The way we usually do it it: Objective A,B,C. Action A, Result A, Action B, Result B. You want to make sure you're clear about your objectives and the client knows what success will look like weeks/months from now. Simple Headers and bullet-points are enough. This is a good example of really simple and useful document - http://webmeup.com/downloads/seo-checklist.pdf Also, don't forget about some conclusions, where you basically just wrap up everything, in case the client isn't patient enough to read the whole document. Good luck!

It can be pretty common. It's different for different networks, some will over-report and some under-report. Google for example generally under-reports conversions, so we adjust for that on our end. Social buys generally over-report due to bots etc. It's definitely annoying but once you get your baseline metrics down you can better estimate your true costs and revenue.

I would pick up the phone. I think actually speaking with the decision-maker will illuminate how to reach them at scale, objections, and other things you need to know.

I think good life partners for entrepreneurs need patience and empathy. Being an entrepreneur is demanding and has its ups and downs, so you need to find someone who is understanding and supportive. Someone with flexible expectations is better able to cope with the lifestyle of an entrepreneur in terms of work life balance. For some people, it's nice to be with other entrepreneurs and startup founders when you can, but this can also be a recipe for disaster if you're both running on high energy all the time. My boyfriend and I are both entrepreneurs (he founded a YC company and I am a consultant for startups). We both value: 1) The ability to brainstorm with each other 2) Having someone who provides useful and genuine feedback about our ideas/products/strategies (even when it has sharp criticisms). 3) Having someone who drives you forward when your motivation is running low. 4) Balance. We both have a lot in common, but we aren't twins. He likes to procrastinate and I finish things early. I'm extroverted and he's introverted. While these are challenges for some, the differences in our personalities and life experiences are what enhances our relationship. About Me: I specialize in copywriting and sales/marketing consulting. I take the approach of an economist and apply that to my work to understand how to create persuasive messaging for target audiences. Check out www.salesfolk.com for more information.

If you're a service business and haven't been able to make profit, then I highly doubt investors are going to get involved. The beauty of selling your time is you can get people to buy right away, and if they pay anything above $25/hour - then you should make profit assuming you can live off of $50K/year salary. All that being said, here's what I did when I almost went bankrupt building my company Spheric Technologies (at the time I had 3 employees). 1) I got on the phone and started calling old friends loosely tied to the industry and asked for advice. Doing so introduced me to new opportunities, ideas and connections. I spend every night - after working 8 hours with a client - emailing and calling 15+ people. Some I knew, some I didn't, many I hadn't talked to in years. 2) Focused on sales & getting paid faster. Many times - especially a service based business - will die due to cashflow issues... they can't afford to pay their employees bi-weekly, and wait on the sidelines while their customers pay them net 30, 45 or worse 60+. So I hustled to get my existing customers to pay me Net 0, and going forward, got a deposit (20% up front) and kept the invoice every 2 weeks, Net 0, paid via wire transfer or credit card. 3) Refined the business to focus only on 1 customer type that was profitable. In the early days you take on anything that will "make you money" but you quickly learn that not every customer is the same. If you know this, stop working with customers where you can't make 30% net profits off a project, and use that as your filter for new opportunities. Also, raise your prices if you aren't making profit. Someone in your industry is... so can you. Unfortunately, there's no short cut or silver bullet - but the pattern to follow is listed above. I eventually grew that business to 30 employees in 4 years (bootstrapped 100%) and was acquire in May 2008 before the crash. It was the easily the most intense time of my life, but I learned A LOT of lessons that I continue to use today. Call if I can help, but assuming I maybe priced outside of your range ... that being said, there's thousands of other folks who can help for as little as $30, so get on a call today.

We work with one of the big cruise sites in the UK and it's all about making the site deserve to rank higher by continually improving the site via design & content. Google wants to rank popular sites so you need to (as Simon points out) figure out ways of getting influential sites to talk about you and link to you. PR is the only real way to build links these days.

I would talk to the team at http://efabless.com Really helpful guys and they can get you an IC prototype for $100 - $10,000 They've built a lot of the smartphone IC's you see in mobile products today. If you're dealing with FCC part 15, give me a shout and I can help you navigate a bit.

A pre-launch raise is really hard but not impossible. I raised a seed round for a mobile app that hasn't launched but it was quite honestly incredibly difficult and I wouldn't recommend others trying it! I answered a question about when is best to raise under what circumstances here: https://clarity.fm/a/3484 I have helped many Clarity members with early-stage fundraising advice and would be happy to talk to you about what makes most sense for you and your company.

