By experience, I will tell you that is Finance or Economics, Marketing & Communications and Soft Skills that help you be a followed and likable leader. You might know or will find out that in business, any business, its not about you but about them - your end user, end customer. If you want to succeed build and leverage relationships - it's not about who you know but who knows what you know and do they like you? Humberto Valle MBA, Strategist, Investor www.Unthink.me https://www.facebook.com/groups/mysmallbusinessresource/ www.facebook.com/iwillunthink www.twitter.com/officialunthink

I don't think your product price supports TV advertising. In the marketplace I'm in, TV advertising is relatively inexpensive. A couple tech friends and I ran a show for three seasons and conversion was not easy for us. I'm not saying that means it will automatically be difficult for you...just that you are expecting a pretty magic return on a 2-week investment. You could have more, larger ticket, related products for sale in the funnel after the customer buys the initial product. You'd need a way of continuing to market to them, of course, to do this. Radio's an alternative. But the thing is, you're trying to do the newbie thing of combining Traffic generation and Conversion into a single step, wanting it to happen fast and without testing. This is a recipe for failure. First you have to learn how to attract targeted leads (that's the Traffic phase.) THEN you can learn how to Convert it into buyers. What's your plan for Conversion? A phone number to call and salesperson to talk to? A web page with a sales letter? A mail-out CD? As you can see there are several factors here, all of which have to be working for you to make sales. You could get traffic, but then fall down on the conversion phase (in fact, you probably will; that's the way it usually goes.) So is two weeks going to be enough? And how often will your ad be showing in that two week period? There are so many factors here that can go wrong. Wrong demographic. Wrong airtime. Wrong pairing of product with show content. Wrong call to action. Wrong conversion tool. The list goes on... ...and two weeks probably isn't going to be enough testing time to fix everything. In your shoes, I'd save up more and get ready to test more steps and for a longer period. When it comes to copywriting, something I have two decades of experience with, I have to share that most of the time the writer gets it wrong the first time. The message is off. The pain points don't bite in. The call to action doesn't work. And then they need to test and adjust until the next step DOES start working. Those vitamin and supplement ads you see...the exercise programs...they've gone through iterations, let me tell you. They didn't do well the first time out. Then the team got to work and with the feedback they got adjusted and step by step got the funnel working. This is not easy. You can't expect to throw a little money at television and expect everything to line up perfectly to make you a profit. You have a cost of customer acquisition. Figure out what that is. My gut says your product price doesn't support it. The cost of advertising, conversion, and fulfillment (getting the product to the customer) will almost surely be over $30. If you can add a back end to the funnel (ie. more, higher-priced products) to buy...or a subscription product like the supplements...then maybe you can take a loss in the short term to profit in the medium term. Maybe you can develop a funnel where they buy the $30 thing now, and for every ten of the $30 buyers you get one $500 buyer (the guy who gets the apron and also buys the barbecue from you right then). That would change your revenue equation. But as things are, I don't see a win here.

Hello, maybe you didn't explain the question right. Do you want to be a consultant? or do you want to start an online business? If you want to start an online business selling Japanese products online you just need a website with shopping cart, a payment gateway that is trustworthy to consumers and access to logistics like FedEx or DHL. If you need a website built for you, you can get in touch with my team at www.Unthink.me and we can see if we can help you with what you need. If you are trying to be a consultant for ecommerce, then I would say start messing around with ecommerce, get yourself a website, become successful running that online store and then leverage your experiences with others wanting to start an ecommerce business.

