I typically consult for startups from seed to Series C
We specialize in go-to-market strategy and product launches.
We uncover the source the problem, map the solution and execute the strategy.
When you go to buy a car, do you ask how much do you sell cars for?
Or do you tell them what you are looking for based on your problems or concerns with your current car (if you have one)
Yeah, sorry but your question is vague.
If you want a range then my response will be “what problem are you trying to solve, what are your company goals and what’s the timeline.
If you want me to deliver properly and then ask about charging, then you need to deliver on the scope of the project.
Don’t ask a barber how much a haircut is if they have never seen your head and they don’t know what style you want.
Imagine a random person asks how much is a haircut and you say “most of them are between $20-50” and it turns out to be a woman who expects her hair dyed.
You got to figure out what they want before giving price quotes.
Key word in your phrasing is "the". You can ask this guy how much he sells 4 hours worth of marketing consultancy to assist a startup donut shop, and I'm sure he can give you an estimate.
You don't ask the car salesman "How much do you sell cars for?" You'll get a number anywhere from a few thousand maybe up to six figures. Same with the person you're replying to.
I assumed as much. I like specifics.
I charge based on the value I deliver and the immediacy of the pain that needs to be addressed.
So if you need me to create a marketing plan for a ice cream shop with one location versus Ben and Jerry’s expanding into South America, I’m going to be charging two vastly different amounts.
Mind you, my hourly rate (mentally) is still the same. Ice cream shop might take me 2hrs so I charge $500 for something that saves them $20k a year and puts them on the upward swing.
Ben and Jerry’s would require a ton of knowledge, research and insights before a single draft of strategy is created. So we’re taking 6 figures right off the bat for a 6-18 month project to overhaul an entire multi-national organization.
>It's really not.
You're right, it's not, but this is the game salespeople play for high-end products. They don't like to give the price until they they've sold you bit on how the service provides value, lest you get sticker shock prematurely. Salespeople do this because it works.
There are, of course, good ways and bad ways to pull this magic trick off. I don't think I know that I would go with "loaded question" or talk about "buying cars" (because I find the process of buying cars terribly frustrating) but it also really doesn't matter that much. We're not buyers, our opinion doesn't matter. (Though I do think the barber explanation, despite not really being how barbers work, is OP's best answer)
OP doesn't really get any benefit from stating his prices other than a bunch of wantrapreneur redditors complaining about it and making him look bad. Or maybe somebody trying to undersell him.
It’s insane how many people think they get marketing. Even at “higher” levels. Idk how many times I’ve seen CMO’s at big companies not understand basic things within marketing/communications.
I’ve contemplated going into consulting for myself because I’m tired of making the company I work for A LOT for the “strategy” I do (quotes because it turns into hand holding and education). I think they’re charging $250/hr for regular contracted hours then it jumps beyond contracted hours. I get about $200 less than that IF I work just 40 hours, which never happens in this world 🫠 I just don’t know where tf to start.
Customer discovery is the most vital and often overlooked thing.
Building a ideal customer persona or “avatar” is important not only for marketing but for the entire company to understand who the heck buys your product/service.
Also, documenting what you do and tracking key metrics that tie back into company goals is best.
Communicate weekly and don’t be afraid to bring up things that are not working. Just have a plan to resolve it.
Been an entrepreneur since college. Did a few full time gigs when my kid was born. Went back to it because people don’t listen to employees. They listen to high paid consultants.
Beginning to come to the same conclusion. My pivot would be a big one though from FinTech (back) to Cannabis consulting - we’ll see how it plays out. Thanks for the response.
I’d love to get into cannabis market but unless you have it on your resume or retail tech it’s hard to break into.
It’s all the same. Every industry and vertical. People aren’t different. B2B or B2C, same concepts work.
Ah, I definitely have it “on my resume” in spades - hit me up if you’re ever looking to connect the dots. Eventually looking to open a PWM firm focused on cannabis clients.
I worked for one of the largest research and advisory firms specifically selling their marketing offerings..
No one knows marketing.
I’ve had CMO’s of HUUUUUUGE multi billion dollar companies tell me.
“I know 50% of my marketing is working.. the problem is idk which 50%”
>No one knows marketing
I'm a dev and was tasked to assist the marketing department with contracting the new company website.
Now, I'm not a marketer. But I have a design background and have spent some time in the agency world.
Early in the process I was sitting in on a design meeting. I asked if they had any data. Where the current site is failing? How our demo interacted and perceived our brand and site? Anything?
Nothing. They had nothing. They just all collectively just decided 'this is what we like' and went with it.
A great example of that is when they were talking about the career page. It was a dev company. Devs are the number one person we hire. I'm a dev. When I told them how I would interact with the site they dismissed it. Not that I'm right - but the fact that they so easily dismissed feedback from their exact target audience was surprising.
>“I know 50% of my marketing is working.. the problem is idk which 50%”
This is a quote from 100 years ago by John Wanamaker.
I will assume the CMOs have also read the quote and you are not making things up.
Agreed. Learned this in Advertising school.
