The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge

[storm]

This is a great podcast:
http://www.startupstoriespodcast.com/podcast/the-complete-saga/
It goes from first concept to success and talks about all the pitfalls (including problem/solution fit, and product/market fit) encountered along the way.

Highly recommended.

 

[Irenicus]

In some other topic I have mentioned that I have started selling on Ebay...here is my report.

So far, I am relatively happy - I made a profit of several hundred dollars. For a relative beginner, such as myself, I do not thing it's bad.

The main problem is supply - the supply of the products I am selling (high end clothing) is relatively low in my area, and that inhibits my growth. I have to say that I am a little jealous at you Americans - you have Saviour's and Salvation Armies at every street,, so supply is generally not a problem for you. Us non - Americans are not that lucky, lol.

Once I get some more money, I may branch into PC hardware ( I am thinking laptop motherboards, for example.)

I have tried on Bonanza as well, but I have received barely any traffic.

 

[Papaya]

So check this out.

I have been going back and forth with a manufacturer on Alibaba for the last few weeks designing a product. I had them make me a custom sample and send it to me, it wasn't exactly to my liking but about 90% there.

This isn't like a blender with a different exterior appearance or something, this is a really unique item that stands on its own and would have less then a half dozen competing products on the market, all of which command a premium, even though they're made overseas and quality could be better.

I have been going over the last few details with them before getting ready to place a first order, and I look and see that they have already listed my sample as a product on their alibaba page. This made me pissed.

I'm not sure what to do, cut contact with these people and find another manufacturer abroad or here in the USA (I'm reaching out to one right now), or tell them to take it down and try to move forward (I'm sure I'm on no grounds to tell them to remove it).

Do you have any intellectual property IP claims? (Patent. patent pending, copyright, trademark etc)

Additionally you should be executing non-disclosure agreements (NDA) with any potential vendors.

Like something like that would work with China...
I believe he's fucked. Trying to negotiate from a position of power is his only way out.

Likely true...but he should be aware and consider the concepts

 

[Papaya]

In some other topic I have mentioned that I have started selling on Ebay...here is my report.

So far, I am relatively happy - I made a profit of several hundred dollars. For a relative beginner, such as myself, I do not thing it's bad.

The main problem is supply - the supply of the products I am selling (high end clothing) is relatively low in my area, and that inhibits my growth. I have to say that I am a little jealous at you Americans - you have Saviour's and Salvation Armies at every street,, so supply is generally not a problem for you. Us non - Americans are not that lucky, lol.

Once I get some more money, I may branch into PC hardware ( I am thinking laptop motherboards, for example.)

I have tried on Bonanza as well, but I have received barely any traffic.

Have you considered partnering with someone that sells what you sell in US? You get a supply source and they get broader distribution

 

[Irenicus]

In some other topic I have mentioned that I have started selling on Ebay...here is my report.

So far, I am relatively happy - I made a profit of several hundred dollars. For a relative beginner, such as myself, I do not thing it's bad.

The main problem is supply - the supply of the products I am selling (high end clothing) is relatively low in my area, and that inhibits my growth. I have to say that I am a little jealous at you Americans - you have Saviour's and Salvation Armies at every street,, so supply is generally not a problem for you. Us non - Americans are not that lucky, lol.

Once I get some more money, I may branch into PC hardware ( I am thinking laptop motherboards, for example.)

I have tried on Bonanza as well, but I have received barely any traffic.

Have you considered partnering with someone that sells what you sell in US? You get a supply source and they get broader distribution

I am considering doing that in the future, if I meet someone whom I can trust, and who knows what is doing.

Also, I am still quite "green" - score of 4 with 100% reputation, so, before I can even consider partnership, I need to build a better reputation. And have a bigger budget.

 

[aeroektar]

So check this out.

I have been going back and forth with a manufacturer on Alibaba for the last few weeks designing a product. I had them make me a custom sample and send it to me, it wasn't exactly to my liking but about 90% there.

This isn't like a blender with a different exterior appearance or something, this is a really unique item that stands on its own and would have less then a half dozen competing products on the market, all of which command a premium, even though they're made overseas and quality could be better.

I have been going over the last few details with them before getting ready to place a first order, and I look and see that they have already listed my sample as a product on their alibaba page. This made me pissed.

I'm not sure what to do, cut contact with these people and find another manufacturer abroad or here in the USA (I'm reaching out to one right now), or tell them to take it down and try to move forward (I'm sure I'm on no grounds to tell them to remove it).

