Ask 8-figure business owners for personalized advice!

[NeoDialectic]

My business partner and I recently sold our successful online business for 8 figures. You can see @fastlane_dad intro page here, and mine here. We have had businesses in alot of categories, but have limited experience in old fashion "shaking hands" type businesses. Our primary expertise is online sales, marketing, marketplaces like Amazon (and others), bootstrapping, and mindset. One way we want to give back to the community is by guiding people that are still on their entrepreneurship path.

We figured one of the more impactful ways we can do it is by answering peoples questions publically versus in DM's or personal consultations. So if you want our opinion/advice about your personal situation, we will be happy to read through your questions and give you a personalized answer. But it has to be public. That way everyone can read and discuss our answers. If we don't have experience in a topic, we will let you know.

 

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[NeoDialectic]

Hey thank you for sharing your story and offering your help!

Since you ran a business with a partner, I would like to ask, what are some of the qualities that you look for in a business partner? What are your thoughts on doing business with friends?

This is a pretty large topic, but here it goes. There are probably 2 seperate questions here.

1. What traits do BOTH partners have to possess to foster a healthy business partnership
2. What qualities/skills in a business partner mesh well with your qualities/skills

I think the following traits are very important for #1

• Capable of setting boundaries
• Capable of being confrontational and standing up for yourself
• Capable of separating the friendship and the business partnership
• Be willing to compromise
• Have their ego in control

All these traits build a foundation to the partnership. Alot can be written on each of them, but to me, they allow the partners to be able to set expectations of each other and resolve issues when expectations change or are unmet. Most people focus on the first part, but find out when it's too late that the only constant in business is change and their partnership can't adapt to the shifting landscape.

Moving onto #2.

The following are a list of things that would facilitate a less rocky partnership

• Your goals and values should be aligned
• You should have similar financial habits
• You should have similar work ethics
• You should have compatible power mindsets. It's NOT OK if both people are stubborn leaders as they will bump heads eventually. It's NOT OK if both people are passive as this will hamper decision making. It's OK if one person like to take lead and the other prefers to follow. Its probably most IDEAL if both people have leadership qualities that they can exert, but also don't mind taking the backseat if the situation calls for it. This last one describes @fastlane_dad and I partnership and is probably one of our biggest strengths. We are both very easy going, but grab the reins when needed.

The follow are a list of things that would make 1+1=3 in a partnership

• Specializing in separate skills. This refers to things you guys know how to do or specifically like to do.
• Having different iritations. This refers to things neither of you may specifically like to do but don't mind doing

I haven't wrote specifically about this topic in the past, so I'm sure I am missing a few things. This is a good start to get you thinking in the right direction though. The advice to not start a business with friends is generally good advice. But that is simply because most people can't separate business & friendship and people also have very different personal financial habits that may not be immediately apparent. So it's not just because something is inherently wrong with starting a business with a friend.

It's no accident that alot of what I said is just basics of how to have GOOD RELATIONSHIPS in general. A business relationship brings additional intricacies, but many of the requirements are similar to building any type of relationship with someone.

Keep in mind that this advice is based on you wanting a long term good business relationship. Plenty of partnerships work long enough for people to become successful and then break up. But they were still successful so it's not the biggest deal. So it may be OK to get into business with someone that doesn't fit all your criteria. You just have to be cognizant of this and plan accordingly.

 

[NeoDialectic]

Thanks for contributing!

1) What's your process on validating ideas and when or how do you know it's a dud / move on to next idea?
2) Is it still a good time to get into ecom despite huge shipping costs eating into margin and logistical barriers?

Cheers!!

1)

We like to call your selling point "the rub". It could be a new marketplace, a new product, a new marketing strategy for existing products, etc... Depending on which of these things you are validating, the process could be wildly different. If I had to distill it down to some basics that they all share it would be:

1. Figure out what aspect of your entire business is providing the differentiating massive real or perceived value
2. Find a way to provide that value but using the easiest/fastest/cheapest way were you may be very far from satisfied from the end result but it "gets the job done"
3. See if there is any response at all. A strong response is a win, a weak response where you break even is a win, a weak response where you barely get any sales or a response where you don't get sales is a lose.
4. If you lose, you can try another iteration or two to modify some variable. Otherwise you move on from that idea.

A lose does NOT mean that the idea isn't workable. It just means that under the conditions you tested it, the value you are providing isn't so large that it overcomes alot of the other issues. When you are just starting a business, don't you want to stack the deck so you run with something that has alot of market demand as it is? MJ kind of talks about this when he says the product should have a pull instead of you trying to push it on people.