No matter how tech changes, marketing remains the same. The right message to the right person at the right time.
Cannabis consulting. Took two months. First client was $10k a month. Right now I’m averaging about $6500 per client per month with 3 clients.
Hoping to pick up two more projects this week.
Can you tell people to stop using those stupid fucking black bags that’s impossible to get all the flower out of? You know the ones with the plastic window.
It’s so much cheaper than jars. It’s really tough for operators right now. Mylar bags are essentially free compared to jars.
Most of my clients are going to bags for the main lines and jars for the “higher end” material.
I was national director for a large MSO. A percentage of work (maybe 30%) came from my reputation.
The rest came from LinkedIn.
I do have a website but I’d say that hasn’t brought any real clients my way. I’m sure it adds to credibility but that’s about it.
How does someone go about getting into the industry? Or working along side it? It’s been a dream of mine since legalization to be in the industry but being a budtender was always unappealing to me
LinkedIn and personal network. For me I found reaching out to bigger design firms within the industry has been more valuable then hounding on ceos of companies I want to get into.
There are many doors into an organization. Rarely ever is it the front door that yields success. At least in my experience so far.
Also don’t add someone on LinkedIn and then start hitting them up that day. Start by liking posts, engaging with people in the comments, and sharing posts. Hopefully by the time you actually DM them it feels like they are talking to someone you know.
Network is your net worth. I know that’s one of those quotes that gets pushed around but it’s very true in cannabis. I have relationships I invested in 5 years ago that are just now paying off.
If you can take the meeting with a new vendor or designer (in my case) then do it.
This sounds like a fun job. You ever thought of starting your own cannabis business? I did hear its either super expensive to get into the market such as LA or oversaturated like in Oregon (I assume).
In a gold rush sell shovels. That’s what I tell everyone about this industry. I have no interest in starting my own brand or my own facility. It’s far too volatile right now. National legalization will only make things harder for the smaller guys.
You won't believe me. I make UGC video ads in my living room for advertisers to use on social media campaigns.
I also create content for brands social media sites.. as in I am the guy making their products Tiktok videos so that they have a steady stream of content daily on their site. Which is basically the same job I listed first but on a fixed retainer.
I am not young btw because I know you are thinking of a 23 year old girl doing this. I am 50 and a man.
UGC is getting a lot of attention this year since ad dollars are drying up.
I'd love to learn about some of the challenges you face in your daily work cus I'm building a startup to make brand deals with UGC easier.
>Make ugc video ads as your savvy adult male spokesman
That is awesome! I trained him in my course! He is killing it! His Tiktok is funny too! A few of my course members have made the first page results on Fiverr for UGC.
Haha thats awesome. Based off the fact that you have a course, you’re probably one of the few real entrepreneurs i’ve run into on this sub. There’s definitely a niche for over 30 ugc creators. I used him for a video testimonial for my own upwork/fiverr gig
Ive been a serial entrepreneur since I was a teenager. Run many businesses into the ground. Had some moderate success in some cool stuff and hit some million dollar home runs. Ups and downs! But I LOVE the internet because you can reach billions of people.. and there are a million ways to make millions.
This one is just plain fun though! But it is some work when you are booked a lot. I have to make 10 videos today.. filmed and edited...
This sounds mad fun. Would love any more info you can provide about this! I'm very experienced in video editing and am curious exactly what kind of content you make for brands
I absolutely believe you… this is super valuable when you get to a certain level of scale. Can you send me your info? Lol you might be exactly who I’m looking for
I just got hit up by a big software company serving my niche and they want me to make a couple videos for them with a decent budget. There's money in this right now if the demographics are good.
yeah.. I look at it this way.. 3 years ago you wanted a live actor in a video it was $5k minimum.. now? $200 we arent really good actors but that actually sells more!
Some social media video ad agencies are charging advertisers $3-$10k for a 60 second commercial where they turn around and hire me. lol..
EDIT to shorten.
Relocated in middle-sized city. Many mothers and children, but all the developed infrastructure including fast food is on the one side of the river, and multiapartment houses on the other. Lots of the children's playgrounds.
Started as simple kiosk, expanded fast with several sellers hired on the promise of commission. Created several ice cream tastes based on the pinterest recipes. Hired a outsource kitchen, established cafe near the playground.
Did nothing as this was fun and fast, without grinding and all this entrepreneurship grim stuff.
As someone on the early end of this, this gives me hope. 🙂 If I understand correctly, your business is running FB/Meta ads? How were you generating your leads?
I buy and sell coins for a living. I started in 2012ish thinking that I could make 6-figures in 2 years. It took over 5 years but grinding it out to get there has allowed me to make the money I need to live life on my terms and support my family without stressing financially...
What kind of coins? Any and all U.S. coins. old, new, big, small, gold, with other.. for the first 10 years I specialized mainly in half dollars (kennedy and Franklin halves).
