Marketplace Tuesday! - January 26, 2021 Entrepreneur |
- Marketplace Tuesday! - January 26, 2021
- How did you overcome the loneliness of becoming an entrepreneur?
- Quitting in 3, 2, 1..
- A lesson from starting a business with a friend.
- Many entrepreneurs got their start during the real estate crash of 2008, who are getting their start now?
- Is there anyone here who wants to start their own business but...
- Anyone know of any thermal printers that can print different sized stickers?
- I started my own company
- I released an ebook and it's sold very well. Just had someone want a refund because the info is "nothing new" and it's similar to another book that I've never heard of. Should I give him a refund?
- I HAVE $150K to invest in an entrepreneurial venture. I am considering creating a Youtube channel because of the scalability. Concerned about lack of barrier to entry, I am also looking for other options. Key fact - I am 55 years old and sold my last small business 4 years ago.
- If anybody needs help with their LinkedIn hit me up
- Pre-Launching 100 Growth Strategies For Startups
- HELP ME WITH THIS SURVEY ON DIGITAL MARKETING
- From where can I import supplements?
- Is this 100k/mth in 12months challenge by neil patel realistic or a load of BullS**t?
- Separating Religion and Business
- My attempt at selling pillows online failed before it even started
- phone case business
- Am I missing something super obvious?
- 1 year Business Managed Hosting + 113 Premium WordPress plugins for FREE
- A list of 1000 investors.
- Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics for startup lead generation
- Trouble expanding/ getting calls back.
- How do I figure out what my actual costs/employee would be?
| Marketplace Tuesday! - January 26, 2021 Posted: 26 Jan 2021 02:00 AM PST 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 main 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]  |
| How did you overcome the loneliness of becoming an entrepreneur? Posted: 26 Jan 2021 06:22 AM PST I've always wanted to run my own business because I'm so sick of working for someone else in an office all day. I wrote down various ideas and plans but never really got to fully implement them. It has been all me by myself. I really want to find a cofounder/partner so our strengths can complement each other and also it's less intimidating and overwhelming and lonely to walk the treacherous road ahead. But I realize that finding a cofounder is tough, since many of my friends prefer a lazy, convenient life. Hell, I couldn't even get them out of the house for a weekend hangout, let alone starting something together. Others don't share the same vision or interests. For those who started out their business by yourself w/o cofounders, how did you do it? How did you even get started and escaped the rat race? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2021 01:18 PM PST 15 minutes away from quitting my first job out of college. Amazing job, great perks, good work life balance, great pay, but I just think I'm ready to take that next step and do something for myself. I am afraid of disappointing the people around me, my coworkers, my family. I'm fearful of the hard work and saying goodbye to stability. At the same time, I'm young. I have multiple years of runway. My side hustle has just passed the 5 months old mark and we've grossed 70K. I find so much passion and joy and excitement and impact in what that side project is producing and I know I need to follow that spark. Maybe it's a dumb decision, but I know that I will regret staying more than I will leaving. Thanks for reading this. :) [link] [comments]  |
| A lesson from starting a business with a friend. Posted: 26 Jan 2021 12:53 PM PST My friend was operating a side hustle for a number of years drop shipping (with a little inventory too) from a Shopify platform. Last year he decided to make a move to get it national (Canada) and called in myself and a couple other buddies to developed it. There was an understanding that we would build this through consensus as we met every week. We began the process with a handshake agreement that we would take 10%, invest 10 hours a week to develop. At many points during the year we checked in to get something more formal than the handshake and there were always reasons that it was taking time. I have a lot of experience in brand building and strategic development. I've honed my skills in a number of industries through a number of careers. In September we got the business to a point where I would take salary and work full time and I took the role of operations manager and started a program to fast track the business. I now sit on my couch unemployed after i quit from verbal abuse and after a long line of flip flops on strategic planning and contradictions in his process. Here is why I think there original error was getting into business with a friend. With friends you want to help them, bring them along to enjoy all the riches you are about to make together. We are so good a laughing and communicating around the poker table, let's just do that as we build this business. Versus the alternative to partner with someone less known but has a resume that fill all the business's holes. I have that resume but he could not see though it and never trusted me because he did not come to me as a qualified candidate, it was from a place of- let's work together and make this happen. Last note about building through consensus. It doesn't work. You need the smartest person in the room to be hearing all points of views then making the decisions. All others then need to fall in line and execute that strategy. Our version of consensus was skewed because really if this friend did not agree he would not listen to counter arguments and we would have to do it his way. However I still maintain that consensus fails because the loudest and the most manipulative just tend to push their agenda. Thoughts? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Jan 2021 05:38 PM PST Whatsapp, venmo, uber, pinterest, slack among others started during a recession and have experienced success If history rhymes, what repeats are we seeing during times of covid? [link] [comments]  |
