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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - ColSpanker - 02-12-2018

Count me in. 25 years working for sinking ships and sycophants. I couldn't take it any more. After I was ejected from the last one, I went out and started my own. It never really took off the way I wanted, but it does provide some income.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Suits - 02-12-2018

I've had pleasant employment experiences with bosses and unpleasant ones. More good than bad, but I also realized that even if I had a good boss, I had no control over how long he remained my boss. He could be replaced by some asshole at any time.

If the job market had been better when I graduated university, I would have been open to being an employee, but it wasn't. I realized that it was unlikely that I was going to be able to find employment that made full use of my abilities and that my income was going to only reflect the skills that were being put to use.

Becoming an entrepreneur was an opportunity for me to create a unique job for myself that made the best use of all of my combined skills.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Suits - 02-14-2018

Yesterday was a pretty big day for me. I met with a potential client who I mentioned back in this post last week.

I'm still finishing up development of the flagship product that I plan to release at the end of February, so I didn't even have a full demo kit, but he was still easily sold.

A couple interesting notes:

*His school is new and does not yet have any students. He wants things set up as quickly as possible and doesn't want to have to worry about all the details himself. He was more than happy to have me come onboard to just setup the curriculum system.

*He commented that my hourly consulting rate and my product pricing was very affordable. If others agree, I'll be able to sell my products and my time for a lot more money than I anticipated.

*He knows nothing about the industry he is entering and I expect him to fail or have a business that barely clings to life year after year. He does have a few of good marketing ideas, but if he succeeds it will because he got a lot of good ideas from people like me along the way.

*I sent him an email tonight with some questions I promised I would send and a list of my expectations as a consultant. One of the key ones is that I would start billing by the hour beginning at our meeting tomorrow. His response will be very telling and will make it clear whether he clearly values my time or if he was just stringing me along.

Anyone have any tips about billing consulting clients? Do you usually work on retainer or just keep track of your hours and bill every week or month?

I've already worked out a system for pre-approving any work I do, so that I don't spend any time doing work that a client has clearing indicated that he is willing to pay for, but I'm guessing that the optimal approach will be something I learn with experience.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Ski pro - 02-14-2018

Quote: (02-14-2018 07:41 AM)Suits Wrote:  

Yesterday was a pretty big day for me. I met with a potential client who I mentioned back in this post last week.

I'm still finishing up development of the flagship product that I plan to release at the end of February, so I didn't even have a full demo kit, but he was still easily sold.

A couple interesting notes:

*His school is new and does not yet have any students. He wants things set up as quickly as possible and doesn't want to have to worry about all the details himself. He was more than happy to have me come onboard to just setup the curriculum system.

*He commented that my hourly consulting rate and my product pricing was very affordable. If others agree, I'll be able to sell my products and my time for a lot more money than I anticipated.

*He knows nothing about the industry he is entering and I expect him to fail or have a business that barely clings to life year after year. He does have a few of good marketing ideas, but if he succeeds it will because he got a lot of good ideas from people like me along the way.

*I sent him an email tonight with some questions I promised I would send and a list of my expectations as a consultant. One of the key ones is that I would start billing by the hour beginning at our meeting tomorrow. His response will be very telling and will make it clear whether he clearly values my time or if he was just stringing me along.

Anyone have any tips about billing consulting clients? Do you usually work on retainer or just keep track of your hours and bill every week or month?

I've already worked out a system for pre-approving any work I do, so that I don't spend any time doing work that a client has clearing indicated that he is willing to pay for, but I'm guessing that the optimal approach will be something I learn with experience.

I'm sure you've worked this out already but you don't want to be adding up hours and then billing him at long between intervals if you think he's going to go out of business in a year.

Why don't you propose a monthly retainer with a set number of hours given in return for x monthly fee?

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Ski pro - 02-14-2018

Quote: (02-11-2018 10:40 AM)Vaun Wrote:  

I wish I could start a poll here to know this, but this fascinates me;

How many of you are entrepreneurs, because you simply can not work for another person?

This describes me.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - player - 02-15-2018

Quote: (02-14-2018 07:41 AM)Suits Wrote:  

Anyone have any tips about billing consulting clients? Do you usually work on retainer or just keep track of your hours and bill every week or month?

