Does anyone need anything?

[Johnny boy]

My employee is off working. I've got things rolling along and I need something to do. Is anyone building up their business that wants some marketing/sales help? Anyone need some ideas? Anyone need some resources?

Let me know. No charge. Just looking to help if you're looking for it but don't want to put up a post about it. I've got nothing to do for most of the day for a couple of weeks and I'd like to do something productive to keep my mind going so I don't pick up any wasteful habits with my free time.

 

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[minivanman]

Dang.... I thought you was going to the concession stand. I was going to tell you to get me a hot dog and a Dr. Pepper

 

[Johnny boy]

Consulting work comes from the group, referrals from past customers, the podcast we're running, the blog's trafic.

Cannot identify the main magnet right now as the pixel wasn't really setup last year. We'll get better metrics this year. I'll check to find the main source.

In regards to scaling.

Are you too busy consulting people at $100/hr?

I would stop charging people "hourly" and just tell them the total price and why it's worth it, then deliver on it. People get scared from hourly rates.

If I told my consulting customer from a while back upfront that I charged $500 an hour then she would shit bricks and hang up the phone. But we didn't talk much about price and I just helped her build a gameplan over the phone about how to grow her accounting firm and she sent me $1000. It was just a 2-hr phone call. She thinks it was a steal because the conversation wasn't my hourly lawyer-level cost, but it was about how much more money she's going to make because of me.

So perhaps you can find a way to increase the price of your services easily without doing much different. Just changing how they perceive the value of your time. For example my lawn care company. If I say we charge $60 an hour they think that's expensive. But if they pay $225 a month for 12 months and we visit 18 times a year and spend an hour and a half at the property each visit, they don't mind at all....but that comes out to $100 an hour. The customer rarely does the math right there and figures out your hourly rate, but if you can deliver the perception of value efficiently, you can make a lot more money.

Keep building up the community.

 

[Johnny boy]

Your company is location dependent which means your primary focus should be getting attention locally. Your company needs to become locally famous.

I’ve posted about how local business can advertise for free by hosting a party and getting other businesses to pay for it.

Go to the local venue that can hold 200-500 people and get a quote for an event.

Go to local businesses and tell them you’ll get them 200 people to meet with and advertise to for an evening, getting them local exposure. Get them to pay you $100-$200 or so. Get enough businesses to cover the cost.

Go to every church, school, etc. and advertise a free community celebration with food and music.

Pay for the event with the money from local businesses. Advertise your own business for free and be locally known as the party guy who has a steam cleaning car wash business.

Then, host a podcast and invite local influencers on your show to talk about all things in your area, chop up the content into short videos and have them post it on their Instagram pages and you’ll post the content on yours. You’ll get them more attention as well as siphon off a bit of their local audience members and you’ll get free advertising that way.

Make sure you’ve got a “google my business” listing on the maps section.

Make sure you’re on craigslist.

I would get a phone list and send ringless voicemails to all of the phone number in my town and it costs like 6 cents a message. Totally worth it.

I wouldn’t waste a dime on mailing out postcards or that stuff.

 

[AceVentures]

Alright, given that you're bored, let's throw some ideas around. I jot down a bunch of business ideas all the time, but rather than to hoard them deep in my notes somewhere they may never see the light of day, I'd much rather share them with others. If anything, we can poke holes at where it couldn't work and shoot it down. If it has real merits, somebody out there can potentially benefit from this. Which is still better than these ideas dying alone in the notebooks.

Here's one I've been thinking about, but I can't fully get the story to hold. Let's chat about it and see if it has any legs.

In a nutshell, this is an App that would connect workout buddies. There's an idea like this out there called Gymder, but this model differs from it. It's about connecting people that workout frequently with beginners at prices cheaper than typical personal training. Let's call the fit person the "Bro", and the beginner, let's call him the "Noob". The Bro works out every day/other day anyway. He could buddy-up with a Noob doing his normal workouts, for a small extra cost the Noob brings to the table. Noob pays for a Bro friend at the gym and learns from his workouts, and the Bro gets a nice bone thrown his way without having to change his current plans, he works out every day anyway. Noob jumps in on machine doing the same exercises while Bro is resting, and they rotate as 1-1 gym buddies. Ok, I think this explains the idea.

