First time entrepreneur, here it goes!

[Scot]

So here it goes, I want to share my business partner and my journey. We are on the ground floor right now, well, we're on the elevator up from the parking garage to the ground floor actually.

Where it all started
My business partner and good friend sent a business audio book with a ridiculous name. Come on, who didn't smirk when they saw the title of TMF ? Haha. I spend 9-10 hours a day in my car at my territory sales job and I though, why not, my current science fiction read is getting boring. My friend has always had the heart and soul of an entrepreneur. I always joked with my wife and mutual friends that if him and I went into business together some day, we'd take over the world. As I listened to TMF , I wracked my brain every few minutes for an idea. Then it hit me. MJ said, "find a fragmented industry and bring it together" (or something like that). I swear, I could see the cartoon light bulb hovering over my head as I texted my friend 15 times in quick succession "call me now! I have our idea!" While waiting for him to get out of a meeting, I pulled over at a gas station, grabbed a hotel notepad I swiped from a work trip the previous week and wrote 2 pages of bullet point ideas. He called, I word vomitted, we agreed. This idea is GOLD.

What it is
Ok so no, as I've had suggested and also seen in other progress threads, im not divulging my business model or idea quite yet. Once we go live and running, you'll see. But here's the basic idea.

We will be a website and companion app based business. Just him and I. No needed employees. Think www.ratemyprofessor.com. For any of you between 16-35, you probably visited this site once if you went to college. RMP.com is a template for our business. (This has nothing to do with academia) Is there a need for it? Absolutely. Is there competition? Yes, one poorly designed website that isn't even running yet.

How will we monetize it?
The website will have 3-4 streams of income. The website will be free to the end user. The business that we are targeting will pay a monthly subscription fee. We will also put minimal ads on our site, not landing page, and on the app. We will start with google ads, once we have the site traffic we will be able to target big producer companies for ads. We will also allow businesses to upgrade premium options and send out app notifications to their customers in a geographic location. Lastly, we hope to allow the businesses to conduct credit card transactions through our app, which we will collect a 1-2% transaction fee from.

Our progress so far
For the few who saw my initial thread, you know we are starting to develope our website. As of now we have the domain and hosting. We are submitting our LLC paperwork shortly.

I have a childhood friend, who along with one of his friends, are both excellent coders. They have both done impressive work in the private sector. They told us writing this app would be easy. They're both looking to start their own software agency. Good news, we're both start ups. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. We haven't started negation yet, but they indicated they don't expect a huge lump sum $$$ and we are hoping we can offer them an equity stake or royalty as compensation.

Over the next 2 weeks we will launch a proof of concept website on our own, collect google analytics data and collect email addresses through user sign ups. We also plan on targeting trade groups, Facebook groups, blogs, etc pertaining to this industry to get users over to our site.


I have a notebook of my plans and ideas for this business, a timeline to accomplish milestones and a list of ways to achieve each one. I cannot wait to share my success AND failures with y'all. I know that my successes will be greater than my uh-Ohs.

 

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[OldFaithful]

I realize that this is a bit late for you, but may I suggest you read this GOLD thread?
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...-but-am-happier-and-stronger-than-ever.62925/

I know that it seems like nothing could come between you and your friend, but just think about it...

 

[Scot]

I realize that this is a bit late for you, but may I suggest you read this GOLD thread?
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...-but-am-happier-and-stronger-than-ever.62925/

I know that it seems like nothing could come between you and your friend, but just think about it...

I totally get it. But like MJ said, a partnership is like a marriage. And I get that. One thing we did when I calls him with the idea was establish rules and expectations.

Will a partnership lend to some major pain in the a$$ moments? Absolutely. But I think we each bring a unique set of skills and drives to our enterprise.

And honestly, self doubt is a powerful tool. I find myself asking myself, am I doing enough work? Does he feel like he's doing the lions share? Do more then.

If it crashes and burns because of a partnership, then so be it. But I'm optimistic and realistic. Time will tell. I appreciate the advice.

 

[Scot]

Some progress updates.

We are officially business owners! Filed our LLC paperwork last night with the state, should have a response in 2 days. By the weeks end, our goals are to have our PO Box as well. By the end of next week we will probably open a small business account with Chase (they have additional benefits for veteran own businesses).

