You ask the customers, and gauge their level of interest. Better yet, get yourself in front of some customers, and instead of telling them what you make or do, ask them what they need. When you notice that many of them need the same thing, and if it is something you can make or provide, you then have a business idea worth pursing.

If the investor is spending his precious time meeting with you, then I assume he has at least some interest in your event. If that's the case, then in my opinion, yes it would be a nice gesture and appreciated. Good luck with your pitch!

Can you give more information on what your product is? Then we can figure out what you need in it. Sounds like electronics...but what?

The SEC is tasked to monitor, and punish if necessary illegal acts committed by trading in securities. They are the "Watch Dog" of Wall Street. Unfortunately, there are not enough skilled employees, and funds to really do their job, so a lot of unlawful acts slip through the cracks. The SEC does enforce their regs. and will levy huge fines and other sanctions. If you have additional questions, just call me. Thank you, Paul Trachtman

I did not actually have too much experience with bookkeeping platforms before. But we stick with Xero and there is no reason why I should look for another option.

COSTCO AFFLUENCE: You might be surprised to know that 54% of CostCo's Wholesale Club (CWC) members are considered wealthy, or "affluent", with only 15% just "getting by" or "poor". BUSINESS VS CONSUMER: Approximately 24% businesses, 76% individual consumers. Even though business customers drive about 60% of CostCo's revenue, about half of that is for home use, so it's about 30% business revenue and 70% individual consumer revenue. HOUSEHOLD: 35% of CWC members have 2 person households. 56% have three or more in their home. I have a ton of paid tools at my disposal for market research. For much more detail on other demographic data for CWC, along with info from BJs and other wholesale clubs, set up a call with me on Clarity.

Well you should store it in a database, most probably an SQL based database. MySQL is a fine start, free and easy to set up. But, you had best start thinking about security issues, especially if you are planning on storing credit card and other personal information. Hackers go right through the standard fare and many companies do nothing to encrypt their data at all, which in some countries is a criminal offense. Best hire a professional to look at your system setup and see what can be done.

It depends on what your contract says and what you want to do. Ultimately you need to decide what you want and then we can work backwards from that. But no just having the conversation does not automatically oust you.

I've been recommended to speak with Leigh Rowan in the past for iBeacon projects. I haven't had the pleasure of doing so yet but he came highly recommended. His contact information is on his LinkedIn account. https://www.linkedin.com/in/leighrowan

After I sold my 2nd company (to Equifax) in 2011, like you, I was looking for a good way to capitalize on the knowledge I had. I'm a tech guy (i.e. developer). I worked for Oracle in the late 80s, then started an Oracle consulting firm (TUSC) which we sold in 2008. With TUSC I travelled to Oracle Users Groups around the world presenting on various topics. I wrote 6 technical books from 1997 through 2010. So I was interested in continuing to share the knowledge I had. In 2012 I started InteliVideo (www.intelivideo.com) to help provide an excellent way to make a passive income. We help people sell their digital products...from audio books to video lessons and more. We hear stories every day from our customers about how they are making an amazing passive income with our platform. It's SO much easier than writing a book and provides more information and a better learning opportunity for my customers. Best of luck with your passive income journey. It's a great dream that can become reality!

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but generally, these are not the types of businesses that venture capital pursues. Due to the risk they are taking, VCs generally want to see a large market (meaning $1B potential) and a significant return on their money (10 times return). However, you can look for an Angel investor. These are generally individuals who are not looking for as large market or a return.Here are some places to start. Best of success to you! http://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaprive/2013/12/16/20-most-active-angel-investors/ http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/top-angel-investors/

I hate to say it, but Google would have got you a much faster answer than this site. I just typed in "Software life cycle" into google, and there are many great articles.

Pardot is the easiest to learn and then execute. Will take your team the least amount of time to provide managed email marketing & automation services to your client. Naturally you'll want to bill fixed rates.

Nearly every high-profile speaker has a website outlining their process, fees, and requirements for speaking engagements. They also have instructions on how to contact and book them.

