At what point did you decide to stop looking for a job and start your own business? - I’m exhausted by these “fake jobs” listed on LinkedIn, Indeed, etc. Many companies are posting fake listings, hiring internally, or just collecting resumes with no intention of hiring anyone at this time. ... See More I’m at the point where I think I’d have better luck starting my own business rather than looking for a job. *At what point did you decide enough is enough and you pursued entrepreneurship?*
I need help finding free-most affordable work/study spaces. - Hello y’all, I need some help finding the best free-most affordable work/study spaces. Wework is an option but around $400 in my area in La. Coffee shops to me aren’t the most comfortable spaces to work long hours and most libraries ... See More are good for studying but I can’t take and make calls in between work/ research. Again, I need options until I can afford an office space any other ideas and recommendations ?
I'm a software developer and my boss probably won't be giving me serious work for months. How can I make an extra 5-10K with this free time? - **Some ideas I have are:**\- Coding a botting plugin for an online game and selling that as a service \- Figuring out ... See More something I can do and/or develop in the crypto or AI space as a service \- Offering To Build WordPress or Websites Coded From Scratch on Fiverr or Upwork \- Starting a YouTube channel for developers and getting sponsors for my videos.**Any other realistic ideas?**
Started a business 3 years ago and I’m grossing ~79kper year (netting around 40k). Not sure how to level up. - I’m a vertically integrated self publisher. I write, illustrate, design, produce, fulfill, and market my books and card decks. I sell on Amazon Etsy and my website. As well ... See More as the occasional bulk order. I have an awesome fan base in some of my niche topics, which has made marketing pretty easy. I get most of my business through instragram posts and tictok videos (no ads, just posting content). I get dips and rises in sales throughout the year depending on if a bigger creator gives me a shoutout, if I go on a podcast, or if one of my posts gets a lot of views. But I’m not growing big enough to feel like I can hire someone to take over my shipping, and if I put my thousands of books and decks in a fulfillment center I’ll loose a lot of profit and I’ll need to find other work to do. Drop shipping is not an option for my card decks which are half my products. So I feel a bit stuck at home with my inventory and slow growth. I’m trying to get creative with other ways to put myself out there. My ideas:1.Hire a publicist to get me in journals or podcasts (podcasts have been huge boosts in the past but I don’t know where to find the right publicist. 2. Get a publisher. Even though my books have been really successful for such a small outreach I’ve done (2k insta followers and 1.5k tictok) publishers don’t seem to be interested in self published work. 3. Run more ads or make more content. So my question is, does anyone have experience with getting over this hump? What would be the best course of action to get to a higher exposure? I feel like other people I know have somehow gotten the floodgates open to large audiences or had investors. Is there a cheat code?
What would you do? - You’re an ambitious individual, but at the same time you struggle to find your path, your passion. You don’t have any major skills, and you don’t have much money either. You also struggle mentally.What would be your plan to succeed? Im curious how people would ... See More go through this, as I feel it’s pretty common out there (I’m one of it)
People who started a million dollar business at age 8 how did you do it? - How??
Anti-Burnout Strategies for you and your startup - As a founder, I've faced the overwhelming pressure and unending to-do lists that have often pushed me towards the precipice of burnout. I bet many of you can relate to this. I started the company 5 years ago. We are now 50 ... See More people and we have raised $15M in funding until now. When I was raising Series A, I hit a point where I seriously considered quitting. I have improved a lot since then, and I have implemented different strategies in the company to prevent burnout not only for the founders but for the entire team.**1. Taking breaks is not something you should feel ashamed of**: Easier said than done, I know. But taking time for yourself is not only healthy, it's vital. I used to feel bad on the weekends if I wasn’t working. Even in the evenings if I finish the job a bit earlier. When you start taking REAL breaks, you feel how energized you are when you come back. **2. Set Boundaries:** Remember, it's okay to say "No." Protect your time and energy like they're the crown jewels. I struggle a lot with conflict, so I accepted many things I should not have taken. I’ve worked on this a lot with my coach, but it is probably the hardest thing for me to do. **3. Show vulnerable:** With your team, your co-founders, and with other entrepreneurs. You can’t imagine how comforting it is to see that you all share the same pains. That you are not alone.**4. The positive feedback is more important than the negative one:** I've found this to be a great mood lifter. We tend to tell our team members the things they need to improve. But if you tell them the things they do well, they will repeat them. Even if they are just tiny things like “I loved how you lead that meeting” or “This document that you created is super well structured, very helpful”. **5. Hire a Coach (for you and for your team)**: You wouldn't believe the difference it makes. A good coach helps you maintain perspective, balance, and improve productivity. I have had one since our Series A and we also offer employees the option to get one. We tried **BetterUp** first, and we moved now to **Wave.ai** because they work both for CEO/Founder coaching and employee coaching. **6. Practice Mindfulness:** This has been a major key for me. A little bit of calm in the chaos can do wonders. I use Headspace for this. All employees have access to a **Headspace** subscription if they want it. **Calm** is another good option. Even though there are lots of Youtube videos for mindfulness, these apps help you build "a plan", starting with simple sessions and moving to more complex ones. **7. Delegate**: You've got a team for a reason. Seriously, delegating won't make your direct reports feel bad, the other way around, they'll burnout if you don't let them make decisions! **8. Stay Active:** A bit of exercise each day keeps burnout at bay. I do CrossFit every day. I used to hate doing exercise and now if I need to skip one day, I completely feel how I’m way more tired during the whole day (I do it first thing in the morning),**9. Sleep Well:** Your bed is your best friend. If you need more time to finish a task, never ever take that time from your sleep! **10. Socialize:** Remember, you're a human first, and a founder second. Make time for friends, family, and fun.Implementing these strategies has been a game-changer for me and my team. I hope they do the same for you! If you have any other tips or strategies to avoid burnout, feel free to share! We're all in this together.