So I can give you an example of this when the rub is the product. Lets say you realize how much of a hassle it is to always have to lug out your huge vacuum to clean your car. You look online and there are no such thing as portable car vacuums. It sounds like a GREAT idea, but I wouldn't invest 10s of thousands of dollars into developing one. The first thing I would do is find the smallest vacuum that is on the market and find a cigarette lighter inverter. I would make a marketplace listing for "portable car vacuum" and when something sells I would send that combination. Many people would point out all the flaws... Yea. There is a ton. Everything from poor conversions because of unprofessional looking product page to customers not being too happy that they paid X amount for what turned out to be a jerry rigged solution. You would likely be surprised to find that most people would still be happy with your product because it solved their issue and that is really what they cared about. But the most important thing is that you got a real world signal. You found out that people ARE looking for portable car vacuums and they ARE willing to actually pay for it. Then depending on the response I would invest either a little to make a beta version and keep testing or invest as much as needed to make a well thought out final product. So if the response was ok but not overwhelming, I would find a company that makes generic vacuums and contract them to just add a cigarette lighter transformer directly into the unit. It will still not live up to your dream of a product you would be proud of and one that would impress customers. But it will now be a professional looking package and that should raise conversions and give you a clearer signal.

2)

Absolutely. What does shipping cost and logistics have to do with anything? If it costs you more, you just charge more. That's how inflation happens, but that's a macroeconomics problem, not yours. If you are referring to just finding junk on Alibaba and trying to resell it; that's been a dying "new business" strategy for 2 decades. Chinese companies are selling directly to consumer on Amazon and you will never beat them on price. Everything's possible with enough ingenuity, but this isn't the type of business we are talking about here. I personally would always recommend against getting into a business where you have to compete on price, unless you found some kind of ingenious solution to make it 10x cheaper yourself.

 

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[NeoDialectic]

@NeoDialectic appreciate you giving back!
would like to setup a call with you and the wife to help with her amazon arbitrage biz. how to 10x what she is doing.
i'll dm

ZCP, at the current time we aren't doing any private consultations. But we would love to answer any questions or discuss openly on the forums so that everyone can get value from it.

I currently run a home services company and it's doing just fine I don't plan on selling on amazon. But I know for a fact that 80% of the young dudes who don't have a business who stumble upon this post are going to be thinking almost the exact same thing and will be combing through any content from you looking for some "how" information.

For example if you ask me about how to succeed in my industry I could talk for 15 pages and I actually have done that on threads on here where I just completely dump everything I know onto the page and provide value. How to get sales, best avenues for doing so, what to offer, what not to offer, etc. Literally everything from managing employees and hiring, to customer service and software we use, down to the details like how we price things and why.

It's difficult to word the question correctly since I'm not the one who knows how to make a shit ton of money on Amazon, you are.

What specifically are the things that you do when finding a product, deciding what to do and what not to do, how you go about sourcing things, etc. If you can list software you use, tricks you've learned, and other things of that nature, it would be infinitely more valuable than any entrepreneur cliches. We've pretty much all read the book here, nobody is going to appreciate "just provide value, follow cents, work hard".

For example, if I said "you have 90 days to make money on amazon starting with 10k and none of the other products you've put on there before" with a gun to your head, what would steps 1-10 be? That's what I'm asking.

Good points! Thank you for your feedback. @fastlane_dad and I will have to discuss this and get back to this thread with these details. Maybe it would be even better to start a new thread offering a detailed sample process of exactly how we would create a new product for Amazon from start to finish. Step by step, as you mentioned.

 

[NeoDialectic]

Let's say you're a young dude in his early 20's and want to start selling stuff online and have a profitable store on Amazon or some online marketplace. You're patient, willing to learn anything, but starting with no experience. What would you do from square 1 to get started?

Read MJ's books.

/End post

But honestly.....It's not about reading 10x more books to gather 10x more theoretical knowledge, hoping that some idea will just magically appear in your brain. It's about doing. Making money selling on Amazon is similar to making money anywhere. Obviously there are some unique properties or strategies. But at the end of the day it's about providing real or perceived value.

If you are dry for ideas, I would actively try to find a few hobbies that you can dive into. As soon as you are exposed to these new worlds, you will see there is opportunity everywhere and somehow everyone is flush with cash to buy thing they shouldn't be able to afford! Try to come up with solutions to common complaints or even complaints you have once you are immersed in the hobby. This could be physical products, educational products, literature, entertainment, etc.. Most will be bad ideas but hopefully one will eventually be a good idea. You just keep trying until one sticks.

