NooB Monday! - September 06, 2021 Entrepreneur |
- NooB Monday! - September 06, 2021
- ��No more paychecks for me! Now full-time business in games after 20 years wanting to be! ��
- Building a Multimillion Dollar Business: Part 2 - Your first few customers
- I'm stuck in a rut and never get past ideation and the initial bliss of a new idea. Does anyone else struggle with this?
- Founder is extremely unhealthy, I'm a shareholder
- Why Doesn't /r/entrepreneur have a Discord or easy way to network with other entrepreneurs?
- I’m making close to $1000/Month from my TikTok, YouTube and Patreon. At what point do I need an LLC or create an official business?
- What are the legal implications of courses having "life-long" access but the website being hacked or a decision to close shop?
- Step-mom put me off starting my own business now struggling to set up
- What platforms for beta testing did you use? And which can you recommend?
- Easy use of space for side hustle
- How do I get to creating a product
- Garbage can cleaning
- "The Lean Startup" By Eric Ries | Animated Summary. Hope you find it useful.
- How to find more business consultants?
- Best bank to open an account for startups in the US
- I need your help increasing my client list
- Browse r/Shortages for ideas
- The framework to create a Stellar Pitch Deck ( After creating 100s of Decks)
- computer repair business with top listing in google and on yelp in major metro area - I want to sell it. Any advice on how to go about doing so?
- Got access to a free warehouse. Now what?
- Would anyone here have use for wholesale web design & development?
- Cheapest place for shelf boxes
- An advice on how to create working routine for a new company.
- This is an easy way to validate your MVP before writing code
- New Business *Any advice and all advice needed*
| NooB Monday! - September 06, 2021 Posted: 06 Sep 2021 02:00 AM PDT If you don't have enough comment karma to create your own new posts, you can post your new questions here. You can also answer/add comments to anyone else's posts in the subreddit. Everyone starts somewhere and to post in /r/Entrepreneur this is the best place. Subscribers please understand these are new posters and not familiar with our sub. Newcomers welcome! Be sure to vote on things that help you. Search the sub a bit before you post. The answers may already be here. 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]  |
| ��No more paychecks for me! Now full-time business in games after 20 years wanting to be! �� Posted: 06 Sep 2021 05:46 AM PDT I've been working to build my own business making racing games for almost 4 years while being a full-time software engineer. Last week I left the world of comfy paying jobs and am now a full-time independent game developer. Risk MitigationThis is the hardest and scariest thing I've tackled in my life, and that comes after being circled and bluff charged by a bear while hiking 2,178 miles. Success is not certain, but failing to try is worse.
I live-stream my business efforts sharing the good and the bad of running a game development business. This has provided some financial benefits as well and will help keep the runway from disappearing so quickly. The Last 4 YearsI woke up at 6:00 am almost every morning to do 3 hours of game development before my day job as a software-engineer. Many evenings and weekends were also added to this effort totaling more than 5600 hours! Released my first "game" in 2018 and made my first sale! The objective was to get something out into the world to make $1. Second project was to be released "as-is" after 4 months of development however after 8 months the scope blew out of control and instead I put it on hold/canceled. I pitched a game to publishers and got a few nibbles, though didn't continue fishing long enough to reel one in. While experimenting a prototype game found a goldmine of fun so I pivoted plans and polished that prototype further. After 3 months I released my first product and took the release cycle far more seriously than the first. While it hasn't recouped development costs, it did better than my expectations. I've been learning all the business stuff as I go. Please leave any advice you have for someone jumping out the window! [link] [comments]  |
| Building a Multimillion Dollar Business: Part 2 - Your first few customers Posted: 06 Sep 2021 10:51 AM PDT Hello again r/entrepreneur! Thank you for the feedback and support on the post from last Monday! Shocked to see that it got 750+ upvotes. One valuable piece of feedback that I got from r/cworxnine was that it'd be helpful to see some real life examples that myself and my team have gone through. I'll do my best to do this! Here's the link to the previous post. For those who are reading for the first time, might be a good place to start! Today's topic is going to be about something that everyone wants (and needs for their business to survive). Your first few customers. How do you get them? Why are they your most important customers? What's the cheapest