For your friend to be successful as a weight loss consultant I would suggest she needs three things: 1. Her own unique weight loss system that she can sell as a monthly service (recurring revenue). It should go beyond the obvious such as diet and exercise or at least provide a new angle on incorporating them. Her system needs to add enough value that people will continue to pay for it. 2. A case study of someone (could be your friend herself) that has lost a lot of weight in a relatively short amount of time using her system. This case study will form an important part of her marketing efforts. 3. As the weight loss market is so competitive, she needs a niche. For example, a weight loss system for stay at home mums. That way she avoids competing with personal trainers who probably don’t have much access to niche markets such as stay at home mums. Having her own system gives customers a reason to use her as a consultant, having an impressive case study provides credibility to her system and having a niche gives her a specific audience to market to. There are three markets people make a lot of money in (health, wealth and relationships). The good news is that her business is in one of these markets. The bad news is that these markets are saturated and incredibly competitive online so I would suggest she avoids online marketing activities, for now, such as SEO, PPC, etc. Social media might work for her if she has a unique system and can prove results. First, she needs proof of concept and to see if people will pay for her consulting. I would recommend she incorporates my three suggestions above and markets offline to friends or find a niche group of people and speak to them at networking events. For a limited time I’m offering free advice for 20mins. VIP link: https://clarity.fm/robstephens/scale323 Rob Stephens robstephens.com

Do in-depth competition research. Find people doing exactly what you do and call/email and ask for pricing. Make sure you have exact specs for the "job" mapped out and use the same exact details for everyone you call. If you can't find anyone at all who does what you want to do you should dig deep and find out why nobody does it. There are probably good reasons.

I've worked with nearly 100 startups over the last 10 years to launch their brands/online platforms and a common mistake I see is an initial overinvestment in the design and aesthetics when they start out. They spend tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours trying to figure out the perfect logo, font, icon, packaging etc just to get their brand/service/product out the door. You can use design to really differentiate your company from the market, but early on there are other things that I think should take priority before overcommitting that many precious resources to design. That is absolutely not an excuse to be lazy or have poor quality work; it is more a lesson of seeing your design as an evolving concept and definitely an area where "great is the enemy of good" starting out. Designs and even brands can and should mature over time – I’d focus on a good quality and scalable design to start while seeking to iterate and mature it over time as your business grows in the first months/year after launch. I'd also say that while startups tend to overinvest aesthetically, they generally underinvest when it comes to organization and documentation around their brand. Things like style guides and other branding materials are critical so you can maintain cross-platform branding consistency (and as your brand/design evolves you can continue to maintain those standards internally and with third parties by just updating the materials.) they also tend to underinvest in the wireframing and planning/blueprinting stages of designing their technical platforms (spending time during that phase saves time and money come time to bring in the graphic artists.) So, to the question of “how much” a startup should invest; that is a little subjective. If you are a retail or consumer product brand of some sort I’d say spending a little more time and money makes sense since you have to include product and packaging design as well as possible displays in stores etc. If you are a digital brand then you may be able to get away with a more streamlined approach. If you are focusing on designing your software (web/mobile) applications then go through the wireframing process first so you can be crystal clear with your design partner what it is you’re looking for from them. It could be as little as a few hundred dollars or as much as $5-$10k starting out; it really just depends on what sort of startup you’re working on. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to discuss your specific needs and talk further about your exact design needs and cost expectations.

if you are interested in being a tour guide in the United States, you might be required to earn professional licensing, depending on which city or area you want to work in. If you plan on being a guide in any of the following cities, you will need to get licensed first: Washington, D.C. New York, NY Savannah, GA Charleston, SC Gettysburg Battlefield, PA Vicksburg Battlefield, MI New Orleans, LA If you want to be a tour guide in New York City, you have to pass the Professional Licensing Examination for New York City Sightseeing Guides. The test consists of 150 questions, and you need to answer 97 correctly. The questions cover topics such as New York transportation, history and architectural landmarks. Becoming a tour guide in Washington D.C. requires submitting an application, which includes completion of the Professional Sightseeing Tour Guide Examination. You'll also need to be able to communicate in English and have a clear criminal history over the last five years. Source: learn.org

If I understand your current question correctly you're asking about desire towards vs impact of financial reward related to work. If you look at Herzberg's 2 factor theory you could conclude that financial gain is a work hygiene issue. Pay is not a strong motivating factor until it does not reach market or personally assessed value. On the other hand, promotion provides an intrensic variable of success that motivates individuals. Also, if you look at Maslow' s Hierarchy the money based issues are on the base while self-actualization and social status are much higher on the pyramid. Keeping this in mind most will find a higher degree of self-effacacy in a higher position vs a pay raise.