There are still countless opportunities! We live in an exciting era. As humans, we still want to connect and share our experiences, meet new people, and deepen our relationship with those already in our circles. We must balance our privacy (which is unique to both users and publishers), as well as our desire to be accepted and approved of. Marketing will continue to become more personal. Brands must adapt a scalable 1:1 marketing strategy and consumers' needs will continue to evolve. These are real human needs and, as a result, creates limitless opportunities for technology and online marketing to connect.

Sorry, but this question is a bit backwards. You need to have an audience/need for your product or service BEFORE you create it. Having said that, I'd go back to the basics: a) create a niche b) determine an ideal client profile c) design a business plan

All successful sales come from the customer realizing that something of great value is being provided. Therefore, to be an entrepreneur, a person should be searching for something that many people will assess as having great value. In other words, look for something you can design once, and sell over and over again to many people. Techniques such as cold calling may be more or less efficient than the "new" techniques such as social media, mobile marketing, and so on. But none of that matters until you have a product/service that resonates with customers. As a salesperson, you are used to being told "Sell what you have." But as an entrepreneur, you need to be much more interested in "Having what sells."

Hello, I've been working in one of the biggest agencies in the world before and now I own a small digital agency. I've found a way to close big clients really easily by doing the following: Connecting with them directly and identifying their biggest pain points. Then you need to showcase that you understand them (mainly with content marketing and talking with them) and you know how to deal with that and making an offer. The first thing I do is I find my niche, the people I want to work with. I connect with them and I ask them for an interview. During that interview I don't sell them anything, I just want to learn more about their business, what are their current issues, challanges, etc. I'm looking for the biggest pain that I know how to solve. If I identify one, I ask them if they want to receive free content on that topic. When they say yes, I put it in my database. Then I start releasing some great content for them on the topic. Then at some point a make a sale by telling them we're growing and we have a few spots open for new clients. I make them fight to become one. I used this system to talk to and close Fortune 500 and Inc 5000 companies so if you're interested to learn more, feel free to schedule a call. I'd love to share my ideals & methodology with you.

In any business to business sales situation, you need to evaluate who is involved in the decision chain that leads to a purchase. Typically, there are at least three parties involved. These are: Your Champion, who noticed your product, and decided it would be a great fit for his organization. This is your cheerleader, and your best friend within the organization. Your Champion's management, who decide whether things that your champion recommends should be acted upon, given the context that the business is operating in. This includes someone who ultimately will request "budget" to pay for your product or service. The company's financial management team, perhaps the CFO. This is the person who needs to understand the financial impact that your product will have on his organization. Will it cost capital up front but quickly save money in operational costs over time? What is the payback period, and so on. There may be others involved too, especially if the company is highly regulated (i.e.: regulatory approvals may be needed). Bottom line: Through your champion, you map out the network of your customer's organization, and work on each person in the chain that is involved in making a decision. Don't be put off if, as often happens, you find that your champion is highly enthusiastic, but the rest of the organization isn't. You can beat your head against this kind of brick wall for a long time. But please don't. Instead, move on to the next prospect. The job of your marketing efforts should be to ensure that there are enough leads that you can spend most of your time working on people who will ultimately become customers. Note that you can happily disqualify 99% of your leads if you can end up spending most of your time on the other 1%. Qualify quickly, then spend time with qualified prospects, even if they are in the minority.

Find someone on Elance.com for a fast hire. LinkedIn.com for a more targeted approach at someone looking for a full time job... but expect a standard recruiting/hiring cycle time-wise. TextBroker.com will get you through in the meantime with pay per word writers on demand.

Try Dun & Bradstreet (DNB.com) to buy email addresses with one time fees instead of monthly subscriptions. I get them for free using an automated combination of tools that allows me to target specific people. If that's something you want, request a 15 minute call, which will be enough time for me to walk you through the set up.

You've answered your own question. Reach out to your prospects with the question, such as "How would you...". Ask what people want then give it to them if you can with integrity and thoughtfulness.