It's been a very long time since I read his thread so I may get details wrong , but @biophase detailed how he successful grew a business by just improving on a a product with existing DIRECT competition. He didn't invent the ghillie suit. It was probably invented over a century ago! He just took peoples complaints of products currently in the market and made small alterations to address those complaints. That's it. Simple, but not easy. Nothing outside of what you are comfortable with and already doing every day is ever easy.

 

[Johnny boy]

I've thought about this some more and I don't think I gave you as good of a reply as I could have.

Can you answer the following things:

• What is your square one?
• What are you currently doing to come up with ideas?
• Have you tried listing anything on Amazon or online before? No? Have you ever sold anything anywhere before?
• What skills do you currently have and do you have any strengths or strong interests?
• What experience or skills do you think you are lacking that is stopping you from advancing?

I currently run a home services company and it's doing just fine I don't plan on selling on amazon. But I know for a fact that 80% of the young dudes who don't have a business who stumble upon this post are going to be thinking almost the exact same thing and will be combing through any content from you looking for some "how" information.

For example if you ask me about how to succeed in my industry I could talk for 15 pages and I actually have done that on threads on here where I just completely dump everything I know onto the page and provide value. How to get sales, best avenues for doing so, what to offer, what not to offer, etc. Literally everything from managing employees and hiring, to customer service and software we use, down to the details like how we price things and why.

It's difficult to word the question correctly since I'm not the one who knows how to make a shit ton of money on Amazon, you are.

What specifically are the things that you do when finding a product, deciding what to do and what not to do, how you go about sourcing things, etc. If you can list software you use, tricks you've learned, and other things of that nature, it would be infinitely more valuable than any entrepreneur cliches. We've pretty much all read the book here, nobody is going to appreciate "just provide value, follow cents, work hard".

For example, if I said "you have 90 days to make money on amazon starting with 10k and none of the other products you've put on there before" with a gun to your head, what would steps 1-10 be? That's what I'm asking.

 

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[NeoDialectic]

Hi NeoDialectic! I appreciate you investing your time into others by sharing your experience, knowledge and wisdom.

That wasn't intended to be a segue but since we find ourselves here....
Have you worked with financial investors or have you been an investor in other companies?
If yes to either one, what advice would you give in regards to finding an investor who sees what you see for the future of your company?
If an investor wants a percentage of the company, how do you determine what that percentage would be?

So far my investor experience is this:
(#1)- A family member gave me $5K to do as I see best with it and not wanting any of it back.
(#2)- A friend of a friend of a friend is willing to invest $10K that I can repay with no interest. He doesn't want to own any percentage but wants me change some things to his liking. His 'liking' has no idea what he talking about so the money is still on the table.
(#3)- A man who invests for a living wanted to invest $60K (3 x $20K) and have 49% of the company. He backed out shortly after Covid hit.

I am not convinced that I will need an investor but these questions come up in my thinker now and then.

Again, thank you for your time and I look forward to your response.

We manage our money now and invest it. But it kind of sounds like you are asking about angel investing or finding funding. If that is the case then unfortunately I can't help you there. I don't have the proper experience to feel good about giving any confident guidance.

Since we are here though, I can tell you my opinion on what I would be most comfortable doing personally and the reasoning I'd have for it. Which may be wrong on average and/or wrong for you. Again, I don't have direct experience in finding funding.

The #1 thing I would do is not take any investments from people I know. However if you do need it, then you need it. Guy #1, I would take his money since it is no strings attached and do my best to make sure I make it worth his generosity. Guy #2, I would not take his money. I would never cede control over trivial amounts of investments, but even if you need it, I wouldn't cede control and I would negotiate for him to either trust your instinct or not. Guy #2. The usual "don't take investment $$ unless you need to" applies. BUT, in certain circumstances I would definitely take investment from a seasoned vet even if I didn't need the money. The purpose would be to tap into his experience and network that could help the business. For example, I would take money from the guys on shark tank just because I know that they will immediately make some calls and get the product into X, Y, Z stores. That is an invaluable asset to the business regardless of what they invested.

 

[NeoDialectic]

Let's say you're a young dude in his early 20's and want to start selling stuff online and have a profitable store on Amazon or some online marketplace. You're patient, willing to learn anything, but starting with no experience. What would you do from square 1 to get started?

I've thought about this some more and I don't think I gave you as good of a reply as I could have.