Now for the revenue model: ideally, your platform would also serve to schedule the Noob and the Bros time together, which would provide a degree of control and management of the services rendered. In this position, you could command a percentage of all hours/bro sessions booked. This is impractical, because what's to hold the Bro and the Noob from making their own arrangements after they link up once? Unless the percentage is low enough that the added convenience of scheduling through this app is worth the whatever percentage you're asking.

Another way to possible extract value would be to charge a service fee for each connection. This service fee would be paid from the Bro's first session with the Noob. This is the convenience or finder's fee for connecting the Noob and the Bro. whatever arrangement they make beyond that is theirs.

How/what else could be done here? Just having fun with this idea - but I really like the sound of connecting these two groups. The fit dude is super passionate, and can genuinely help a noob for cheap, and there's endless Bros and Noobs out there.

 

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[Johnny boy]

I could use some help! Do you speak a second language? I could use some help to translate my book. If not, I have a lot going on that I can use some help with.

Definitely can’t help with that.

 

[Johnny boy]

Alright, given that you're bored, let's throw some ideas around. I jot down a bunch of business ideas all the time, but rather than to hoard them deep in my notes somewhere they may never see the light of day, I'd much rather share them with others. If anything, we can poke holes at where it couldn't work and shoot it down. If it has real merits, somebody out there can potentially benefit from this. Which is still better than these ideas dying alone in the notebooks.

Here's one I've been thinking about, but I can't fully get the story to hold. Let's chat about it and see if it has any legs.

In a nutshell, this is an App that would connect workout buddies. There's an idea like this out there called Gymder, but this model differs from it. It's about connecting people that workout frequently with beginners at prices cheaper than typical personal training. Let's call the fit person the "Bro", and the beginner, let's call him the "Noob". The Bro works out every day/other day anyway. He could buddy-up with a Noob doing his normal workouts, for a small extra cost the Noob brings to the table. Noob pays for a Bro friend at the gym and learns from his workouts, and the Bro gets a nice bone thrown his way without having to change his current plans, he works out every day anyway. Noob jumps in on machine doing the same exercises while Bro is resting, and they rotate as 1-1 gym buddies. Ok, I think this explains the idea.

Now for the revenue model: ideally, your platform would also serve to schedule the Noob and the Bros time together, which would provide a degree of control and management of the services rendered. In this position, you could command a percentage of all hours/bro sessions booked. This is impractical, because what's to hold the Bro and the Noob from making their own arrangements after they link up once? Unless the percentage is low enough that the added convenience of scheduling through this app is worth the whatever percentage you're asking.

Another way to possible extract value would be to charge a service fee for each connection. This service fee would be paid from the Bro's first session with the Noob. This is the convenience or finder's fee for connecting the Noob and the Bro. whatever arrangement they make beyond that is theirs.

How/what else could be done here? Just having fun with this idea - but I really like the sound of connecting these two groups. The fit dude is super passionate, and can genuinely help a noob for cheap, and there's endless Bros and Noobs out there.

advertise as a personal training service, create some made up personal training qualification and give it to people who sign up with your company as the trainers, have a subscription service that they pay via credit card to you for and take a fee off the top, but make any refunds come out of the trainer's income since it's their responsibility to keep customers happy.

why make it cheap? make it profitable as hell. I love the idea.

Make it and be the "personal trainer" yourself to try it out. Make a website with a solid one-page layout, advertise on craigslist making it look like a personal training platform to find great trainers in their area, hook them up with the best personal trainer out there (you, lol) and then get busy seeing it yourself where potential problems might come up. Then, get the app made. Hire on a wannabe personal trainer and give them your "certification" and get them clients. Make it a low effort thing that any gym bro can sign up for. "Dude, did you hear you can get paid to go to the gym and help people that suck at lifting?" "Holy shit bro, that sounds sick! What's the app called??" And that's how you grow it.