As for the website itself:
Signed up for our Aweber account, will have it finalized by Friday.

I have been reading the threads about writing copy, researching good website design ideas as well. Our minimum viable MVP will be ready to go live by the end of next week. I have been working on getting a simple and effective landing page, with a few CTA's on the site. The CTA's will link to email forms for Aweber to capture early adopters. Well also start a small Adwords campaign to test out early traffic once the site launches. Our key words aren't very competitive, so should be able to get a reasonable amount of hits in the first week.

Our Developer should be back in the country in 2 weeks, right after we get the proof of concept site up. Well get our negotiations rolling and get them working. Our hope is that within 1 week into development, they can launch our true MVP with some of the functionality that our final product will have.

What we're doing in the meantime
We are getting out social media presence started. My business partner already has a sizable IG page he's going to slowly convert over to our market. I'm going to start building a presence on Twitter. I saw a thread yesterday about Pornhub's marketing. Believe it or not, gave me some great ideas for social media marketing.

I have also been conducting market research, talking to both our target user and target customer to determine their needs in the space. Good things are coming!



More to come. I don't know, but clicking submit on that LLC application made everything real, really quick!

 

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[Jonathan1]

Wow. Sounds exciting. Keep us posted.

 

[Scot]

@Yoda This may help to answer if it's a brandable brand.

 

[Scot]

Micro update:
Sunbiz informed me our LLC name was taken. Our fault for not researching better. But it works, because I came up with a better LLC name which I think suits us better.

IG, Twitter, and Facebook pages are signed up. My partner is the social media guru. I'm definitely going to learn, but he's taking point on getting them established.

I just spent the past two days staring at Microsoft word attempting to write copy. I finally got some great pieces out. How? I'm a salesman. I can sell anything. So I pretended like I was sitting down with a customer telling him why he should subscribe. I typed out my "conversation" and took out the best parts, tweaked them and made them sexy.

Teaser
Growing up, I was taught every man needs two things, a good accountant and a good tailor. Let's make it three things a good accountant, a good tailor and a good ....

Find out what it is soon!

 

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[Scot]

LLC was approved! We are now a business! I got some more work done on the website today. My partner's laptop took a dump, so I'm pulling the weight on site design at the moment, but I'm not worried about it.

Updated goal is to have our site done by the weekend and ready to launch in one week on Monday.

 

[Scot]

Coffee
I'm posting this at 11:15pm to tell you to go to Amazon, buy the Mr Coffee espresso maker for $40 from Amazon Prime. Worth. Every. Penny. (Cafe Bustelo, cuban coffee all the way)

Coffee fueled progress
I just hammered out our sell sheet and features page. Finishing up individual landing pages for each subscription level to track CTR for each price point once we launch MVP. Should have the rough rough draft of the website done by Wednesday. Then going to get our Aweber forms finalized, inserted, and make sure everything functions correctly.

Relationships
So something pretty important happened last night I forgot to share earlier. People in your life an either be a big support to your dreams or a parasite to your motivation. I struggled with the idea of telling my wife about this venture in the beginning. But I knew it would be impossible to hide all the work I was doing from her. I talked the idea over and what we wanted to do. She was skeptical I could tell, but she wanted to see where Id go with this before she made up her mind. We agreed on one thing, "you're not quitting your job for this and we dont have the extra money to sink our savings in this." Got it.

This past weekend was a pivotal point for this venture in her mind, I think. My parents came into town and I shared the news about the business and the excitement with my mom. Up to this point Id shared it with my dad because we are definitely like minded people. But this is the first time I'd talked about the business to someone else in front of my wife. She's seen my dedication, late nights, study sessions, books read, audio books listened to in this short time. That, combined with my passion about what I'm doing made her realize that I was serious about this.

Then the perfect storm. She has to start paying those medical school loans back soon and the impending monthly bill is becoming a reality. I explained to her my promise, the first thing we pay for when we become profitable is to erase those student loans. Because to be free to live our lives, we must first be free of our debts. I have my wife's blessing and support. At first, when I secluded myself in the dining room with my laptop, I was met with skepticism. But now she asks if I need anything to keep working and critiques my sales copy.

I think its really important to include your loved ones in what you do. Its important that they understand and support what you want to get out of this. I'm glad that I have an understanding and supportive wife. She understands ambition.


6 days until we go live.