Do you have any intellectual property IP claims? (Patent. patent pending, copyright, trademark etc)

Additionally you should be executing non-disclosure agreements (NDA) with any potential vendors.

I have no protection, this is my first go around with having a custom product manufactured, so live and learn I guess.

I dont think I have to scrap the design at this point, there were critical modifications I wanted in the sample that they didnt include because they wanted to rush it out to me, I had them send it anyways, they threw it up there on Alibaba without the changes which I was going over with them to finalize everything. As it currently stands with what they have stolen from me the product would fall under poorly designed/unergonomic in a market where those things make the product successful.

I am going to talk with a manufacturer in the US next week, hopefully the cost isn't so high that I have to back away from the project for the time being, I would much rather work with a company in the US anyways as I could be much more closely involved. Plan B is to actually go boots on the ground in Asia in a few months, which has the benefit of being a bang side mission.

 

[storm]

...

I am going to talk with a manufacturer in the US next week, hopefully the cost isn't so high that I have to back away from the project for the time being, I would much rather work with a company in the US anyways as I could be much more closely involved. Plan B is to actually go boots on the ground in Asia in a few months, which has the benefit of being a bang side mission.

In my experience, if you have minimal assembly required the US product manufacturing prices are competitive with Asian ones. I think you will be able to find a good deal.

 

[Peregrine]

Great thread. Some current/former colleagues and I are starting a business in our spare time. Nothing to contribute as I'm new, but looking forward to learning from the guys who've been at it for awhile.

 

[texas]

I hope Nemencine shows up in this thread. El Mech too. He could probably start up an auto/mechanic-related hustle incubator with all his knowledge and help get some to self-employed status and make some money off it as well via an up front or back end fee or piece of equity. We do have a lot of good hustler spirits here.

Would be great to do a semi-annual meet up too. Socializing is one aspect of life that I know gets put on the back burner for me during busy times and I suspect it happens to lots of others as well.

 

[n0000]

Ebay business is really taking off. We just doubled our biggest monthly revenue last month. It took a year and a half but I can consistently pull in $300-500+ per hour. I took a look at what activities maximized my hourly rate and focused on that.

Its going well and I could probably do this for the rest of my life, but I want to move on to a more traditional startup, and put in 10 hours a month on the ebay business to pay the bills. The thing I have in mind is going to be big.

That's extremely impressive. What kind of products are these? What segment?

Any pointers for us little fish? :smile:

I would go on craigslist and look for price differentials between that and ebay or amazon. It really depends on your area though. You should try selling items in all different categories to get a feel for it. How I approached it was I looked at what I was selling that would make me the highest hourly rate and try to do more of that.

I really think the way forward for entrepreneurship is getting back to basics and not coming up with new gadgets. There are boatloads of people inventing new gadgets, apps, etc, but these really don't make peoples lives better. They make peoples lives worse. What people really need to be happy is to be surrounded by good friends and family, spend alot of time with these people, cook good food, and be healthy. Unfortunately the culture is not geared towards happiness, it is geared towards buying expensive stuff you dont need. Make a couple hundred thousand so you can buy that huge house? Congrats now you never see your neighbors and you spend 75% of your free time watching TV. The suburbs could be fun with 3x as many people, unfortunately the population density has dropped so precipitously(about 250 sq ft/person in 1950 to over 1000 sq ft/person today).

 

[Suits]

I started a business 5 years ago with $10,000. Last year we passed 4mil in sales. Have 12 employees.

It's hard.

My personal boon and bane has been I always want to do everything myself (excluding routine operations, but including marketing, sales, creative, R&D, etc). On the one hand this is good because it's extremely hard to find dependable people (and very expensive). On the other hand this has limited our growth.

I think my introversion has been both a boon and bane too. It allows me to get technical and look for ways to implement operational improvements via a lot of self-reflection and introspection. However, dealing with employees is hard when I want to be left alone (which is most of the time) but need to interact with them instead (which is also most of the time, lol). And many times against my better judgement I have opted not to do networking stuff in favor of working on things at the office because I hate networking even though I know it is beneficial.

Everyone always wants to give advice on what you should do or shouldn't do, but the fact is 99% of the people giving you advice have never been successful at what they're giving you advice about, lol.