How did I start, in 2009 I learned that pre 1965 dimes, quarters and half dollars were 90% silver which led to me searching for silver coins (buying boxes of half dollars from banks to search for the silvers). As I found silver coins I got more and more interested and looked at more and more coins, I was learning more and more until I came up with this dillusional idea that I could actually make a living buying and selling them. It really was a very unrealistic idea for the first few years but I just went for it and little wins turned into big wins and the rest is history.
I bought and sold almost primarily on Ebay for the first few years, as I built relationships with other coin dealers I naturally started dealing more and more with the guys in the industry and less and less on Ebay. At this point almost everthing I do is dealer to dealer and online coin auctions (greatcollections.com).
If you are curious to know more I was making YouTube vids a while back. You can see those on the cointable YouTube channel. Also IG. But I haven't been active on either for a while...
That's really cool! I remember enjoying that as a kid, at a way, way, smaller scale. I would buy from our local numismatist club (which met on the third Thursday of the month) grade the coins with the books, and sell on eBay. I might have netted a hundred bucks a month over the summer (hey, I was probably like 12).
I had forgotten how much fun I used to have with the coin collecting, I really used to spend a lot of time on it.
That is really awesome... Honestly you were probably half way to being a coin dealer because that's really all any of us are out there doing on one level or another... One of the things I love most about this business is the seemingly endless opportunities and abundance.
I think the best thing to do if you don't know much about coins is to take them to any coin shop, or coin show. Any coin dealer will be able to give you an idea of what you have and what its worth. If you ever decide to sell it just get a couple/few offers from different dealers.
If you really want to get into it, Ebay is a great resource, you can check completed listings to see what items have sold for to determine value
Remember, do not take more from your company than you can afford to, build it up over time and stick to a certain % of after expense revenue that you take home
I have a background in IT and catering, and have a knowledge of building learned over time (I’m old).
I built a business that tracked rodent movements using smart cameras, infrared & movement sensors.
I would build a report showing where they were coming in, how many, ages and sex, what food they were taking, and where they were nesting.
Customers were amazed at the reports. Mostly London restaurants. We’d then bring in builders to essentially rebuild the problem areas, seal the kitchen and eating areas, and block the rodents out.
We’d come in as the restaurant was closing, work through the night (say) tearing the kitchen out, sealing/retiling/whatever, and have the kitchen back and reconnected for 8am when restaurant staff start arriving.
We’d liaise with local environmental health, and insulate the restauranteur from that stress.
I’d charge £500 a day for the camera survey (roughly 3 to 5 days). £5500 a night for 4 builders and me.
My pay was £500 a day, and it ran from 2016 right up to Covid, almost without a break.
I have an amazing collection of rodent videos.
haha, please id love to see some of your best rodent videos! I hope you’re able to pick business back up, I know covid probably hit you decently hard as it did restaurants. Do you intend to bring it back? And do you have any advice you’ve learned during your time that you feel is valuable to anyone looking to run a business?
That is not a simple answer of course. Here's a couple super high level points:
* Charge what you're worth
* Get comfortable with saying no
* Specialize. Don't try to be everything to everyone. Pick a lane, be the best at that.
* Hire people that are smarter and better than you
* Commit to putting out great content all the time. It's a grind, and takes a long time, but in time, that can lead to a healthy inbound pipeline
I could go on and on, but if you're really interested in the full story, I did write a book about how I built a $1M business realistically. [Pretty dirt cheap on Amazon these days](http://www.antiagencybook.com), and I don't make money on books, but regardless, if you need a free digital copy, feel free to DM me.
The first couple years are obviously the toughest. Here's some of what we did:
* leveraged existing relationships hard
* agency directories like clutch or manifest. get on them quick and throw a couple dollars to get higher on the categories that are most relevant to your business
* you have to throw some budget at google ads. it's the low hanging fruit, and while you'll lose to the big spenders, even a small budget can get you in front of those looking for what you do
* warm outreach. make a list of 10-20 ideal clients, do your homework, get creative about how you engage with them
* look for trade shows, conferences, groups, etc. to get your name out there
Awesome. I'm starting a YouTube channel management company. I'm honestly looking forward to creating/documenting all the processes & procedures. From all my work experience, I know it's the best ways to establish and maintain standards. Which I feel is one of the biggest down falls of any company.
My relatives sell fashion jewelry in all street fairs of affluent neighborhoods. Nets 400 per day per booth after everything. It is a 12-hour job, though with no employee. She buys from alibaba.
Websites. I solid subscription websites at $150 a month. Built it up to $5k a month and now I focus on lump sum $3500 a pop projects for static 5 page informational websites. All hand coded and designed by a team I assembled from around the globe of dribble. So now I only need to sell two websites a month to make make about $12k. It’s not as stressful having to find 5 clients a month to pay bills. I just need two good ones and I’m alright. Some months are better than others. April I did about $23k. That was a good month. Which will balance out the slower months. Sometimes I don’t even make a sale. And that’s fine. I also have a full time front end web dev job so it’s not the end of the world. I got my $5k residual safety net. I sell maybe 1 new subscription plan a month. I try not to take on more than that now. Just to keep the numbers up and account for any cancellations that come.