Set up a free account on MailChimp. Use their drag and drop visual editor. Click the "HTML" tab and copy the code. Paste it into Interspire. Remove any MailChimp-specific code.

Why do you need to know about the pricing of your competition in the first place? If you're offering great value, people will buy from you even if you're charging 5 times more. If you want to offer the lowest price possible to get more clients, then ask yourself how little can you actually charge. And put that price. Spending the time to identify the price of your competitors is a waste of time. In 99% of the cases.

I've been in ecommerce for over a decade and have co-founded and helped start companies collectively driving over $10MM in ecommerce sales. I've consulted for Fortune 500 ecommerce stores. Here's my advice if you're just getting started without a big budget. Note: Some of this is copied from my answer to a similar question. #1) PROVE THE ASSUMPTION: Start with a dropshipper's existing products to figure out what sells best before you spend money on manufacturing and warehousing. Amazon is perfect for this - they will pay you 4%-10% to promote 253,000,000 products (http://bit.ly/1q2M85R) - you can sign up at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ Alternately, get very small amounts of the product (maybe even just buy some from a competitor) and try selling them on ebay and amazon. Nothing hurts more than having $50,000 of imported product gathering dust in your fulfillment warehouse while listening to a voicemail from a debt collector. #2) SOURCING There are several options here. Many people prefer Alibaba.com. Warning - if you use Alibaba, you are stepping into a tank of pirahnas. There are more scam "manufacturers" on Alibaba than real ones. Use Escrow or AliSecure Pay if you buy. If the supplier says they only take T/T, Western Union, Moneygram - just say no! I prefer American Made when possible. If you're like me, try Ariba's Discovery Service - http://bit.ly/1q2NFZu - which will allow you to find suppliers with a physical presence in the USA. Note: Many things can be made on demand (someone purchases, one gets made and shipped) instead of in 500+ manufacturing runs. Start there if you can - Books on CreateSpace.com, Clothes on CafePress.com, Playing Cards on MakePlayingCards.com, etc - to test out your exact product. If you decide to source by purchasing product in bulk, find a fulfillment company to store and fulfill (ship) your orders. Amazon does this - http://services.amazon.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon.htm - but they might decide to crush you like a bug if you're successful (http://bit.ly/1q2V7DX). Other fulfillment companies for e-commerce include http://www.shipwire.com/ and http://www.webgistix.com/ #3) LAUNCH YOUR SITE This is an entire topic in itself. One of the fastest ways I know for newbies to start in e-commerce is with a SquareSpace.com store. Other options include GoDaddy.com and BigCommerce.com. If you can stand to use the templates they provide instead of trying to customize them, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle and expense - customization usually looks terrible unless a designer/coder was hired to do the work. If you do customize, find someone on odesk.com or elance.com. If you're not hard up for money, just build a custom store from the start. If you can't do that, save up some money and then go for it. Focus on increasing conversion rate - for every 100 visitors, get 1 to buy. Then 2. Then 4. Then 8 (8%). #4) MARKET Figure out where your competition is advertising. Are they getting free, "organic" SEO results on Google? Using social media to drive billions of dollars of sales? (NOTE: That was a joke - don't count on social media as the nucleus of your marketing campaign. Please!) Are they paying for Google ads ("PPC"), buying email lists, using strategic partnerships for promotion, relying on shopping portals, using banner advertising, or something else entirely? There's probably a good reason - figure out what it will take to play in those waters. At the same time, try to find a small enough niche that you can win in it. #5) BEWARE Be careful about artsy things. If someone is attracted to something artistic, it's usually because there is a story behind the art for them, or because it's cheap. If you're going to try to sell artistic things, you may want to consider doing some serious research first about who has been successful in that area. Look at etsy.com to see handmade artsy items (very cool). #6) WORTH A LOOK Worth checking out as you start your journey: Art.com, yessy.com, Artfire.com, ArtPal.com #7) DEEP FOUNDATION If you need help, reach out for a 15 minute call and we'll discuss a go-to-market strategy specific to your goals.