| Is there anyone here who wants to start their own business but... Posted: 26 Jan 2021 05:51 AM PST Doesn't know what they would like to build their business around? Just wondering if anyone else is in the same spot... [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone know of any thermal printers that can print different sized stickers? Posted: 26 Jan 2021 02:39 PM PST I've seen quite a few but it's unclear if I can adjust the sizing to what I need it to be. I'm looking for something able to print square (no rounded edges!) 1" x 1" stickers for labeling purposes. Small business so pricing does matter, but at this point willing to spend the $ to get something that does exactly what I need. TIA! 🙏🏻 [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 25 Jan 2021 07:24 PM PST My brother kept pressuring me to start a company and do work through it instead of working full time. My day job is real nice but I always wanted to execute an idea for a website. I also wanted to try if I can find software contracts if the former fails so I started a software company. I came across a post by this other guy u/senos64 that said he put together a website for synonyms and is making six figures from it and got mad and jealous. Today I opened up a checking account for my company to separate my finances for liability protection. I tried to buy a domain but I had trouble with the payment. Will try tomorrow again. The website isn't gonna be anything crazy but I'm trying for a similar idea that he put forth. It's probably gonna flop but fuck it at least I get to create software the way I like in my free time it's fun and will get some experience to grow from. Always wanted to have my own company. I doubt I will make it as an entrepreneur will probably wageslave the rest of my life but don't wanna regret not trying. I got all of the skills and experience to pull of really big corporate projects. Building a website ain't nothing serious for me. Will see if this seo stuff is for real and how much money can really be made out of it. I got a network of people that can help me with anything that I need to get my head around so it's more reassuring to go in by myself. I started out in startups so it makes me extra mad and jealous about people having their own companies. It drives me more and offers perspective on what it can be. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2021 10:26 AM PST He sent me a message saying "Just purchased your book 10 minutes ago and it's nothing new. It's similar to the XYZ course. Please refund" I asked him what course he was talking about and he sent a link. I've never heard of it. My book is pretty high priced, and I spent a lot of time working on it. Never heard of this course he's talking about but apparently it's similar. Should I give him a refund? Edit: refund issued. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2021 09:51 AM PST I am looking for a scalable business idea that will begin to cash flow within two years. My experience is simply being a business owner of a variety of entities: local coupon paper, southern brand t-shirt company, real estate landlord. I am strong at sales and public speaking. People say I am creative and entrepreneurial. I get excited about learning new things. I thought about learning to code but wasn't sure the best direction to go in order to create a scalable company. So instead, last year I produced a comedy web series that will launch in March. Based on that experience, I am considering creating short 5 -10 minute films weekly to build a Digital channel. I have not decided on a target audience yet. Given the low barrier to entry into digital entertainment, I am questioning this idea. So please, Reddit, give me some ideas on worthwhile pursuits. Oh, and one final thing - I would be happy to work with a young company looking for an experienced entrepreneur to help with building the company. I do not have to be the founder. I just want to be a part of something that makes a difference in society while also offering the opportunity for financial success. [link] [comments]  |
| If anybody needs help with their LinkedIn hit me up Posted: 26 Jan 2021 01:35 PM PST |
| Pre-Launching 100 Growth Strategies For Startups Posted: 26 Jan 2021 01:16 PM PST Indrek here. I'm building a list of 100 growth strategies for startups. Some of the strategies work extremely well if you want to acquire your first paid users or launch your product successfully. If this sounds interesting, grab a copy of the pre-order and save 40%. I'm launching it in approx 1–2 months. Maybe earlier. [link] [comments]  |
| HELP ME WITH THIS SURVEY ON DIGITAL MARKETING Posted: 26 Jan 2021 01:05 PM PST Hi guys , Share with me your experience, pros and cons of current digital marketing by taking this survey. https://forms.gle/8DMnXQgTbbx6ae8a6 Type in "Anonymous" in the form if you don't want to share your name or email. Thankyou [link] [comments]  |
| From where can I import supplements? Posted: 26 Jan 2021 06:42 AM PST With an increasing health conscious population, including a personal interest in the subject myself, I am looking to find a way to setup a health supplement business. I currently live in Europe (and EU state member) and I am currently looking for manufacturers where I can start importing supplements at a good price. Ideally someone that can export low MOQs to test the market at first. From where can I start looking? [link] [comments]  |
