Well there are tons of courses online everwhere, point is how would you know which one works best, i suggest you do online coaching program, i give 1:1 to millennials who need to start their business, my quali in accounting and exp in business helps them get clarity on step by step guidance on how to move forward, connect with me if this interest you or wish to know more.

Hello, I myself do not have much hands on experience with growth hacking , but I can offer some thoughts on the subject. I'm not quite sure what you're looking for in terms of your question though? Are you looking for ideas or methods for growth using the growth hacker mentality for local brick and mortar businesses? Are you looking to bring these brick and mortar businesses online and increasing their lead captures? If I were to take a local photography service and try to increase growth in a local area there would be a couple of things I would focus on when it comes to growth hacking. The first thing I would look at is the actual product that is being offered. Then I would see if I could use the product itself to increase growth for itself. Make sense? What is the product of the photographer? I would think that the product would be the photos produced. So I would then figure out how I could use the photos to increase the photo shoots done with my photography studio. One way to do this may be to offer some sort of deal to people that share the photos on social media and get their friends and family to sign up. If I were the photographer I would tell my customers that if their friends and family like and comment on my Facebook page about their photos I would give their friends and family a free 8x10 photo on their first shoot. If 10 of their friends sign up for a shoot I would then give my original customer some sort of thank you in the form of free prints or something similar that makes sense for the business. Use the product to market itself. Another thing I would be looking at is the distribution of my product. In the local scene I feel that online directories, live events, local media, and forming business partnerships are critical. If I were a local photographer I would be at as many local events as possible taking photos. I would then place these photos online where they could be viewed and purchased. I do offer consulting in the area of local marketing and would love to chat with you in more detail about what you are looking to achieve. Schedule a time to talk. I'm sure we can come up with some great actionable ideas that can help with lead generation.

Get specific with the "who" of your market (i.e. what kind of dentist? what is their specialty? whom do they serve? demographics and psychographics of both the dentist AND their patients?) And specific with your offer to them. What are you selling? What are they buying? And why do they want it (according to THEM... not you)? Get those factors right and they'll buy from you all day long.

There are two types of advisory boards: For show (i.e. credibility) or for help. They should intersect but often don't. The "For Show" advisory boards are usually no more than 5 (though I've seen up to 10) and are meant to demonstrate a significant depth of subject-matter expertise and credibility to potential customers. They act as a form of "social proof" for, meant more to be a form of "light endorsement" than to actually provide guidance. A venture I was interim co-ceo of had such an advisory board and running formal advisory board meetings was a really big pain in that when we actually "put them to work" in asking to weigh-in on a specific question or issue, it was almost impossible to get a unified answer. We found it better to hold quarterly events at our office which were meant to be much more social and produced some interesting conversations than formal advisory meetings. For help advisory boards really should be no more than 3 and would advise having diverse experience but all highly relevant to the challenges you are and will be facing. I have a document I'm happy to share that spells out commitments at different levels. Just private message me your email and I can send it to you.

That is a LOUSY return. You'd be better off putting the money in a savings account in the bank. I do not know your industry well, but in mine (Marketing Agency) I aim for a net profit of 15% after paying corporate taxes, wages and all overheads.

I was involved with a SaaS product that launched a landing page and made clear that the product was still in development, but that we would give earliest access to people who pre-paid for the product. We also allowed people to choose what they paid, and promised them that payment would stay in-effect for several months. We generated revenue the first day of posting the landing-page publicly and increased revenue month-over-month. However, we discontinued the product as it was simply not big enough of a market for us to justify continued time and energy. But I would encourage you to pursue a similar model in that it's a great way to test and validate the pain others experience for the problem and a great way to ensure you're building the product to satisfy real customers. Happy to talk this through in more detail in a call

This is not my specialty, however, I have been in your position many many times -- maybe this will help. If the product is in-tangible, then look for JV partners on the Internet. Try to find an expert that deals with these JV opportunities (like me). If the product is physical, then look for sales organizations that have networks of sales people across the country. You do the deal with the organization and the independent network of sales people sells your product. It's a sweet setup if you can negotiate a margin that works for everyone. Hope that helps - Cheers - Nick

This question is very broad so it's tough to answer, but I'll give it a shot. Is there anyone else making money in that market? If so, how? What business models are working well? Take the automobile industry. There are hundreds of business and revenue models in the auto industry (wholesale, retail, repair, parts, leasing, specialization, etc.) There is potential profit in every market, it's the intersection of the market and your particular business model or product / service that determines the profit. If you can be more specific, I can give you a better answer.

