Q & A

Q. What is the best way to engage a sales pro for a highly developed, early stage business startup?

A. It depends on how serious you are to want to hire the best salespeople.

The good ones have heard all the smoke and mirrors stories so you have to offer something substantial.
I would say you would want to take the best salespeople out there that have or are doing the super sales level now, the leaders or wake up some old leaders.

Put your self in their shoes and ask yourself what you would want if you where in their position.
For me I would say some basic salary but most of their profits tied to the success of the company.
It can’t be some vague promise, they have to feel they have actual shares in seeing the company make it.

You could have some statement that you could buy back those shares at a certain price if certain things don’t happen that are bases on their performance. With this approach they will do all in their power to make it happen.

Again the principle being how real is this opportunity and what are their guarantees if they work out.
They need some skin in the game but they have to know if they preform they get their share in the success.

Always put yourself in their shoes, what would you want an agreement to look like if you where them.

Q. How big an effect on unemployment will come from retiring BabyBoomers?

A. Little- because companies in many cases are not replacing them as they retire, or should I say forced retirement in many cases. When businesses can hire out of the country for a fraction of the cost they do, especially big business they are unfortunately into bottom line, not necessarily future bottom line but this ¼ bottom line. Often the management want to hang onto any profit they can make immediately and let the future take care of itself and that doesn’t work out to well. I think this is the time to start a business for all ages, companies are not looking out for you I’m afraid but if you go out on your own you can turn this around. Don’t be afraid or embarrassed if you have to do some dirty work you will be making the money while other are too proud to get their hands dirty.

Q. Online Marketing Strategy: We project two revenue streams from our business- from client 1 and client 2. How do we set up competitive pricing.

A. Simply create a revenue model that is the same for everyone and then have extra charges for specific situations. If the reduce a price up front you explain that the reduced charge comes with some strings attached like the customer can include a flyer in every bill they send out about you, or an ad on their website or a percentage of their future business or a % of ownership in their business. You are not charging them less in most cases you are charging them more and if the word gets out about what you did you can offer the same to those customers. Give nothing for free but in essence delayed payment or other types of payment you will get in kind. Call me if you would like to discuss this further.

Q. Education: I want to cater IT courses to people living with Asperger’s & feel the administration of the community college I am targeting is not on board with it

A. I would get the newspaper or local media involved, pressure from there may do the trick.

Q. Pricing: As an expert, how do I change my price?

A. My first thought is eliminate some of the features of your package and make them adons. For example the basic hourly program contains these features and now these features are now extra.
Offer to continue the present prices to those who will pay for the services 3 months in advance, or 6 or 1 year.
You could keep the basic price the same but require a percentage of the profit it produces, a shared revenue model along with your old prices.
Offer to keep your prices the same if they will give you a free ad on their website, or include a flyer of yours with every bill that goes out to get you more business.
Trading services is a lot easier to get approved then increasing your hourly billing by 50% but with some of these ideas you may make more than 50% and everybody’s happy.

Q. Start-up Ventures: Why are Canadian VC’s so risk adverse?

A. First of all if this is true why are you going after Canadian companies. When it comes to investments the world is your oyster. But to address the question, I just had someone I interviewed on my podcast that I have not put up yet on iTunes from Vancouver, BC. He would have up to a million dollars for any new venture high tech or not if he thought it would make it and also provide the entrepreneur training free to make sure they made it. So there are opportunities in every country.

Q. Fundraising: What’s harder, creating the opportunity or financing it?

A. I’m a believer in shoestring start-ups so I would be creating a situation that would have investors seeking me out. You need to get yourself out there in front of as many people as possible bragging about your great new product so that investors call you. Let me say this an investor who called you is worth at least 10 times one you phoned. One your in charge and your looking for the best investors, the other your one of a hundred people calling them and they are looking for the best investment, which position do you want to be in. How do you have them clamoring to your door is get some minimal, viable version of your product or service so you can show some real figures, real buyers not just a hypothetical possibility of success.