Can you answer the following things:

• What is your square one?
• What are you currently doing to come up with ideas?
• Have you tried listing anything on Amazon or online before? No? Have you ever sold anything anywhere before?
• What skills do you currently have and do you have any strengths or strong interests?
• What experience or skills do you think you are lacking that is stopping you from advancing?

Okay I'll ask a different way.

What specifically did YOU sell on amazon that did well?

As is typical of asset sales.....We are bound by a non-disclosure agreement from discussing what we sold.

What I can tell you is that we have sold products on Amazon in the following categories: beauty, health, personal care & automotive

 

[Johnny boy]

@fastlane_dad and I will have to discuss this and get back to this thread with these details. Maybe it would be even better to start a new thread offering a detailed sample process of exactly how we would create a new product for Amazon from start to finish. Step by step, as you mentioned.

that would be extremely valuable to many many people here

 

[Antifragile]

Maybe it would be even better to start a new thread offering a detailed sample process of exactly how we would create a new product for Amazon from start to finish. Step by step, as you mentioned.

IF it is possible it would probably provide immense value to many forum members. I say “if” because for my business I debated how to add value here and the best I could do is offer an AMA thread. That’s because it would take me a three volume book to share everything ”step by step”, no two projects are the same, no two municipalities have same zoning or step-code requirement. Marketing alone is a book, so is construction, so is financing and that’s just “intro”. I am not sure how it was for you and the Amazon focused business. But I venture a guess that you’d spend a lot of time typing to provide a step by step process for a new product.

Great to see you and your partner here and contributing. Keep it up, it’s good karma.

 

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[BizyDad]

IF it is possible it would probably provide immense value to many forum members. I say “if” because for my business I debated how to add value here and the best I could do is offer an AMA thread. That’s because it would take me a three volume book to share everything ”step by step”, no two projects are the same, no two municipalities have same zoning or step-code requirement. Marketing alone is a book, so is construction, so is financing and that’s just “intro”. I am not sure how it was for you and the Amazon focused business. But I venture a guess that you’d spend a lot of time typing to provide a step by step process for a new product.

Great to see you and your partner here and contributing. Keep it up, it’s good karma.

Put me down for one order of your three volume book set...

 

[fastlane_dad]

I'll give this a shot. Idea is for a startup that provides small businesses with no HR presence yet with documentation relating to onboarding, off-boarding, etc. My partner is the HR expert, and I will take care of building the website initially. I've tried to work through the CENTS model to evaluate whether it's fastlane or not and I'm just not sure.

Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated!

Sure - I guess more so then anything I don't understand the product yet and have loads of questions.

Is the product 'documentation' strictly or is there more to it? Is there software that goes along with it? Outsourced phone support of any sort?

What will your website offer? How do you plan on establishing the 'need' in the marketplace and testing out your idea?

How will you achieve scale on this - my assumptions would be through advertising? Word of Mouth? What are your initial marketing plans once this is all up and running?

These are some of the things you have to work and think through many times before sitting down at the computer to begin any sort of work moving forward.

Many of businesses' CAN be directed or turned into a CENTS business either initially or down the road - it just all depends on what you are selling and how you will go about it.

 

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[NeoDialectic]

that would be extremely valuable to many many people here

As promised, I have made a post here addressing your questions and recommendations. So far I only covered the Idea generation part. I went through the entire process already and took notes along the way. So I was going to cover it all at once in the first post, but it took an insanely long time to write out just the idea generation portion into coherent sentences. So I'll wait and see if people actually get some value from my post before dedicating time writing the rest and adding it to the thread (kinda like testing the market before investing more, eh. /dad joke).

 

[Johnny boy]

Let's say you're a young dude in his early 20's and want to start selling stuff online and have a profitable store on Amazon or some online marketplace. You're patient, willing to learn anything, but starting with no experience. What would you do from square 1 to get started?

 

[NeoDialectic]

My current situation and I don't know where should I focus my time:

• Own business already running, selling two different low ticket offers (1x content product, 1x physical health product). I run everything from home since I just quit my day job and I live with my savings now.
• My online presence was skyrocketing until it got stagnant due to me kind of not being sure of my direction and focus. I'm good at speaking, I'm so convincing naturally, I'm easily approachable, kind, fun to watch, people constantly tell me how I add value to their life through social media

BUT... I'm not sure should I just focus on selling more (distribute and scale my existing offers) that have proven to be extremely valuable, trendy & wanted to my audience (being less of an online personal brand, and more focusing on making money and scaling existing)? OR... just focus on purely growing my online presence and audience even more (Insta, Youtube, Pinterest, becoming a full time content creator which so far has given me steadily growing audience but irregular small earnings)?