I've already worked out a system for pre-approving any work I do, so that I don't spend any time doing work that a client has clearing indicated that he is willing to pay for, but I'm guessing that the optimal approach will be something I learn with experience.
Look into some of Alan Weiss' consulting books - he has some great stuff about starting and building a consulting practice, and probably far more independent consulting experience than anyone here.

Weiss bills based on value created rather than time, for a number of good reasons. Check out the contents page from 'Getting Started in Consulting' and see if it might be interesting. Chapter 8 is all about establishing fees and billing for value provided, not your time.
Amazon China: https://www.amazon.cn/dp/0470419806
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-C...0470419806

As the old story goes...
Quote:Quote:

Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.

“It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.”

So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.

“It’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?”

“Five thousand dollars,” the artist replied.

“But, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!”

To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.”

Also, make sure you keep leverage over the client. When I was younger and naive I occasionally delivered all the value to the client up front (due to extenuating circumstances), and expected payment afterwards - I got burned and lost four figures a few times before wising up. Do not do much work without at least getting some of the money.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Suits - 02-15-2018

I had my first "on the clock" meeting with my new client yesterday. So far, I've had the following observations.
Quote: (02-15-2018 10:48 AM)player Wrote:  

Quote: (02-14-2018 07:41 AM)Suits Wrote:  

Anyone have any tips about billing consulting clients?

Look into some of Alan Weiss' consulting books - he has some great stuff about starting and building a consulting practice, and probably far more independent consulting experience than anyone here.

Weiss bills based on value created rather than time, for a number of good reasons. Check out the contents page from 'Getting Started in Consulting' and see if it might be interesting. Chapter 8 is all about establishing fees and billing for value provided, not your time.
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-C...0470419806

Thanks for this recommendation. Based on your suggestion, I've purchased the Kindle version and will start reading it today.

Quote: (02-15-2018 10:48 AM)player Wrote:  

As the old story goes...
Quote:Quote:

Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.

“It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.”

So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.

“It’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?”

“Five thousand dollars,” the artist replied.

“But, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!”

To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.”

Also, make sure you keep leverage over the client. When I was younger and naive I occasionally delivered all the value to the client up front (due to extenuating circumstances), and expected payment afterwards - I got burned and lost four figures a few times before wising up. Do not do much work without at least getting some of the money.

I wanted to start off on the right foot, so I created a list of expectations and shared it with this client. Included is the requirement that I be paid twice a month for any hourly work I do and immediately upon delivery of any purchased products or products created by my company.

This gives me enough security to feel comfortable. I doubt I'll be doing so much weekly work for this client that I'd lose more than $1000 if he ripped me off and I'm sensing that he needs me more than I need him.

In the future, I plan on charging based on a retainer (or at least a certain percentage up front, but my priority right now is not as much earning money, so much as learning what potential clients need and how I can deliver services in a uniform manner.

At this point, I can only speculate about the specific needs that I would be able to fill for clients. Once I have a better idea about what those needs are and how much time/effort/money I would need to put into fulfilling them, I can move in the direction of value based price tags for my services, which is definitely the logical move.

I think that clients would be more comfortable paying a set premium for a clearly defined service and it would also make it easier for me farm out work to those who can do it cheaper than I.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Thomas the Rhymer - 02-16-2018

Quote: (02-14-2018 07:41 AM)Suits Wrote:  

Anyone have any tips about billing consulting clients? Do you usually work on retainer or just keep track of your hours and bill every week or month?

My random 2c:

I'm not strictly a consulting business (in the sense of B2B consulting), but I switched to an hourly fee this year. I just send the bill at the end of the every day involved. That said, people call up my services very erratically, so it wouldn't make sense to send it at the end of the month/week. Most people just want to pay me ASAP and get on with their lives. Also much easier for me, because it gets hard to remember exactly how much time was spent on what after a day or two has passed, and as a business policy I try to describe exactly how the time was allocated.

What I've found is that you're going to have to expect a certain default rate (10% seems pretty common across all businesses). So you need to have a line across which you will not cross. For example, I don't do any new consultations unless the previous consultation has been paid or there is a history of reliable payments. It's reasonable to offer some services up front and then wait for payment, but you have to be able to cut off bad customers quickly.