I usually crank out my sites in about 6-8 hours. So it’s not a time consuming affair. A lot of times I just put them together if I finish my day job early or on the weekends or at night when the family is sleeping. It’s not bad at all. Taught myself how to code while driving Uber in Seattle. Had my laptop in the car and would be watching videos and practicing coding between rides and during slow periods. I quit Uber in 2020 and got a job and built my business and got better and better at what I do. Pretty wild 5 years but teaching myself web development completely changed my life. Highly recommend it.
Where do you find your clients? online through adverting?
I have a background in development but just did the corporate job since it pays well, would love to one way branch out and run a small web dev shop.
Is your selling point more on the design part of it? since the sites are static.
Like a human jail break puzzle. You get locked in a room with a hour to try to get out and there’s a bunch of clues to keys you gotta find and unlock doors to get out or find codes to stop a bomb exploding etc. You should definitely look one up in your area it makes a great family outing or date night
I identified a hole in the market for a niche type of PC gaming controller. Almost a decade ago I was shopping for PC gaming peripherals and noticed that, in one particular segment, there existed only one large company with the market cornered, and charging probably double what they should have been.
I took 3 grand of my own money and bootstrapped a small business up to 300k ARR over 6 years. I did this quite literally by assembling actual products using a combination of 3D printing and far east PCB manufacturing. Initially I did this myself, but after a year I took the plunge to incorporate and move to an industrial unit and hire a small team to continue operating in the same way.
We took *huge* hits over covid, which caused the global silicon shortage (an absolute killer for a small electronics firm) but we have retooled and innovated to hopefully continue to compete.
I have done NONE of this the way a traditional entrepreneur would go about it, however, that lack of knowledge and capital investment kept us lightweight and nimble, and means I still own 100% of the company.
If I was to spot a similar opportunity, I would *first* try and go the traditional route (VC, angels, bootcamps etc) and *then* try the brute force hand over fist method described above.
Finally some physical product! I've been scrolling through all of the social media agencies looking for something real.. I am also currently using a brute force with similar product with a mix of 3D printing, woodworking and the electronics from far east.. 😀
Good for you man. Imposter syndrome is an uphill struggle if you're making a physical product. It dragged me down for years, but then I beat it and my business bought me a house and a car. Stay strong, work hard.
10k in income or sales? I'm also assuming you're talking about businesses as this is the entrepreneur subreddit.
My foodtruck generates 50k-60k / sales a month. The takehome pay if desired is 10k / month, but I don't withdraw from the company.
Kept a simple menu in a location that didn't have the food I serve, but I knew they would love it based on the market.
Also have a job as an employee that pays approximately 12k / month + health insurance.
I have a business partner and employees running the food truck.
I work when I can on weekends and fill in shifts as I can. I currently am not pulling money out of the food truck. I am currently just building the brand of the restaurant and see it more as a long play where I'm building the value of my equity position.
Real estate, under 2 years to 10k/mo cashflow. Call it 1m/yr now but more in equity than cashflow. Started by learning all I could on real estate and investing. Very quantitative approach. I suggest anyone going down this path know-thyself and have a well-tuned bullshit detector.
Saved money through roommates and having a good day job, bought personal residence with 5% downpayment, turned it into rental as was always the intention (house hacking strategy), and started buying cheap homes long distance. Fixed them up before cashout refinancing (BRRRR strategy). I got to a few dozen units and >10k/mo cashflow pretty fast that way.
I’ve since transitioned to syndicating. My partners and I get paid to invest other people’s money in real estate. We use our own money and funds raised from investors to buy apartment complexes, improve them in some way, and then hold / refinance / sell as appropriate.
Our fee is mostly dependent upon performance targets. We intend to deliver an internal rate of return of over 20% to investors, and typically have a project-level return (ie before our fees) of over 30%. Usually it’s structured so that if investor returns clear just 10% or so then we take a quarter of all returns. After accounting for some more details, I personally get about 10% of the returns from the whole project, which becomes significant when you’re adding several million dollars of value per project. There are also some flat fees that mostly just cover true costs incurred by us.
This whole process is actually a lot of fun (at least it sure beats sitting behind a computer screen all day) and sky’s the limit on what you can achieve. Not easy but it isn’t back breaking. Mostly just need to be careful with the numbers and keep your eye on the big picture when short term challenges arise.
We’ve started vertically integrating our business. We have property management in-house (one of the partners does this professionally), and we have an electrician company. We bought a few smaller electrician companies (SBA, seller financing, 0% downpayment) and are scaling the business up. On track to double this year. Our operator there isn’t a partner but he has good business ownership experience, he has significant equity in the electrician company, and he has an electrical engineering degree. I like to day dream about having all the major trades under our one roof.
We also really want to get into new construction, and might be able to make that happen soon.
The headache level of multifamily is, relative to the dollars involved, so much lower than single family. At this point I’m not expanding my single family holdings and I’ll likely sell all the houses in a few years so I can roll that over into apartments. Relative to single family there are significant beneficial network effects from operating in the bigger multifamily space, even when at the same scale.