I know there are a number of healthcare incubators in the US such as Start-Up Health. This is a community of healthcare start-ups with some connection to the delivery system entities in Avia.

Absolutely. I have done this in various aspects of my business, either as a consultant for film projects or as a sponsorship consultant / referrer and in many other aspects. There's a nice quote - it escapes me who said it - but "Your network is your net-worth" - what they mean by that is there is incredible value in who you know, but not just that - it's really WHAT you know, about how to HELP them. Couple of ways you can make money by introducing: - Find out what someone (or a business) needs. It could be more sales / clients / or a service. Then figure out how to get paid for that. Let's say a business sells XXX service for $10,000. If you were able to bring them a new customer willing to spend that, do you think they'd be happy to pay you a 10% referral fee? Probably, as long as they have a healthy profit margin, and you agree this upfront. If you bring people what they need, they will usually be happy to share the proceeds with you. In my own example, event organizers for major celebrity events often ask me for help to introduce sponsors, for which they pay a commission. The equation is easy - they need sponsors to finance their event. So if I help them find a brand, or advise them on doing that, they pay me some of the proceeds for making that introduction. It helps them achieve their goal quicker. - The other way is online. Many companies run "affiliate" or "referral" schemes. Just like Uber will give $10 of free rides if you share with a friend, online companies often give fees for clicks or leads to potential customers. Just do a search for "affiliate marketing" or look up sites like Clickbank or Peerfly. If you have a good online network, social network or email list, you will be able to make money by letting your contacts know about things that interest them. The great thing about referral income is it is often a percentage, and so it has great leverage for you. The more the client spends, the more you earn, for often the same effort. So focus on referring either big clients, or a wide spread of small ones, but be careful of too much effort on one small client! Hope this helps.

Likely your best avenue is to call H&R Block Executive Tax services. There might be one in your country. If not, just pick one from any US City. I'm in Austin, Texas + have been using them for years. They're way cheaper than a CPA + tend to stay current on new tax code, far better than a CPA, as they run internal, company wide trainings, all year round. You're smart to deal with this up front. Avoiding US I.R.S. trouble == a very good idea.

This depends on contracts you signed + if you're in a legal pool. If you're in a legal pool, makes no difference (to me) how often I'm sued, because I can always go longer in court than the other side, so I always win. https://clarity.fm/questions/4768/answers/15740 covers how this works. You pay a monthly flat rate for unlimited out of court time + 100s of hours in court time. I can't imagine living in the US without Legal Shield coverage. Nothing sucks time + money like lawsuits, unless you don't have to pay any money or invest any time, because you're in a legal pool. Once you have Legal Shield coverage for at least 10 days (which is what use to be required for coverage to begin) then do whatever you like. If you get sued, you'll just laugh, because you might be able to suck the other side so dry, you can pick their clients for your product.

Free? Yes, slavery. I mean, you do still need to feed the slaves. And they might get sick, and you still feed them while they are not working. I know, such a bummer. Jokes aside, nothing comes for free in life and it's insulting to ask somebody to work for free.

If you are friends with this person on Facebook you can go into your Page Settings and edit Page Roles. Assign them the role you wish, depending on what you want them to be able to do. They will then have access to the Page. In your case I would assume you would assign whoever as an Editor. If you're on your desktop and doing this, Facebook will give you a layout of who can do what in different Page Roles -- you will see link at top of page when you hit Page Roles under Settings.