I also think that as you expand a business, you should start trying to figure out common denominators in those customers that are trying to scam you, and then put in business procedures designed to deliberately frustrate those kinds of scammers. In my industry, the scammers tend to be people who demand immediate, same-day and urgent service, so I now deliberately have stopped doing urgent work. I have a lot fewer opportunities for business, but it simply wasn't worth the effort considering that a lot of these were false opportunities with customers that tried to wriggle out of paying, and effectively exhausted my energy which should have been spent on other things. Customers that are willing to wait, on the other hand, are remarkably more reliable in payment and are worth spending extra time and effort on and going the extra mile, especially since they end up being my repeat customers. You will probably find that in your industry, there are certain traits that bad customers have in common and as you encounter them, you can restructure your business to be more scam-resilient.

Also, don't make your price low because you feel sorry for someone. Even if you're desperate for business and someone negotiates with you for a lower price, bill them your usual price but then put a discount in to push it to the lower price. You need to psychologically anchor yourself to what you feel is your fair price and the customer should realise that he is not getting a lower rate, he is getting a discount, and that will also anchor him to the higher price should a renegotiation be required in future.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - ColSpanker - 02-16-2018

Quote: (02-16-2018 03:25 AM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  

Quote: (02-14-2018 07:41 AM)Suits Wrote:  

Anyone have any tips about billing consulting clients? Do you usually work on retainer or just keep track of your hours and bill every week or month?

My random 2c:

I'm not strictly a consulting business (in the sense of B2B consulting), but I switched to an hourly fee this year. I just send the bill at the end of the every day involved. That said, people call up my services very erratically, so it wouldn't make sense to send it at the end of the month/week. Most people just want to pay me ASAP and get on with their lives. Also much easier for me, because it gets hard to remember exactly how much time was spent on what after a day or two has passed, and as a business policy I try to describe exactly how the time was allocated.

What I've found is that you're going to have to expect a certain default rate (10% seems pretty common across all businesses). So you need to have a line across which you will not cross. For example, I don't do any new consultations unless the previous consultation has been paid or there is a history of reliable payments. It's reasonable to offer some services up front and then wait for payment, but you have to be able to cut off bad customers quickly.

I also think that as you expand a business, you should start trying to figure out common denominators in those customers that are trying to scam you, and then put in business procedures designed to deliberately frustrate those kinds of scammers. In my industry, the scammers tend to be people who demand immediate, same-day and urgent service, so I now deliberately have stopped doing urgent work. I have a lot fewer opportunities for business, but it simply wasn't worth the effort considering that a lot of these were false opportunities with customers that tried to wriggle out of paying, and effectively exhausted my energy which should have been spent on other things. Customers that are willing to wait, on the other hand, are remarkably more reliable in payment and are worth spending extra time and effort on and going the extra mile, especially since they end up being my repeat customers. You will probably find that in your industry, there are certain traits that bad customers have in common and as you encounter them, you can restructure your business to be more scam-resilient.

Also, don't make your price low because you feel sorry for someone. Even if you're desperate for business and someone negotiates with you for a lower price, bill them your usual price but then put a discount in to push it to the lower price. You need to psychologically anchor yourself to what you feel is your fair price and the customer should realise that he is not getting a lower rate, he is getting a discount, and that will also anchor him to the higher price should a renegotiation be required in future.

The last paragraph is of utmost importance. I've had more scam attempts run on me based on "pleading" than I care to admit. These days, the first time I even suspect someone is trying to use me to get a lower price from a rival, or worse, I shut them down. It's saved me a lot of time and grief.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - CleanSlate - 02-21-2018

Anyone use the Yoast SEO Premium version? Are the extra features worth paying for?

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Keepiticy2 - 02-21-2018

Great news,

Sorry for my choice in words, don't really know any other way to put it

Finished up my business plan and it's looking great with emphasis on marketing strategies
The logo for my App is made, it simple yet memorable. I just hate the very limited color scheme
The scheme and overall design for my App is finished however still not functional (Not even a MVP yet)

I really need a mentor. I'm stuck with whats the best next move. Go for investors or try to learn how to program it myself

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Suits - 02-21-2018

Quote: (02-21-2018 08:39 AM)Keepiticy2 Wrote:  

Go for investors or try to learn how to program it myself

There are just two very simply questions that you need to ask yourself. Do you value full ownership of the finish product or do you value earning (potentially a smaller amount of) money faster? Is this an idea that you can afford to sit on while you either learn how to program or scrape together the money to hire programmers? If it's not, you'll have to seek investors.