I want to scale my monetisation strategy and grow and keep solving my audience's problems, but I'm not sure with what money/free content balance. Any help on this would mean the world to me!

Jannina,

I will try to restate your question and let me know if I am misinterpreting something.

You have 2 businesses. Your first business is your online & social media presence. It in itself is is not very lucrative yet but it is growing rapidly. Your second business is a physical health product that people really value and you have received a strong response to, but you just haven't dedicated enough time to it to be able to scale it appropriately. Your question is which you should focus on. Is that right?

It's not possible to know for sure without knowing your values/goals and seeing the businesses first hand However, if you enjoy it and you believe you can grow your online presence to a respectable size, I would say keeping both on the table but focusing on on the online presence unlock more opportunity. Most content creators are making money by sponsoring or advertising some kind of product. The fantastic part for you is that you can sponsor your own product! Then when you want to make more money, you make a new product and add it to your lineup that you advertise for free. A strong online presence is like a money printer to someone that also has an entrepreneurial mindset.

As I mentioned, this answer makes alot of assumptions about your product and presence though.

 

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[biophase]

You're right I don't know how to market it or how much a click is. This is what I'm trying to get an insight into. Do you have any recommendations on what specifically I need to learn before I release this product?

I'm saying that you need to figure out how you are going to market before you even make the product. It feels like all you plan on doing after getting your product is launching PPC campaigns. I am recommending that you think about marketing more.

From what I'm reading, all you have is a different scratch off travel map. And your only plan is to use PPC, whether it be on Etsy, Google or Amazon. You have one means of getting sales and if it doesn't work, you are screwed. What other methods will you try to get sales? Tik Tok, IG, FB, Youtube?

What happens if your PPC cost is too high to be profitable and you have spend $3000 on product? What would you do next?

Also, regarding the fake testing method. If you list it, I'm assuming you are going to do a small quantity since you don't have any. What happens if you list 1 and then sell 1 in the first day? What do you conclude from this data? Did you happen to just sell 1 because of the new store? Would you have sold 10 if you had listed a quantity of 10? Or would you have only sold 1 out of 10? What if you sell 1 in the first 10 days?

 

[NeoDialectic]

Well, looks like I overlooked this thread, so my replies may be a bit late. In case it still helps you or others....

Hello @NeoDialectic

Thank you for this thread. Thank you for sharing yourself with people who currently can't give much back.

I've been brainstorming ideas to get started on the Fastlane track with after reading various posts on the website.

I understand that you aren't an expert at everything, but you have more business sense than 99.99% of people. So I was hoping for some feedback.

Here goes...
Idea: Rental system that focuses on kitchen appliances. Specifically immersion circulators.

How (I think) it adds value: The circulators cost $100 -$200 to buy. Most people don't use it more than a few times before it's stored away and forgotten about.

If instead, they rented it for the times they do use it (sort of like a Turo/Airbnb for kitchen appliances) and paid a small fee (~$10/month) that would be the value add. They save money but also get access to a restaurant-quality cooking method only when they need it.

How it would work: A rental website. I've seen similar ones for gaming consoles so I would base it on that.

CENTS framework:
Control: I'd own all the equipment.
Entry: Reasonable amount of know-how is needed for execution, which eliminates 90% of people.
Need: I've seen multiple channels on Youtube, that have 100K+ views. People are at least interested in this equipment though. For many, the price might be the biggest hurdle.
Time: a rental system, which is excellent.
Scale: I have a goal of renting out 20K units a month. I think it is reachable.


I've just outlined the bare-bones idea here. I'd refine it as I go. I just wanted an expert to give some feedback and possibly poke some holes through my logic and challenge my thinking.

Thanks again!

I have never used an immersion cooker and I'm also someone that stays away from renting things... So I don't have great insight in this field...

Here are concerns that pop out to me:

1. I see relatively cheap immersion cookers on Amazon. I'm guessing you would say that there is a huge difference in outcome between the very cheap ones ($50) and the professional restaurant quality ones (~$1,500+)?
2. Are their enough people that know about and would appreciate that difference? Building a market is a lot harder than filling an existing market need.
3. In that same vein, a small portion of people that want a product would be willing to rent it. So you are looking for someone that appreciates quality cookware but can't afford them.

Luckily, you have come up with an idea that is extremely easy to test, so all these questions are moot. If you think it may be a good idea, SEND IT! Don't waste any time on all the BS you think is important to start a business. Make a simple website for immersion cooker rentals with a contact number. Spend $100 advertising "rent X immersion cooker in Y city today" through google adwords. Put up and ad "rent X cooker for cheap instead of buying" on Facebook, offer up, and craigslist.

