Yes but you need to spend a fair amount of time in person so that you'll be effective together. "Date" online for the co-founder but once you've found a likely partner, spend time together to make sure it's a good fit.

I'm going to give you a personal experience. I wanted some business experts to join a panel of judges and this was my "execution plan": Research universities and non-profits where this executives or business people give their time. Why? Most successful people that can teach (both are different skills) feel the need to "give back". So many of them volunteer their time and money on universities or organizations. If you find those who have this characteristics you will be one feet closer to actually being able to reach them. This is because they are "minded" in helping. To approach them I will recommend an exchange where they are not benefit of your conference but someone else is. If you tell a company owner that teaches "entrepreneurship" in a university that you want him to give. "Speech or class" and in exchange you will give 10 tickets for his students, he will be much more receptive of the idea. The other strategy is the one you mentioned and it actually focus on two feelings: possible new clients (leads) form the conference or ego. I would definitely go for the second one, and instead of approaching saying "you will benefit from this" I would go for inflating his/her ego. Hope this could give you some ideas.

I have. You will experience a much better return on investment, and your customers will have a much better experience when you take advantage of audience segmenting -- which Customer.io and the likes offer. To be far, you can achieve this same result with tools like Aweber, but they are not as intuitive because, frankly, they were made long before the best practice of segmented and event-based email notifications were established and as matured as they are now. Depending on your list size, a move can be a hassle. But, if you have a plan on how to monetize that list, and deliver incredible value to your subscribers, I would encourage you to move to platform that can slice and dice your list how you need. Any other questions, feel free to drop a note or schedule a call. -Shaun

Well, that's a first. I don't usually answer questions here on Clarity.fm with my electrical engineer hat on. Shielding materials vary depending on the frequency distribution of EM waves emanating from the source. The same medium will have a greater or lesser attenuating effect for high and low frequencies – e.g. microwaves and radio waves. Also, energy will dissipate across distance even in a vacuum. The government uses more robust computers that are insulated against electromagnetic leakage, since keyboard signals can be externally tapped, giving away passwords. Plastics are used. So is copper mesh for RF shielding – though not for microwave frequencies. The range of suitable materials is actually quite extensive, and multiple substances may need to be utilized in combination, depending on the frequency distribution. Thickness is a factor as well, obviously. Hire an electrical engineering student to evaluate the frequency spectrum emanating from your target devices. The student ought to be able to suggest materials and design shielding to reduce energy levels below any desired threshold. One of my professors was involved with mathematical simulations of EM penetration into child brains during the early days of cell phones. (Kids have less shielding, since their ears and skull are smaller. SWell, that's a first. I don't usually answer questions here on Clarity.fm with my electrical engineer hat on. Shielding materials vary depending on the frequency distribution of EM waves emanating from the source. The same medium will have a greater or lesser attenuating effect for high and low frequencies – e.g. microwaves and radio waves. Also, energy will dissipate across distance even in a vacuum. The government uses more robust computers that are insulated against electromagnetic leakage, since keyboard signals can be externally tapped, giving away passwords. Plastics are used. So is copper mesh for RF shielding – though not for microwave frequencies. The range of suitable materials is actually quite extensive, and multiple substances may need to be utilized in combination, depending on the frequency distribution. Thickness is a factor as well, obviously. Hire an electrical engineering student to evaluate the frequency spectrum emanating from your target devices. The student ought to be able to suggest materials and design shielding to reduce energy levels below any desired threshold. One of my professors was involved with mathematical simulations of EM penetration into child brains during the early days of cell phones. (Kids have less shielding, since their ears and skull are smaller. So the industry standards are based on such small heads as the limiting case.)

I've led Marketing as VP/Marketing or CMO for multiple firms and have been tasked with gaining paid subscriber. Some of the best advice I've found comes from a great book called "Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. The entire book is dedicated to answering your question in detail - and they break down each channel by chapter.

Because other, more common domains were not available. FM is not exclusive to music, and is some times used to mean "for me"

Optimizely is a popular testing service that lets you do this. See: https://www.optimizely.com/mobile/ and http://developers.optimizely.com/ios/

I do promote Clarity, but do not get many new clients from it. As others have said, my new clients come from other sources. In my experience, the traffic I do get from sites like Clarity tend to not value the advice they get here and/or want the silver bullet and pay little to nothing for it.