way to do it? -------------------------------- So how do you get your first few customers? I hope you're good at setting up Google ads, Facebook ads, and YouTube video ads. If you're not just stop now. /s … I'm totally kidding. Don't listen to all of the gurus who say you can put $1 into Facebook and get $2 back. Sure it's possible, but if you're just starting out and doing everything yourself, you're going to struggle with that. Trust me. Paid ads are easier when you've identified your target market and have proper messaging. Here's my real life example on this. When we first started, we set a Facebook ads budget of about $3,000/mo ($100/day). This was a few years ago when Facebook ads were super hyped and everyone claimed to be making massive returns. I'm sure a bunch of people were. They probably had years of experience and spent millions of dollars learning. Here's the problem… At the time, I knew very little about Facebook ads. My ad copy kind of sucked too. I set up a bunch of audiences, made some nice images (they actually weren't the greatest), and set my budgets. My other 2 co-founders and I thought we'd be getting a couple fresh leads every day. WRONG. After 2 weeks and $1,500 of our own money burned, we thought it'd be good to try something else. How about Google ads… Similar story. We set our budgets at $100/day and didn't get any leads. In that first month, I think we got 2 leads from paid ads. Notice how I said "I think"... I didn't even have tracking set up properly haha! -------------------------------- What'd we do wrong? We never did an exercise to identify our ideal customer profile (ICP). We never even talked to our potential customers before running paid ads. When defining your ICP, try to figure out how your customers talk, what's important to them, what their pain points are, how they operate, etc etc etc. You won't be perfect, but it's a good place to start. Next you need to understand WHERE THEY GO. Are they in Facebook groups, are they on Reddit (what subreddits?), Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn? Maybe there's a gap in the market where you can rank for certain keywords with SEO. Or is your ICP more old fashion and relies on trade shows, their email, or even direct mail? Or maybe you need to get your hands dirty and start picking up your phone and calling. That's how we got our first few customers. And how we still get a lot of our customers to this day. You've gotta try picking up the phone and start dialing. Start having conversations. Don't be scared, it's not that hard once you do it for a little while. How do you know what to build if you haven't even talked to your target market? Speaking to your customers is one of the most important things (or the most important) for your business on day one and even year 7. NEVER STOP TALKING TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. Here are the steps you need to take for calling.
We actually combined email marketing and calling. We had success finding our point of contact emails. I would set up cold email drips and my partners and I would call on people who were opening and clicking links in the emails. This made it much less of a cold call because we'd try calling within minutes of them opening the email. If we had a decent conversation, we'd all connect with them on LinkedIn to make the follow up process even easier. To this day, our company has a Slack channel called #LinkedInConnect where we put point of contacts and people from our team connect with them. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were our call days. Monday and Friday were very difficult for us to get good results. -------------------------------- So what about online forums, LinkedIn, subreddits, Facebook groups, etc?
I'll keep the forums and groups short because that's going to be MUCH slower than actually dialing the phone. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's going to be a grind to get customers. It's not easy. -------------------------------- Your initial customers are gold. You need to treat them like they are kings and queens. Don't be afraid to ask for their honest feedback. No matter what company you are building (software, ecommerce, a local service, etc) you have to get feedback to see where you can improve. You'll learn that people like to give their feedback. It also makes you more trustworthy. If your initial customers are happy, try getting referrals and online reviews. Once you feel like you have a product that people are happy with, you can slowly scale up and get more clients. -------------------------------- Quick bonus tip for the end… If you feel like your website is really good, you have product market fit, and you are able to tell a good story, you can run Facebook retarget ads. It will make your follow up calls a little easier. I know I mentioned that you should stay away from paid ads in the beginning of this post, but Facebook retarget ads are affordable and actually yield good results (for us at least). Here are the simple steps.