On your first rental, buy it and rent it out. If you have a decent response, then you know you maybe onto something. Then you can move onto investing time and money into building out something bigger.

Instead of us playing guessing game on demand, you will know ASAP from the horses mouth (the market). Worst case scenario you wasted a few days $100.

 

[Antifragile]

we would love to answer any questions or discuss openly on the forums so that everyone can get value from it.

Excellent approach. Very mature way of creating lasting value! Kudos. And congratulations on your success. It’s great to see people like you here. We need more!

 

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[NeoDialectic]

I’m talking about it as a general business model. Break even on the initial purchase and profit from future purchases.

Kind of like the modern day printer and ink. Sorry if I couldn’t find my words but I think you get my point now.

I'm still not really sure if I am getting it because it seems self-evident. A business model that successfully makes more money from ta customer than you paid to acquire said customer, is a good business model.

Is it the right business model for you or your venture? That's a much different question and would require alot more details.

 

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[Two Dog]

Hi NeoDialectic! I appreciate you investing your time into others by sharing your experience, knowledge and wisdom.

That wasn't intended to be a segue but since we find ourselves here....
Have you worked with financial investors or have you been an investor in other companies?
If yes to either one, what advice would you give in regards to finding an investor who sees what you see for the future of your company?
If an investor wants a percentage of the company, how do you determine what that percentage would be?

So far my investor experience is this:
- A family member gave me $5K to do as I see best with it and not wanting any of it back.
- A friend of a friend of a friend is willing to invest $10K that I can repay with no interest. He doesn't want to own any percentage but wants me change some things to his liking. His 'liking' has no idea what he talking about so the money is still on the table.
- A man who invests for a living wanted to invest $60K (3 x $20K) and have 49% of the company. He backed out shortly after Covid hit.

I am not convinced that I will need an investor but these questions come up in my thinker now and then.

Again, thank you for your time and I look forward to your response.

@MrE I worked with a lot of tech startups to raise angel and VC money. Unless you're extraordinarily well connected or lucky, you're going to find raising private money takes at least as much dedicated time as growing sales. A couple of basic points on this endless topic.

1. You shouldn't be selling any portion of the business. It leads to potential problems with taxes, liability, ownership and bunch of other legal issues. The simplest approach is always debt financing. The investor puts in money in return for a note specifying the financing terms. No different than getting a line of credit or using a credit card which are typical alternatives.

Only naive, generous or excessively optimistic people put money into startups. That's why friends and family financing is often called "dumb money." The obvious problem for any investor owning a minority share of the company is getting their money out. It requires an acquisition, IPO or company buyback of the shares or ownership stake. Since that's entirely at the whims of the majority shareholder aka YOU, you can imagine it's not a great position for the investor. It goes without saying that you don't want a minority investor who feels they now control the business.

Of course angel investors and VCs take minority stakes, but they use legal tools to protect their investments. Complicated stuff. Convertible debt, preferred shares, piggy back rights, non-dilution clauses, etc. They also understand the necessity of making 10 - 20+ investments over a long period to properly diversify risk. Shark Tank investments do not work like everyone watching Shark Tank thinks they work. There's considerable due diligence, many investment offers are rescinded and legal protections for the investor are always in place.

2. My favorite approach to outside capital for almost every small business is royalty financing. It's sometimes called revenue financing nowadays. It's basically a loan with flexible payment terms. The payments are based on a percentage of gross (not net) monthly sales. Payments can stop when a specified total payout is reached, go on for a specified timeframe or in perpetuity. It keeps the investor motivated to help with the business (if that's the intent), they can potentially make a killer return when the company does well and it doesn't burden the business with excessive negative cashflow when times are tough.

 

[biophase]

Try it yourself.

Make 2 instagram/facebook accounts and follow 30 people including one of your accounts.

Post something on one account and log into the other. Does it show up on your feed then? Or maybe 3 hours later? Or maybe next day/week?

I think that is a simplistic and straight forward way of looking at FB or IG. I'm saying that the OP of this issue doesn't have funds to run PPC. What he probably has is time. You can participate on them, make content, make connections and start dialogs at the cost of time only. I would not just start an IG account and make posts. I would interact and try to get someone else with a bigger account to talk about my product.

 

[ji1029]

My business partner and I recently sold our successful online business for 8 figures. You can see @fastlane_dad intro page here, and mine here. We have had businesses in alot of categories, but have limited experience in old fashion "shaking hands" type businesses. Our primary expertise is online sales, marketing, marketplaces like Amazon (and others), bootstrapping, and mindset. One way we want to give back to the community is by guiding people that are still on their entrepreneurship path.

