If it's a client you want to work with and this is part of the client's requirements then yes, you should allow this or politely decline the business. The client has the right to ask for anything and you have the right to approve or decline. I ran an offshore software services company in Costa Rica after being a Division Manager at Cognizant and now I advise and work with 50 software companies in 25 countries and this is a common request that is complied with. This isn't to say you shouldn't make the reasonable argument that it is preferred that interviews are conducted just with team leads who will then vet and manage the rest of the team. Even though you recruited, vetted, hired and trained your employees, the client wants to validate that your standards and definitions of capabilities are in line with theirs. That is a reasonable exercise assuming you want the business and you feel that this investment of time and validation will lead to a long, fruitful relationship.

When taking on employees you have to be mindful of state labor laws. If they are sales people working on commission only then you might get away with this form of payment. However if they are providing you skilled labor then you maybe required to pay them minimum wage. The bigger question should by, why would someone want to work for you with little or no pay? And who would trust the growth of their company with staff making little to no pay? It's the old saying, you get what you pay for. Without knowing too much about your company I would say that if you do not have revenue your not ready to hire. The free labor comes from founders (sweat equity). I would be glad to speak with you further on the topic. Best of luck.

It can be hit or miss. I have found at times that it's more management than it's worth. Most of the time I have instead taken the same budget and hired a part time virtual assistant for the same tasks and gotten better results. Now, there's certainly something to be said for building your community and hiring local interns from local colleges in order to give back. I do think that's a real and important motive. If you are set on an intern you might reach out to marketing professors at local colleges and see if you can back channel and isolate great students from their classes, though at this point in the season you are going to be late. Most internships for top students are going to be solidified early in the Spring. This goes without saying for any job, but you want to make sure you carefully write down and explain expectations and remember this will be someone who has not worked before (much) so things you take for granted with an experienced professional might not be second nature to them. That said, social media and online is going to be a good area for this generation of young workers.

I recently started my own fitness based company, tailored to athletes, and I've been an athlete in organized sport for 14 years. It really depends on what you're looking to work on. For example, if you want to gain mass, you're going to need access to weights. If you're strictly looking to do cardio, you could easily bypass the gym and go for a run 3-4 times a week. There are so many gyms out there now that you could easily get a gym membership for as low as $10 a month, but on average I'd say you'll be paying around $30 a month. Then again, there are gyms that offer a lot of amenities, that can charge as much as $200 a month. Again, this all depends on your needs, budget, and comfort level of working out in front of strangers. I'd love to hop on a call if you'd like, and talk more about this, or answer any other questions you have about the topic. Good luck! :)

I work at Long Island University in NY. You should start by reaching out to local universities and requesting their criteria for providing credit for continuing education courses. The incentive for most colleges is to offer the course on their campus, collect tuition for each class, and gain campus exposure. The three options that may work for you are: 1.) Reaching out to university continuing education programs and finding out who the director of each program is. If they accept outside resources providing classes for credit, then you could review their criteria and tailor your curriculum to match their requirements. It's important to remember that they may only accept classes taught at their university. 2.) Initiate a partnership between universities and and the school district you teach these classes at, which could then potentially lead to credits since the school district would now have the endorsement of the colleges. 3.) See if you could bring your curriculum to neighboring universities and "increase their scope" in terms of continuing education programs, which could lead to credits being granted for your class. Again, this is very subjective to each university and how strict they are on accepting outside curriculum, but coming from a school district, I think you may find luck with one of the three approaches above. I'd love to hop on a call to learn more about what you do and possibly help you on this journey if you're interested. Good luck! :)

Focus on apps/devices that make it easier to manage chronic diseases--asthma, COPD, diabetes, or other issues like infertility. Managing these ailments can be cumbersome, and most patients fail at managing them. This is where mobile devices can offer the most benefit.

Maybe the prudent approach is to create a parallel system which includes all the newer technologies. Instead of an all or nothing transition, transfer one (or a few) functions at a time. If something goes wrong, you have a failback. If things work well, you can speed up the transition until everything is moved over.

Just get started. I have been using this site with great success. https://www.freelancer.com/affiliates/bgriffey I am working multiple ventures at the moment and the resources available on this site are tremendous. Very affordable high quality work. You can have an instant team of professionals. I concur with the other poster. A 3D printed mockup is a great place to start. I would not worry about your idea being stolen at this stage. Investors are going to be more concerned that the idea was someone else. For that sake seek patent pending when feasible. The most critical thing is to get outing the market to validate the product. That is what business is really about.