You can spend like $3-$5 per day to retarget about 100-200 people per day. -------------------------------- Alright everyone, that's it for this post! Next week's post is about pricing. Stay tuned! :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Sep 2021 10:14 PM PDT Over the last 10 years, I've had countless business ideas that I think would work. Most of them are startup-like (novel product; online site or service; or other unproven businesses) as opposed to traditional small businesses (lawn care, handyman, or restaurant). I want to be an entrepreneur and to be truthful, I'm motivated by the money. The problem is, I have a very high paying job for my age so I've definitely got on golden handcuffs. I'm comfortable and even thriving as it is, but I know entrepreneurship is likely the best path to exponential wealth accumulation. Here are some things that are true about me: 1) I know myself and if the business doesn't make money, even a little bit, in a short amount of time, I'm going to lose interest. 2) I've "started" many of the business ideas I have MANY times. Buying domains, building prototypes, making basic websites, and going other legwork to make the ideas real. The problem is, I lose interest VERY quickly. I'll go all in for like 2 weeks, then I just kind of run out of gas. 3) I tend to like the initial ideation phase and then the initial setup, but get bored with the execution part of it. 4) I don't want to spend a lot of money up front (under $1k). Probably, this is because I know I'll likely lose interest before I make anything back. In general, I go through this cycle where I think if an "awesome" idea, start working on it, then get bored. A few weeks will go by and the cycle will start again. This isn't depressing to me, and in a lot of ways, I feel like it's good to get the bad/practice ideas or of the way, but that's kind of just self-justification for not sticking it out. Does anyone else relate to this? If you went through this and overcame it, how did you accomplish that? Any advice? [link] [comments]  |
| Founder is extremely unhealthy, I'm a shareholder Posted: 06 Sep 2021 06:13 AM PDT After 15 months, my shares are now vested. Mine and the CMO. The founder, who owns around 64% of the company, has heart issues, amongst many, and is probably around 370lbs for a 5'3. What do you suggest, besides a health insurance (if anyone ever gives it to him?). Even the investors have raised the issue. [link] [comments]  |
| Why Doesn't /r/entrepreneur have a Discord or easy way to network with other entrepreneurs? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:20 AM PDT First, I absolutely, positively, unequivocally appreciate this sub and what it's trying to accomplish. For as much complaining as I often see, these posts consistently offer young entrepreneurs fantastic advice for starting and growing a business (and yes, terrible advice too). But one thing I believe this sub is missing is the opportunity to connect more closely with other entrepreneurs in real-time, and in a more impactful way. In essence, I'd like the opportunity to move the discussion of a topic from text to voice, which I think could be incredibly valuable. Kind of like a traditional business "mastermind", but less rigid and more inclusive. Is that something that others would take advantage of if it existed? If not, why? Also, for those of you who already do something like that elsewhere, where? Any recommendations? Tools or other groups that utilize voice or VOIP to talk about business-building related topics? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2021 04:58 AM PDT Just the title Not sure if I need an official business yet or I can keep just doing what I'm doing for awhile without worrying about starting a business All taxes are already paid up front from what I make from google ads and my Patreon [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Sep 2021 08:41 PM PDT I'm planning to sell some online courses. And I see everyone else sells them with the tag "life-long access". Let's say somebody buys the course. And maybe the learning goes well for them and they get more people to buy it. But later on, some competitor opens up or I meet some kind of financial losses or health problems or for whatever reason, I have to close shop. Or maybe my website gets hacked and I'm unable to operate it again. What happens then?
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| Step-mom put me off starting my own business now struggling to set up Posted: 06 Sep 2021 10:36 AM PDT I have been preparing to start up my little side business that hopefully one day I can expand to a full time income. I have a cricut and plan to make some projects using that. However when I told my parents about it, my stepmom was very quick to put a downer on my ideas. She said that SO many people have circuits and are doing these things that my business will never stand out and I won't make money from it. This has really bummed me out and massively impacted on me actually starting up. How can I reinforce my positive motivation in order to start my business? [link] [comments]  |
| What platforms for beta testing did you use? And which can you recommend? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 05:58 AM PDT Out of your own experience, which platform do you find the best to gather feedback from users during the beta test? All recommendations will be helpful, from web service, to social platform, we aim for Discord and Telegram as a main source to create the beta testers community, but will it that efficient? and what did you use, or do you wish you did? [link] [comments]  |
