You can use web sites such as Kickstarter to "pre-sell" memberships just like is done for other such products. For the "pre-sell", you may want to offer a special deal for being an early adopter. There are also other sites, such as Fundable, that seek financing for the business. Let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

You need to have a marketing plan.. Define your market segment and see how to reach them. SEO / SMM / your blog interaction , ads in newspapers or on the streets, or newsletters ... etc. All depends on the target segment.. If you want to share more details about your project, I can help with specific marketing plan. Good Luck..

What I would offer to you is this piece of advice. First, don't rush to start a business. When you are "tired" after having been in a certain job or certain industry or anything actually, the first thing to do is to take a break. You can't be objective or clear right after you exit something that has drained you. Second, I respect that you have a family and responsibilities. There are folks who depend on you. Perhaps you can negotiate with your family a timeframe where you can hit the pause button and reset. This way, it'll give both of you what you need: It'll give them reassurance and it'll give you a break. In sum, I don't know why it works this way, but there is something magical about paying attention to yourself and giving your body, mind and spirit what it needs. It somehow creates a space for the next step to reveal itself. And because you will have gotten all the "stuff" from your industry out of you, you'll create a clear line for the right something different to present itself. I wish you the best!

We sell both through the retail chain and direct on our website. The only way to encourage customers to buy from you rather than your stockists is to provide more value than your retailers. The advantage you have as a manufacturer is your intense knowledge for your products. Educate your customers on exactly why your products are the perfect fit and show them how the product would function in their lives. Make the process easy, delivery quick, customer service awesome, and build a unique connection with your customer by telling your story. The one thing you WILL NOT want to do is under cut your stockists on price. Stick to your MSRP and encourage your stockists to abide by that as well. Take price out of equation and rather than thinking of "how can I cut price to move more products," think "how can I add more value to this product to move more products." Hope this helps!

If you're using source control, it's easy to track source and control access — or revoke access — if someone leaves the company. Also, your developers should have signed a contract about the project itself that clearly places the source code under your/the client's/the company's control, and if/when they leave, they release all rights to code created under that contract. You can never be 100% sure, but these small steps will at least ensure a legal high ground should anyone steal code. Good luck!

Unfortunately all the numbers are off. Content builds on itself in an accumulative fashion. Much of it is unquantifiable, but the success comes as breakthrough success after building your authority over time (atleast 18 months of consistent publishing content.) Those 1000 monthly visitors should be growing consistently every month over time. If it is not growing you are not producing valuable enough evergreen content. The list should be growing your traffic, not just sales...it should be a referral machine. Are you engaging your audience when they interact with your content across various social channels? Is your content being linked to and shared organically? If not, you aren't really doing effective content marketing. Are you constantly testing your emails and landing pages for improvements to conversion rates, analyzing which content is producing the most signups, sales, etc... If that is not growing exponentially you are doing something wrong. Are you advertising your best content using native ad platforms like stumbleupon, outbrain, taboola, yahoo gemini? Why not? If your content is not valuable enough to drive signups and sales when you promote it, you are doing content marketing wrong. Are you adapting your content into multiple media types and syndicating it? (i.e. a blog post can be shortened into bullets for a slideshare presentation, which can be used a slideshow video on youtube, and an audio reading of your post can be on soundcloud, syndicated as a podcast, etc... Are you doing blogger outreach to generate interest in your content? Are you guest blogging to leverage other peoples audiences? Content marketing is an accumulative effort, which when done right builds on itself accumulatively and snowballs into breakthrough success (i.e. look at moz.com and copyblogger.com both massive startups which started with simple content marketing. I hope this helps.

The worst motivation for starting a business is the need for income. A business has to be built over time based on meeting a market need. Of course a business must make money to be successful, but this can take a bit of time. So, the real need is to use the online world to make money. Based on your copywriter skills, here are some ideas to get you started: 1) Start a blog. You can do this for free with platforms such as Blogger and WordPress. This will provide you a chance to show case your writing talent. Writing articles about copywriting can both demonstrate your writing ability and be used to market your approach. 2) Join job markets. There are several freelance sites you can use to make extra money without little to no cost, such as Upwork and elance. You will find jobs on these that will help you earn money and build your portfolio. The pay can be low as the markets tend to be aggressive but a few good contacts can lead to a better source of work. 3) Build your network. Connect with people who provide web marketing services. They need guest bloggers, ghost writers and ad copywriters. Over time you can build a steady source of freelance work. Once you have a good portfolio and practice, you should consider building a branded web site. But first, build your freelance brand. This approach works with other skills too. Let me know how else I can help.

I have built spec houses, built tract houses against contracts, renovated houses and flipped houses. One way to fund projects like this is a rich partner or partners who puts up collateral (like an LC) so that you can borrow to complete your projects. If the first one is successful, you would be surprised how easy the second one is to get funded. The profit sharing is negotiable-it can be anything form 50/50 to 20% to you the promoter. If you would like to discuss this further, please feel free to get in touch.