Start by interviewing people who do have experience in the field and determining to what extent they feel the pain for the problem you're solving. Your biggest risk with an idea where you don't have domain expertise in is that you're solving a problem that doesn't need solving. If after speaking with a number of people in that field, there is a strong sense of validation, then you might consider moving forward on attempting to execute the idea but before doing so, I'd recommend you talk to me or another well-reviewed Clarity advisor to ensure you are well equipped to move forward on the idea.

There's usually a few downsides to developing with any kind of cross-platform solution. 1. You won't be writing apps in their native languages (ie. objective-c for iOS and java for Android). Instead, with Corona, you'll be writing your apps in Lua, which is a scripting language. 2. A lot of times not writing apps natively can negatively impact the performance of an app. I can't speak for the Corona SDK directly, but using 1st-party tools and languages properly should always yield the best app fluidity, responsiveness, and performance. 3. You will be directly limited by the Corona SDK. What this means is, when you are developing your apps, you won't have the luxury of being able to use the latest and greatest technologies. You will have to wait for Corona to add those specific features into their own library, before you'll be able to gain any benefit from them.

There's a bit of myth regarding time management in my view. That said, I think there are two perspectives to the answer - depending on your perspective in asking the question. If you're asking because you seem to be running out of steam before you get the work you need done in a week, I'd suggest your issue is not time management but either energy management or focus. I've done a few blog/podcasts on this subject from that angle: http://wisenapkin.com/2014/01/10/four-step-focus-man-dave-lakhani/‎ http://wisenapkin.com/2014/02/25/profit-favors-action-dave-lakhani-president-bold-approach-inc/ http://wisenapkin.com/2013/12/19/time-management-is-a-myth-michael-walsh/ On the other hand, if you feel like you work all day and are failing to get ahead on the key and important parts of your day, I'd suggest you have an issue with establishing priorities: http://wisenapkin.com/2014/03/25/live-the-picture-jack-daly-speaker-trainer-coach-author/ http://wisenapkin.com/2014/02/18/defend-your-yes-jay-papasan-author-publisher-and-entrepreneur/ Make it a great day!

I would try selling it to 10 customers (without changing your pitch) and if you don't get 3 customers to buy, then adjust. It's less about time and more about # of learnings. I don't like interviews, I like asking if they have the problem, showing them our solution (verbally or with a visual) and then asking for their business and taking their money. If they don't pay, doesn't count. Don't spend it, test the complete group (or 10 min) and then decide to pivot, or preservere.

I think having a strong sense of determination is important and drive is important as well. There are plenty of successful entrepreneurs that left school simply because the education system wasn't right for them. I think this is a complex question, on one hand doing well in school can be helpful you learn a lot, gain skills but those can be acquired outside school. Unfortunately a lot of students learn material just to pass tests in school and get by, actually long term valuable learning is less frequent. So i think the education system is flawed...and while having the structure of school was beneficial for me I can say school was valuable but I learned 100x more outside of school

Hi - I run three successful companies of varying sizes. It can be done, but it is not easy to accomplish and it is easy to get sidetracked if you are not intentional about developing focus each and every day. I've written and podcasted a fair bit about this subject (http://wisenapkin.com/tag/focus/) but the key is this: develop a very clear picture of where you're going; develop a top 5 list each and every day of the most important things that you can do that day to work toward your goal, maintain records of your progress, ask for help along the way, get a coach/mentor/forum of your peers, and execute consistently. Make it a great day!

Interesting question - But one that (for me) requires additional information for me to give input: -What kind of "partnership" are you interested in? (i.e. Strategic Partnership where you work together for mutual benefit) -What is the intended / desired outcome for you? Why are you seeking companies to partner with? If you can provide this info I'd be happy to give you my thoughts.

As lawyers have jumped in already with lawyerly advice, I'll offer you a different perspective to your question. Apple allows two types of publishers into the app stores. Individuals and Corporate Accounts. Corporate Accounts require a Dun & Bradstreet number which of course, require a corporation to be formed in order to get a D&B number. Transferring an app from an individual developer account to a corporate account post release in the AppStore is a bit of a pain (they require you to prove you are a founder / cofounder of the company you are transferring to) and depending on the kind of app you're building, a corporate presence might make an incremental impact in the user trust of the app.

First - I'm inclined to agree with Darin. I've been marketing to MDs for over 17 years and have had some incredible successes and some major disappointments regarding my approach. To help you with your marketing plans might I suggest: 1. You get more specific about your "avatar" (i.e. prototypical ideal client). How old are they? What type of medical practice? Why are they retiring? etc. 2. You get clear on what your product / service does for them. Since you didn't give any details I'm not sure what your offer is... If you would be willing to share that perhaps I (and others) might be of more assistance. Give me a call to discuss - I'm happy to share what's worked for me over the years and what I currently recommend. And best of luck to you!

I can certainly help out with that.