We figured one of the more impactful ways we can do it is by answering peoples questions publically versus in DM's or personal consultations. So if you want our opinion/advice about your personal situation, we will be happy to read through your questions and give you a personalized answer. But it has to be public. That way everyone can read and discuss our answers. If we don't have experience in a topic, we will let you know.

I'll give this a shot. Idea is for a startup that provides small businesses with no HR presence yet with documentation relating to onboarding, off-boarding, etc. My partner is the HR expert, and I will take care of building the website initially. I've tried to work through the CENTS model to evaluate whether it's fastlane or not and I'm just not sure.

Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated!

 

[NeoDialectic]

I made a thread about domain expertise, what are your views on the issue?

It looks like you had a bunch of smart people already reply with nuanced and well thought out replies. In summary, I agree with most of the people responding. Domain expertise is definitely ONE thing that can be used as leverage to start a business. However it is far from the only way. Domain expertise the way you describe it (7 years on the job) is not needed. At all.

 

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[S.Y.]

You're right I don't know how to market it or how much a click is. This is what I'm trying to get an insight into. Do you have any recommendations on what specifically I need to learn before I release this product?

In addition to what @biophase said above, think old game vs new game.

Old game: status quo
What are the current players on the market doing, and what is their game?
-> You cant move to the new game if you don't understand the current games

New game: How your brand will change the game
Build the new game. Look at the old games, keep the audience front and center, and create your new game. Think of ways to skew the value array. Bonus point if you can name the new gam

For example:
(1)
Old game: slowlane
New game: fastlane

(2)
old game: calling for a cab - not only I wait on the line for minutes, but I also don't know when my driver will arrive or how much the journey will cost me
New game: a convenient way to order transport via an app. Quick, convenient, transparent.

The process of crafting the new game will give you the answers you need to launch the product.

 

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[NeoDialectic]

Thanks for sharing your time! Was there a moment for you when you realised that you'd escaped the rat race? If so, what was that like? (Working on visualising this for myself as motivation.)

It's a difficult question to give an exact answer to. Partially because it probably has more to do with my mindset at each "era" and the surrounding environment.

The most rich I have ever felt was probably when I started making 100k-200k a year during my first venture as an 18yr old. Before that I was hustling in restaurants working 20-40hr weeks during school, to make comparatively spare change. Being young and coming from a middle class immigrant family, it felt like I was printing money. This was in a midwest town where I only saw one lamborghini in my entire life up to then. It was also before the age of instagram where everyone logs on and is spam blasted with insanely wealthy people. I'm not sure if I felt like I totally escaped the rat race there as I knew it could all come crashing down and I would be back to making 0. But with the amount I saved up, I was confident that I could live on it for years to come and that I could find something new during those years. I felt like I should blow through stop signs to save time because any tickets I got would be worth the cost just so I could get back to working. "Opportunity cost" and all. I didn't actually do that. But taking my thinking brain out of it, it felt like the financially right thing to do. If that's not feeling like you have "f you money", I don't know what is. Boy do I enjoy looking back and chuckling at myself from those times.

Form there on in, there were alot of "ups" and "downs". Which culminated in this last major "up" that puts to shame anything I did at 18. But even then, I'm not sure if I ever captured the same feeling again. It's the feeling that I believe most aspiring entrepreneurs are chasing. It's like the cocaine side of success. But then what happened is I grew up. Planning for "myself living well the next few years", turned into "planning for my wife and I to live well for years", to "planning for my wife, I and kids to live well for years", to the final "planning for my family living a good lifestyle without the requirement of work for the rest of my years (barring the edge scenarios like the collapse of the USA)". My business sale successfully achieved that last goal. So while I think most are talking about the hit of cocaine, I would currently define escaping the rat race to be this last mile marker I hit.

But even then.... I'm not sure. I am only able to confidently live a reasonably well off lifestyle without working. I still find myself at work to this day. Is it much more "labor of love" focused now? The answer would be a resounding yes. But sure still feels familiar to the rat race.

 

[NewManRising]

What's the number one piece of sales/marketing advice you could share? What was your most effective channel or strategy that gave you the most success??

What is/was your process for finding a viable product/idea to execute on? What criteria did you look for? How did you do market research or understand there was a big enough need?