Probably not the answer you're looking for, but companies have so many unimplemented ideas that the likelihood of partnering to implement someone else's idea is really low. And besides which, the idea is not something that has much value in and of itself. If you're passionate in the idea, build it yourself. That's the only way you can have leverage.

For the first 90 days, listen and plan - but don't do anything. You need to understand why they are under performing and 9/10 it's because the previous Manager was just not a good Manager, could not recognize people's strength's, had them in the wrong roles, tried to do their jobs etc etc Read "First break all the Rules" - get to know your team, get to understand their strengths, get people in the right roles (plan a change if reqd) and then your focus after that is break down the barriers that stop your team being successful and get out of their way. “Now, discover your strengths!” that Swier suggests is also a marvellous book\resource to help you in this task. You are in a very fortunate position - there is nothing more rewarding than turning this situation around and there is only one way to go.... up... and that will get you noticed. It is much harder to take over a high performing team and either keep that going or further improve on it, as it's very unlikely you'll get the chance to really meet the previous Manager and understand why they had success and that team's loyalty will be with the previous Manager - this team will be looking for someone to lead, guide them and help them be successful as no-one goes to work wanting to under perform. Show and help them to achieve that and they will do and achieve remarkable things and you will be so proud of them as you watch them develop, achieve, grow in confidence and keep going. So, give thanks for having landed such a great career opportunity and go enjoy it.

I think the answer to your question is multi-layered. Here are a few things to consider. #1: Do you want a company to conduct the research for you? Market research and demographic-studies are expensive. There's no way around that. However, you can do the research yourself and you'll save a lot of money. #2: Do you want the design to be a standard "top down" graphic with pie charts and trend-lines? If you want that, you'll be able to find a lot of inexpensive designers. If you want something more custom, you'll have to pay for it. #3: Do you want an experienced designer or someone from 99 designs? Either way is fine, you'll just "pay for it" either with your time (looking through 98 bad designs, and working with 1 good ensign to try to make it better) or with your budget. While "cheap fast work" isn't always the best, I can connect you with a designer who can do a good infographic for around $500. It's up to you. Feel free to ask me for a personal reference if you'd like to get in touch. bryant@withnoble.com

If you'd only like the content to live at one location, and you're worried about legacy links that people shared across the internet breaking, then a 301 redirect from the old URLs to the new URLs is what you're looking for. Every HTTP Request receives a response code from the web server. Response codes in the 200s mean "everything went well", response codes in the 400s mean "user error" (like the famous 404, "we couldn't find the page you requested") and response codes in the 500s mean server error (Twitter's famous 503 Fail Whale). 300s indicate some sort of redirection and a 301 response code specifically tells the requesting client that this piece of content has moved to a new URL *permanently* and will never be back at this old URL. When web browsers receive a 301 redirect, they'll cache it and automatically forward all future requests for the old URL to the new one without even asking the server. Similarly, when search engine crawlers encounter a 301 redirect for a URL that they had already indexed, they update their information to move that old content (and all of it's old ranking information) to the new URL. This means you don't have to "start over" to get a piece of content to rank if you move its URL. However, your question makes it sound like you actually *do* want the exact same content to be served out of multiple URLs, but you'd ideally like only one copy of that content to be indexed and ranked to avoid splitting your inbound links and any other duplicate content issues. In that case, I'd check out adding so called "rel-canonical" tags to your pages, to indicate which version is the "canonical" version of that piece of content, and have all other versions point to the canonical one with the tag. Google is pretty good about using these, and Bing says they use it has a "hint." More info: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en In a world where websites might choose to organize the exact same content in a number of different ways, adding "rel canonical" tags to your pages adds a lot of semantic meaning and helps you avoid a number of issues that duplicate content brings. Hope that helps!

There are several factors to consider: 1. Profit share does not have to equal equity. As an example, two people can agree to split net profits 50/50 even though the percentage of equity is split 60/40. Just get it in writing. So find out their expectations for long term income and equity. Are they expecting a share of net profits or just the ability to recoup their investment when you sell the business? 2. What value do they bring to your business? Are they funding? Are they bringing significant contacts or the ability to secure contracts? Are they helping with infrastructure or product development? What would you pay someone in salary with no equity to do the same exact thing? 3. Are the short term or long term? In other words, once they help you launch, do they continue to have value in building the company? Or, are they no longer needed? There is no right answer to how you compensate them for helping you get started. But, try to look at all the value variables. Maybe that will help you identify what they are ultimately worth and what a fair, win-win offer would be. It sounds like they are very reasonable and you have a good opportunity to get their help for a reasonable compensation package. Good luck. If you would like to talk more about this at no charge, I offer a one time free call to new callers. Just use this link to schedule a call. https://clarity.fm/kevinmccarthy/FreeConsult