My two biggest obstacles are time-management and finding talent. Time management because all these little things add up to so much time and it's easy to not have time for working ON the company rather than IN the company (The E-myth Revisited is a good book on this). Finding employees is a major pain, sort of like looking for that unicorn. I want people to be generalists and do all these things that I do, but it's the opposite, everyone focuses on just a minor element and wants to depend on someone else to do what they don't know how, but if you don't provide them with that other person they have no idea what to do. For example, marketing: I'll design the t-shirts, find the printer, coordinate the shipping, find models, do the photography, then do the social media. Good luck finding anyone who can do more than one of those things. And then it seems to me that talent often over-values their worth by a good margin.

One thing I've learned that is apropos to the other elements found on this forum is this: on RVF women get a lot of slack for being hamster-driven, for being entitled, for being mindless, for having self-important & inflated egos & more. From all the human resources work I've done over the last 6 years, just as many men or like that too & just being a lousy person with the aforementioned negative qualities is not gender-specific by any means & in fact pretty normally distributed among both genders.

But to counter that negativity I must say when you do find a good employee it's a brilliant thing to have them by your side to carry out your vision in an effective manner.

I'm less than a year into a launching a company, but I've already experienced everything written here.

Your breakdown is is very helpful.

Please keep posting advice and tips in this thread.

 

[Laner]

I have been running my own businesses for 11 years now.

The last 6 have been somewhat difficult due to poor partnerships and straight up theft.

At the moment I have three businesses on the go and one consultant gig. All three are somewhat successful, though two of them are only a few months old.

In the past week, one of them has taken off and my long term business has been getting good traction with 3 lucrative sales and one very lucrative sale pending. I paid a rich connected Chinese girl to do a WeChat campaign for me and it has been working out amazing.

I dropped a bunch of money on elevator advertising in mid to high luxury condo buildings. Its a digital display and looks good, although I have yet to get any sales from it. My analytics show people coming to my site, but no calls or emails yet. Its been two weeks, so my hopes are fading. I thought I would have a captive audience, but it turns out that the upside might be as little as brand awareness.

I teemed up with a couple who has a product that I come across in my business. We have the same clients, and they are strong hustlers. We both have very complimentary products and are big fans of each others. This will likely turn out to be very lucrative for both of us. Strategic partnerships are my favorite.

I have managed to move my manufacturing from the US back to Canada. China is almost the same price as the USA, only that China has far better quality than the US in what I am manufacturing. Canada is the worse of the three, but I managed to find a nice little gem of a factory here that is competitive with pricing and is very easy to deal with.

I still have one product that I want manufactured in China (or Taiwan, Vietnam or Philippines). My packaging comes from Guangzhou which is amazing quality and very reasonable. I can also slay some serious Chinese pussy in this area so I enjoy business here.

One of my products went from zero competition to having 10 competitors in only the last 4 months. I was looking at this as being a product that was ahead of the wave, but now I could be swamped and in competition with guys who have deep pockets and more time.

My consultant mind always has me trying to help my clients do more, expand more and improve more. I like this sales technique and so it seems do my clients.

I am glad I ask for 50% up front, I have had a client go cold on me last week but he put USD$5000 up front so my costs are covered. Not many people like doing this, but it has save my ass many times.

 

[Off The Reservation]

I dropped a bunch of money on elevator advertising in mid to high luxury condo buildings. Its a digital display and looks good, although I have yet to get any sales from it. My analytics show people coming to my site, but no calls or emails yet. Its been two weeks, so my hopes are fading. I thought I would have a captive audience, but it turns out that the upside might be as little as brand awareness.

I find the trial and error aspect of marketing to be very important. When something is not working and is just eating money I now cut fast. When I first started my company I had more patience wishing and hoping things would work.

 

[Pyrrhic victory]

I've been self employed almost my entire life starting off in finance and then later transitioning entirely to real estate.

There are a few rules that i have learned the hard way.

1. Trusting others to do your work entirely will always have a limited success rate.
Delegating to others without full knowledge of their capabilities and skill sets is an exercise in futility.

2. When considering hiring contractors or new help look into their past verifiable history. I have found consistently that a person who is a thief or liar with even the smallest of things will more than likely revert to these tendencies when the scales involve more. Especially , those that are very charismatic at heart and cover up these faults by appealing to you on a strong personal level. These are the ones you must really look out for.

As a perfectionist, I have seen flaws in others thought processes , laziness , not being able to determine senses of urgency , lack of intelligence , understanding Etc. Each and every one of these faults will always cause losses of efficiency and cumulatively may possibly even be devastating.