| Is this 100k/mth in 12months challenge by neil patel realistic or a load of BullS**t? Posted: 26 Jan 2021 12:29 PM PST If it is possible what do you think prevents most people from achieving it? https://www.quicksprout.com/how-to-start-a-blog/How to Start a Blog That Makes Money (Lessons Learned)https://www.quicksprout.com [link] [comments]  |
| Separating Religion and Business Posted: 26 Jan 2021 05:57 AM PST Has anyone had a Co-Founder who constantly pushed their religion in the business? We are both the same religious people, the main difference is he only wants to communicate and trust people who share his beliefs. I am fine with anyone no matter their religion if they can get the job done. I am the CEO, hold most shares, but need him for our startup. I need some wise words from someone in a similar situation that cant helps me convince him this is not our vision, without insulting him wanting to leave. I must make it clear that religion and business MUST be separated. [link] [comments]  |
| My attempt at selling pillows online failed before it even started Posted: 26 Jan 2021 10:43 AM PST TL;DR: Pillows have a bunch of state-specific regulations and costs that make them impractical for a low volume sales I'm an Amazon seller in my spare time with 6 figure annual revenue and I've been working lately to move from retail arbitrage to private label. I launched a few houseware products in the 4th quarter of last year and they've been going okay, and I had 2 new pillow products that caught my eye. I ordered samples from manufacturers and was on track to order, but now I am caught up in the US regulations on stuffed products including pillows. My day job is related to regulations so I thought I'd be able to work through it, but I am now at a point where I don't believe it is possible for my business model to sell pillows, and here's why. I'm sure a lot of people have seen or joked about the labels that come on pillows/mattresses/ etc. that say it is illegal to remove the label. This is called Law Label and it's required in a dozen+ states and does not seem to have federal oversite or very much consistency at all. The naïve mistake I made was thinking the requirement was just to have a label with the appropriate text, which would be something I could figure out after reading the regulations from all 14 states and looking at examples. And better yet, I found that there are companies that print the label for you and confirm the label wording you use meets regulations, so I was becoming hopeful! Sure, it would be an added complication to order labels from a company (about $140 for 500) and then have them shipped to my manufacturer to be sewn in, but that was an absorbable cost. The next difficulty I found was that manufacturers on Alibaba are unlikely to have a Uniform Registry Number, which is a requirement for the Law Label. But, it appears that it is common for the importer (which would be me) to request one on behalf of the factory and that I would only need to do this in one state (hence the "uniform" part). Another complication, (especially since I cannot seem to find where to request one for my own state of PA or how much it costs!) but something that can be worked with. It also seems that I will need an importer URN either in addition to or instead of the manufacturer one- this point is still unclear and maybe depends on what state I register in. Now here's where it became unrealistic- each of those dozen+ states also requires an additional registration to sell stuffed products, and each state's registration comes at an annual cost. My first state, PA, was $100/year. Possible for one state, but as I went on the costs kept going up. How many pillows would I even sell in Rhode Island to justify paying them $650 every 3 years for the privilege? On Amazon, there is no ability to block certain states- you either sell to everyone or you don't sell at all. So the only way this plan would be possible is if I could commit to selling pillows in a high enough volume to pay for registering in every required state (a cost I haven't even finished calculating yet, but is likely around $1k/year). And it would also need to be worth the opportunity cost of my time and money to do so. Both are counter to my smallish order/test the market strategy. So I see four options: 1) Stick with other items with fewer regulations and fewer hurdles in brining to market. 2) Prepare myself to go big on pillows- having multiple high volume products from the same factory (unclear currently if that $1k/year cost is per factory). 3) Adopt a sales model where I can choose what states to sell to (is this possible on Shopify, which is part of the next phase of my business plan?) 4) Break the laws- I will not do this, but I suspect that's what's going on with all the competition on Amazon. Chinese sellers who can't be held accountable for US state regulations, and also Amazon isn't held accountable for whatever reason either. I ordered two pillows from Amazon recently and I'm interested to see what they're labeled with! Has anyone else had similar issues? Would you go with option 1 or something else? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2021 10:37 AM PST I want to start my phone case business I have an idea of how my designs would be but 1-I don't know wich app will help me to at least make a virtual version of my ideas 2-I don't know the materials used in a phone case and I don't know if I can add new materials and who should I ask ? 3-IF I created a virtual design of my product and ask a manufacturer to create a physical product but I didn't like it could they use this design at sell it themself how can I trust them and protect my designs [link] [comments]  |