You need to build your community from the get-go. Start with your beta testers, creating a community where they talk to each other about issues and come to you with ideas, suggestions and bugs. Encourage them to do this, no matter the issue, and respond quickly. If you develop a community like this from the start, it's very easy to get your users to give advice on improvements and the like. You'll quickly see the beta users who are very involved, and ask them privately for suggestions of other beta users. Beta users WANT to provide feedback, and they will provide some of the must useful feedback you can get, so long as they see you responding and taking into consideration at least some of their ideas. If you start this in beta, you'll build a community of users who want to help you succeed and want to help you improve your product, for the long haul.

My first question to you is what are these URLs? It's important to know what these urls role in your overall website (ie do they carry important search signals or not , or by them being crawled they actually diluting these search signals) so based on your answer above : if they are important , or duplicated then you need either 301 them and if too much dev time you go with your 2nd choice which is use rel=canonical. (PS canonical is a suggestion/hint to google and dnt active like directive ) if they are not important ( search pages, doorway pages or whatever) then you need to remove them either by a 404 or a 410 then after couple of months (when you see all of these urls has been disappeared from the index) apply robots.txt exclusion to not to crawl these urls anymore. please note that the url removal works just for 90 days and if you didnt apply a robots.txt to disable bots from crawling them again then they will reappear. hope this helps

Bottom-line is that you have to be at a point where the evidence suggests you are ready to spend this capital to create a period of hyper growth connected to a clear path forward to creating a billion dollar business. What that looks like to investors depends on so many different circumstances, namely: How much have you raised previously and when and from whom? What were the metrics that you expected to hit with that raise and what's reality since then if the path stayed unchanged? How many months of "good data" (the data that tells the story that validates the pitch) have you collected and how statistically meaningful are the data signals you're using to sell. 6 months of solid data is really reliable, but three months of good data can create a lot of excitement. And of course, it's important to ensure that what the team defines as traction aligns with investors' assessment of traction, where there can often be significant misalginment. It's good to be asking this question now directly of investors you think are likely good A investor for you. Adam Nash (CEO of Wealthfront) wrote a great blog post about finding the right investors here: http://13hourstothink.com/2011/11/03/vc-tips-sell-burgers-to-meat-eaters/ … You also want to make sure that you have filled any gaps in your team required (as defined not by you but by outsider assessment) to really scale your business. Happy to talk to you in detail about where you're at and try to give you some more specific advice. Hope this helps set a general sense.

Mark is correct that the best advisors should have skin in the game but that advice is applicable only when you and your business are obviously investable. I've engaged advisors at times when I knew I wasn't ready to ask for their money and I've often begun advisory relationships in the earliest of stages where I like in and believe in the entrepreneur and the idea but they don't yet meet my investment criteria. Also, the old adage is true: Ask for advice, and you might just end-up with the person offering or even asking to invest. This has happened to me again on both sides of the table. In terms of compensation, I have a chart that spells out specific advisor expectations and stage-appropriate equity based compensation that I can email anyone who DM's me here through Clarity. Mark's answer is lower than I would accept for a start-up that isn't well funded. But anything above 1% would be really unusual and would have to be a really, really hands-on advisor or partial contributor as a team member. It should never be money on a retainer basis. I now have several people who call me regularly through Clarity to talk through specific things but other than that, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect cash compensation in a formal advisory role. And I would personally be vary of that because if they're not taking equity, then they really, much to Mark's point, have any skin in the game. I have a standard template that I use as an advisor (it was originally given to me by a company I advise) and I know use it with my own advisors, so happy to pass a stripped version of that agreement as it's the best one I've seen and is clearest for both parties. Just DM here via Clarity if you want it.

1) The whole team is growth focused, but I'm the only who helps guide and lead the strategy but for the most part, we know our core metrics and we have a development process for reviewing / assessing / testing / adjusting, etc. So I guess that's me. 2) We have many tools, and all depends on the metric, funnels, etc. As a general rule of thumb we use Google Analytics for all external traffic converting to sign-up, Mixpanel as a data warehouse for all events & funnels, A LOT of custom reports and tools we've built in house required when MixPanel or Google Analytics falls short. 3) We actually use Clarity (whole team) for conducting usability testing with members & experts on specific topics. We create clickeable prototypes and use Clarity to schedule a call & www.join.me to share the prototype for feedback. We also use www.usertesting.com for odering weekly baseline videos on our mobile app. It's not a "tool" but we use the Jobs-to-be-Done framework for conducting interviews when trying to understand intent. 4) Dave Skok has written the bible in my mind when it comes to SaaS metrics http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics/ Hope that helps, feel free to request a call to discuss further.