Q. Board of Director experience: How do I find board members for my Christian non-profit?

A. I would go after the heroes to you in this field. Don’t worry about that your new or small. Think like if I had the best organization in the world and I had the pick of the crop who would I pick. Make a list of 30 people in this boat and I believe you will get 5 of them. I just started a podcast interviewing those baby boomers that have a message to help people get in business and this week I interviewed someone who did $3,000,000,000 (Billion) in business last year and gave me an hour of his time. If you don’t ask you don’t get. And who knows you might cause someone that you talk to become a believer. Hoped this helped.

P.S. I raised over 1.5 million for the blind almost single handedly so I have an idea of what you are doing.

Q. Strategic Partnerships: With $28,000,000 in Appraised assets,What is the best approach- time spent to finding the right partner-resources.Let them find you or seek and find?

A. This answer was made easy for me because I first thought it was $28,000 in assets you had. To answer either amount of assets my feeling is you have to put yourself out there in every form you can related in your field. I wouldn’t be asking for these partnerships directly because you will have to shift through a lot of dead wood. Just be more visible than you ever have through every online and offline medium you can. When the offers start coming in you can start to pick and choose the best of the best. If you seek them you immediately are in a inferior position but if they have search you out it’s a whole new world. Think of it as the difference between inbound calls and outbound. When I promoted my last attorney and I figured a way to have the phone ring all day with clients, what a position I was in. I was often able to teach people how law was done these days my way and we ended up with the best clients with no competition. Hoped that helped. By the way I’m at $150 an hour right now just for fun but I will going back to $500 an hour as I was when I worked with the attorney. And if your wondering who this attorney is I have the letter of recommendation from him.

Q. Charity: To post many business ideas so someone can run with it and create it. No need for monetary gain or recognition. Which website would be best?

A. Post them on my website because I am dealing with Baby Boomers and many would jump on good ideas, let me know.

Q. Fundraising: Any creative approaches for raising capital outside of your immediate network on a stealth startup?

A. If you are starting up a company that might be in direct conflict with your regular company you will need to set up a corporation let’s say in Hong Kong so there is no likely tie to you. But outside that for a moment I like to start up companies on a shoestring or at least test out the concept on real people which a have a couple of methods of doing that. Investors will fight over a proven concept but on just speculation you have to fight to find them. If you need help testing out your idea I can help.

Q. Acquisitions: Is there some suggested price per acre to look for when looking for a self storage site for development ?

A. You would figure out your price per acre by the kind of rent you can collect in that area. You don’t need to be right downtown in the richest area but if you want to have middle class clients you better be in a middle class area.

Q. Acquisitions: Is there some suggested price per acre to look for when looking for a self storage site for development ?

A. You would figure out your price per acre by the kind of rent you can collect in that area. You don’t need to be right downtown in the richest area but if you want to have middle class clients you better be in a middle class area.

Q. Mobile App Design: Both a partner and I have a very good idea about a mobile platform game but how do we protect our ideas and find developer(s)?

A. You really don’t, the only real protection you have these days is the track record of the company you want to work with. If they have 20 lawsuits going on then I would probably stay away. The second protection is the first in on an idea and you really push it you become the front runners and get the lions share of the business. You can have a developer sign a non-compete non-disclosure agreement. Again reputation is everything, if a developer has a good one then that’s the man you want to work with, call me if you have any further questions and I will see how I can help.

Q. Travel: Can Canadian consultants work as independent contractors in the states without a work permit?

A. This is not legal advise, and I don’t play a lawyer on TV but I would say as a contractor all work worldwide is open. Your not moving to the US your just taking business from their. There maybe a question of where you pay tax at some point so set up a Hong Kong Corporation that is near impossible to sue if your going to be dealing with goods internationally. And why restrict yourself to the USA only, hoped this helped.

Q. Conferences: I have the following types of sponsorships for a conference I’m organizing: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and need a package bigger than Platinum.

A. Platinum Plus…….you want to keep it in the same vein.

Q. Venture Funding: How can i get VC to invest in our two startups? One being elitehive.com and the other tutsbench.com.

A. Numbers, when you can show investors what you have done on a shoestring then they will be tripping over each other to fund you.

