u/throwaway111111156
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How does a non-US citizen go about registering a business(sole proprietorship) in US?

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 10:37 AM PDT

Is it even possible?

My business is mostly catered to US citizens and they're more likely to do business that is registered in US than in a third world country.

submitted by /u/crockrox
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How Can I Find a Good Marketing Book (When All Such Authors Fill Their Amazon Listing With Friendly Reviews)

Posted: 09 Sep 2020 10:25 AM PDT

I'm looking for a good book on affiliate marketing, but I think this problem would apply to any marketing book.

You'd have to be just terrible at your job if you were an author of a marketing book, and you didn't ensure that the first 20+ reviews of your book were positive. As a marketer, you know those reviews have a huge impact on who buys your book, so you pretty much have to find a way to pad them.

But this makes me highly suspicious of such reviews, especially when there aren't a ton of them. And yet at the same time, on the Internet information goes bad fast, so I also don't want to buy a book from 2005, even if it has a ton of good reviews.

And just to make matters worse, if I google for something like "good affiliate marketing books" ... I (of course) get a bunch of affiliate sites, which couldn't care less about the quality of their books. Every site just provides a list of books, in hopes you click on one and make them some money ... but I'm skeptical that the authors of those sites have even read a single one of the books they recommend. Even if one site does provide genuine recommendations, I can't tell them apart from the other dozen that don't.

Between the tiny window of "not so old the information is stale" and "not so new that it only has 20 reviews from the author's friends" ... and with (seemingly) no reliable 3rd party I can rely on ... how do people pick good (and technically up-to-date) marketing books?

P.S. While I'd certainly love some recommendations for a good/modern affiliate marketing book, I'm really more interested in hearing strategies others might use to find good marketing resources, in general ... when all of those resources have strong strategic incentives to be untrustworthy.

submitted by /u/ILikeChangingMyMind
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Breaking News

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Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (September 09, 2020) Entrepreneur

Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (September 09, 2020) Entrepreneur

Here's what I can help you with:

My story:

Ask me Anything. I'm here to help and give massive value!

The Billion Dollar Blog

MY JOURNEY

THE 5 RULES OF A BILLION DOLLAR AUDIENCE

RULE #1: BUILD MORE THAN A PERSONAL BRAND

The Disneyland of quilting

RULE #2: SELL PRODUCTS, NOT ATTENTION

A common misconception

You should do sponsorships when it raises your profile

Capture all the value

RULE #3: DRIVE HIGHER CUSTOMER VALUE THROUGH RECURRING OR REPEAT PURCHASES

RULE #4: CHOOSE A BETTER BUSINESS MODEL

Buying higher quality revenue

Better sound

BUILD A BUSINESS TO BE ACQUIRED

NOT EVERYONE MAKES IT, LET'S STUDY WHY

THE WRONG BUSINESS MODEL

ONLY SOLVING HALF THE PROBLEM

SELLING THE WRONG PRODUCT

INVENTING A NEW CATEGORY

TOO MANY GREAT OPPORTUNITIES

THE WRONG PLATFORM

DREAMING BIG

YOUR NEXT STEP

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