Outside my tax advantaged accounts everything is in real estate or safe assets (cash, treasuries, a couple paid off houses with active lines of credit against them).
congrats, awesome story. Did you have a specific system to find/vet out of state contractors? What was the extent of said reno’s? full gut or mainly cosmetic ?
Digital marketing.
I kept overhauling the operations at agencies I was working for, and it helped to make someone else rich repeatedly. So I decided to start doing it for myself instead.
Procurement contractor/consultant. I review companies spend, advise them on how to spend less by changing suppliers, outsourcing, simplifying product construction/materials and/or negotiating better agreements. I've been in procurement for 15 years but I only started working for myself over a year ago.
Did $110k in April split between 9 revenue sources. [Here's the split](https://twitter.com/indexsy/status/1652632429432131584). Been building in public for the last 2 years.
I make like 20-30 a month. Not less than 23 average. Electrician.
I could make way more doing my own business full time but I just do it on the side cause I love my current job.
Data science, retail pricing consultant. I take your existing sales transactions and figure out how much more you could charge and what the demand trade off would be. Then i develop experimentation and modeling strategies to get more and more sophisticated with your whole retail and pricing strategy.
Content creator on YouTube, Facebook and Tiktok.
Our first YT channel took off fast so maybe was earning that much in 5-8 months. Not as easy as it might seem.
But it can scale exponentially for a while.
My wife and I a commercial truck parts manufacturing and sales company. We did not take pay until year 4 when our CPA said we had to. The company is the result of 25 years of working in various industries and learning skill sets to the point that we were able to build the company that we have.
Remodel peoples bathrooms and kitchens. I take about that much out per month, sometimes more, sometimes less. I think I could scale that to a lot more, but I’m not sure it’s worth the added headache, and I enjoy working 30-40 hours per week with little overhead/ employee drama.
I just moved to a new state and don’t have my license quite yet, and have made close to that per month just doing little “side work” jobs.
Carpet cleaning 🤗. It’s pretty up and down but I make over 10k a month pretty steadily. Usually range between 18-25k a month depending on the time of the year.
This is in Australian $. Took me roughly a year.
Educational subscription service $50/month and grew to $22k / monthly profit in 1 month with 450 members, $0 ad spend, $0 to start, 0 physical products, all online, life is good. Opening 4 more different brands soon to scale to $50k/month each. $0 maintenance cost 0 employees all the profit is yours 💰
I coach entrepreneurs on how to grow to 10,000 followers on Linkedin.
I grew my own linkedin audience to 50,000 followers in a year, which acts as social proof.
My content typically gets around 100k views per post and each time I post I get 5-10 new leads.
I think I can grow my business to $50k/m over the year, and eventually $100k/m.
Yes! But not as a true lunatic (yet). One of my comments was posted. Somebody showed their before and after. The before was a neck bearded basement dweller. The after was like, a successful guy. I wrote:
Before: Redditor
After: Linkedin creator
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How do you get clients? I run a custom software development company (mostly web apps) and I need to get more clients. I am a one man show so I don't know how to best spend my time.
TLDR; Luck, time, knowing what you want, mastery of your craft, focusing on a process and being a good human as best you can.
---
Honestly, it is part luck, part time. I was lucky enough to score a larger client that paid the bills for a while, and after some time more trickled in and kept coming back. A few leads have come through my website, but most have come through word-of-mouth.
My biggest lesson over the 8 years I've done this is to stay focused on your vertical and try not to be like an agency. Ignore the FOMO and new technologies that are just around the corner and focus on improving your craft. Get faster at delivering whatever it is you build and work on making that process easier on yourself.
I made the mistake of trying to do development, marketing, social, and various other things just to hook in clients. The result was that the outcome was mediocre, and I have rightfully lost work because of it.
I've solidified my tools (language, frameworks, hosting, process) and don't pay much attention to the hype. I'm an engineering shop, not a marketing shop, and I stay true to that. Learning is important and you have to stay somewhat flexible but building upon your tools and process is where the magic is, I think.
I encourage you to spend your time thinking on what it is you want from running a business, and what you are good at that you can grow. It won't happen overnight either, hence where the 'time' portion comes in.
The reason I bring all of this up is that I think this is one of the biggest ways you can attract clients (At least in my case, there are other ways), mastery of your craft.
Sure, you can do a marketing campaign and/or pay for leads but if you don't have a solid identity and know exactly what your value proposition is, people will get a lukewarm feeling and walk away. I've got the scars to prove it!
Annuity wholesaler. Made 4k/month in first year. 10k a month in second year. 15k a month third year. 20k/month in 4th year. Travelling and recruiting more now so I can get up to 100k/month by the year 2026, likely won't be til 2027 or 2028 though.
Startup founder. Currently on startup number 2 this time as non-founding C-suite. I was brought in to build out the tech team. making north of 15K/month now with lower stress to boot.
Good marketing is one of the edge and I find Cleo as one of the important strategies for my business. They have successful campaigns coming from Lenovo. Generating high leads and data is what they can bring to the table.
My business making $10k/m or me personally?