| Easy use of space for side hustle Posted: 06 Sep 2021 05:45 AM PDT I've found an amazing deal on a commercial property near me, like 10% of the average price for my city. I've double checked and it's not a mistake, just a very good deal. I really want to snap it up before anyone else does, but I want an idea of what to use it for before I do that. I've looked into using it as a storage space but that counts as subletting in my country which I wouldn't be allowed to do. I am self-employed already so I am capable of the administrative side of things, I simply need an idea of a good side hustle to use this space for. [link] [comments]  |
| How do I get to creating a product Posted: 06 Sep 2021 02:45 PM PDT Hello all, just for some background, I am in school for mechanical engineering because I love to design things and I'd say I'm pretty innovative. That being said, I love to think about and design novelty products and dream about building a business around them. I am full of ideas, but honestly my biggest struggle has been getting started with actually getting my hands on a product, and having help with figuring out the small little quirks. Here's a few more specifics. I'm 19, have no established company, and don't have a crazy amount of capital. I've sent hundreds of emails to manufacturers, and most of them just want a CAD design and they will build it. My two favorite ideas are fabrics, and I know nothing about fabrics. I can't create these products on my own because u don't have the skills or tooling required, and I don't know where to even start with getting the help I need. This post is all over, I know that, English isn't really my specialty. Any tips on where to go with an idea to get help actually designing it and working out small details would be appreciated. If anyone out there has any experience in the product design field I would love to talk. Thank you for your time, God bless. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2021 08:29 AM PDT I've been seeing new companies around that do garbage can cleaning. It's seems relatively low start-up and operation cost. My question is do people still get their cans cleaned in the winter time? I've never hired a company to do it but I only because there hasn't been one in my area that I know of. So is it kind of a seasonable business? I live in Chicagoland and wondering if it's something I can actually do. I'm a disabled vet and get quite a bit of help from benefits for SBA loans and whatnot. [link] [comments]  |
| "The Lean Startup" By Eric Ries | Animated Summary. Hope you find it useful. Posted: 06 Sep 2021 04:21 AM PDT Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6QPZp--lJE I've done summaries of other books like:
If you're interested and want to subscribe here's a link:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfbLDMh6uGOZePAfqqjVZ-g?sub_confirmation=1 If you'd prefer to read the script instead of watching the video, here it is: The Lean Startup By Erick Reis The Book's Main Idea The book's main goal is to help readers avoid the number one mistake that makes start-ups fail i.e. launching a product or a service without the entrepreneur knowing who the product's customer is and what those customers really want. To quote the author: "Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer's problem" Erick Reis You can get this book for free with a trial of audible using the link in the description of this video. Subscribe and turn on the notification bell so you don't miss any future summaries. The Lean Start-up focuses on teaching readers how to better their start-up businesses by exposing them to a new way of thinking that is able to mitigate their risk going forward which automatically increases their likelihood of finding a product that sticks. The book does that through introducing the readers to a systematic and scientific method that enables them to get all the information they need to make fast and decisive decisions when starting a business. "The ability to learn faster from customers is the essential competitive advantage that start-ups must possess"' Erick Reis A Look at the Main Topics Discussed In the Book Here is a taste of what to expect from the three phrases of the book.
In the book, Reis, through his experience, explains why start-ups fail. He tries to make readers understand that the battle for a successful start-up is first lost in the vision where entrepreneurs follow a conventional approach of starting a business; which dictates that immediately they get an idea and it has been approved by either their friends or family, the idea becomes legit and ready to be launched in the market. According to the Lean Start-up, the conventional approach is wrong because it makes entrepreneurs launch start-ups based on untested assumptions, which increase the possibility of them creating a perfect product that nobody wants. Reis says that the first goal of a start-up is to figure out the right thing to build, the thing that customers will want and will be willing to pay for as quickly as possible. Under the topic of vision, Reis teaches the readers how to kick start a start-up the right way. He uses a super formula, which makes the reader better at starting a successful business. Here is a glimpse of the formula.
This phase the book focuses on teaching the reader how to steer his/her start-up business through using the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop formula. In the book, Reis says the lean start-up methodology is based on a cycle of rinse and repeat; the build-measure-learn. What the reader is taught from the steer phase is how:
In the book, Reis uses the vision and steer phases to set a foundation for the reader's last move to take to have a successful start-up, which is acceleration. In acceleration, Reis teaches the reader how he can move past the feedback loop faster and go on to set the innovation and growth ball rolling. Under accelerate Reis focuses on teaching the reader the following topics.