Are you the manufacturer or reseller? If you are the reseller, typically about 40-50% above cost. Use the MSRP as an indicator.

You are right about starting from LinkedIn. But who would you target?? Its not easy to see each and every profile in LinkedIn and there you are likely to miss the trick. You need a specialist who can mine all relevant people from LinkedIn based on location, industry, etc and share their profile for you to contact them personally and take the discussion forward. I am sure you will get results if your reach out to the right person. Should you need any help, contact me asap..

Creating successful (you define what this means) content online, no matter the topic or audience, is dependent upon research. Use online tools such as Google Trends, Google Suggested Search, Keyword Planner, etc., to discover what people are searching for. You can then use this data to create "buyer personas" - which allow you to build profiles of the different types of people that you want to consume your content. Once your buyer personas are accomplished, you can assign specific keywords and phrases to each and begin writing. If you're interested in learning the details of each, along with the next steps, I'd be happy to help! Good luck!

So here are two strategies: Follow the money You need to go where the money is spent on developing/design. I would approach startups at WeWork and also get in contact with the MBA programs of the universities in NY. Instead of giving a better price (finders fee) to actual projects build the relationships with those that will start startups. If you build their first project successfully then you would have started a long term relationship with someone that will have many years in front of them needing development work. I will also approach Angels/VC and let them know you will give a good price to portfolio companies that get referral by them Follow the volume Accelerators/Incubators: Go to where the volume is: remember that the conversion rate on leads is small. Focus in the places where many projects will be built and where you can find those guys that don't have the technical skills. PS: This are not strategies I did but I would if I was in your situation. :)

Imho I think they are very valuable. I know the owner of a restaurant that told me he will carefully go through every Yelp review and call the one that lower his average of 4+ stars. He says many people search on their phone where to eat, and they use mainly Yelp, judging with stars first and reading later the reviews. One unsatisfied client with one bad review can create a lot of damage. The important thing about Yelp is that they build the business around it making a community of viewers & reviewers. You can read it here http://pando.com/2013/12/09/when-yelp-is-good-enough-can-anything-else-beat-it/ how the network effect it had was almost monopolic. Here are some stories about Yelp (the one I have follow the most): http://www.inc.com/jill-krasny/now-this-is-how-you-handle-a-bad-yelp-review.html http://www.fastcompany.com/3027249/lessons-learned/how-yelp-encourages-users-to-write-more-thoughtful-reviews-even-on-mobile http://www.fastcompany.com/3033942/fast-feed/this-new-york-hipster-hotel-fines-you-500-for-bad-yelp-reviews-and-yelpers-are-pis Also remember how now everyone got used to use reviews (Amazon, Airbnb, Uber,etc) so they are not going anywhere. They will actually get smarter (I'm writing a post on this)

Showing value without giving it for free and if I do, later having to convince that the value given before is worth $$.

You might want to try Clickwebinar for webinars. I have used their service seamlessly for a couple of months on MacOS and they do the recordings. They are not good though if you need to constantly interact with the audience because the delay in speech through their server is too high (or at least was too much for my standards). In those situations, I presume Skype's or Google Hangouts screen sharing feature is just about enough. If you need to record the screen even when using Skype or such, try SnagIt (http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html) Hope you'll find this useful. Igor