Invest it in yourself and find a great job that will pay the bills while you work on your own venture. Whether that means buying new work-appropriate clothes, books in your profession, a new certification or even interview coaching is up to you. I'd find a company that is emerging in an industry that you find interesting and go after working for that company. Good luck!

Hello! This is a great question, my name is Humberto Valle, I'm a content and marketing strategist for www.Unthink.me. Our small agency bring big business tools to small growing companies. Your question is related to SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. The reason why you don't see your company name or website pages come up on a Google search is because your website is most likely very new and Google has not indexed it. With that said, even if your site is older and you have many pages and good SEO, its never a good idea to search for your company or website off your own browser like you would search other things because you are going to get skewed results on the Google Search. One of the things you can do to test how you rank without altering the results from searching on your own IP address is by opening a Google Incognito window or going to third party tools to test your SEO. Now, your question was how to get Google to show your site and the answer is simple, you have to index it. 1) Try submitting your website here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?continue=/addurl&pli=1 2) Register your business with the over 80 different major indexing sites out there such as Yelp, Yellow pages, white pages, bing, apple, etc. The more you register the most links Google will have to find your website as it's scanning others. If they all have the exact same information then over some time Google will begin to associate your website page with those particular keywords based on the region that you serve based on how Google categorizes your particular industry. For example, a software development company will have different region categorization and SEO than a local pizzeria. 3) Insert the right tags and code snippets on your website so that Google can best validate and read your website, then index it better. Google does not see or care how your website looks to other humans, can't see what a picture looks like so you have to tell it, same thing with phone number or address on a certain page or certain of a website, just because you wrote it and maybe have it linking to a map it doesn't mean Google knows is an address, but properly tagging the code of the site will help google know what each part of the site is and what's it for and the hierarchy of each page and each section. 4) Improve/create content for your website, when people visit your website and they leave within the first few seconds or minutes is BAD. Really bad. Imagine if someone was ranking stores in a mall based on how many people walked in and immediately walked out because they didn't see anything of interest in that store and left right away. That's what Google is doing, but the more people spend time on your site, the more Google rewards you because they are in the business of giving us good search results - they show relevant websites that are being browsed around by new visitors and returning visitors. 5) Improve/create your funnel system, goes hand in hand with the time spent on the site. The more pages a new visitor clicks through the better for your ranking. 6) Make good use of H1, H2, H3, etc throughout your page and your blog posts. 7) Make sure each page has its appropriate meta data and social media descriptions clearly describing the page content intent. 8) Leverage social media, although no business should really be in all social media you should definitely secure each profile and stick to those with a follow syntax. Facebook and instagram for example are no follow which means all your content there will not be indexed by Google, but sites like Twitter, Linkedin, Google Plus and Youtube are follow. 9) Consider registering for a paid membership with BBB, Google and BBB partnered to provide better ranking to its members. This is easier to achieve in certain cities where you may not be competing against many other SEO savvy companies. But for example, in a city like El Paso Texas - companies with a BBB registrations tend to rank better than others with average SEO (all else being equal). 10) DO ALL THIS WHILE KEEPING CONSISTENT WITH ONLY A HANDFUL OF POTENTIALLY PROFITING SEO KEYWORDS OR LONG TAIL WORDS (SEARCH SENTENCES). No body can rank high for everything, but you can rank high for certain keywords. Some agencies like ours use some expensive tools to find out the best keywords and SEO plans companies are implementing and could help you find the right keywords for your market. Either way, even if you were to pick keywords are random on your own - stick to no more than 5 and make sure to alternate them on your posts, pages, headline titles, meta data, etc. The more you have the more you will rank for those keywords or longtails. SEO and appearing on Google results is a constantly evolving game of chasing the cat's tail. Google keeps improving and changing their algorithm to protect themselves and stay with the times which is why is always recommended that you avoid paying to those click farm, link building services that 'guarantee' 1st page ranking in a month or two because all they do is spam the internet with fake profiles everywhere with your link included, they work for a bit but then they don't forcing you to keep paying for such service and when you stop paying it all goes away VS the way I just described above - well, that investment stays for ever building on itself. SEO is not optional if you are planning on ever depending even a little on online sales you need to have SEO. Its like opening a business in a very busy street but thinking a sign with states your product and "open" is optional. How are people supposed to know you're there and stumble onto your products even by accident much less intentionally? I hope I was helpful and provided you with enough good clarity to help you take the next steps in your business. If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to reach out to me. If you are interested in SEO services, we offer a broad range of services and can accommodate most budgets. Continue learning about DIY SEO on our blog at http://blog.unthink.me/100-incredibly-easy-ways-to-have-better-seo