Then, your trainers sign contracts when they sign up (terms and conditions), and your customers pay for subscriptions so the money goes straight to you and then to the trainers (bros).

You'll need an app, two websites (one for your app and another for the "certification" that your trainers have) and that's all. Start with being the trainer yourself and this could be a mini uber-type business that brings in a few million.

 

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[minivanman]

anyone who needs to find workers goes on craigslist or indeed or any other job site. I must be missing something because I don't see how it helps anyone.

While I agree, this is probably a country that does not use Craigslist or Indeed. Why does it not use Craigslist or Indeed? Because in the posters own thread, he/she says it is a country where technology is behind. This is a PERFECT example of why this site should make the profile AT LEAST tell the country a poster is in. If they don't choose to put their country, they can be a lurker until they choose to tell us what country they are in. Not just this poster but LOTS of posters.

 

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[TonyStark]

a hug

 

[Johnny boy]

Hi, I recently wrote a thread about my business idea,I'd appreciate it if you check it!
PLATFORM FOR AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS

These people aren't going online so how the hell are they going to find your site?

They are dinosaurs. They will get old, die, and when people with an understanding of technology take over the agricultural industry in your area, they'll all use indeed to hire people and your service won't be needed.

 

[Johnny boy]

I'm co founding a local soccer club under a 501c3. We're talking to local bars to sponsor us, in exchange for bringing in people after the game.

We're still brainstorming other ways to get donations.

Thoughts?

Try out the local party idea as well except mark it up a bit and get more businesses to come so you can actually take some money for the non profit.

Go to businesses and ask people for donations to raffle off and they can buy sponsorships for sign space on the field or something.

My old college baseball team raised like 30,000 in one night from a dinner and auction. That was a community college.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Bari, in the south of Italy near Taranto

I don’t know much about Italian agriculture but here’s all I can say.

If you want to start a job finding website for your area, make it like the popular ones in America. That will be very hard so I hope you’ve got some really good developing skills.

Also, if these farmers are not on the internet often, they won’t start now unless you first tell them in person to go to your website or something.

I don’t know how badly they need a service like what you’re saying since I have no idea about that market.

With that said, you know 100x more than I do about that market so I would say to just trust your gut. I’m not very helpful in that scenario

 

[Monica Rose]

My employee is off working. I've got things rolling along and I need something to do. Is anyone building up their business that wants some marketing/sales help? Anyone need some ideas? Anyone need some resources?

Let me know. No charge. Just looking to help if you're looking for it but don't want to put up a post about it. I've got nothing to do for most of the day for a couple of weeks and I'd like to do something productive to keep my mind going so I don't pick up any wasteful habits with my free time.

Hi Johnny Boy,
I'd love to have you take a look at our website (www.towelsdirect.ca) and let me know what you think but we're in the process of changing up a whole bunch of stuff at the moment and our new website rollout won't be for around 3-4 weeks. We are a wholesale textile distributor, based out of Vancouver, Canada, and sell towels, linens, bedding, bathrobes, and other products. Our customers include hotels, vacation rental owners and property managers, gyms, salons, spas, etc... We also do a lot of custom embroidered products.

Our main market is wholesale, and we have a good mix of smaller wholesale (AirBNB owners, smaller lodges, mom and pop salons, gyms etc) as well as what we call our private banking clients (hotel groups, vacation rental property management companies, boutique hotels and high end resorts). For the larger clients, who bring in the majority of our income (their annual linen budgets average $40,000 to $100,000), my husband and I both do direct sales (call, email, set up meetings, follow up) and have done pretty well there, although it does require travel for meetings, and it's harder to do indirect marketing to these clients because they usually have well established vendor relationships and they haven't heard of us until we call them. However, when we land a new customer in this range, they are usually pretty loyal as they are used to getting average customer service and slow lead times.