If your preference is towards speeds, attempt to attract investors. If you fail to do this, either figure out how to program it yourself or earn enough money to pay programmers yourself.

Don't ask me how to seek funding. I have no experience with that. Most of the guys on this thread that I've talked to personally are bootstrapping projects with their own money, as am I.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - worldwidetraveler - 02-21-2018

Quote: (02-21-2018 08:39 AM)Keepiticy2 Wrote:  

Great news,

Sorry for my choice in words, don't really know any other way to put it

Finished up my business plan and it's looking great with emphasis on marketing strategies
The logo for my App is made, it simple yet memorable. I just hate the very limited color scheme
The scheme and overall design for my App is finished however still not functional (Not even a MVP yet)

I really need a mentor. I'm stuck with whats the best next move. Go for investors or try to learn how to program it myself

I bootstrapped my own stuff. It can be very difficult. Especially when talking about software. Software can take a very long time to create when working on it yourself. That is perfectly fine if you believe in the idea. It took me over 5 years to get my software to the point that I considered it good enough to sell.

I run across many people who think their ideas are worth an investor putting up millions of dollars and allowing them to control the business. Those people end up with nothing but their ideas.

You seem to be trying to work through what you can. I still don't see you pulling in investors until you have some type of prototype created. You still only have an idea with a color scheme and logo. That isn't a product.

Try to look at it from an investor's point of view. Would you want to put in money and start a long term business relationship with someone who couldn't even figure out how to put together a prototype of the thing they say will make a lot of money?

Remember, this isn't a zero sum game. The skills you learn with this idea can be applied to the next idea. You stack up them skills and continue until you succeed.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - ballsyamog - 02-21-2018

Cleanslate, the free version is all you need.... what specifically are you trying to do?

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Keepiticy2 - 02-21-2018

its like webmd but for ____ (with alot of other stuff added to it, and a big selling point i don't want to say) It has a lot of features but that's the easiest way for me to explain it without giving out the secret

thanks for the advice guys. Honestly im trying to "rock star" sell this (i think thats the term)

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - CleanSlate - 02-21-2018

Quote: (02-21-2018 01:50 PM)ballsyamog Wrote:  

Cleanslate, the free version is all you need.... what specifically are you trying to do?

It would be nice to optimize a page on multiple keywords, and I have a lot of redirects I need ro create. I could use another plugin for redirects, but supposedly Yoast makes it much easier to over a hundred fix 404 errors by importing all of them from the google search console.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - ballsyamog - 02-21-2018

Yeah then it's probably worth paying for the upgrade depending how much you value your time.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - worldwidetraveler - 02-24-2018

I relaunched a product line I created a couple years back. I wasn't expecting much from this product line. Truth be told, I created it to help with cashflow, at the time, so I could continue development of my main product that took years to finish.

This product line didn't do that well. I didn't mind because I used some of the features in my main product anyway. I try and create features that I can use throughout different product lines.

I use these products quite a bit myself so didn't care if they sold that well.

I recently took some time to update them and figured I would relaunch them. I'm getting a lot more interest from my customers with the relaunch. I found it wasn't so much the product line itself but the way I presented it previously. I just didn't put enough time into a sales page and demos as I did with the relaunch.

The new sales page and demos made a big difference right off the bat.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Suits - 03-05-2018

These last two weeks have been very educational. As I mentioned in one of my recent posts in this thread, I've taken on a client who at this point needs me for 30 hours a week for the next three months. They'd love to make me a permanent employee, but I'm not agreeable to that. As it currently stands, they are trying to treat me as an employee as much as possible, but I've made it clear that unless there's a real reason for me to be onsite, I'll come and go as I please and my work will be tracked based on the updates I provide.

For me, this opportunity is more about building some experience and knowledge and stacking enough cash in the next three months to allow me focus 80% of my time and energy into sales and further product creation for the second half of 2018.