In many cases, said individuals may be honest people but do not have the ability to internalize basic business concepts. These individuals need to be vetted and assigned to tasks they can excel at. I have been very good at giving slight cross training depending on the individuals natural talents. When hiring a contractor , I will have them work with my most skilled guys for a week to see what their pros and cons are. Based on this and multiple general conversations with them I can gauge whether they have the skill set and work mentality that will work in my business.

3. Scaling a business is very difficult. Especially if you are juggling two or more businesses. Any start up will always require a tremendous amount of your time and energy.
By focusing on one , you will always neglect the other at least slightly. When starting a new business , this neglect is a recipe for failure or running at sub optimal efficiently levels. Focus on one thing at a time and devote the necessary resources to maximize its success.

Once you have found a recipe that works then slowly add the necessary pieces to scale up. Trouble shoot and repeat again for next level of escalation.

4. Mark Cuban once said " Don't drown in opportunity." Every time I hear that I Chuckle as I think of my somewhat limited success in finance that could have been scaled on a much more efficient and profitable route. In addition, I now apply this fully to my real estate development business as I constantly have to hit the brakes to ensure my renovations are being done efficiently and reducing the amount of service calls tenants will place down the road by doing the job right the first time.

As cliche as it may sound , cutting corners in any business will more than likely come back at a greater cost down the road.

5. I am a firm believer in not getting too personally involved with my staff. Many employees will blur the lines of business and personal as this happens. I put a stop to this as soon as it comes up. It's almost like walking a tight rope, you need to show a sense of compassion but not too much or you will be taken as someone they can push around.

 

[Pyrrhic victory]

^
Add on

6. Do not ever go into business with friends or in many cases, family. You more than likely will not see eye to eye on many subjects. The sense of entitlement and greed can come up at any time. It can possibly devastate any personal relationships you had prior to working together. At the very least it
Will create a sense of resentment that will stick around for many years.

 

[Nineteen84]

^
Add on

6. Do not ever go into business with friends or in many cases, family. You more than likely will not see eye to eye on many subjects. The sense of entitlement and greed can come up at any time. It can possibly devastate any personal relationships you had prior to working together. At the very least it
Will create a sense of resentment that will stick around for many years.

This should be etched in stone.

 

[Laner]

^
Add on

6. Do not ever go into business with friends or in many cases, family. You more than likely will not see eye to eye on many subjects. The sense of entitlement and greed can come up at any time. It can possibly devastate any personal relationships you had prior to working together. At the very least it
Will create a sense of resentment that will stick around for many years.

Absolutely. I lost out on some major money when a previous partnership went to shit. I chose friendship over money (I am very close friends with his little brother) and my partner is very greedy. It would have been devastating even to my mother who is also close to this family. But even though I took what I thought was the better route, things were still strained. So in hindsight I should have just took it all.

 

[Libertas]

Not sure if this is the appropriate thread or if I should start my own or find another, but I'm in the market for an artist on something I'm looking to publish soon (in the next few weeks). Images have to be in print quality. Where would you guys recommend one (aside from Fiverr) that I can find or negotiate with? And if any of you here are interested, let me know.

 

[PartManPartMonkey]

^^ Check out Upwork. I was impressed.

 

[TheFinalEpic]

^
Add on

6. Do not ever go into business with friends or in many cases, family. You more than likely will not see eye to eye on many subjects. The sense of entitlement and greed can come up at any time. It can possibly devastate any personal relationships you had prior to working together. At the very least it
Will create a sense of resentment that will stick around for many years.

I have to also chime in on this. I founded a business with a close friend of mine and due to the friendship, saw his skills through rose tinted glasses. He couldn't make sales calls to save his life and I didn't need his financial knowledge as I had priced everything out and he came to similar conclusions. As the business wore on, I was taking far more of the brunt work, and it made me disdain ever asking him to join.

It put strain on our relationship, and as the partnership faded, so inevitably did our friendship.

That being said, I am now in real estate with a close friend I've known for almost a decade, and because of our similar wavelengths, are absolutely killing it via our individual skill sets that build on each other. I handle more of the marketing online, he has more technical knowledge in the industry, and we learn through each other while also enhancing the business because of our strengths.

As a generality, make sure that whoever you're going into business is a "walker" and not a "talker". Build friendships through making money, those are the friendships that really last.