For the smaller wholesale market, these guys find us through our website or word of mouth, and come to us looking for what they need. As our website has gotten more traction since we re-did it last year, we've gotten a lot more of these types of clients and while they're definitely profitable, they can require the same amount of time input as a client that is 10X larger. Because we know there is market need, we want to put more focus on growing with these customers and to be able to do that without just making a bunch more work for ourselves, we are working on simplifying our ordering process and adding an online eCommerce store for wholesale customers. Up until now you could purchase a few of our products for retail pricing on our website, but to order at wholesale pricing you had to contact us directly via phone or email, which was great until we got busier.

Sorry for the long back story, but hopefully it gives you some context. Mostly what I'd love your feedback on right now, since our website is still under development, is how to best reach these smaller wholesale customers en masse once our online store is up and running. We get a fair amount of organic search traffic, and plan on improving our SEO by adding some more content (blog posts about choosing towels, linens, thread count, etc) as well as having a go at email marketing campaigns (we were looking at using MailCheat(Chimp)). Any advice here? Again the customers we are going after I would say a decent amount are using Google to find products similar to ours, and others might not be as they're used to purchasing sheets and such from Amazon or even department stores.

 

[Johnny boy]

Hi Johnny Boy,
I'd love to have you take a look at our website (www.towelsdirect.ca) and let me know what you think but we're in the process of changing up a whole bunch of stuff at the moment and our new website rollout won't be for around 3-4 weeks. We are a wholesale textile distributor, based out of Vancouver, Canada, and sell towels, linens, bedding, bathrobes, and other products. Our customers include hotels, vacation rental owners and property managers, gyms, salons, spas, etc... We also do a lot of custom embroidered products.

Our main market is wholesale, and we have a good mix of smaller wholesale (AirBNB owners, smaller lodges, mom and pop salons, gyms etc) as well as what we call our private banking clients (hotel groups, vacation rental property management companies, boutique hotels and high end resorts). For the larger clients, who bring in the majority of our income (their annual linen budgets average $40,000 to $100,000), my husband and I both do direct sales (call, email, set up meetings, follow up) and have done pretty well there, although it does require travel for meetings, and it's harder to do indirect marketing to these clients because they usually have well established vendor relationships and they haven't heard of us until we call them. However, when we land a new customer in this range, they are usually pretty loyal as they are used to getting average customer service and slow lead times.

For the smaller wholesale market, these guys find us through our website or word of mouth, and come to us looking for what they need. As our website has gotten more traction since we re-did it last year, we've gotten a lot more of these types of clients and while they're definitely profitable, they can require the same amount of time input as a client that is 10X larger. Because we know there is market need, we want to put more focus on growing with these customers and to be able to do that without just making a bunch more work for ourselves, we are working on simplifying our ordering process and adding an online eCommerce store for wholesale customers. Up until now you could purchase a few of our products for retail pricing on our website, but to order at wholesale pricing you had to contact us directly via phone or email, which was great until we got busier.

Sorry for the long back story, but hopefully it gives you some context. Mostly what I'd love your feedback on right now, since our website is still under development, is how to best reach these smaller wholesale customers en masse once our online store is up and running. We get a fair amount of organic search traffic, and plan on improving our SEO by adding some more content (blog posts about choosing towels, linens, thread count, etc) as well as having a go at email marketing campaigns (we were looking at using MailCheat(Chimp)). Any advice here? Again the customers we are going after I would say a decent amount are using Google to find products similar to ours, and others might not be as they're used to purchasing sheets and such from Amazon or even department stores.

Website says all prices are in Canadian dollars so it could have a C$ by the prices. I thought it was a mistake because that’s what I’m used to seeing. Just my opinion.

Some interesting tactics I think you could use.

Creating an affiliate partnership with popular content creators that make content for people running their Airbnb.

You need to attract decision makers in the b2b world of resorts and hotels. You could start a travel show where you showcase other hotels and vacation destinations on a YouTube show and try to make it a very high quality show (think of something the travel network would produce) and then interview the hotel owners as you showcase their business. Then the topic of linen supply comes up off camera and you just landed a huge hotel client who you’d never talk to otherwise since they’re too hard to reach with a sales call.