This is a great question. The world of accounting/bookkeeping can be a confusing array of options for non accountants. Let's address the software question first. Let me start by saying that my firm is relatively agnostic to software, we work with dozens. I'm familiar with Xero and my firm has worked with it, and if someone comes to us already on it, we stay with it. It's a solid piece of software, certainly works. And it's a very fashionable choice right now due to inroads their marketing has made with the startup community. The big dog in the market is QuickBooks On-Line (QBO), and when I say big dog, various version of QuickBooks have easily 10x the number of current customers that Xero has. Why does this matter? The usability of the software from a user experience is about the same, but Xero is still trying to play catch up to QuickBooks On-Line in terms of features. For instance, they have payroll rolled out for "a few states and are adding more each month". Anything innovative that Xero comes out with QuickBooks is going to quickly copy and add to their product, because they are huge and have the resources to quickly adapt. This is not a situation of the iPhone putting Blackberry out of business, QuickBooks isn't going anywhere. Likely end game is that at some point QuickBooks acquires Xero and moves everyone over to QBO. Lastly, every bookkeeper knows QuickBooks, some know Xero, and there are hundreds of developers developing software that integrates with QuickBooks. So, while Xero is a perfectly adequate piece of software, we’re talking the platform for your accounting, go with QuickBooks On-line. The subject of a bookkeeper is tricker. Do you go with a person or a process solution? Full disclosure here, my firm does outsourced bookkeeping for a living, so you have to take that into account when viewing my answer. I haven’t worked with Bench.co, but it looks very intriguing, and pricing is quite aggressive. They also look very easy to engage with. The down side is that is appears to be a person based solution. You get assigned a bookkeeper, and then good luck. The skill of individual bookkeepers varies widely from damn good to truly awful. They often hook up with several services like this, so their loyalties are divided. Additionally, they are often working with up to a dozen clients, and what typically happens is one of their clients starts growing quickly. All other clients get pushed aside while they focus on their largest client because they can’t afford to lose them. A couple of other disadvantages are that, because they are on their own, you are limited to just their skill set, they have no one else to check with in sticky situations, and when they go on vacation, your accounting goes on vacation, too. These are all things that may be fine for you if you’ve got a relatively small business that doesn’t need daily attention to its accounting. The other alternative is a firm that specialized in outsourced accounting. There are several firms out there, you can find them (and us of course) with a simple search of the internet. The advantage to the better firms in this space is that they typically will assign you a team of bookkeepers/accountants so that you have backup in case one member of the team is on vacation or leaves to take a full time job somewhere. These solutions also will typically come wrapped with software they would suggest for your business. Finally, you aren’t limited to knowledge base of the one person working on your account. You have a team, and really the knowledge base of the entire firm at your fingertips. Of course you pay a little more for this, but the hourly rates are often not that much more than individual bookkeepers. And in the long run you may end up spending a lot less by not having to come behind a bookkeeper that maybe wasn’t so good and clean up the mess. So if you plan on scaling your business beyond a few $200k a year, it may be best to start out with a firm based solution rather than an individual solution. Side note on Bench.co: I can’t tell what software platform they are on. If they are using a proprietary platform, you will find it very hard to move your accounting to another solution if you’re not satisfied with their solution. Something to ask if you go with them. So, I think that about covers it. I’ve probably told you way more than you wanted to know, but I’m always available to schedule a call if you want to dive in a little deeper. Just let me know.

I'd recommend that you build out a range of packages with different deliverables for clients. Price them based on what you want to make per hour times the amount of time it will take you to create each deliverable (don't forget to build in time you'll spend meeting or communicating with the client). You may want to consider "theming" each package so it helps guide a client to selct the package that would be best for them. Also consider varying the packages both on the end result, as well as the process to get there. For instance, you will want to set the number of rounds of redesigns, as well as the number of options / logos they will get to see at each stage. By clearly showing what a client gets out of the process, this will also help you compete against the companies that are commoditizing logo design like CrowdSPRING.

I'd consider finding some middle ground. Be careful of SEM farm agencies where it's a bit more of a factory atmosphere. That said, your current gig doesn't seem to be challenging you. So I'd consider a change but I'd be more picky about where you go so you can find an environment where you can learn but also be happy.

Remember having a friend in a similar situation. This was my advice in that moment: -Make a list of the top 50 clients you had in the consulting firm, choose those which you had a close relationship and can actually talk about you (not fake it) -Call them and ask them if they believe you did a good job and if they were satisfied with your services. If the answer is yes, then here you have two options 1-Ask them if you can use them as reference. Don't talk about your ex employer. He doesn't matter. This is between you and them. Don't talk bad about him/her, it doesn't help. If they say yes, you are up to a start 2-If you ask and they say no, then you can make a decision. You can put them anyways and they will be called by your interviewer (not necessary they would talk to him or say good things, it's a risk) or you can just name the companies without a persons name or contact info Hope this helped! Good luck

There are a lot of moving parts to this question. First, you need to determine in which states you have "nexus" and then determine do those states require you to charge sales tax, as each state has different rules. As an example, MA requires salesforce.com to charge sales tax to MA customers but does not require newyorktimes.com to charge sales tax. The difference is that users can manipulate data on salesforce.com vs. neworktimes.com is read only. This example can only be applied to MA, Arizona, Illinois, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and Washington State (as of now). There are also "click-through" and "affiliate" nexus rules that need to be considered. Be careful, as state and local taxation has become a very hot due diligence issue in M&A transactions. So, if you plan to sell your business in the next few years, you want to get this right. Also, the Officers and Directors are personally responsible for uncollected Sales tax. You are best to get an expert to review your sales tax compliance, as it is a very specialized area and changing constantly. I am not an expert, but know of some firms that offer this service at a very reasonable rate. Feel free to call me. Thank you, Joe Faris Accountalent Management Corp. 45 Prospect Street Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel (978) 621-0759 Fax (978) 278-1517 Website: www.accountalent.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/farisjoe/ Twitter: @accountalent