 

[Scot]

Man, what a day. What a week.

Finance
Yesterday we started our small business account. That made it a whole lot more real. Applied for a business credit card so we can consolidate all the random expenses we have like Aweber, Adwords, hosting, etc onto one card (and get some rewards too).

Small Pivot
We are preparing the launch of our MVP in 2 hours. On Wednesday, August 3rd, we're live! While preparing for that, ironing out our last minute details, I kinda panicked. For those of you who saw my thread about google Adsense, yeah, sorry.

So we were originally going to launch with google ads on the website to help generate a few measly $ to reinvest into the business. Google ads was in my partner's wheel house, not mine. I didn't realize that there was an annoying approval process. Good thing though, because after advice from fellow FLF members, I decided to leave ads off the site when we launch. I also had some of my assumptions about lead gen disproved, so thank you @Andy Black for preventing future lawsuits and the wrath of Google.

Getting the ball rolling
We used Fiverr to find a pretty affordable logo design. Its not perfect, but it works. I only spend $15 on it, so I'm happy with the end result. Now we have some form of identity. My partner has the IG page up and running, he has a good following on a few of his other pages, so we're quickly getting followers. I've got FB up and running as well. We've invited our whole friends lists, have had a few shares from friends too. Our Aweber is up and running, we already have a few submissions from friends and friends of friends.

Tomorrow is the real deal. Adsense campaigns go live. I've set a small budget so I can get my feet wet and see how this really works. Good thing is, every key word I'm bidding on, no one has ads up for those searches, so I'm hoping I get large impressions and clicks for cheap.

Launch day is here. Deep breath. Lets do this.

 

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[OldFaithful]

I feel your excitement & your anxiety. It will work, just give it time, and don't give up!

 

[Scot]

I feel your excitement & your anxiety. It will work, just give it time, and don't give up!

So you mean don't refresh my dashboard on google analytics every 30 seconds? Got it! Haha

 

[kkompoti]

is there a tripadvisor or rateyourprofessor like template for a site or you have to make your own? i don't know much about sites that is why i am asking. and if you have to make your own how much would that cost? and where can you find people to make it for you?

 

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[ZCP]

wait a full day. then see what feedback you have. gather data.
breathe. patience.
be prepared to pivot.
start thinking about how to a/b.

 

[Scot]

is there a tripadvisor or rateyourprofessor like template for a site or you have to make your own? i don't know much about sites that is why i am asking. and if you have to make your own how much would that cost? and where can you find people to make it for you?

So as of now our site is pretty bare bones. We don't have the rating functions up rate now or even a search function. We basically have some sell sheets and email capture tools to test the market.

There are some Wordpress plugins out there that all you to do listings and ratings, but in all honesty, I never looked to deep into them.

We have a programmer who is going to do most of the design. For our purpose, it made sense to have a developer put it all together because we wanted to have very specific functionality

That's the problem though, finding a developer. They will cost a lot of money or if you luck out like I did, you can find one willing to work for equity or a royalty. Put some feelers out with your friends or over social media, ask around who knows web deleveopmemt or friends of friends, see if you strike up a deal with someone.

I would suggest joining some website developement groups. There are a bunch of Wordpress groups on Facebook that can help answer specific questions and site plugin recommendations.

 

[Guest3722A]

Seeing that you set up an llc with 2 managing members prior to a first sale, I highly suggest you continue on your current educational journey and complete your partnership with an operating agreement. VERY IMPORTANT when partnering. Trust when I say that down the line, slopes WILL get slippery and individual responsibilities and contributions need to be identified right here right now.

 

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[Scot]

wait a full day. then see what feedback you have. gather data.
breathe. patience.
be prepared to pivot.
start thinking about how to a/b.

Thanks. I've had to stop myself from opening up my Adwords and analytics apps. We have a couple of automated IG posts going up around noon today, so hopefully that will pull some traffic in as well.

We have already made some tiny pivots and had a couple of our assumptions disproved, which is great! It saves us the problem of driving our business into the ground and let's us steer it in the right direction.

 

[Scot]

Seeing that you set up an llc with 2 managing members prior to a first sale, I highly suggest you continue on your current educational journey and complete your partnership with an operating agreement. VERY IMPORTANT when partnering. Trust when I say that down the line, slopes WILL get slippery and individual responsibilities and contributions need to be identified right here right now.