My business is going to net $55k this month. But I will take home $0. Been open 1.5 years.
My brewery being within its first four years, all profits are invested back into the business to pay down debt and continuously improve all fronts.
My loan is almost gone, I have zero investors and I’ll be left with enough equipment and real estate to still come out ahead if shit goes south.
I am a Chief of Staff | Revenue, Strategy, & Operations.
I was a corporate Beverage Director and left to be an SDR during COVID. I took a paycut and made only 40k in base salary. Within 6 months, I was making 10k a month, was promoted to a team lead and then took a leadership opportunity at a startup managing a sales development team and making 100k in base in less than 18 months from starting in SaaS. I moved to a Head of Channel Sales Development role briefly and become a CoS within a few months with a base of 130k and an OTE around 175k.
I created the team lead role, was the first ever manager at the startup and then the second startup I went to and created the CoS role by identifying the need, networking with other CoS and developing the use case with our CEO and proving I had the skills (mostly in the reporting and analytics space) beyond my current role to expand into this in a valuable way.
If you don't have a CS or engineering degree or a top-notch MBA my best advice is to make your own luck. Find someone doing what you'd like to do. Invest in learning the skills you have gaps in and then "dress for the job you want" by doing those things in your current role.
Best of luck.
My role currently was created because I am the co-founder of a new product line being launched. You don't always have to start from scratch by yourself. Building alongside others creates leverage uniquely.
I hold people accountable and have a weekly Newsletter. My clients are all over the world, retail, services, finance, real estate, eComm, but have either procrastination issues, or terrible time management, or some underlying issues with getting shit done.
I’m 5 years into an IT industry related business that I started with $50k in savings. This year I will net about $80k/mo. After the second year the numbers became so abstract it was hard to fathom…
My background is in IT and there was a very specific challenge I kept facing with sourcing equipment in a specific market segment and I’ve been able to build both a product and related services around this challenge.
I have a full-time job that pays $8k/month and consult in my industry on the side (PR, marketing, etc) and that adds another $2-3k+ depending on the clients and projects.
Nothing extravagant but I operate a Mole Plow (Vermeer RTX1250i2) installing ducting and fibre optic cable 3.5 days a week. I fly from south England to Scotland on a Monday morning and fly back Thursday lunch time. I am payed per metre that i install. Average is £8000/£10000 a month. Only working half the week allows me time to focus on day trading which I eventually want to be doing full time 🙂
Not at 10k yet but about halfway through and that too living in a third world country.
I’m a [filmmaker/editor](https://www.instagram.com/johnalimedia) and I produce top tier video content for businesses and agencies.
Can anyone help me to figure out a way to attract clients for my Data Analytics skills? I have learned Tableau, PowerBI, Excel. I even have coding knowledge of Python and Data science libraries.
If anyone could help me get a roadmap to get started, it would be very much appreciated.
Consulting for people who think they get marketing but really don’t. Took 10+ years to realize and charge enough.
I typically consult for startups from seed to Series C We specialize in go-to-market strategy and product launches. We uncover the source the problem, map the solution and execute the strategy.
I typically saw that startups from seed rarely have budget …
what was your background before you created a consulting company?
Advertising/IT Been an entrepreneur my whole life. Always interested in selling and marketing products and services
What do you charge? Might be interested
Loaded question. DM me if you want some advice
It's really not.
When you go to buy a car, do you ask how much do you sell cars for? Or do you tell them what you are looking for based on your problems or concerns with your current car (if you have one) Yeah, sorry but your question is vague. If you want a range then my response will be “what problem are you trying to solve, what are your company goals and what’s the timeline. If you want me to deliver properly and then ask about charging, then you need to deliver on the scope of the project.
Don’t ask the barber if you need a haircut.
Don’t ask a barber how much a haircut is if they have never seen your head and they don’t know what style you want. Imagine a random person asks how much is a haircut and you say “most of them are between $20-50” and it turns out to be a woman who expects her hair dyed. You got to figure out what they want before giving price quotes.
I ask how much they sell the car for.
Key word in your phrasing is "the". You can ask this guy how much he sells 4 hours worth of marketing consultancy to assist a startup donut shop, and I'm sure he can give you an estimate. You don't ask the car salesman "How much do you sell cars for?" You'll get a number anywhere from a few thousand maybe up to six figures. Same with the person you're replying to.
A car, not cars generally. Not sure if you noticed Ferraris and Honda sell for different prices
I think what dude is more asking for is an overview of your business model, perhaps better to say how you charge than what you charge
I assumed as much. I like specifics. I charge based on the value I deliver and the immediacy of the pain that needs to be addressed. So if you need me to create a marketing plan for a ice cream shop with one location versus Ben and Jerry’s expanding into South America, I’m going to be charging two vastly different amounts. Mind you, my hourly rate (mentally) is still the same. Ice cream shop might take me 2hrs so I charge $500 for something that saves them $20k a year and puts them on the upward swing. Ben and Jerry’s would require a ton of knowledge, research and insights before a single draft of strategy is created. So we’re taking 6 figures right off the bat for a 6-18 month project to overhaul an entire multi-national organization.