You would want to hinge the purchase on a key feature that gives you a competitive advantage - and that is not fully incorporated in the trial version. I have advised SAAS Product Managers and your dilemma is certainly a shared one - getting customers to pick a) paid over free/basic/trial and b) getting them to pick the most lucrative package of the paid ones. If as you say, the software is complex, then we need some interface-based simplicity: try explainer videos for starters. http://www.powtoon.com/ So in sum - a friendly interface, and feature-based price marketing are two good places to start. Happy to have a conversation with you for further details.

Few suggestions: - When you say your customers like your product, how do you know that. - I would recommend asking customers specific questions that correspond to the strengths and features of your product, e.g. 'Are you concerned with your on-premise costs of HW maintenance ?' while you're addressing this issue with your product. - You can add to these questions, assertions that other customers you spoke with highlighted issues such as '...'. Your prospect would empathize with such pains Bottom line - don't start with product & features, ask your customer about their pains and 'match' your product to address these pains

It really depends on what you're building here. If you can do any part of your product manually, I would suggest doing that in the first version. The absolute fastest way is to hire a contractor to get it done, but that can be expensive. If your first prototype can't be built with a prototyping tool (even a Keynote presentation) and it's too expensive or difficult to build on your own, you have to convince other people that you are solving an important problem, that your solution solves that problem, and that you have the right team to do it. VCs in a seed round will care more about the team than the idea, but crowdfunders will care about both. And obviously getting designers or developers to join your team for equity will require convincing them of all 3. Happy to give more specific advice based on your app thrugh a Clarity call!

A couple of quick notes to add on top of some good answers: 1. Have you done any blogging / writing around the concept? If so make sure you have google analytics on your site and you have demographics functionality turned on. You will get some good high level demographic info on who is interested in your product. 2. Work up 1 - 3 personas of people you think will like the product look at gender, geo location, income, interests, careers, etc. of these personas. Find individuals or groups of people that fit into each persona and give them a survey. You may want to go to meet up groups or other gatherings that fit personas and speak to them. Offer to buy them coffee or sponsor your own coffee gather and use it as a consumer research group.

This isn't very unusual or creative, but really go down every path you can to connect with someone who works there. It's the best way to get your resume past the initial gatekeepers. Some ideas: - Are you connected to anyone at the Startup on LinkedIn - invite them out to coffee -Does any alumni from your college or High School work there reach out and introduce yourself -Is anyone from the company speaking at any local events or meet ups go and introduce yourself. Good luck!

If your looking for financing and not wanting to give up equity you could try to get venture debt. Check out Hercules http://www.htgc.com/ and their competitors these companies can provide big loans. Be ready to provide a lot of info on your company and your financial health. Be aware these companies exist to make money so make sure you end up with payments you can handle. You'll also have loan covenants which will outline certain financial performance metric you'll need to hit. If you miss covenants your loan terms will change for the worse and it can even end up with bank taking control of your company. Obviously a worst case scenario, but you need to be aware and make sure you are very comfortable with the covenants you agree to. - mike

A high level / quick answer - write your idea out, understand what the plan is. What will your company do? How will you make money? What will be your approximate costs? The plan will change over time but have clear view. - create a corporate entity like a llc to protect yourself (check with a lawyer and accountant) to make sure you form the right corporate entity for your business, you'll also have to start a company bank account, and register for a federal tax id) - register a domain via a domain registrar like name.com - choose a host to host your website and platform/ technology to create I could give you much more specifics over the phone. Would love to learn about your business and help you get started. Sign up for a call with me if you're interested. - mike

Your strategy should encompass at least four components: (A) Complete Visual/verbal/social/technical audit to find/create needed assets for transition: know which assets need to be retired or replaced and what transitional assets are needed to bridge the gap. Prioritize: not everything always needs to change at once and the more you have the longer it will take or cost. Plan to convert brand book concepts/guidelines into tangible or digital deployables: how much "stuff" do you need?; vendor selection; budgeting; designing production files; ordering; quality assurance etc... (B) Internal (team) awareness & asset deployment program and monitoring compliance. (C) External publicity plan: aimed at existing clients & prospects, and any other stakeholders: social networks, media, affiliate partners, etc... Timing should be coordinated with industry / sector calendar (trade shows, if applicable), and major app update for maximum effectiveness. Do you need specialized short term PR/AD help? How can you leverage your 10K+ users to buy in / get the word out? (D) Technical migration & Monitoring Plan: seo strategy & tracking including all affected url redirects, landing pages, email changes, whatever is affected. Monitoring & analytics to see how effective the transition is (compared to old name stats) and when transitional assets can be retired.