Definitely. It's #2 or 3 on our to do list. After this MVP test, we are going to iron out our OA. the only reason we have put it off is if the Dev decides he wants equity instead of a royalty, we'll have to write that in the OA.

Edit: But yes, thank you for reminding me of that and pointing out the gravity of it. I tend to trust people a bit too much, but I know that even though he's a friend and former comrade in arms, business is business.

 

[Scot]

Alright. So day is over and I definitely screwed up my Adwords campaign. I guess I didn't fully grasp the concept of bidding for views. My assumption was, well hey, no ones bidding for my key words because I see zero ads. So, I figured, set a max bid for $1.00 Maybe Ill get clicks for a few pennies. Nope. No ads showed today and google told me my bid was too low. Lesson learned. Recreated the campaign with manual bids at $5 and a bigger budget. Lets see what happens!

 

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[Scot]

I wanted to share this because I think people need to read this, regardless of it we make it big or if we fall flat.

Do not give up, do not give into the doubt.

We have been live for 1 day. In that day, by dredging through IG, we have found a couple of big IG pages that do something similar to us. At first, it was a heart dropping moment. Someone has our idea and they have 800k followed. Shit.

But I've said it to others before, I'll say it to myself. Good. Competition means we have a market. Their website isn't well layed out and it doesn't have the functionality we will have.

We will be better, we will overcome.

There will be moments of crushing doubt. Moments of "what the F*ck did I get myself into?" I will say this once, I will say it100 times. This is normal and healthy. But do not give into it.

Use that doubt to evaluate what you're doing, fix any problems, make it better.

 

[Scot]

So it’s been 5 days since we launched the website. We have learned a lot and already applied some of the things I learned from the Lean Startup Method.


Adwords

I cannot thank @Andy Black and @lowtek enough for all the help and advice they’ve given me. I ran our adwords campaign from Wed – Sunday, spent about $80 for this experiment. Due to the nature of the industry we are working with, they are most busy Friday-Sunday, hence why we ran ads then. I was able to adjust the keywords and settings to get the most relevant keyword down to $1.90 with an average position of 1.4. Not bad. However, I realized a major flaw. My website currently has ZERO monetization. Which means we have no ROI on those clicks. Also, the adwords campaigns are aimed at the end user of our website/app which will be free users. Granted, we will be running ads on the site eventually, but we decided not to ugly up the site with google ads just yet. So, it looks like adwords is being put on the shelf for now. I may run another campaign after the app launches aimed at the businesses we are hoping to get to subscribe down the road.


Analytics

So analytics are looking good so far. We had 605 page views since launch. Not too shabby, pretty good with almost no real marketing. We have our Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages up and running. IG seems to be doing the best so far. We’ve gotten 30 or so conversions just from posting stupid memes (it actually relates to our business I promise) and around 30 from Twitter (mostly from me searching hashtags related to our industry and essentially trolling people and posting our link).


How we’ll market

So Adwords is out for now. So.. how the heck are we going to get people to actually visit our site before we launch the app and go into full scale marketing mode? Social media seems to be the best option right now. I was really hesitant to do this, but we decided on adding a blog to the site. We aren’t going to make it a main feature of the site, probably have a small site link to it on the bottom menu. But the posts will serve two functions. 1) to help with SEO and eventually get adsense approved and 2) Serve as landing pages for social media ads. By posting the blog to Facebook and IG, it gives people something to actually click on that takes them to our site, rather than hoping someone clicks the laughing face reaction or maybe likes our page. We’ll have our Aweber inline signup on the blog posts as well. (which btw we got 3 random unknown people on our email list so far!)


Next Steps

Our developer returns from vacation next week. This week, in addition to getting the blog running and boosting posts on FB and IG, we’re going to get a full story board and design schematic drawn out. This way, once we iron out the contract details we can hand over our specs for a quick start.

1 week down. A lot of internal ups and downs. But someone posted a great Gary V video the other day that helped set it in stone. It essentially boiled down to I will out work you, I am playing the long game.

Edit: P.S. Once we actually get the app live and have actual numbers involved, I'll move that part over to the Inside.