Usually it comes as "extraordinary events", which it would be a specific line apart in the P&L and would necessary have a note to explain the whole situation and how it won't happen again, and what are you doing to mitigate those risks (this is kind of from an accounting perspective and so you can also explain this line item won't show up again -hopefully- in your balance sheet)

First off, stop calling it an idea. (might be just that, but in licencing efforts you don't want to call it that). Second, what do you mean time is of the essence? This already started sounding risky. With that said, I believe you have two options, assuming that you can spend the next quarter reaching out and performing poorly in presentations and pitches to executives for licencing deals. 1. Learn the art of pitching and presenting, in my blog I have listed some books, one of them is presentations like Steve Jobs. Check it out here: unthinkeverything.blogspot.com (books are listed on the right) and hopefully secure a deal. The risk with this is that if you don't is time wasted. 2. Figure out a creative way to launch your innovation yourself, even if is simply to test for validation. It can be relatively inexpensive to do this (you didn't provide information on your patented idea so I can't help you on that yet). The upside of you launching your product or validation effort yourself is that it gives you exposure, it gives you business experience and most importantly it adds tangible value to your idea no longer putting you on the spot putting a random price point for it. This also makes it easier for you to approach companies and executives and if the licensing deal doesn't go through you have a business out of it. The reality is that if another business can make profit off a license, so can the owner of the product itself. Just have to figure out how.

First of all, finding keywords that are relevant to your products or services is the first step in an SEO effort. If the words are not under high demand for advertisements, the keywords can be more cost effective as long as there is still sufficient search volume. In other words, you want to make sure they keywords are something people use. The next step is a solid content strategy to employ the keywords in a natural way. I find the SEO Table at search engine land to be the best guide. You can find it at http://searchengineland.com/seotable. The key is to use the good practices, such as incorporating words in your articles and posts as well as URLs, and capitalizing on external sources, such as Social Media. At the same time, you artificially loading up on keyboards.

100% yes. Make sure it works in your area. Having a regional manager or CEO doesn't make sense at all. Not for the market, not for investors, not for you either. The Founder-CEO should be able to pull it off, otherwise you don't seem like a good bet as a product or as an investable venture.

You don't need much to get an MVP together. Check out SimpleWebRTC for a free, open source video conferencing solution. I just built a live video platform using a variation of that software (the next generation, Otalk, which is more complex) and found it really simple to get things breathing. Once you have a prototype, just get people using it. See if someone will pay for it. Keep asking. Run targeted ad campaigns where your target market exists. You don't have to start with a well-defined niche; see if a group buys in, and your niche may identify itself. I have a lot of experience with both realtime video and validating/building/marketing new products and services. I'd be happy to offer some insight if you're interested. Good luck!

I would first attend that person's actual training sessions to judge his quality of delivery in a live setting. Once convinced, the next question is the revenue sharing ratio. If he is doing most of the work, including development of the training material, while he is using my training company name then I would consider something like 70:30, to him after paying for all the direct expenses. Of course, if the course fails to sell enough seats and is cancelled, or not cancelled but does not breakeven then the costs incurred including those on promotion should be evenly split. You are free to negotiate any other ratios.

What do you mean you can't afford a base salary? What has a higher priority in your spend plan than bringing in revenue? If you don't have enough to cover a base salary you are probably not ready to launch your company. In many cases the founders will do the sales themselves. In some cases offering sales people equity might work. But, few will work without a base. Here's a tip I did with two startups. For the first five deals, do them at cost. This is essentially buying the business. BUT, they need to know that you are severely discounting the price and in return you must get from them an agreement to be a reference for you (assuming, of course, that everything works out). In the beginning, breaking even is a good thing. And, doing that while building a cadre of reference accounts is even better. Bob

Find a business similar to the one you wish to open. Speak to the owner and make a wholesale pricing agreement. ie: he gives you a discount and produces work for you that you provide to your client. Go find customers and sell the services. If you can sell enough services for it to make sense to start providing the service yourself then grow into production. If not, you haven't risked anything more than a lot of your time. Whether you are great at video production or not, what matters is that you can generate enough sales for your business to be successful. Testing your sales ability 'in the trenches' is a much better measure of potential success than most market research I've seen. Thanks David Barnett www.InvestLocalBook.com

Hi there.... I am not a media giant or PR person but I do know social impact and my guess if this guy has really great story to tell, you'd be able to find resonators with a large audience simply by cherry picking the right groups with whom to share his story. It's like any sales, really. Find the selling point and get the message out far and wide. Perhaps there are like-minded organizations that may want to hear him tell his story over a working lunch for their staff. Or an organization that is looking for a great conference or event speaker. There are many ways to turn his story into something heroic as long as the right ears are listening.