Disclaimer: I'm not an intellectual property attorney - and I am not attempting to, nor qualified to give legal advice. That said - here is what I know on the subject. Copyright was once explained to me as a bundle of sticks, where each stick was a different right. Two sticks that might be important in this situation would be: 1. Distribution Rights: Creating the sheet music in itself may be harmless, but copyright does cover right to distribute - and so your idea to distribute for profit may infringe upon this right. 2. Derivative Works: Copyright also gives the owner the right to create derivative works based on the original - so even if your version is different - it becomes an issue of "how different" - so you may also be infringing on this right. One path forward is to determine who owns these rights (the original artists or label often sell the rights) and license the right to produce and sell the sheet music. My guess is this could be cost and time prohibitive. Another would be to see who is already selling sheet music for these songs - and simply act as an affiliate, taking a portion of the revenues per sale. Consider trying the affiliate route first, to determine how many of these sales you generate from your audience, before going to the trouble of licensing the content etc. I'd be happy to discuss ways that you can validate demand within your population before you do either, and recommend doing so with or without my input. Cheers, Ryan

The best time to raise capital for a startup is when you have a clear idea of what you want to do and a clear idea of how much money you need to get to a milestone that will set a higher value for your company. In general its better to bootstrap and do friends and family as long as you can, because the more mature and successful you are the better deal you will get from angels or VCs.

I've worked on marketing in the home healthcare space and found it rather fragmented. The growth in the industry is so fast and there are so many mom and pop services that it was hard to find anyone specialized in it. What we ended up doing was a full competitive analysis in our geographic region and with some major players nationally in our particular space and then working backwards from there. We also evaluated trade groups with which we could advertise. I'd be happy to chat with you about it.

PhpMyAdmin would probably work for this. http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php Lots of hosts have it pre-installed.

First step is to read about other peoples' experience in this space by looking at the top rated real estate investment books on Amazon. Second you will have to do the math to understand your budget, taking into account all your expenses such as mortgage, taxes, HOA fees, etc. Then you need to allocate a vacancy rate (you won't always have it full) and you also need to think about how to keep a good maintenance budget because things will go wrong. Quality of tenant is a huge issue so make sure you do background and credit checks as well as check references. There are management companies who can do all this for about 8% per month which might be worth it. Again, all this should go into your planning budget.

I've actually done this, signup to monetize your youtube videos, signup for Google Adsense, become a member of the Amazon Affiliate program and find products to push. Find affiliate programs for gyms (yes they exist). I went as far as to create a weekly podcast to talk about my struggles, answer questions from my user base (first month I faked the questions but the end result was achieved) Its a great way to build engagement and thats where most of your efforts needs to go towards. The more personal, or connected they feel to you the higher the reward. Those are just as few things I started out with, I'd be happy to go over how I created my vlog and sold it with you anytime.

Why does 1 object sink while a nearly identical object – just a fraction of an ounce lighter – floats effortlessly to the top? Because there's a critical threshold above which you're expanding and below which you're losing ground. There needn't be any qualitative difference between the 2 outcomes. It may be simply be a small difference – a bit more of the same stuff. That's why it's important to work hard on every aspect of your project – because neglecting any area might cost you your buoyancy. Think about everything – content quality, types of media, publication pacing, social sharing, email list segmentation, return visit rates, user interface design, cross-marketing, SEM, link building, branding, yadda yadda yadda.

Why not grow it yourself? I'm sure you've heard of angel.co I'm sure you can find a good network there for investors connected to Amazon in many ways. But if not, either way you put in a disadvantage if you are the one pitching for the sale. Look for investments instead and make firms bid for you, you never know if a company you haven't thought of or heard of sees value in your assets. Best of luck.

It's a competitive market for online programs and takes concerted effort to make a splash and get noticed. Before providing tips since there's little context, here are some questions for you: 1. Do you have a platform/audience already developed who want the courses you've developed? 2. How did you launch the product? Putting a sales page up isn't enough. Your targeted audience needs to be primed to know that the product is coming, what it does for them, when it's being launched and then told it's available. 3. Follow up, follow up, follow up. Without out consistent reminders, your audience moves on because there's someone else promoting their online course. Building and nurturing your audience is the primary and ongoing activity that will create demand. Your calls to action, urgency and keeping your courses top of mind will help keep sales consistent. If you'd like to discuss a strategy and specific tactics for your products, feel free to schedule a call. I've been working and marketing on the web for 19 years and have seen a lot of tactics come and go, and it comes down to haveing a solid foundation, an audience for the service/content you're selling and a consistent way to connect with them. Denise Wakeman