Conclusion The big take away from the book, 'The Lean Start-up' is; entrepreneurship is management so for the reader to succeed in it, they need to manage their start-up business as the institution it is and avoid jumping head first into ideas. [link] [comments]  |
| How to find more business consultants? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 01:43 PM PDT I do niche web design and development for business consultants but it's difficult to find many locally or generally. I was wondering if anyone has advice on finding your specific niche online or perhaps specifically for consultants. Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Best bank to open an account for startups in the US Posted: 06 Sep 2021 07:43 AM PDT I recently formed LLC in Florida state while I'm not in the US. Anyone can recommend foreign startup friendly banks in the USA? All the best [link] [comments]  |
| I need your help increasing my client list Posted: 06 Sep 2021 01:36 PM PDT I've recently started an IT outsourcing company (both individual projects and dedicated teams), and have been trying to figure out what the best way of finding CEOs and company leaders that need these services might be. I've had some luck in the past but scouring through lists on LinkedIn hasn't been enough. I hope one of you guys here could provide an input on how I can find people that need what I have to offer. Thanks in advance. PS: The size of the companies I'm currently targeting have between 1-100 employees [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:54 AM PDT This subreddit is perfect for figuring out better solutions and creating alternatives. Openly giving out the problems we are facing in this tough crisis. [link] [comments]  |
| The framework to create a Stellar Pitch Deck ( After creating 100s of Decks) Posted: 06 Sep 2021 04:22 AM PDT A great pitch deck reads like a great poem: it summarizes well what inherently resists summary. Decks are 'Emotion transfer vehicles': do it with data, videos, or your delivery, but make the audience feelwhat you feel for your company. No Pitch is perfect. It keeps evolving over time and different series of funding stage from Angel to Pre Series A to Series A as the process is a Marathon Here are certain pointers (Slide wise) to keep in mind while creating your deck to raise your next round of funding
For designs, check out this link. Hope it helps the community [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2021 11:43 AM PDT I burned out on the city, the work, etc, and moved on. It is a computer repair business. I ran it, alone, from various locations (often my home) for a decade or so in Portland, OR. Even though I've been gone from that town for 8 months or so, I still get plenty of inquiries, all day, everyday... maintaining the top spot on both yelp and google. The listing gets 40k hits a month. The kicker, I kept no books. I have no storefront. What inventory I had, I took with me. So, basically what I'm trying to sell is, the google listing and the yelp listing, the website domain... etc. I know it's worth money... I was making 50k a year whilst taking long vacations from even answering my phone... I just don't know how to sell it... any advice would be greatly appreciated. cheers [link] [comments]  |
| Got access to a free warehouse. Now what? Posted: 05 Sep 2021 06:20 PM PDT A buddy's dad owns a warehouse complete with trucks, materials, etc. He's not going to be using it for the foreseeable future and said we could use it. We were thinking about going in on wholesaling some products, but how would you play this? [link] [comments]  |
| Would anyone here have use for wholesale web design & development? Posted: 06 Sep 2021 10:58 AM PDT I usually just do retail/sell directly to my clients who are B2C. But recently I've made some connections with B2B people that don't offer web design & development but want to or were planning on it. So I'm very curious if I should pursue more of these B2B clients vs B2C clients. So I thought I would ask if anyone here would have a need or you think other small businesses would have a need for wholesale websites? [link] [comments]  |
| Cheapest place for shelf boxes Posted: 06 Sep 2021 06:53 AM PDT Hey all, I'm looking for boxes to put on my metal shelving units, the boxes should measure 24"Lx16"wx12"/13" deep (high) (this would allow me to fit two per shelf) does anyone know where to find the best deals on such boxes, I spect some corrugated cardboard ones out on Uline, but the shipping charges brought the price up a ton. [link] [comments]  |
| An advice on how to create working routine for a new company. Posted: 05 Sep 2021 10:39 PM PDT Hello guys I hope you're doing great, I recently started an import/export company, specializing in commodities. right now our work is somewhat unorganized we're finding deals online, or from people that we personally know. I want to know if there's a systemic work method, if not how to create one, any books or resources on the matter, any help is much appreciated :) [link] [comments]  |
| This is an easy way to validate your MVP before writing code Posted: 06 Sep 2021 01:48 PM PDT
*culled from Andrew Gazdecki [link] [comments]  |
| New Business *Any advice and all advice needed* Posted: 06 Sep 2021 10:00 AM PDT Hello, A little background about myself. I've been in the auto industry for 13 years. I've seen a lot of scenarios, asked a lot of questions and have been in a lot of situations while dealing with vehicle services and purchases. I've worked for good amount of dealerships and continue to work for a local dealership in my area. My idea that is a work in process at this time based of concerns I've experienced:
*At some point I would love to work with dealerships and request a monthly referral fee for my services and providing business. Dealership services:
MY PROBLEM:
What I'm good at:
I have a basic concept of what is needed and how to do this. I'm very excited about this idea and I'm so ready to get this going. Thank you everyone for reading and your help. -Bryan Auto service Hunter [link] [comments]  |
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