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Any tricks to finding a quality business partner?

Social media marketing, advertising, and growth

JAJT

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150k net profit - take out taxes.... the rest ALL goes to family living expenses (family of 4) so no....... no room to hire employees

Here's the thing about being an entrepreneur that's never stressed enough:

You can't live on 100% of your profits if you want to grow. It's just not realistic.

If you spend 100 bucks to make 200 bucks, live on the profit of 100 and put the other 100 back into your business - where have you moved? Nowhere. You'll do this for eternity.

I've made the mistake of living on profits earlier than I should have in my businesses in the past and it was a hard lesson to learn.

Honestly, I don't know where you live or what you do but if we take away, say, 30% for taxes, you are living on $105k for a family of 4!! That may not be a millionaire's lifestyle but that should be pretty damn comfortable for most people. Surely there's room to cut back.

Can your wife pick up a job for a while? Are your kids old enough to work?

The point is you need to get uncomfortable, cut back, and start re-investing profit for growth. Imagine how much further ahead your business would be if you could take that 105k and dump 100% of it back into the business? That's what you are giving up by living on the profits.

Edit: Actually, you'd have closer to 150k, not 105k to re-invest because you re-invest BEFORE taxes, lowering your tax burden significantly. Obviously talk to your accountant for the real numbers here but the point is if you reinvest you lower your tax burden and can put more of it to good use. By living on the profits you are evaporating cash into the government that you could be putting to better use.

If you could cut back your expenses by 20-30-40-50% for even a year or so, it would suck, but if investing 20k into advertising could bring you 20k more profit - now you are starting to get out from under the wave crashing on you and you can start moving into a better direction where you work ON your business instead of IN your business.

Just food for thought.
 
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Scot

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So, you’re making $300k in revenues but can’t afford to hire anyone?

Why not contract out what you can’t manage?

Need digital marketing? That’s $1500-2000 a month with guaranteed ROI

You can hire out affiliates, SEO, even backend admin and accounting for a fraction of what it would cost to hire a full time employee.

Are you sure you want to give up 50% (or any chunk) of your business just to do day to day tasks?
 

lowtek

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If you're making 6 figures in gross and can't find the revenue to hire an employee, then you gotta fix your bottom line first.

If you have no profit to share with the partner, why would they want to come on to do the tasks described? None of them will generate profit, since it doesn't fix the problem between the top and bottom lines.

If you had profit, then why would you want to share profit with someone when you can just hire an employee to do it?
 

CareCPA

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Area where I need help --- No clue how to hire all this out.....

150k net profit - take out taxes.... the rest ALL goes to family living expenses (family of 4) so no....... no room to hire employees
You often get to a point in business where you know you need to hire things out, but you're only bringing in enough revenue to equal a salary for yourself.
That's the point where you cut expenses, save up a small cushion, and bite the bullet to hire/outsource. It's painful, it's stressful, but at some point it needs to be done. Some of the more experienced guys here will tell you to hire/outsource way earlier than you think you can (I think @amp0193 has said this in the past).

I would not hire an employee for marketing if you don't know how to do it yourself (how would you know if your employee was actually accomplishing anything?). Don't bring on an employee at your size unless you have the knowledge to teach them their job - you can't afford anyone experienced full-time that can hit the ground running.I would bring on a marketing consultant as @Scot mentioned above. Find one with a proven track record and convincing testimonials. Ask for references, some were already mentioned.

If done right, marketing will increase your business (duh, that's kind of the point), so this is one of those "short term pain for long term gain" type of scenarios.
 

Andy Black

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Hmmm... I'll just brain-dump in no particular order:


From the book "The ONE Thing":
  • What's The ONE Thing you can do in your business that, if done, will make everything else unnecessary or easier to do?
  • If you don't know what your ONE Thing is, then your ONE Thing is working out what your ONE Thing is.

80/20 analysis:
  • What marketing channel and funnel is working best for you? What if you doubled down on that?
  • What marketing channels are not working well for you? What if you paused them for the moment?
  • Where's the biggest leak in your main funnel?
  • What product is making you the most money?
  • Who are your best customers? Can you find more of them? What if you doubled the number of your best customers?
  • Which of your customers are the biggest drain? What if you cut them?
  • What small change would move the needle the most for you?

