G
Guest92dX
Guest
Hi Everyone,
I just joined. I found this forum in 2014 after college. During college, I thought that I didn't want to work a job. I even tried to switch to Computer Science to have a more marketable degree with a skill that I could own and use for life. Well, life didn't work out as planned. It's fine though. Everything happens for a reason.
Since 2014, I've worked 2 really crappy jobs and have had inconsistent work. In 2016 or early 2017, I told a mentor and friend that I would never work another job again. The job market is a lottery just like the mega millions. Securing a corporate job without an internship or previous skills and work is just not feasible.
The jobs I worked weren't corporate positions at all and totally unrelated to each other so they were screwing up my resume even more.
It took probably 1k or 2k job applications for me to figure this out, and most of that time I was only applying for jobs like customer service, sales, business development, and other general skill jobs. Maybe I'm terrible at interviewing, maybe I can't write a resume, maybe I'm not qualified for anything, what is true is that this isn't place where you guys care about that stuff. This is place to carve out your own path. I'm here to do that.
What did I do from 2014 to 2017 besides apply to jobs?
I researched business ideas. I researched and researched and researched. I also took a small amount of action. I was so naive to a lot of things. Here's what I did:
2015
first failure ever: I tried to sell a terrible provisional patent from reading the stuff in the 4 hour work week. I didn't even use a lawyer. Huge mistake and will never do that again or even try to sell anything but a full patent. I received bad information because it was incomplete.
Second mistake with huge progress: I tried pre-selling a used book indeing application for used bookstores. This is an amazing idea, but the main problem with the idea is that used bookstores don't really have a lot of money. Think of the idea as crowdsourced book searching.
Would I try this idea again? Most definitely because I know better techniques for testing now that I didn't know before and am currently learning.
What did I do? I cold-called 125 used bookstores. 3 were interested and no one wanted to buy. The problem is that this mobile and web application would need a lot of traffic to make it worthwhile. It's still worth testing again though because it wasn't tested right.
I just personally hate every solution for searching used bookstores for out-of-print and hard to find books.
2016
Third failure and gladly: I kept looking for a specific type of sports drink that wasn't currently on market. So, I tried making the drink in my home. I'm an average cook so I thought I could create it. Boy was I wrong. I quit this before I got too far. $100 went down the drain in product. It was definitely worth learning that my startup costs even with a fully managed and outsourced production would be hard to get into retailers.
Will I revisit this idea? Definitely. If you figure out a way to sell water/drink to someone then you're an instant millionaire. I just don't have $$$$ (read thousands) to burn on this even it's proven.
1 year later a competitor popped up in the market.
Fourth failure with some success: This time I started thinking how can I do something that would be easy to get done and would allow me to make money. Read easy to do as something that's easy to setup and easy to market.
I found a niche in an industry I was interested in and reading about and partnered with a small startup growing in the space and ecpanding internationally.
Note: this is for consulting if you're wondering.
Where was the catch here? The startup founder didn't really market me to his email list that heavily even though we offered complimentary services. Maybe I didn't create a decent enough website. I got my first potential customer.
What did I learn? The guy had already bought services like mine from people on Upwork. He used a "resume" as his decision factor instead of an outcome based approach. He paid someone $1k to get the same services I was offering at $3k - $5k with fees contingent on success. It was clear he didn't understand the information even though he said he did that with someone on Upwork.
The cheapest leads I could find started at like $1k to buy decent leads to cold call for any industry that don't bounce on email and actually connect to a working phone. This doesn't even account for travel costs.
He also mentions that he and like 5 of his friends had tried it before. It sounds like a good opportunity right? No way. He wouldn't refer me to any of his friends, and it was definitely a market that needed way too much educating.
2017
Fifth failure and lessons learned with more progress:
I tried to build on each lesson I learned from previous failures and it paid off a slightly. I got my first email signups and had a list going, which is boss. Before I started trying to sell, I did more research and found out that my product had too many issues that were out of my control.
The first issue was that it was in a legal gray area, which I didn't know. The second issue was that the market was scorched earth territory. So many businesses had come through and imploded upon impact with bad services that they left a bad taste in the customer's mouth's.
No good.
It was better to scrap the project even though I was getting signups to market to because it wasn't a business that could even grow in my state. The largest business in the area had like 5k customers signed up nationwide, but they were charging on a percentage of transaction and not subscription, which means you need way more than that. The closest to them was at 1500 nationwide and definitely can't support their model. I wanted to get to 300 in my state but there's no way that it is happening if these guys can't get tons of clients nationwide.
Cold calling potential customers confirmed that they didn't really like or trust businesses serving this need.
Too bad.
What not to do:
I'm also working with someone else to release a business that can definitely make money. It has been in the building stages for a while and is near completion. The person I'm working with just doesn't have much time to work with me.
What I need help with:
testing
sales
copywriting
marketing
If you can point me to forum crash courses for copywriting, Google Adwords (checking out Andy Black now), FB Ads, and Instagram Ads then please help me out.
This is what I've found so far:
The Single Biggest Reason People Lose Money With AdWords
GOLD - Paid Advertising Crash Course
I just joined. I found this forum in 2014 after college. During college, I thought that I didn't want to work a job. I even tried to switch to Computer Science to have a more marketable degree with a skill that I could own and use for life. Well, life didn't work out as planned. It's fine though. Everything happens for a reason.