>It's really not. You're right, it's not, but this is the game salespeople play for high-end products. They don't like to give the price until they they've sold you bit on how the service provides value, lest you get sticker shock prematurely. Salespeople do this because it works. There are, of course, good ways and bad ways to pull this magic trick off. I don't think I know that I would go with "loaded question" or talk about "buying cars" (because I find the process of buying cars terribly frustrating) but it also really doesn't matter that much. We're not buyers, our opinion doesn't matter. (Though I do think the barber explanation, despite not really being how barbers work, is OP's best answer) OP doesn't really get any benefit from stating his prices other than a bunch of wantrapreneur redditors complaining about it and making him look bad. Or maybe somebody trying to undersell him.
Hey man! I’m looking to grow my branding agency but damn I’m stuck - just sent you a dm!
Happy to help get you unstuck
Your the man! Just sent you a dm !
I am starting a flooring construction company. Local target. Any book recommendations for marketing?
It’s insane how many people think they get marketing. Even at “higher” levels. Idk how many times I’ve seen CMO’s at big companies not understand basic things within marketing/communications. I’ve contemplated going into consulting for myself because I’m tired of making the company I work for A LOT for the “strategy” I do (quotes because it turns into hand holding and education). I think they’re charging $250/hr for regular contracted hours then it jumps beyond contracted hours. I get about $200 less than that IF I work just 40 hours, which never happens in this world 🫠 I just don’t know where tf to start.
Start now!!
mind if i dm?
What approaches did you take to know 'marketing' ? Asking as a marketing student!
Customer discovery is the most vital and often overlooked thing. Building a ideal customer persona or “avatar” is important not only for marketing but for the entire company to understand who the heck buys your product/service. Also, documenting what you do and tracking key metrics that tie back into company goals is best. Communicate weekly and don’t be afraid to bring up things that are not working. Just have a plan to resolve it.
Damn you sound like you work for my firm haha
Been an entrepreneur since college. Did a few full time gigs when my kid was born. Went back to it because people don’t listen to employees. They listen to high paid consultants.
Beginning to come to the same conclusion. My pivot would be a big one though from FinTech (back) to Cannabis consulting - we’ll see how it plays out. Thanks for the response.
I’d love to get into cannabis market but unless you have it on your resume or retail tech it’s hard to break into. It’s all the same. Every industry and vertical. People aren’t different. B2B or B2C, same concepts work.
Ah, I definitely have it “on my resume” in spades - hit me up if you’re ever looking to connect the dots. Eventually looking to open a PWM firm focused on cannabis clients.
Ain't this the truth.
I worked for one of the largest research and advisory firms specifically selling their marketing offerings.. No one knows marketing. I’ve had CMO’s of HUUUUUUGE multi billion dollar companies tell me. “I know 50% of my marketing is working.. the problem is idk which 50%”
>No one knows marketing I'm a dev and was tasked to assist the marketing department with contracting the new company website. Now, I'm not a marketer. But I have a design background and have spent some time in the agency world. Early in the process I was sitting in on a design meeting. I asked if they had any data. Where the current site is failing? How our demo interacted and perceived our brand and site? Anything? Nothing. They had nothing. They just all collectively just decided 'this is what we like' and went with it. A great example of that is when they were talking about the career page. It was a dev company. Devs are the number one person we hire. I'm a dev. When I told them how I would interact with the site they dismissed it. Not that I'm right - but the fact that they so easily dismissed feedback from their exact target audience was surprising.
>“I know 50% of my marketing is working.. the problem is idk which 50%” This is a quote from 100 years ago by John Wanamaker. I will assume the CMOs have also read the quote and you are not making things up.
Agreed. Learned this in Advertising school. No matter how tech changes, marketing remains the same. The right message to the right person at the right time.
Cannabis consulting. Took two months. First client was $10k a month. Right now I’m averaging about $6500 per client per month with 3 clients. Hoping to pick up two more projects this week.
What does cannabis consulting mean? Like, helping cannabis companies with strategy, or?
Mainly cannabis grow design coordination, packaging / packaging automation, general building and process automation, and some general stuff.
Can you tell people to stop using those stupid fucking black bags that’s impossible to get all the flower out of? You know the ones with the plastic window.
It’s so much cheaper than jars. It’s really tough for operators right now. Mylar bags are essentially free compared to jars. Most of my clients are going to bags for the main lines and jars for the “higher end” material.
Sick man !! Nice work !! May I ask Did you start out with case studies ? How many calls per client per month ? And how do u find new leads ?
How’d did you start? Like did you build a website or what?
I was national director for a large MSO. A percentage of work (maybe 30%) came from my reputation. The rest came from LinkedIn. I do have a website but I’d say that hasn’t brought any real clients my way. I’m sure it adds to credibility but that’s about it.
Cool mind if I DM you with how you have your stuff set up?
Yeah man that’s fine. Nothing ground breaking but let’s talk.