Customer LTV:

Monthly subscriptions:
  • Do your customers/clients signup and pay you in automated monthly recurring payments?
  • If not, what can you offer them that they can pay monthly for?

Your business infrastructure:
  • This consists of your People, Processes, and Technology (and I think in that order of importance).
  • Start giving small pieces of work out? Ideally to someone who'll do a better job than you, but even if you delegate/outsource to a junior/VA then reducing some of your coal-face workload will help you work on your business.
  • I prefer dealing with freelancers/contractors. They have more initiative and are more fun to be around anyway.
  • Work with good people and they'll develop and document your processes, and then your technology.
  • Work with lower skilled people or those with less initiative and you'll likely have to develop the processes and technology for them to use - before you hire them.
  • Personally, I'll only take on employees after my processes and technology are such that I can use lower skilled people. My job as a business owner isn't to employ people though, so that's not a "goal" of mine. I'll only do it if it makes sense.
  • Treat each piece of work you hand out as a small test to see how well that person does. You may have to kiss a lot of frogs.
  • Bear in mind that "The person who'll run with the ball is the person who catches it." Keeness beats expertise in my experience.
  • Have you documented your main processes and written repeatable SOPs? (Bear in mind it's not really repeatable until someone else can do it.)
  • Do you have an asset register listing all your SOPs?

You:
  • Are you selling the wrong product? (You're selling the wrong product (4 mins))
  • Do you have trusted peers you can bounce ideas off? A mastermind? Maybe even give some more info here and let forum members bounce ideas off you?
 

Andy Black

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You often get to a point in business where you know you need to hire things out, but you're only bringing in enough revenue to equal a salary for yourself.
That's the point where you cut expenses, save up a small cushion, and bite the bullet to hire/outsource. It's painful, it's stressful, but at some point it needs to be done. Some of the more experienced guys here will tell you to hire/outsource way earlier than you think you can (I think @amp0193 has said this in the past).
The first thing I outsourced was my book-keeping and accounts. What a relief.

Then I hired a freelance developer to do all that stuff I was getting bogged down at.

Then a graphic designer.

All of the above produce at a level I have no hope of attaining, and do the work I shouldn't have been doing as the business owner anyway.


A couple of thought provoking lines from James Schramko's book and/or podcast (I can't remember where):
  1. If you're still logging into your website you're doing it wrong.
  2. Can you just work from your phone?
I'm trying to work mostly from my phone. That means outsourcing and delegating more of the coal-face work. I don't think I will or even should outsource my super-power. I think that would be dumb. But I'll encapsulate my skills and experience into processes and technology so that lesser skilled team members can leverage them.
 
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Andy Black

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How & Where do you find a solid LONG term partner who you can trust that actually has a proven track record, knows what they are doing, not out to scam/lie/cheat/steal and make a quick buck?


Must be some preferred more reliable way to seek out a partner that I'm missing other than taking out ads on various forums and hoping to get lucky?
To answer this specifically:

Baby steps.

You didn't take out an ad to find your wife.

You didn't ask her to marry you on the first date (I'm guessing).


Do work with lots of people. Your team will reveal themselves. Maybe even someone you can partner with officially.

Personally, I'm in a small team of freelancers. We have a common vision, and we move faster when we combine our skillsets. We're partners in that a rising tide lifts all boats, but we've all got our own business entities.



EDIT: It sounds to me like you've built a job, and now could be the time where you evolve into a business owner? BTW... I'm in this transition. It's a journey and it doesn't happen overnight.
 

amp0193

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I would not hire an employee for marketing if you don't know how to do it yourself (how would you know if your employee was actually accomplishing anything?). Don't bring on an employee at your size unless you have the knowledge to teach them their job - you can't afford anyone experienced full-time that can hit the ground running.

It's not that you need to be able to teach them their job. You just need to have a base level of knowledge to be able to understand, communicate, and evaluate.

Ideally, you are hiring people who are smarter than you, and are more capable than you are.
 