Q. UX Design: Ever wonder what it’d be like if you’d started working for a company like Apple right before it went huge?

A. First of all I don’t want the unemployed UX designer I want the best one working either in a competing company or similar field so I already know his track record. A couple of sources for freelance UX designers would be www.guru.com www.elance.com odesk.com (who’s changing their name to upwork which is the biggest one and they also bought elance but has kept them as a separate companies).

Q. Startups: Can somebody point me towards some failed marketing analytics startups?

A. I would go looking at public records of failed companies. One way to get really detailed information would be to call the former owners of these defunct companies or their underings and possibly even pay them for there analysis of what happened and what they would do differently. You could contact angel investors and all other investment groups like them, which usually have more failures than successes so they might be a good source and tell them that you would be willing to share your finding with them to help them know who and what to stay away from.

Q. Call Center: What are some of the best ways to train call center agents that work from home?

A. First of all I would not look for inexperienced call center workers. You need to get the top agents to switch to your company because of your incentives. Let the other companies train them. The cost of getting a green person up to speed is 10 times the cost of hiring the best that are at other companies now. How long a training would depend on the product but I would like agents that could up-sell my customers also. You want people with proven tract records. The test will be the pay check they have been getting from your direct competitor or similar field.

Q. Call Center: What are some of the best ways to train call center agents that work from home?

A. First of all I would not look for inexperienced call center workers. You need to get the top agents to switch to your company because of your incentives. Let the other companies train them. The cost of getting a green person up to speed is 10 times the cost of hiring the best that are at other companies now. How long a training would depend on the product but I would like agents that could up-sell my customers also. You want people with proven tract records. The test will be the pay check they have been getting from your direct competitor or similar field.

Q. Non-profit Development: We need to transform our company to a non-profit organization. What steps do we need to take to change our company while protecting ourselves?

A. My first question is why are you wanting to switch to a non-profit model? I raised over a million dollars in Canada for the Blind and I didn’t have to become a non-profit to do it. If you partner with the organizations who have a name why start something brand new?

Q. Online Marketing: Are new startups more successful if they are always new or high tech related?

A. My first gut reaction is you have spent enough time developing your idea you must immediately test it now to see if it has financial merit. Let’s get it tested and see if its going to work today in this business environment.

Q. Sales: How do we improve the credibility of our company?

A. Don’t worry about it if you are 2 guys in a garage companies want solutions not someone in an over priced office.
What is unique about what you will do for your customers that the competitors wouldn’t or better yet can”t?
Who can you team up with that would put you above your competition? Don’t worry if they will take 1/2 your income they will produce, pay them, 1/2 of something is better than all of nothing.
Call and let’s brain storm this and see what can get you off the ground to some profits, maybe it’s me that could do the job.

Q. Crowdfunding: Any suggestions on raising funds on kickstarter (or other crowdfunding) for a business innovation model as opposed to a product innovation model?

A. There are other crowdfunding groups that would take a business innovation but let’s not start there if you have not gotten your idea to a certain level and secondly there might be some better approaches.
You need to set up some basics first to test your idea and get some real time customers or not. I don’t want you wasting your precious time and anything that can’t test out first.

Q. Start-ups: Single founder, non-tech start-up service venture. Bold new service with a clear path to profitability within a 2 years. Who to talk to?

A. There is no business that cannot be start on a shoestring, so the first thing I would be doing is testing the market with a real website offering a real product. I can explain how I would do that when we talk.
One question I have is, is this a product or service that you are really excited about doing or are you strictly looking at it from a dollar sign viewpoint. Why I say that is you will like most of us who have done a start-up hit some really tough decisions and if you don’t like what your doing you decrease your chances of making it substantially.

Q. Sales: Sales plan, if it’s a new product how do I go about planning on setting up sales goals?

A. My first thought is forget the sales goals for a minute for two reasons they are just made up numbers so if you put them to low they will cause you to under achieve if you set they to high you might feel like a loser. You need to get out and sell and promote the heck out of your product. As you take off with your product you will have a better idea of goals if you want to do them then. Right now I see goals as an obstacle with no benefit except for the bank loan if you need one but they are otherwise a waste of time because it can steer you off the road. Put your full force of your energies to get your product in as many hands as you can. Do each day the number one thing to get your company off the ground and I would say that is sales, sales, sales. Be that one pointed..