So far, my take-aways have been as follows:

(1) I think I may have undervalued the product I'm planning to release this spring. Charging $1000 for four years of lesson materials is far less than schools will be willing to pay for it. If all the features are properly marketed, I think I could sell it for $4000 for 4 years. Of course, this would be waaaaaay outside the price range most teachers can handle, so I'd segment the product into two or three different tiers, with a couple very helpful, but non-essential features (as well as responsive customer support) included in the most expensive version.

The other tiers would probably be $1000 for the whole four year package and $2000 for whole two year package. That would make the unit price of each segment of the product (16 segments total) would be just $63 each and the lowest tier, which would make it affordable to individual teachers who don't have the same money that schools do.

This higher price point for the entire product would mean that sales would be a more viable use of my time. I'd just need to make 1 sale a month to generate a good cash flow just from that, rather than 4 a month, which would be a lot more challenging. A high price point like that would justify spending money on travel to make a sale and on providing a certain level of customer service following the sale.

(2) I believe that there is a very strong need for my product. Not completely confident that everyone will understand the value of the product, but the need is definitely there.

(3) Schools seem to prefer curriculum materials for children that focused on singing silly songs that the kids understand 0% of rather than doing activities that actually lead to language learning. This means that I'll have to really double down on my marketing in order to show the value of my product and why its different direction is a good thing.

(4) My plan to try to sell my product in multiple countries is definitely a smart idea. Chinese business logic is to rent a location for a school, complete the interior decorating, name all the classrooms things like "Apple Classroom" and "Banana Classroom," start marketing activities and begin recruiting students before worrying about curriculum at the last minute. I think my product will do well sooner in markets where people aren't as committed to putting carts before horses.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Keepiticy2 - 03-05-2018

Hey what do you think of a tinder type of App that allows you to rate a person on a scale of 1-10, But the person you're rating doesn't see their rating.


HOWEVER the higher the rating average the higher up on the list that person gets.

People can then go on that list of 1-10's and message people. (if you rate somebody high enough you can message them anyway)

You'll never know your rating but you can filter out messages from only the rating you want to message you





Not my best idea for an app, more of a spur of the moment thing.(literally came up with the idea 1 minute ago) But would love you guy's opinion


sorry for the horrible grammar btw, i was rushing this idea out, typing as i go.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Suits - 03-05-2018

The challenge in creating a dating application is not having a particularly clever idea, but rather penetration.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - roid - 03-05-2018

I think it is user acquisition cost that is expensive and also paying members have limited timespan about 3 months.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - Suits - 03-05-2018

I think that the future of new dating apps may be better suited to more niche offerings. I've got a few ideas, none of which I would ever waste time on, but a more specialized experience combined with set menu planned dates (the bill for which the dating service gets a cut of) might make more sense than trying to take on the big fish already dominating the marketplace.

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - sterlingarcher - 03-09-2018

If anyone needs help with copywriting (website content/social media/sales emails+) send me a PM.

I need to build my portfolio, and can do a few jobs for free)

The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge - H1N1 - 03-14-2018

If there is a more exasperating class of person than the engineer then I have yet to encounter it. No group, on the mean, is more smug, and more unworldly. It is intensely frustrating to me that the world I am drawn to, and the things I am interested in, from a business perspective rely so heavily on such infuriating, slow moving men who are also antagonising to deal with. I feel no type more embodies the best and worst of what man has to offer than the engineer. Nowhere is extreme competence and extreme incompetence so readily found within the same person. Their unworldliness is annoying in a way that it is not in the scientist. I think it's because they have that much more engagement with the practical, physical world, that their unworldliness is coarsened by an arrogance and cynicism that one rarely finds in the pure (scientific) academic. For all their skill in harnessing material science, no group of people seems more pig-headedly immune to the realities of using this progress for financial gain - they seem entirely unwilling to recognise that it is not only the scientist they revere who must come first, but also the businessman, who often creates the need and always the financial conditions that allow for the engineer's existence.

That said, engineers with business savvy, though rare, are formidable beasts. One need only look at the archetype of this, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of the greatest Englishmen of all time. He was a perfect storm of imagination, commercial aptitude, and engineering brilliance. There has probably never been a more significant engineer, and few men have done as much to advance human progress. He is a great hero of mine. I still get a great thrill each time I head to Bristol and see his wonderful Clifton Suspension Bridge - one of the great triumphs of Victorian engineering.