 

[Scot]

We officially have a developer! We had a web conference last night with our development team, laid out the vision of our website and app, and came to an agreement. Long story short, we were able to get our website developed for a royalty on our income. We really lucked out because they are starting their own software company right as we are starting our company. My partner asked a very important question during the call which I think really steered it in the right direction for both parties, "What do you want out of this, compensation or business development?" Turns out, the programmer wants two things, to add our website to his portfolio to show future clients, and to follow along with our business to learn how he can monetize his own projects in the future.

Essentially, he gets to have a backseat ride in our entrepreneurial venture, and learn all the mistakes and successes we have, without the risk of losing his business.

I'm pretty pumped. A friend of mine who is an attorney, is reworking a contract that @Jon L was very kind to send my way, and we'll be in business. He gave us the timeline that the website should be up and running by December. This will set us up perfectly to start selling as soon as its ready. In the meantime, we are going to develop more content for our website. I am writing more blog posts, my partner is going to make short videos blogs as well. We'll use these to get more social media buzz around our service, help build our email list, and get a ready group of customers ready to access our website when its live.

Things are going in the right direction.

 

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[Scot]

Also, I created an INSIDERS thread for the intricate details and numbers that go along with this. www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...one-business-suit-for-small-businesses.69640

 

[Scot]

So we hit a snag. Our developers dropped a couple of bombshells on us on our last webex.

This biggest bombshells was a change to our payment for service. Originally we had agreed to a royalty over 2 years with a possible equity conversion at the end of the 2 years. Our developer has a 3 month gap in his current contract approaching and wants to work on getting his software company off the ground. He prefers a more traditional payment for the app instead.

That would be fine if we had the money. We are 100% bootstrapping this. The goal was to go into this without maxing out credit cards, wasting time drafting a business plan to get banks funding, or to seek outside investments.

They told us they would work with us on a more reasonable payment plan. My partner and I are exploring our options, but we want to continue work with this developer, as we believe in his vision for our app.

More of the details, as well as some of the other proprietary issues will be posted in the INSIDERS thread. https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...one-business-suit-for-small-businesses.69640/

 

[IrishSpring600]

I don't think I can do that...It's really big. Is this your first business? Just reading the first post overwhelms me; isn't there a simpler way to solve a need?

 

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[Scot]

I don't think I can do that...It's really big. Is this your first business? Just reading the first post overwhelms me; isn't there a simpler way to solve a need?

I'm very confused by your comment. What are you referring to..?

And simpler way to solve a need.. Again not quite sure what you're referring to.

However, anything worth doing Is never easy.

 

[Scot]

We had a set back. Our developer changed the terms of payment. Originally we thought we'd hit the jackpot, a great developer who would work for royalty+equity. Well, he's starting his business and they need capital too, from us.

The new terms frankly, we can't afford. They indicated they'd be willing to work out a payment plan. Also, he said he didn't want to lose the option of equity since he believes in the company.

We are delivering a negotiation to our payment. More to follow on that.


I wanted to share this mostly for one big reason. The second they dropped the bombshell, for the remaining 45 minutes of the call, my heart was in my stomach. I wanted to just say "why bother with the rest of this call?"

There will be moments when you say "you're an idiot for believing you could have every done this. This was never going anywhere. All you did was waste money on a pipe dream"

Tell that voice to SHUT THE F*ck UP. Sorry for the language, but that voice is an a**hole and had it coming.

I had that voice Thursday night. The ones who succeed in business are the ones who hear that voice, ignore or overcome it, and do it quickly, without self pity.

I'll fill y'all in once we get the new terms hashed out.

What's the worst part of all this? I'm su excited to sell this product, I hate having to wait!!

 

[IrishSpring600]

When I hear that voice, I just breathe knowing i'm doing my best and move along. We can have faith in the future, but it is better if we have faith in our actions.

 

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[Scot]

When I hear that voice, I just breathe knowing i'm doing my best and move along. We can have faith in the future, but it is better if we have faith in our actions.

Exactly. Fear is normal and healthy. It should be a tool that you master, to evaluate what you're doing. But never use it as a crutch or even worse, an excuse to stop.

 

[IrishSpring600]

Exactly. Fear is normal and healthy. It should be a tool that you master, to evaluate what you're doing. But never use it as a crutch or even worse, an excuse to stop.

Yeah, every time I feel fearful, I do it anyway. If I fail, I examine what I could have done better.