Selling to enterprise customers is about demonstrating value while reducing risk. You will need to show irrefutable proof that your solution will address a pain - ideally, one that is both urgent and important (Eisenhower matrix/Covey). The best way is to point to tangible examples of where you have solved the problem before - through documented case studies, testimonials from industry luminaries, etc. Most enterprise solutions have been developed with the involvement of at least one customer to ensure there is some semblance of product/market fit. If that is your situation, you need to use that customer as a proof-point. In the absence of an existing customer, you need to find someone (a champion) who is willing to accept greater risk in return for the benefits of being an early adopter. The offer to them could be financial (free/reduced cost/pay when you're happy), exclusivity, customization/ personalization/integration,... - something that will provide extra reward for taking a chance with you, in return for allowing you to use them as proof when the value is proven. As well, expect that an enterprise will limit their risk by testing your solution in a controlled setting - in one department, a specific project, a parallel implementation with another product, etc. with very specific, measurable objectives and expected outcomes. Selling to enterprise customers can be daunting. Decision-making can be slow, complex and political. The reception area is full of existing account managers with big expense accounts and six figure salaries who call on the customer every day. But, if you can find a way to successfully break into the market, large companies can be like lemmings - and one sale can lead to many. Good luck! Ping me if you think I can be of help.

Paid traffic via Google AdWords will be your quickest/easiest option. Setup a couple of campaigns around highly-relevant and low-cost keywords. Target KW's that are very specific and you'll get them for less cost-per-click. (CPC) You can turn the funnel off as soon as you get enough users for testing purposes.

I know you've already decided to use a bid management platform. However, I'd like to share with you my experiences. As an SEM agency managing $30 million+/year, we've invested tens of thousands of dollars into streamlining our work effort with a bid management platform. We've specifically used Marin & Click Equations (now owned by Acquisio). We also consistently demo the bid management platforms to see if there's anything eye opening for us. 1) We've always had an implementation challenge. Installing each one across multiple clients has been a pain. If you're just running it for your company - then it's a lot better. 2) Crappy Bid Algorithm's - they always (used to) try to pitch you on how sexy their bid management algorithms are. We had a client who came to us already on Marin, and we found that their bid algorithm consistently sucked. Honestly, bid management isn't rocket science, and once you have an equilibrium, it doesn't need to be changed much. 3) Google doesn't consistently update their API - many of the beta features that power users use aren't available via the API immediately, so the bid management platforms can't take that data in. We liked Click Equations years ago, because they were the only platform at the time that imported Quality score, and created alerts and reporting for you, even though it wasn't avaiable via API. These days, things like the Google Business Data center, Adwords Scripts & Labels etc. aren't available via the standard API, and therefore none of the platforms deal with it. 4) These platforms are ONLY good for reporting - I sat at a Google roundtable of 10 top SMB SEM agencies ($25 - $100 million/year in managed spend), and I asked them "do any of you use Bid Management platforms?". Only ONE of the ten said they use a bid management platform, and at that, only for reporting. 5) The real things Bid Management solutions should be doing - The real thing that bid management platforms should be focusing is automating the things that count (e.g. split testing ads), and they don't. You can however, find other vendors (e.g. Brad Geddes's Adalysis.com) that do ad testing in an effective manner. If you have further questions, please feel free to give me a ring.

LinkedIn is the world's best recruiting source. The advanced search fields allow you so much criteria to build a hit list of potential candidates. Making direct outreach will likely result in a 20-30% response rate. I'd look for someone who is less entrepreneurially inclined by targeting people inside similar but much larger companies to the business line you are in. Best of luck!

I can discuss having done indepth research before we select Marin software

I've done a lot of complex analytics installations, usually cross-domain and including AdWords and manual tagging with conversion tracking of ecommerce transactions. The gclid by default will override the manual UTM values in Analytics so that is what you are looking for. If you are just grabbing the manual tags from the URL for your own purpose, this should be OK. However, if you at some point want to import conversions (say) connected to your manual tag, then you would want to enable UTM overriding the gclid: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033981?hl=en. Do you have AdWords and Analytics accounts linked? Where and how are you tracking commerce conversions, if you are? Do you feel you are getting the insights you need from your current custom reporting? Let me know if I can help with a call about those or further optimization of your analytics capture. Best - Michael

It's hard to get a definite answer to this as these companies will not tell us how their algorithms work. Having said that: Based on my experience working with these APIs, it is totally possible to implement a real-time search like "socialmention.com" purely based on the APIs from Google, Twitter, Yahoo, or Facebook. On the other hand, crawling and saving all that data just for the eventuality that a customer might search for it is probably not economically viable and will also violate the Terms of Services of most of these APIs. Bottom line is: They are probably not crawling and caching.