How we made a sale of $71,000 through cold email. - We recently took on a client who exports a commodity product wholesale. Initially they came to us because they were a bit lost on how to generate deals and demand for their products. He was a friend and we ... See More hadn't had contact for a year or so. When we first met, we wanted to start a business, but the timing was never right and it fizzled out. This March, we caught up, he was an SDR of a commodity export business, I was deep into cold email lead gen. One thing led to another and after a couple of calls we started working together on pay-per-call and commission basis. To me it seemed as an easy win campaign. Not only the total addressable market was huge, but they had one of the lowest prices on the market. With the initial research done, it was time for technical setup. I bought 10 domains and setup 2 email address on each giving me sending volume of around 1k emails per day. At a very conservative 0.1% booked calls, that should give us 1 booked calls per day. Next, I scraped close to 15k companies for the initial run, enriched them with personal info, verified the emails and wrote a simple sales copy offering samples. To be honest, before going into this market, I had 0 knowledge, but I quickly learned that not a lot of people do cold email in this space. For us, that meant reply rates of 20%. Typically, across all clients, we get 10% - 14% so this was a stark difference. What's more, most of the replies were positive and asking for the samples. There was a call before they sent out the samples so they could screen the companies and see if they're potentially a serious buyer or just someone who's after free stuff. After about a couple of weeks of me running the email systems and them hopping on calls and sending out samples, we generated a couple of very interested potential buyers, high-value industry contacts and a deal. Someone ordered a container worth of goods. Now that I've validated the strategy, it's full steam ahead. As I mentioned in my previous posts, it's all about the offer and not sounding like a robot. In this case, we offered samples and one of the lowest prices on the market. That and AI-generated first lines that are unique to each recipient.
Value Drop Day 2 - Simple Profitable Companies You can copy - Here we are again on day 2 of dropping value. I was inspired by the engagement I got yesterday. 400 upvotes. Let’s go Here are my findings of the day:#1/ Freejobalerts. com This website based in India is ... See More making $100k+ a month. It’s simple - They just sends users alerts for newly available jobs.Business model: Display Ads. They get about 13M visitors per month. So my $100k estimate might actually be low. It might be even more.Someone can just copy the same idea and create freejob alerts for other countries. Just have to scrape available jobs and aggregate the data. ———#2- Everydaypower. comThis site is pretty awesome. it’s a collection of inspirational quotes making $250K/ year. It doesn’t get simpler than that.👉The site was created in 2013 and has become one of the largest and most popular websites for inspirational quotes. 👉 It gets about 1,9M visitors per month.👉 $20K/month Inspirational Quotes are free and available for anyone to use. They just aggregated them under one place and ranked the site through SEO ———#3 - MouseDining. com A website that gives you alert when Disney Reservations become available. There are a lot of events going on at Disney world and Disney land. It’s super hard to get reservations with crazy wait time. This website simply sends you alerts. They constantly check availability and notify you when something opens up. Simple pricing.Free for individuals - 6 alerts$9/ months for - 50 alerts $90 per year - 100 (They appeal to businesses, travel planner, agencies and people that are going all the time) Getting traffic through SEO (144k monthly visit) and Word to mouthCouldn’t find their exact number but wouldn’t be surprised if they’re banking. Similarweb estimates that they’re making $2M - $5M per yearKind of a simple Genius idea!See you tomorrow - Day 3!