| Am I missing something super obvious? Posted: 26 Jan 2021 10:36 AM PST This is a x-post from /r/entrepreneurridealong, but it wouldn't let me actually cross post so I'm just making a new one. Hey everybody. This is probably going to be long and not super coherent, so stick around if ye dare. I run a mobile car detailing business in Fairfield County, CT. I'm running it with a friend of mine. We're both juniors in college. At the start, we went about things in what was probably the wrong way. We started in September. We bought a truck, bought all the equipment, and leased a small garage ($900/mo) in the area we wanted to work in. I know this was probably an expense that we didn't need, but we go to school in NYC, so we didn't have any place to store all of the equipment / truck, and we would've spent a fortune on gas and travel time. It also gives us a place to sleep so we can wake up early and fit as many jobs into a day as possible. I know this might be too ambitious this early, but we really want this to be more of a business than a job. Right now we spend all of our free time detailing or otherwise working on it ourselves. We'd like to expand to hiring employees, multiple locations, etc. over the next few years. However, there's a problem. Our overhead is basically killing any possibility of expansion. We have around $1500/mo in overhead right now. This includes gas, electricity, internet, rent, business insurance, truck insurance, etc. We also have to pay CT Sales and Use tax (6%). This means that we need to make $53 every day, on average, after paying employee wages and the associated withholding tax, worker's comp, etc. These figures also don't include the costs of materials (chemicals, broken parts, etc.) which usually comes out to $1-200/mo. This wouldn't be too bad, with our current pricing. We can pretty comfortably fit $4-500 of work into one 8 hour day with 2 employees and standard travel time, which works out to $160-260 gross profit / day (not counting withholding tax, social security, workers comp, etc.). However, no matter what we've tried, we haven't been able to fill this volume. We've found the most success with posting on Facebook buy/sell groups (>90% of our jobs), which has pretty consistently been getting us 2-4 details per week. Even at the maximum of 4 details every week, if we hired an employee to do them, we would be losing $220/mo, before factoring in taxes, withholding, worker's comp, higher fleet insurance, etc. Not to mention the fact that then we would have to deal with the headaches of hiring, scheduling, etc. (and that we wouldn't be paying ourselves anything). Of course, we wouldn't really mind this volume. We've been doing all of the detailing ourselves, and had planned to continue until we're at a point where we can't handle the load on our own. We know that getting to a point where we can delegate all the work will take time. But the problem is, we don't seem to really be building upon prior success or growing at all. We have a few repeat customers, and everyone has been super happy with our service, but most people get their car detailed once a year, if that. We've had a few corporate customers, but we always get hit with a "we'll give you a call in the spring." We haven't really been able to convince anyone to commit to a recurring plan. The fact that we are spending sometimes up to 10 hours a day detailing, and then have to rush back, shower, cook, and fall asleep to wake up the next morning and do it again is sort of killing any chance of us being able to start working on expanding. And even when we do have the time, we don't really know what we can do to work on it. I know that thinking about expansion now is sort of premature, but that's sort of the whole point of why we're doing this. I know that this was super ramble-y and that there probably isn't even really a question anywhere in there. Mainly I just want to know: are we doing something wrong? How can we start actually building month-on-month, rather than just working 50 hours a week to remain stagnant? It seems like right now we're just working full time on top of school and we're not even making profit for ourselves really. Relevant info: There is one medium-sized competitor within 20 miles of us. They don't run any ads, and have very low engagement on social media. We have GMB, Yelp, Facebook pages set up, as well as a website which is ranking for relevant local kws (obviously not all of them yet). We have tried Facebook ads, but CoCA is usually around $70-120 regardless of creative. We have tried google location ads, but have found that the traffic rarely comes from quality leads. We have tried a month of local radio ads for ~$1200, but only received 1 conversion from that. We positioned ourselves at the top of Craigslist for a month and didn't receive any calls or emails. There doesn't seem to be any Next-door equivalent for detailing. Our target demo, in our experience, has been middle age men with expensive cars (Vintage, Ferraris, etc.) and moms with no time to go and get their car cleaned. We charge, on average, $149-299 per detail, depending on what they need. We send 2 detailers on most jobs > $199. I run a few online businesses that I'm very lucky pay me >$4k per month which we've been using to bankroll this. We are doing everything legally. We have an LLC, we pay taxes, we have business insurance in case we damage a customer's car. We both have jobs that pay for school (~16-20 hours a week) We both have stacked our classes on Monday / Thursday so we can work 4-5 days a week. Our garage is an hour and 15 minutes from our school by train. Each of us posts on Facebook on alternating days, so collectively we post to every group once a day. We always pitch recurring contracts at the end of a detail, and we leave the customer with multiple referral cards to give to friends, as well as