If you want we could talk more about this and give you a solid blueprint on how to go about this because I see it doing very well. Also, in a product business it should involve very little work once the orders are placed so creating a smoother process to handle the volume of smaller orders should be a priority as well.

 

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[astr0]

May I jump in?

1. Charge more always. It's tough to increase the fixed price if you can't provide a strong reason that the customer would understand. But raising prices would average out those ups and downs.
2. Yes, paid support after 12 months sounds fine. You're not charging monthly so that's pretty reasonable.
3. One way would be to charge 50% upfront, show the results afterward and deliver only after full payment. Not sure if that can work in Italy though.
4. Hope that Johnny would answer it too. For me, it's about time. I would give the most value I can if it won't take too much time completely for free and even more if it's still doesn't take too long compared to the paid work.

Fixing bugs for free is normal for me, but not adding features, even small ones. I also try to spend more time on the estimate phase until both I and the client see how to software would work. That adds a ton of value upfront and pays out with more accurate estimates and I include the estimate phase in the invoice too.

 

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[BlackLands]

Hi, I recently wrote a thread about my business idea,I'd appreciate it if you check it!
PLATFORM FOR AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS

 

[TheFox]

My employee is off working. I've got things rolling along and I need something to do. Is anyone building up their business that wants some marketing/sales help? Anyone need some ideas? Anyone need some resources?

Let me know. No charge. Just looking to help if you're looking for it but don't want to put up a post about it. I've got nothing to do for most of the day for a couple of weeks and I'd like to do something productive to keep my mind going so I don't pick up any wasteful habits with my free time.

Hi Johny boy. I'm building my accountability coaching business and I would love to pick your brain how you would market it.

 

[Johnny boy]

Hi Johny boy. I'm building my accountability coaching business and I would love to pick your brain how you would market it.

Let’s start with the monetization side. You do the coaching yourself? How does it work? Explain the sales pitch to me. Then we can move into the attention side of the business and how you get people into your “funnel”.

 

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[Jeff Noel]

Web Marketing Consulting business (sole proprietorship), focused on content creation, editorial calendars, managing a community, etc.

Most customers are recently-founded or brand new businesses.

Selling coaching in stacks of 1, 3, 6 or 9 hours (hours are scheduled one by one, most often after one coaching session is done we book the next one).
Also sellings ebooks (they don't really sell though).
Got multiple newsletters going on, about 2000 people.

Running a 23K members female entrepreneur group on FB, selling ads on the group (weekly) at ~$150/week.

I feel like we could sell WAY MORE (currently expecting ~$30K for 2019), we're charging ~100 USD/hr for consulting.

We're providing value non-stop. Participating in the group a lot too, but we're trying not to spam the group (considering we do not allow others to advertise their business either, unless they bought an ad).

Any tips on scaling ? Girlfriend (owner) is not keen on hiring/contracting yet as she feels the business is not big enough. I believe she could scale faster if someone else would take care of some things by following a SOP.

I adjusted pricing to USD, remember we're in Canada, about 35% fiat value drop --> USD$30K = CAD$40K)

 

[Siddhartha]

Johnny, what would you tell a novice about early-stage validation and landing pages?

 

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[Johnny boy]

Hi JohnnyBoy,

I'm in the infancy stages as the single salesperson for my B2B company that provides value to businesses by way of savings them on recurring expenses by way of utilizing our product ,think along the lines of saving on monthly phone or internet . Forgive the purposeful vagueness, hopefully you are still able to lend some advice and thoughts

so...trim?

It's a bot that negotiates lower bills for free.

 

[minivanman]

See, that makes all the difference in what he might answer.

 

[Johnny boy]

lol ok,
do you have any ideas to make any of these apps viral

Its All Good Games

Life is a Game, Have Fun!

www.itsallgoodgames.com

The same exact way as every other successful game app is doing on the App Store. Just little mini ads that pop up in other games.

 

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[AceVentures]

Your company is location dependent which means your primary focus should be getting attention locally. Your company needs to become locally famous.

I’ve posted about how local business can advertise for free by hosting a party and getting other businesses to pay for it.

Go to the local venue that can hold 200-500 people and get a quote for an event.