 

[NeoDialectic]

500 quantity per design, I have 4 designs

Usually I would recommend getting one or two of one design and making a listing everywhere. Then trying to see if you can make a sale. Breaking even or better would automatically signal that there is a want and I would order more. Crickets would signal that you just saved $1,500. Theoretically you don't even have to get one and you can just make a listing and see if there is a response... But you could run into not only ethical problems but places like Amazon would not look to fondly on you cancelling orders immediately on a new Amazon account.

A quick Amazon search shows that this is obviously a field with alot of traffic and sales. So ordering one bulk pack at $3 doesn't seem too bad of an option either. If your item flops at your target price, you can probably salvage a big portion of your investment by just selling it off really cheap on eBay or something. Regardless, $1,500 overall is a relatively small loss to many, even if you don't sell it off. Only you can answer whether that is a big investment for you or not. I think the answer will depend on your sensitivity to loss.

I have no idea what your value add is, but the more time I spend looking at your field as I type this the more I think you will have to make sure your product stands out and the value add is immediately obvious. This seems like an extremely crowded field. You have competitors ranging from really cheap to relatively expensive, all with thousands of reviews. It may be a tough hill to climb if you don't have something that immediately stands out. Sometimes in fields like this, it could be tough to even get one sale without spending absurd amounts in advertising.

EDIT:
The more I look at this field, the more I think you should get one $80 sample and see if you can do anything at all with it. That way you learned a lesson and you are only out $80 and now have a cool item to keep.

You may know more about this field and choose otherwise.

 

[Jannina Emila]

My current situation and I don't know where should I focus my time:

• Own business already running, selling two different low ticket offers (1x content product, 1x physical health product). I run everything from home since I just quit my day job and I live with my savings now.
• My online presence was skyrocketing until it got stagnant due to me kind of not being sure of my direction and focus. I'm good at speaking, I'm so convincing naturally, I'm easily approachable, kind, fun to watch, people constantly tell me how I add value to their life through social media

BUT... I'm not sure should I just focus on selling more (distribute and scale my existing offers) that have proven to be extremely valuable, trendy & wanted to my audience (being less of an online personal brand, and more focusing on making money and scaling existing)? OR... just focus on purely growing my online presence and audience even more (Insta, Youtube, Pinterest, becoming a full time content creator which so far has given me steadily growing audience but irregular small earnings)?

I want to scale my monetisation strategy and grow and keep solving my audience's problems, but I'm not sure with what money/free content balance. Any help on this would mean the world to me!

 

[NeoDialectic]

Still very much in the idea/design stage, but I'm thinking of a design of mens underwear - specifically seamless ones (I find them irritating), since most are not, and even ones which say they are, are not...
The main doubt I am having is about how much it would really be wanted, since I'm more fussy about the comfort than most. However, I think that if people were to try it, they would feel how much more comfortable it would feel, and perhaps a productocracy could be generated from them telling others about it. I think this could have a lot of potential considering how important the comfort is for most, but it's whether most would currently really care about it enough to switch to a different product - it is a very crowded market in mens underwear.
So the main issue I think is about the total addressable market - which I am currently investigating.
Do you have any other points of view on this?
Thanks!

Unfortunately sometimes you won't know till you try. You can try testing the market by adapting the TESTING methods I post there.

With the power of Amazon and Google, you don't have to wait for months/years to know if the product will be good enough based on word of mouth. You should be able to invest a little into advertisement to see if an audience is interested.

 

[NeoDialectic]

Awesome stuff man.

That's a very common thing I've noticed with successful people like you and others on this forum. You'll never hear them say stuff like "Oh, you shouldn't want that". Every guy who I know of who has had that kind of life will always tell you to go and get it. Even Andy Frisella said something similar on one podcast episode: "Absolutely, you should own ten of them. There ain't nothing better than pulling up to a bar full of 30k millionaires, flipping the doors up and giving the fu to everybody there".

It's always the people who don't have it who tell you that it's bad to own one or aspire to an affluent lifestyle. My mom's family tree always used to shit on people who have money like "Oh, they're evil" or "Money won't make you happy". And yet, these people are very broke and pretend like having more money won't help them. You know, it's kind of hard to disconnect that paradigm when you've been told that stuff ever since you were 5 years old.

I see the "flipping the doors up and giving the fu to everybody there" mindset to be just as shallow as the "making money is evil" mindset. Frisella is probably just trying to motivate the people listening to him and ego can be a great motivator. Showing off certainly feels good. I'm just saying I see that as a weaker mindset than just doing what you want to do because you want to do it. Trying to show off or trying to prove something to an audience is more a sign of insecurity than of strength. We all do it. But we are talking about being aspirational here....May as well aspire to actual virtue!