Being a freelance developer for the last 10 years or so, I have seen and used almost every project management software you can think of, open-source and closed, and I have found that the "best bug tracking tool" completely depends on your process. I employ and direct teams in an Agile process that involves loose story-based requirements with point-based estimates, two-week cycles of iterative development, planning and retrospective sessions, and look-ahead and show-and-tell meetings with the stakeholders. It's important to me, then, that my tools have a method of capturing all those pieces with as much detail as I need but no more. On projects, I've successfully used Pivotal Tracker, Unfuddle, Redmine, Codebase HQ, Basecamp, Trello, and many others. I usually recommend people to Trello for light, agile management; it's essentially a digitized version of sticky notes and swim lanes. If your team actually needs a full-featured ticketing system, see Redmine (Rails), Trac (Python), or Mantis (PHP), depending on your language preference. Hosting a version of these yourself is fairly trivial, and numerous options exist for cheap or free hosted versions. For something in the middle, Github Issues is a good fit and the open-source clone GitLab.org replicates most of those features nicely. However, if you're looking for a hosted version, you're probably looking to offload that tricky "backup" thingy, and in that case, how important is your data? How proprietary? What's your business model? If you're working on an open-source project, Github will give your team a free account with private repos, issues, wikis, and the like. If you're okay with your project being "readable by all", public projects on Pivotal are still free. I'm mostly a consultant these days, leading small groups of junior or intermediate developers into a more productive, more mature, fully operational teams of senior software developers. One of the first things I teach folks is how to use a project management system... and why! It'll save your bacon if it's simple, effective, and reliable. With a few minutes of discussion about your project, I can probably help you select the right tool and service for your team. Let me know if I can help with that. Best of luck!

Developing the website is the least of your concerns. If you are operating an online store, building trust and confidence with your customer base is critical. So, when choosing a shopping cart to run your store, performance and availability are key. When you use a quality, paid service like Magento or Shopify (or the myriad of others), you are paying for the solid infrastructure, the ongoing development and support. With an open source cart, as you said you will have I do it yourself. You may not have the monthly subscription fee. But, you will have maintenance and development fees. You will also have infrastructure fees - if you plan to do it right. If you would like to discuss this more, schedule a free call using my free consultation code below. I provide up to 30 minute calls at no charge for first time callers. https://clarity.fm/kevinmccarthy/FreeConsult Kevin McCarthy www.kevinmccarthy.com

One of the many great things about AngelList is that they don't charge commissions. In the case of an AngelList syndicate, there is both a management fee and a carrying cost, but that is not deducted from what you raise but rather deducted from the investors' profit (if there is one). The likelihood that you will be successful in raising $100k via AngelList on the other hand is quite low. While it would be a great place for you to find potential angel investors, I would advise against you using it to actively fundraise for such a small amount. Happy to talk to you about AngelList and fundraising strategy in general.

Are you targeting new businesses? Try acquiring a list of all new business license applicants. Do you have a budget for radio? Try news talk radio stations in your markets. Also try targeted news feed ads with Facebook and LinkedIn if that isn't already part of our PPC plan.

I wrote a couple of articles when I was going through it for the first time: http://www.danielarroyo.net/2011/08/can-corporate-employees-become-entrepreneurs/ http://www.danielarroyo.net/2011/09/how-to-transition-from-employee-to-entrepreneur/ I hope you enjoy them. I can talk in length about this as it's still relatively fresh in my mind.

The best way is always through helping your people to grow. Think about the micro managers motivation - typically it is fear driven. Alleviate that fear. Give them the One Minute Manager book and talk about it... If they are tough to approach, hire an outside consultant to come in and talk with the whole group. Micromanagers run good employees away...so if you are not betting on this horse, perhaps it is time to restructure the department...

First, hat tip to you for being a young entrepreneur. Keep it up! If you have the funds to build out your MVP, hire a developer and possibly a mentor. If your idea is marketable, you don't need to give up equity by bringing in a co-founder. If this is your entrepreneurial venture, I would recommend you do retain a coach to help you see all the things you may not know. Have you already done your SWOT analysis? Have you identified your target market? What is your marketing plan? What will be your operating expenses? There are lots of questions to ask. If you would a free call, I'd be happy to help you in more detail. Just use this link to schedule your free call... https://clarity.fm/kevinmccarthy/FreeConsult Best regards, Kevin McCarthy Www.kevinmccarthy.com