Currently over $2 million in annual revenue and how I got here.

Well bing put it in the #2 position after 1 wikipedia link, so I started generating leads through bing and I have no clue how to Bid a new Hardwood flooring installs in old homes or let alone any homes.
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Dude this is freaking awesome. I might want to chat with you to see how you pulled this off. But yeah, you can get some nice rankings with local sites pretty quickly.
 
@localcasestudy That's what I thought regarding specialized industries. I have 1 out of the 4 that is exactly what you mentioned (onboard quickly and pay onsite) which we just started generating leads for yesterday.

PM me if you wanna chat, I'm an open book and will help where I can!
 
localcasestudy said:
I'm on to other projects: wetshaveclub, launch27, lawntribe, and launching these two in the new years:

http://www.branddesignz.com/hellocarpets/hellocarpets/
http://verycreative.info/marian_h/backpacks/wp/

Zero market research @CCarter . I predict $50K each in the first 6 months. Let's see what happens! : -)
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@localcasestudy I realize we are talking past each other. Market research for me is making sure there is a viable market - spending at least 3-6 hours understanding your market. It's not 3 months of figuring SWOT analysis. My problem is you are telling people that are reading not to do any - assuming they have foresight or the same experience to spot opportunities in markets which you developed already - yet they have not. I can't tell you the countless businesses I've jumped into without sitting down and doing a full hour of consideration - cause I had the experience to recognize opportunities versus being a newbie. In the beginning I failed miserably, but eventually developed a system. If i had done 3-6 hour of research the first operation i would not have entered. The others I would have.

And I definitely understand the wasting time and kicking the can down the road problem people have - looking for a picture perfect plan or nothing. I'm from the school of hard work will beat out a "perfect plan". You might want to consider where these people are in life - if they can even spot a good or even 'okay' opportunity.

I dunno - maybe I'm trying to make sure they avoid a 6 month mistake which could have been avoided with an hour worth of research - guess people starting out have to learn that big one for themselves and the training wheels should have been pulled off by now. Maybe I'm too cautious with these newbies and giving them advice - when in reality I'm not the same overly cautious in my activities.

You can tell readers to jump into the water and see what happens. Your 8th time jumping into the water you'll swim fine - but their 1st time...
 
> Market research for me is making sure there is a viable market - spending at least 3-6 hours understanding your market.

Yeah I think we were talking past each other then. I agree. When people say market research they're not talking about this. They're talking about some long process. So yeah I agree with this. I talked about it in one of my case studies how to spend a few hours seeing what's up with the competition. So yeah I think we agree. This is one example of this (Day 3 in my ridealong: http://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneu...y_3_critically_important_figure_out_what_the/)

>You can tell readers to jump into the water and see what happens. Your 8th time jumping into the water you'll swim fine - but their 1st time...

For me, I think the 1st time is to be taken no matter what. So we might have a different outlook here. The biggest problem newbies have is not whether they will fail the first time, it's whether they will find a way to get off the bench and get in the game at all. And if you build businesses the way I do, failing the first time will be the best and cheapest MBA you've ever gotten. I do not build businesses in ways where I try to prevent failure. My entire outlook is moving fast, making sure there is an easy onboarding possibility, and applying the same principles in an almost robotic fashion. For me the possibility of failure is part of the game. The way I see it, as long as I have the resources available, I'll take the shot. I'll miss some. I'll hit some. I only have to hit a few big ones to win. But no matter what I'm coming out shooting! lol

For newbies, I think they are better off taking the shot, rather than waiting for what seems like the perfect situation. That's where they usually fail, while sitting on the bench. imo

Thanks man, enjoyed the convo, you made some great points!!!
 
localcasestudy said:
It's happening. 1st half of this year I'm working on two easier companies to start, and then I may approach it second half of the year depending on how things play out. Biggest currency for me now is time.
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Awesome dude, best of luck with it.

I recently had a company I was working on for most of 2014 fail (venture-backed, economics of the business didn't make sense w/ the traction we needed). Lesson learned.

Looking for good opportunities in 2015 instead of falling back on marketing consulting (stagnation, no growth). If there's something you need help with that time isn't allowing you to do, I'd love to hop in and deliver.
 