Since 2014, I've worked 2 really crappy jobs and have had inconsistent work. In 2016 or early 2017, I told a mentor and friend that I would never work another job again. The job market is a lottery just like the mega millions. Securing a corporate job without an internship or previous skills and work is just not feasible.
The jobs I worked weren't corporate positions at all and totally unrelated to each other so they were screwing up my resume even more.
It took probably 1k or 2k job applications for me to figure this out, and most of that time I was only applying for jobs like customer service, sales, business development, and other general skill jobs. Maybe I'm terrible at interviewing, maybe I can't write a resume, maybe I'm not qualified for anything, what is true is that this isn't place where you guys care about that stuff. This is place to carve out your own path. I'm here to do that.
What did I do from 2014 to 2017 besides apply to jobs?
I researched business ideas. I researched and researched and researched. I also took a small amount of action. I was so naive to a lot of things. Here's what I did:
2015
first failure ever: I tried to sell a terrible provisional patent from reading the stuff in the 4 hour work week. I didn't even use a lawyer. Huge mistake and will never do that again or even try to sell anything but a full patent. I received bad information because it was incomplete.
Second mistake with huge progress: I tried pre-selling a used book indeing application for used bookstores. This is an amazing idea, but the main problem with the idea is that used bookstores don't really have a lot of money. Think of the idea as crowdsourced book searching.
Would I try this idea again? Most definitely because I know better techniques for testing now that I didn't know before and am currently learning.
What did I do? I cold-called 125 used bookstores. 3 were interested and no one wanted to buy. The problem is that this mobile and web application would need a lot of traffic to make it worthwhile. It's still worth testing again though because it wasn't tested right.
I just personally hate every solution for searching used bookstores for out-of-print and hard to find books.
2016
Third failure and gladly: I kept looking for a specific type of sports drink that wasn't currently on market. So, I tried making the drink in my home. I'm an average cook so I thought I could create it. Boy was I wrong. I quit this before I got too far. $100 went down the drain in product. It was definitely worth learning that my startup costs even with a fully managed and outsourced production would be hard to get into retailers.
Will I revisit this idea? Definitely. If you figure out a way to sell water/drink to someone then you're an instant millionaire. I just don't have $$$$ (read thousands) to burn on this even it's proven.
1 year later a competitor popped up in the market.
Fourth failure with some success: This time I started thinking how can I do something that would be easy to get done and would allow me to make money. Read easy to do as something that's easy to setup and easy to market.
I found a niche in an industry I was interested in and reading about and partnered with a small startup growing in the space and ecpanding internationally.
Note: this is for consulting if you're wondering.
Where was the catch here? The startup founder didn't really market me to his email list that heavily even though we offered complimentary services. Maybe I didn't create a decent enough website. I got my first potential customer.
What did I learn? The guy had already bought services like mine from people on Upwork. He used a "resume" as his decision factor instead of an outcome based approach. He paid someone $1k to get the same services I was offering at $3k - $5k with fees contingent on success. It was clear he didn't understand the information even though he said he did that with someone on Upwork.
The cheapest leads I could find started at like $1k to buy decent leads to cold call for any industry that don't bounce on email and actually connect to a working phone. This doesn't even account for travel costs.
He also mentions that he and like 5 of his friends had tried it before. It sounds like a good opportunity right? No way. He wouldn't refer me to any of his friends, and it was definitely a market that needed way too much educating.
2017
Fifth failure and lessons learned with more progress:
I tried to build on each lesson I learned from previous failures and it paid off a slightly. I got my first email signups and had a list going, which is boss. Before I started trying to sell, I did more research and found out that my product had too many issues that were out of my control.
The first issue was that it was in a legal gray area, which I didn't know. The second issue was that the market was scorched earth territory. So many businesses had come through and imploded upon impact with bad services that they left a bad taste in the customer's mouth's.
No good.
It was better to scrap the project even though I was getting signups to market to because it wasn't a business that could even grow in my state. The largest business in the area had like 5k customers signed up nationwide, but they were charging on a percentage of transaction and not subscription, which means you need way more than that. The closest to them was at 1500 nationwide and definitely can't support their model. I wanted to get to 300 in my state but there's no way that it is happening if these guys can't get tons of clients nationwide.
Cold calling potential customers confirmed that they didn't really like or trust businesses serving this need.
Too bad.
What not to do:
- don't sell a patent or even a provisional patent no wants it.
- don't choose a bad market
- don't start something where you have to heavily educate your potential customers
- don't pick something in a regulated market.
- test your idea as best as you can
- choose a market that can afford your services or products
- choose an idea that fits your budget
- stick to proven markets mostly
- do something where you can pre-sell
I'm also working with someone else to release a business that can definitely make money. It has been in the building stages for a while and is near completion. The person I'm working with just doesn't have much time to work with me.
What I need help with:
testing
sales
copywriting
marketing
If you can point me to forum crash courses for copywriting, Google Adwords (checking out Andy Black now), FB Ads, and Instagram Ads then please help me out.
This is what I've found so far:
The Single Biggest Reason People Lose Money With AdWords
GOLD - Paid Advertising Crash Course
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