Great advisors are driven by 3 primary variables: the industry/sector of your product, your existing network, and where you are physically located. Industry - Your industry may or may not be network driven, in the sense that industry members regularly come together organically (venture capital) or stay relatively separate (accountants). If they regularly come together, industry events are great ways to building your network and eventually finding advisors. If they do not, this is where the value of your network comes into play. Network - Your network is the first place to start, going first through 1st degree connections and then to 2nd degree connections. 2nd degree connections can ultimately be more helpful as the individual has less of a personal relationship with you and may be more amenable to a business relationship that is more objective than your close friends could ever provide. Physical Location - While this may be difficult to permanently change, your location matters, and your proximity to the circles you care about matters. If you are not already in the center of where you want to be, it may be worth a trip to where the highest number of potential targets are if you can stack enough meetings together. Happy to further expand on a call if you'd like.

Very possible, the hardest part is finding the area of interest. What niche market or opportunity do you see yourself enjoying as a hobby. Enjoyment or purpose is key because passive income often requires putting in some time. At least at the beginning and on going. Here is an example: I'm good at marketing, enjoy talking business tactics, sharing my expertise and like to write, although I'm not good at it. :) One option I saw a few years ago was starting a strategy blog, this blog shares random thoughts, stories, tactics, tips, FYIs, etc. regarding business. I run Adsense on the blog to generat income from there. But my bread and butter when it comes to making passive income from the blog is the affiliate links I have on there. I enjoy reading and think I'm really good at finding great stories, bios, and How To books and I share some of those there, I think I have one of my favorite albums listed there and links to courses and services offered by other companies and some for my own companies (I run a web development firm, a business analytic and advertising team, and a hosting platform that is cheaper than GoDaddy) I have links there. All affiliates or ads to my other services. All I do is drive traffic there once in a while and see the commissions add up. I do my homework in driving the right traffic. Also, another example which is connected to the prior is that I have landing pages (see: trainer.unthink.me for example) where i get registrations for single page landing pages done by a contractor that works for me and we split the earnings. I don't do anything, but post them once In a while on Instagram. I also have an affiliate system for online programs im vested in, and help drive traffic to increase the bottom line and get commission. I also don't do anything for this one. did take time and effort in finding the right market to advertise and message to use. Once that was done the rest takes care of itself. Another example, a friend of mine has a blog about a particular lens piece for a camera loved by many professional photographers, they come to his blog (which he doesn't invest much time in anymore) to find information about tips and how tos for the lens... During the time he updated the blog daily and then weekly he would share his own affiliate links to Amazon and collects money that way. Because the niche was so targeted and there are a ton of people looking for that information he gets good return on that. This is what you call a lifestyle business, but what the people that make money off selling lifestyle businesses don't tell you is that is for those who don't require much income. Another passive income is investing, consider investing in family or friend that maybe wants to start selling Mary Kay or something, you invest in them by buying the products for them. The person sells you collect either an interest or perpetuating until you find some agreement of full repayment to you. Buy a soda or vending machine if you have a truck and are handy with fixing stuff. You can always find deals on snacks and sodas and in a good spot a machine can generate average $50 per cycle. May not sound like much, but if you get yourself a couple of them you have a small income stream that can be saved and used to buy a candy machine or another vending machine... And give you weekend spending money. These are just some ideas I hope help you get your brain flowing to see that you might not need money to do something and if you do you might have more choices than you realized before.

Yes. That's called a "fictitious business name" or an "alias" or "doing business as (DBA)" depending on what state you are in. Should be a fairly easy filing option available from your Secretary of State. If you can't figure it out on your own any attorney could do that for you, although you should be able to do on your own.

That's indeed a great idea!! Basically all you need is leads.!! This can be achieve with multiple channels. 1. PPC (a bit costlier for IT agency) 2. Referral Marketing 3. SEO 4. Niche Emailing (Not Bulk) 5. SMO And for mode I need to see nature of your business in detail Tx, Hope that helps!!

I am an investor and advisor and have been structuring deals like this for many years. You can provide equity in the parent if you do not spinoff, provided that the people you provide the equity to agree to it in advance and you comply with all existing shareholders agreements and securities laws, which you would need to to even if you were offering equity in the spinoff. Let me know if you would like to have a call for follow up. Thanks.

Happy New Year (2020) ! Do Feel (Perfectly) Free to Contact Me ; for a (Legally-Compliant) Facility Optimization (and Ethical Corporate Promotion) Strategy. Sincerely , Professor Obi

I don't know how much your workflows vary from project to project which may have some impact on the best way to develop this, but a good starting approach could be to analyze the current workflow(s) that you are using now and then document best practices based on that as well as incorporating research-based best practices into your workflow(s) depending on they type of workflow that needs developed. Checklists, templates, etc. could be developed to assist your staff based on this analysis. Happy to discuss further. I have developed many processes and project plans for IT related processes in the Healthcare sector. Steve

Show them how you will bring them customers. Get your plan written down. Present it to them. So many people are dreamers. You'll stand out merely by having your plan written down, and taking the action of getting in front of them. Think about it from their perspective. What would they like in a local rep? What level of sales would they expect? How would they like to see you reach the marketplace? If a physical product is involved, how will you transport, store and deliver it? Are their border issues? How will you overcome these if so? Every decision maker has room for a person who has a definite plan. Don't be worried about size.