@Kevin thanks man. Would definitely be interested in learning more about your experience with VCs and what that was like. Also, how would you describe your current skillset?
 
localcasestudy said:
Bottomline: I think the risk of skipping the bullshit research and getting to work is LESS than the risk of conducting the bullshit research and talking yourself out of the opportunity.
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This is for you, with your multiple businesses experience, deep pockets and steady cashflow. Not for any beginner who literally risks his only couple grands for a new enterprise.
 
Golan said:
This is for you, with your multiple businesses experience, deep pockets and steady cashflow. Not for any beginner who literally risks his only couple grands for a new enterprise.
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We'll have to disagree @Golan . I've only had steady cash flow for 3 years. Before then I was doing the same thing. Finding opportunities and executing on them. I started over 8 companies in the 5 years before my first big win. Where I got the money from? Not eating out, turning off my cellphone, saving up $300 per month from my real job and getting a site up with two months of savings. You name it. My approach was exactly the same. My point is, the beginning will stay a beginner until they get in the game. And they'll never get in the game messing around at the margins and waiting for some perfect opportunity where everything points to success. The way to get to success is to build up experience and learn from project to project. How did you think I got multiple business experience? By starting multiple businesses and trying. Someone who starts and fails in 6 months is much better off than the guy that doesn't start because he's trying to protect himself from failure. But alas...

I don't expect you guys to agree with me, and I actually am wary of repeating this so much so I'm going to retire from this line of chat. But I'm open to responding to other types of questions/ideas if they are any. Love the forum! Thanks man.
 
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Thanks for the answer that helps a lot!

Two more questions.
How do you make sure that people who work for you won't make a direct deals with the clients leaving you behind? Are you concerned about this at all?

If you were about to make a box for vegans/vegetarians what would you put inside that box? (excluding fresh vegetables and fruits) :smile:
 
Your market is easy and doesn't need any notable marketing research, is like 500 million people who are able to pay you trough VISA or any kind of payment, easy to attract and market to.

Do you know what kind of products category you have been marketed, you have promoted the easiest product in those categories, so you don't need much of market research cause it's usually consumed by everyone. Something like cars are hard to sell them because now you need a market research "market segmentation and positioning" (economic stat, GDP, lone variable, geographic...) you can't sell a sport car in Nigeria, this is not an insult but an economic restriction that makes less and less people are able to have one duo to currency problems, low income, handful rich people, but if you do the same in Switzerland you can get many buyers as you want.

Market research is important even for a half an hour as the minimum time you will waste on for a small project, long term marketing research are for big companies that try to predict income increasing in each five years which is not made for individual or small companies but isn't a bad thing to do, cause you may find a loophole that your competition never think of.
 
@localcasestudy great to have you here. This thread is already filled with loads of great advice! I know from reading about sourcing products for wetshaveclub; initially you had problems with mom and pop shops not being able to produce your large order requirements. Is that still an issue? Do you ever have companies come to you wanting to be in the box? If so how does that process work for you?
 
I must say great thread here!

We all seem to be making a big fuss about the Market Research etc, of course MR is required to what depth differs for different markets, products and services. One persons MR to another will always be different I don't think there is a "one size" fits all. I take about 3 hours looking to see if a market will work for me some may say " thats great" or some may say different - who cares!

What we have here is @localcasestudy laying out a solid plan of action that if you go ahead and put some work into it can be very lucrative.

You may make some mistakes along the way - so what, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger! Its also very true when it comes to people saying I don't have the funds to start etc, but that doesn't stop you from:
a) start planning out your attack
b) As @localcasestudy mentioned stop going out for fancy meals, live on water and bread for a month if you have to - when there's a will there's a way!

Bravo to you my brother me myself have took alot from this :smile:
 
Andrewkar said:
Thanks for the answer that helps a lot!

Two more questions.
How do you make sure that people who work for you won't make a direct deals with the clients leaving you behind? Are you concerned about this at all?

If you were about to make a box for vegans/vegetarians what would you put inside that box? (excluding fresh vegetables and fruits) :smile:
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Hi I was never concerned about this. At the end of the day human beings are human beings so I only put energy into things I can control. I'll say though that our setup reduces this somewhat: clients have credit cards on file, know that we're insured, like our guarantees to fix things if they go wrong, etc. So clients would be losing some peace of mind to save a few bucks. On the side of folks that work for us, they also have an economic disincentive: Take the risk of earning an extra $20 by trying to steal a client, us finding out, and them losing a steady flow of income that is thousands of dollars per month. So they are natural disincentives built into the operations. Then there are more formal disincentives in the form of a noncompete that they sign. With all of this though, it has happened, but so infrequently that it's a nonfactor for us.