some other nice stuff (air freshener, receipt, pen with our name / phone number, card with links to our pages that asks for a review) When booking a customer, we always pitch upsells and cross-sells ("Hey, while we're doing your interior, you might want to consider having us shampoo your carpets. It really helps to get any smells and stains out.") Things we haven't tried yet We have been thinking about going out (or hiring some people) to hand out flyers in the busier areas of the cities around us to see if that can drum up business. In the summer (covid permitting), we're planning to go to every car show in our service area and either get a tent or just walk around and hand out flyers until we get kicked out. We've been collecting customer emails (when they'll give them to us), but we haven't yet started using them for lookalike audiences or email marketing. We plan to do this in the future, but it honestly hasn't seemed worth the time yet since the list is only like 30 emails. If you made it here, well done. Thanks so much for reading this. If you have any advice at all, I'd really appreciate you leaving it here. [link] [comments]  |
| 1 year Business Managed Hosting + 113 Premium WordPress plugins for FREE Posted: 26 Jan 2021 09:30 AM PST I found a huge giveaway today, they are offering 1 year free cloud hosting bundled with 113 premium WordPress plugins. I joined the contest, maybe I will be the lucky one to get it: https://coderevolution.ro/2021/01/26/huge-giveaway-get-free-cloud-hosting-all-my-plugins [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 26 Jan 2021 09:29 AM PST So for the past 3 weeks I have been putting together a list of investors. And today I finally hit the 1000 mark. The list contains multiple data-points of these investors such as phone numbers, email addresses, website links, LinkedIn, etc. After seeing many platforms that charge hundreds of dollars for such data. I decided I would go ahead and do it myself. I have decided to add a much smaller price as compared to these platforms for the work I have done and hopefully some of you might be interested, so here it is >> https://gumroad.com/l/lKCMC Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| Actionable Growth Hacking Tactics for startup lead generation Posted: 26 Jan 2021 09:18 AM PST Since 2 years ago I've been trying to grow my business by helping other businesses to grow too. We focus a lot on strategies that enable us to keep sourcing new opportunities on a constant basis. Because that's the critical step, once you can feed your funnel with enough opportunities every month, you start expanding your customer base every month too. Well, not everything is as straight as it sounds, but over time I've been able to grow to 100+ happy customers that are growing their businesses as well. This means that I'm fortunate enough to test multiple customer acquisition strategies at scale. The beginning of 2021 made me reflect on the best strategies I've used in the last year. One interesting fact I found is that less is more. All the top 10% performers focused on strategies with a lower number of opportunities, but higher purchase intent. Simply speaking, Quality > Quantity when it comes to generating new opportunities. But, finding ultra-qualified new opportunities on a daily basis is a major challenge to most of the companies, that's why most end up neglecting quality to focus more on quantity. Which doesn't lead to the best results, if any sometimes. That's why I created a database with all the best strategies I've used to help my customers over the past year. You can check it here: Strategies to grow your business in 2021 🚀 PS: In this database, you'll only find the strategies with the best testing results (5 stars only). I'm sure that you'll get at least one great idea from this selective list. [link] [comments]  |
| Trouble expanding/ getting calls back. Posted: 26 Jan 2021 09:10 AM PST I'm struggling to get calls back/ getting people to take this seriously and am just looking for some potential incite. I work for a Window Cleaning/Replacing company, we stay up to date on the OSHA regulations and OSHA changed the rules regarding the certifications of the anchor points on the roofs to tie off to prevent falling injuries. The problem - all the big company's that do the certifications charge obscene amounts of money but the process is not that difficult. I can charge 40-50% and make great money for myself. I've been able to turn a couple connections I have into work and was successful. And am now trying to expand beyond the connections I have. With COVID hammering office spaces I'm focusing more on hospitals and high rise apartment buildings. Buildings that need the windows cleaned and potentially have a lot of work done on the roofs. I've been dropping off binders including the OSHA Memo updating the rules, a write up of where and how I can help in a short write up and then include a longer form citing OSHA and breaking things down into detail. I do not include anything about pricing but do say to reach out for a free quote I've also emailed the information to building management companies with each thing write up in PDF form. I know times are tough on all businesses right now and that's understandable, I just am making sure I am not missing anything or committing any fatal flaws in my approach. [link] [comments]  |
| How do I figure out what my actual costs/employee would be? Posted: 25 Jan 2021 06:02 PM PST I know that employers have to pay more than just what they pay the employee. They have to pay taxes, social security, etc. I'm trying to write up a business plan. How do I figure out what I would be paying an employee if I offered them minimum wage, $10/hour, $12/hour, etc? [link] [comments]  |
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