In my more than a decade of experience I have worked on either side of the table. From being a consultant to hiring a consultant to running my own business consulting company. I believe you should think more about the things that you should ask the consultant than questions a consultant may ask to assess your business. Whatever question a consultant may ask shouldn't bother you as he/she will ask only about your business and nothing personal. But, what you should ask a consultant is going to define the value of the engagement. Hence, make sure you are clear with: 1. What problem do you expect the consultant should help you solve? 2. What are the diverse capability required to solve the problem and whether the consultant possess them all? 3. How would you measure the success of engagement? Don't try to quantify the success. Sometimes qualitative aspect outweighs the quantitative stuffs. 4. Time frame of the engagement 5. Engagement model and approach 6. et al I hope above could be of some help. Is there anything specific you're looking at? Feel free to reach out with more clarity to receive clarity. I am just a buzz away and our capability spans across business, management, and technology.

Scaling with paid/cold traffic is a very different kind of beast. Depending on your paid traffic source their motivations and behavior is different than that of a house list or affiliate / JV traffic. Usually paid (cold) traffic is more difficult to convert with a $47 initial offer. I've had success warming up this type of traffic, with clients of mine, before asking for that level of sale. There are some exceptions to the rule depending on how rabid your market is to buy, but the fitness niche is usually more skeptical. You can warm them up by starting with an email opt in to a lead magnet then present them with your $47 sales offer, theres a side benefit to this as well. The other way to warm them up is to start with a survey leading them into a customized VSL to your $47 product. There's also some major benefits here if you segment your traffic right. As far as after the initial sale in regards to the backend funnel itself my typical flow looks like this: Sales page > Up Sell #1 > Down Sell #1 > Up Sell #2 > Thank you page. However some of my clients have much more than 2 up sells in place in some funnels. The trick is that your up sells should flow logically to each other. Meaning make your first up sell a product that gets your target market to their desired solution faster and easier with the up sell. For your down sell, you can keep the same product / offer but lower the price or offer a payment plan. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions.

Having worked a consultant with global consulting firms and served over fifty of the Fortune 500 companies, I have been a consultant for over 15 years. Although the type of work will vary, consultants need to know why they are being hired. What does your client expect from you? If consultants are armed with that knowledge, they can best apply their skills. I have seen many consultants who jump right into the problem without understanding the context of why they were hired and what success will look like from the client's perspective. A very specific visual that I use is to imagine what the bullet point on my resume needs to look like after I am done. What am I going to do for the client that they can measure and be happy with that I can put down as an example my advice had on the organization. Once I have that in mind, I make sure the client wants that too and the rest is just doing my job. Another thing that consultants may need to know is the type of company culture. If the organization has a lot of certain types of folks, like passive decision makers, the approach to take will accommodate this. The culture of an organization can shed a lot of light on what a consultant can realistically accomplish, especially as the consultant's approach and personality will have an effect on how successful they can be in that organization. I have worked with some organizations where I was not a good fit, while others made working together easy. Being aware of the culture can help the consultant modify their approach accordingly and even know when they may not be the best fit. It is a mature sign for a consultant to read the problem well enough to know that they are not the best person for the job.

Very interesting concept. You need to understand the value proposition of your product to understand who is the stakeholder that you'll benefit the most. As I see it from your short description you will be obtaining lots of data from the end users (customers). This data is not really of interest to the CRM but to the merchant. Is them who want to understand their client to be able to serve them better. If you go to the CRM they would like it, but to package and sell it again to the merchants :)

Generally speaking, a Preferred Share class with strong protective provisions (such as the right to appoint a board member) could afford you significant protections but if the terms are too onerous relative to the amount of money and stage of the Company, it might prevent the Company from raising further funding downstream, thus hurting your investment. You could also put all of the money in on a convertible debenture, which has some advantages but doesn't necessarily protect you. The best way to protect your investment is to invest in good people that you trust. It's simple and true. Happy to talk through the particulars of your situation.