I have had at least half a dozen clients ask me this and build analysis for them around this specific topic in the last year alone. The answer largely depends on the circumstances (funding, time to market required, reliability of the platform provider etc). But it is a dilemma that many founders (particularly non-technical founders) face. But in general I like being the master of your own destiny and keeping your tech stack fully in your control (that's not to say using open source tools isn't a useful way to still achieve that goal though.) I would say this: even if you are going to white label at the beginning, it is only a matter if when, not if, you will want to migrate in part or in whole away from this third party platform being the entirety of what you offer. In my experience these platforms typically offer too light or too expansive of a feature set and can be unreliable when it comes to things such as uptime, ticket responses etc. So generally I steer my clients away from it, or when necessary help them limit their exposure by creating a hybrid app that has elements you control merged with existing tools from the platform. the good news is that, in general terms, chatbots by and large are not tremendously complex (again, a few caveats aside) so building it with a software firm is certainly a plausible option to consider. If you'd like to brainstorm or talk through specific parameters that could influence your plan one way or the other, or talk through how to roadmap potential issues that should be avoided (both contractually and feature-wise) feel free to reach out and we can schedule some time to dive in.

So you're saying that your business is a service business like auto repair, home buying, or any of millions of businesses that have existed for many many years. This is not a problem. Businesses like yours are bought and sold every day. The secret is a track record of profitable cash flow and a demonstrable system of how you get clients. If you want to run down a quick valuation just arrange a call and I'll show you in 15-30 minutes what kind of ballpark value your business may hold. Cheers David Barnett

In my experience coaching hundreds of people, anytime you go against your gut (aka intuition) you will lose. Data is important to consider, but your gut often knows the path.

Toyota and motorolla

"Growth Hacking" relates to identifying highly efficient ways of growing business. Where efficient, to me, tends to by $0 methods, as these scale forever. If you can create a $0 based system to grow your revenues, you can plow huge chunks of cash for even faster profit increases. I tend to use this approach to validate ideas + just to bring in new waves of customers/clients. My approach is Meetup trolling. Attend Meetups where people will be who can use your product/service/information/courseware + where you have zero competition. For example, one of my companies provides high traffic hosting for WordPress sites. Easy places to pickup new clients/customers include any Meetup.com group event where people network... because... likely many have WordPress sites + most hosting tends toward slow + glitchy. Likely no one else will be pitching WordPress hosting, so I'd have no competition. This example is using offline tech to push to online service. You can use the exact same approach to promote lawn mowing, only you call it... Executive Landscaping... Or coaching or computer repair. Marketing is marketing. Whether your product is online or offline.

Search for the term... Meetup Group Construction Kit which explains how to abuse Meetup.com for pleasure + profit.

What I would recommend is to find out what your competitions are not doing. then figure out how you can add more value at that area. Adding more value to people life that out weight your competitions is the key to stand out.

I think as stated below, its important to do some research on who would use this platform and why? I think there are so many platforms out there, you need to be clear about what you’re offering and why your target market would continue to log on to your platform, and not an established platform like Linkedin, which is evolving more and more, and also how you are going to make money from it (unless it’s a charity thing).

It is difficult to provide an exact number as it would require an audit of all stripe merchants' systems to check for dynamic billing descriptors enabled and their equivalents.