Andy Black

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Here's the thing about being an entrepreneur that's never stressed enough:

You can't live on 100% of your profits if you want to grow. It's just not realistic.

If you spend 100 bucks to make 200 bucks, live on the profit of 100 and put the other 100 back into your business - where have you moved? Nowhere. You'll do this for eternity.

I've made the mistake of living on profits earlier than I should have in my businesses in the past and it was a hard lesson to learn.

Honestly, I don't know where you live or what you do but if we take away, say, 30% for taxes, you are living on $70k for a family of 4. That may not be a millionaire's lifestyle but surely there's room to cut back.

Can your wife pick up a job for a while? Are your kids old enough to work?

The point is you need to get uncomfortable, cut back, and start re-investing profit for growth. Imagine how much further ahead your business would be if you could take that 70k and dump 100% of it back into the business? That's what you are giving up by living on the profits.

If you could cut back your expenses by 20-30-40-50% for even a year or so, it would suck, but if investing 20k into advertising could bring you 20k more profit - now you are starting to get out from under the wave crashing on you and you can start moving into a better direction where you work ON your business instead of IN your business.

Just food for thought.
^^^ This.

And earning more (for the same hours).
 
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Scot

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If you’re looking for SEO or ads, several forum members here do those services and could either quote you or give you tips to contracting them out. @Ungodly @Andy Black @eliquid

Honestly, just google “how to hire an online marketing agency” and that can answer most of your questions.
 
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CareCPA

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...
Ideally, you are hiring people who are smarter than you, and are more capable than you are.
100% agree with this part.
My post was based on the assumption that with limited funds, you would get the best bang for your buck with a firm that specializes in this area. Maybe someone has some good data on whether or not that assumption is accurate?
 
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eqttrdr

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If you're making 6 figures in gross and can't find the revenue to hire an employee, then you gotta fix your bottom line first.

If you have no profit to share with the partner, why would they want to come on to do the tasks described? None of them will generate profit, since it doesn't fix the problem between the top and bottom lines.

If you had profit, then why would you want to share profit with someone when you can just hire an employee to do it?

150k net profit, less taxes....

Employee is going to ask me how to do everything.....

NO clue how to do social media marketing, how to scale, how to best organize and grow...
 

eqttrdr

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--- So if I need to hire someone to examine our business structure/funnels to see if we can improve in certain areas...

Who is that? a business consultant?

I see other competitors with different structures than we have currently and may want to reposition ourselves accordingly.

Sorry.. just really lost as to the correct way to do things from this point.

Established a business, proven the market... just literally have no clue from this point on how to correctly position/market/scale
 

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@eqttrdr where are you located in US? PM me.
 

Roli

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Let's say you have an new online business that was doing well, proven to convert, happy customers who want more to buy, 1% refund rate, know all your KPI's...

$300k in gross sales last 8 months...

Its just you... and you alone doing everything...

- You have all the creatives, assets, content, lead magnets, tripwires, front and back end products, website, CRM, full funnels, emails, copy, lists, and its all already in place.

- However your 15 years of experience lies in the niche itself, the day to day customer facing operations, back-end sales, content creation, with emphasis on delivering massive value running the online digital business.

- Despite your best efforts you need help in all aspects of marketing, specifically social media marketing, growing the new customer base, recruiting affiliates, scaling, PPC, SEO, SEM, getting targeted traffic, promotions, contests, giveaways, etc.. and assistance implementing, what to do with new content, etc..

- You don't have nearly enough cash reserves to hire specific employees but are looking to take on a revshare partner whose knowledge lies in the areas that your doesn't and vice versa. To take an already existing proven business and help scale in exchange for some sort of Rev-share arrangement.

- You want to partner with someone who isn't going to waste your time and as you have no intention of wasting theirs. Step in to an already existing operation and work together to take it to the next level. Everyone makes ever increasing money while customers remain satisfied and want to consume more and more.

- You have a vision for taking the current 6 figure sales to multiple 7 or 8 figures and know its going to take a TEAM to get there.

- You want that partner in the USA where you are located.



QUESTION:


How & Where do you find a solid LONG term partner who you can trust that actually has a proven track record, knows what they are doing, not out to scam/lie/cheat/steal and make a quick buck?