Haha, about the vegan box, man i have no idea, but I would just check what they do and do the same : -)

https://naturebox.com/
https://www.graze.com/us/
 
vinnypolston said:
@localcasestudy great to have you here. This thread is already filled with loads of great advice! I know from reading about sourcing products for wetshaveclub; initially you had problems with mom and pop shops not being able to produce your large order requirements. Is that still an issue? Do you ever have companies come to you wanting to be in the box? If so how does that process work for you?
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Thansk @vinnypolston , glad to be here.

Yeah the issue with mom and pop shops is still there but we found a solution. We've figured out that many of them can actually get these orders done if we give them a longgggg lead time. So what we do now is have our boxes set up 3 or 4 months in advance so each company has at least 3 months to fulfill our orders. This has worked tremendously.

Yeah man, companies approach us all the time wanting to be in the box. So now that we've grown instead of us having to hunt people down, they hunt us down. We receive samples at the office literally every single day at the office. Man I think I broke out in a rash once by trying like 7 colognes in one day lol. But yeah if we like the stuff, and it makes our price range for the box, then we'll make an order for a future box.
 
localcasestudy said:
Hi I was never concerned about this. At the end of the day human beings are human beings so I only put energy into things I can control. I'll say though that our setup reduces this somewhat: clients have credit cards on file, know that we're insured, like our guarantees to fix things if they go wrong, etc. So clients would be losing some peace of mind to save a few bucks. On the side of folks that work for us, they also have an economic disincentive: Take the risk of earning an extra $20 by trying to steal a client, us finding out, and them losing a steady flow of income that is thousands of dollars per month. So they are natural disincentives built into the operations. Then there are more formal disincentives in the form of a noncompete that they sign. With all of this though, it has happened, but so infrequently that it's a nonfactor for us.

Haha, about the vegan box, man i have no idea, but I would just check what they do and do the same : -)

https://naturebox.com/
https://www.graze.com/us/
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Many thanks mate! I'm was thinking the same.

In regards to vegan boxes. Those two boxes you have posted above could be a great examples to follow. I got my own idea about this box though... Thanks again :wink:
 
Nate said:
For anyone interested:
http://mixergy.com/interviews/rohan-gilkes-maidsinblack-interview/

How was the experience going on Mixergy?
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Besides my haters from reddit following me over there and posting innuendo and straight up lies about me and my business, it was great! lol I think that's par for the course online though. Because I was only alerted to this forum after folks were making comments making it out to seem like the entire case study was some ad for cratejoy lol. It's the thing I hate most about the internet, but everything else is positive: Andrew is a cool dude. We went to dinner in DC (he's from the area as well) and we had a full pre-interview set up with one of his folks so i kind of had an idea of the general questions to expect. I thought he was going to edit the video in some way, but nope. What you got was the exact video, complete with me fixing the light in my hotel room and all. haha Great guy, and very cool experience. I'm doing one for the foundation in a few weeks.
 
Just reading your section on your adwords campaign, when beginning what budget did you set as I don't think you mentioned it and what did the ROI look like with Adwords?
 
Pacman said:
Just reading your section on your adwords campaign, when beginning what budget did you set as I don't think you mentioned it and what did the ROI look like with Adwords?
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Yeah ROI for adwords is going to look like a minefield for one-time bookings and like heaven for recurring bookings. All and all, it's a win if you get folks to signup for recurring jobs in fairly good numbers. It's the one thing that I always use when launching a company though, because it will be guaranteed jobs if you have a good landing page. So to answer your question specifically: ROI will probably end up being slightly negative at the start and you can tweak it into positive numbers over time. But the real ROI kicks in when you're able to keep a client for 6 months to a year from a job you got from Adwords.

My budget was probably 50 per day, but ended up spending like $15 per day or something like that.
 
localcasestudy said:
Hi I was never concerned about this. At the end of the day human beings are human beings so I only put energy into things I can control.
.........
With all of this though, it has happened, but so infrequently that it's a nonfactor for us.
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I admire your coolness :tongue:
 
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