Go to local businesses and tell them you’ll get them 200 people to meet with and advertise to for an evening, getting them local exposure. Get them to pay you $100-$200 or so. Get enough businesses to cover the cost.

Go to every church, school, etc. and advertise a free community celebration with food and music.

Pay for the event with the money from local businesses. Advertise your own business for free and be locally known as the party guy who has a steam cleaning car wash business.

Then, host a podcast and invite local influencers on your show to talk about all things in your area, chop up the content into short videos and have them post it on their Instagram pages and you’ll post the content on yours. You’ll get them more attention as well as siphon off a bit of their local audience members and you’ll get free advertising that way.

Make sure you’ve got a “google my business” listing on the maps section.

Make sure you’re on craigslist.

I would get a phone list and send ringless voicemails to all of the phone number in my town and it costs like 6 cents a message. Totally worth it.

I wouldn’t waste a dime on mailing out postcards or that stuff.

Seems... almost too simple when you put it that way. Great stuff man, this is all practical and actionable advice. You're on fire

 

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[Johnny boy]

I have a website I just started which is to teach the few knowledge gained on my journey to the unscripted . Basically its to talk about money and lessons from ideas, moneys, books etc. It's not niche specific as i think everybody needs to know those stuffs.
The challenge now is that i have about 60% bounce rate and my close group ain't giving me a honest review of the website.
I would appreciate if you can take a few to look through and highlight what you feel is wrong and what i should change or improve on. Anyone else that can also check out can please give a honest review too. Thanks
website ---- RichBillionaire | ...Let's talk about MONEY!

It’s just terribly terribly awful. Wipe it away from the internet.

 

[Johnny boy]

Hi @Johnny boy, I have a "reference" app which is in a healthcare niche. It has around 15% of the market using it. Currently it's free as I was hoping to build up the user base and then charge the companies who's products are listed there a fee but they don't want to bite. Any ideas on going forward?

The companies are selling on your app? Charge the fee to the customer when they buy it. The transaction has to occur on your app. That’s part of control.

 

[Ocean Man]

It must be my limited mindset, but I don't see the leverage I have in this position. They are already getting free leads from me, if I remove them from my app, my users will just look up their info online/ using oldschool reference books. My app makes it quicker and easier though.

You do have leverage. You're in control of your application, thus, you're able to decide who is and isn't on the application. If they're not willing to pay for your "free leads", then kick them off. I'm sure others will be more than willing to have customers come their way.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Web Marketing Consulting business (sole proprietorship), focused on content creation, editorial calendars, managing a community, etc.

Most customers are recently-founded or brand new businesses.

Selling coaching in stacks of 1, 3, 6 or 9 hours (hours are scheduled one by one, most often after one coaching session is done we book the next one).
Also sellings ebooks (they don't really sell though).
Got multiple newsletters going on, about 2000 people.

Running a 23K members female entrepreneur group on FB, selling ads on the group (weekly) at ~$150/week.

I feel like we could sell WAY MORE (currently expecting ~$30K for 2019), we're charging ~100 USD/hr for consulting.

We're providing value non-stop. Participating in the group a lot too, but we're trying not to spam the group (considering we do not allow others to advertise their business either, unless they bought an ad).

Any tips on scaling ? Girlfriend (owner) is not keen on hiring/contracting yet as she feels the business is not big enough. I believe she could scale faster if someone else would take care of some things by following a SOP.

I adjusted pricing to USD, remember we're in Canada, about 35% fiat value drop --> USD$30K = CAD$40K)

Are you getting the consulting work from that facebook group? Or from somewhere else?

 

[BlackLands]

These people aren't going online so how the hell are they going to find your site?

They are dinosaurs. They will get old, die, and when people with an understanding of technology take over the agricultural industry in your area, they'll all use indeed to hire people and your service won't be needed.

Yes, but there are also young person, maybe this project could create a cooperation between city and become a reference point in my area.

 

[Deleted50669]

I need help optimizing my cloud hosting costs. Jk, I don't want anyone else to suffer this lol