Must be some preferred more reliable way to seek out a partner that I'm missing other than taking out ads on various forums and hoping to get lucky?



Any suggestions or direction is greatly appreciated.


Thanks and blessings!

It sounds like you have created a job around yourself, whereby you are the unreasonable boss that you have to satisfy (I did a similar thing once).

The first thing you need to realise is that you are not asking for a business partner, you are asking for a fellow employee to come and get stressed out with you.

But I believe that you know this, you must have been thinking that as you typed the line - $300k gross profit in 8 months ....I can't afford an employee. (Erm, yes you can).

@JAJT's advice, coupled with @Andy Black is the best on this thread. You simply have to stop spending so much and start hiring people, one of the excuses for not doing that is because you'd have to show them how to do stuff; so what?

Isn't it better to spend 1 or 2, or more weeks showing someone a system, which then frees up dozens of hours per week for you, than to just keep spinning round and round in circles getting more and more stressed until you burnout?

You need to be honest with yourself, is this ever going to be a business whereby you can sit back and watch the cash roll in; or are you always going to be on call no matter what? If it's the first, then great take the advice above, if not, start making plans to do other things, or just accept your lot and be happy spending $150k per year.

Good luck whatever your decision is, the stress you're feeling really comes across...oh and I say this to everyone in your position, read the 4Hour Work Week.
 

masterneme

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I don't have any experience with this but I know many successful software companies that when hiring someone they don't look for people with a specific education, degree, or whatever, they talk about their problems and hire those with the ability to solve them.

It's the Fastlane in reverse.
 

eqttrdr

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Let's say you have an new online business that was doing well, proven to convert, happy customers who want more to buy, 1% refund rate, know all your KPI's...

$300k in gross sales last 8 months...

Its just you... and you alone doing everything...

- You have all the creatives, assets, content, lead magnets, tripwires, front and back end products, website, CRM, full funnels, emails, copy, lists, and its all already in place.

- However your 15 years of experience lies in the niche itself, the day to day customer facing operations, back-end sales, content creation, with emphasis on delivering massive value running the online digital business.

- Despite your best efforts you need help in all aspects of marketing, specifically social media marketing, growing the new customer base, recruiting affiliates, scaling, PPC, SEO, SEM, getting targeted traffic, promotions, contests, giveaways, etc.. and assistance implementing, what to do with new content, etc..

- You don't have nearly enough cash reserves to hire specific employees but are looking to take on a revshare partner whose knowledge lies in the areas that your doesn't and vice versa. To take an already existing proven business and help scale in exchange for some sort of Rev-share arrangement.

- You want to partner with someone who isn't going to waste your time and as you have no intention of wasting theirs. Step in to an already existing operation and work together to take it to the next level. Everyone makes ever increasing money while customers remain satisfied and want to consume more and more.

- You have a vision for taking the current 6 figure sales to multiple 7 or 8 figures and know its going to take a TEAM to get there.

- You want that partner in the USA where you are located.



QUESTION:


How & Where do you find a solid LONG term partner who you can trust that actually has a proven track record, knows what they are doing, not out to scam/lie/cheat/steal and make a quick buck?


Must be some preferred more reliable way to seek out a partner that I'm missing other than taking out ads on various forums and hoping to get lucky?



Any suggestions or direction is greatly appreciated.


Thanks and blessings!
 
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eqttrdr

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So, you’re making $300k in revenues but can’t afford to hire anyone?

Why not contract out what you can’t manage?

Need digital marketing? That’s $1500-2000 a month with guaranteed ROI

You can hire out affiliates, SEO, even backend admin and accounting for a fraction of what it would cost to hire a full time employee.

Are you sure you want to give up 50% (or any chunk) of your business just to do day to day tasks?


Area where I need help --- No clue how to hire all this out.....

150k net profit - take out taxes.... the rest ALL goes to family living expenses (family of 4) so no....... no room to hire employees
 
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GoGetter24

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One option is merging. Any competitors or others in a similar space who might be in a similar situation? But who might have complementary skills?

Recall that Paypal came out of a merger. They had like half a dozen partners after they absorbed Musk's company.
 
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