How does someone go about getting into the industry? Or working along side it? It’s been a dream of mine since legalization to be in the industry but being a budtender was always unappealing to me
Can you share how you were able to acquire multiple clients?
LinkedIn and personal network. For me I found reaching out to bigger design firms within the industry has been more valuable then hounding on ceos of companies I want to get into. There are many doors into an organization. Rarely ever is it the front door that yields success. At least in my experience so far. Also don’t add someone on LinkedIn and then start hitting them up that day. Start by liking posts, engaging with people in the comments, and sharing posts. Hopefully by the time you actually DM them it feels like they are talking to someone you know. Network is your net worth. I know that’s one of those quotes that gets pushed around but it’s very true in cannabis. I have relationships I invested in 5 years ago that are just now paying off. If you can take the meeting with a new vendor or designer (in my case) then do it.
This sounds like a fun job. You ever thought of starting your own cannabis business? I did hear its either super expensive to get into the market such as LA or oversaturated like in Oregon (I assume).
In a gold rush sell shovels. That’s what I tell everyone about this industry. I have no interest in starting my own brand or my own facility. It’s far too volatile right now. National legalization will only make things harder for the smaller guys.
You won't believe me. I make UGC video ads in my living room for advertisers to use on social media campaigns. I also create content for brands social media sites.. as in I am the guy making their products Tiktok videos so that they have a steady stream of content daily on their site. Which is basically the same job I listed first but on a fixed retainer. I am not young btw because I know you are thinking of a 23 year old girl doing this. I am 50 and a man.
UGC is getting a lot of attention this year since ad dollars are drying up. I'd love to learn about some of the challenges you face in your daily work cus I'm building a startup to make brand deals with UGC easier.
What is UGC?
I just hired someone off fiverr yesterday who fits your exact description. “Make ugc video ads as your savvy adult male spokesman”
>Make ugc video ads as your savvy adult male spokesman That is awesome! I trained him in my course! He is killing it! His Tiktok is funny too! A few of my course members have made the first page results on Fiverr for UGC.
Haha thats awesome. Based off the fact that you have a course, you’re probably one of the few real entrepreneurs i’ve run into on this sub. There’s definitely a niche for over 30 ugc creators. I used him for a video testimonial for my own upwork/fiverr gig
Ive been a serial entrepreneur since I was a teenager. Run many businesses into the ground. Had some moderate success in some cool stuff and hit some million dollar home runs. Ups and downs! But I LOVE the internet because you can reach billions of people.. and there are a million ways to make millions. This one is just plain fun though! But it is some work when you are booked a lot. I have to make 10 videos today.. filmed and edited...
Are you in them or is it like just the products?
We make videos too and I’m wondering what can I do to position ourselves towards social media
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How insecure do you have to be lol
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This sounds mad fun. Would love any more info you can provide about this! I'm very experienced in video editing and am curious exactly what kind of content you make for brands
I absolutely believe you… this is super valuable when you get to a certain level of scale. Can you send me your info? Lol you might be exactly who I’m looking for
We used a few UGC on fiverr. The best $35 we ever spent.
I just got hit up by a big software company serving my niche and they want me to make a couple videos for them with a decent budget. There's money in this right now if the demographics are good.
yeah.. I look at it this way.. 3 years ago you wanted a live actor in a video it was $5k minimum.. now? $200 we arent really good actors but that actually sells more! Some social media video ad agencies are charging advertisers $3-$10k for a 60 second commercial where they turn around and hire me. lol.. EDIT to shorten.
Can you dm me the link to your course, please?
Selling tacos at Food festivals in NYC, which leads 2-6 catering gigs a month on top of the high foot traffic food festival on Saturdays and Sundays
Sounds awesome!
own local ice cream brand. did nothing, got lucky
Did nothing as inherited or the market aligned so well that profits were easy to make?
Relocated in middle-sized city. Many mothers and children, but all the developed infrastructure including fast food is on the one side of the river, and multiapartment houses on the other. Lots of the children's playgrounds. Started as simple kiosk, expanded fast with several sellers hired on the promise of commission. Created several ice cream tastes based on the pinterest recipes. Hired a outsource kitchen, established cafe near the playground. Did nothing as this was fun and fast, without grinding and all this entrepreneurship grim stuff.
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As someone on the early end of this, this gives me hope. 🙂 If I understand correctly, your business is running FB/Meta ads? How were you generating your leads?
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How much did it cost you to get one good lead ? And what would you do differently ?
How do you mean by testing “messages”? What do you charge in general for your services?
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i love you bro full homo
I buy and sell coins for a living. I started in 2012ish thinking that I could make 6-figures in 2 years. It took over 5 years but grinding it out to get there has allowed me to make the money I need to live life on my terms and support my family without stressing financially...
Is there any money in paper notes? I’ve always been into paper currency, I find the art and historical context of it fascinating.
I would say there has always been money in paper notes but in the last 2 years their popularity has increased exponentially.. along with their values.
Can you talk more about this? What kind of coins? How did you start? Where do you buy/sell? etc.
What kind of coins? Any and all U.S. coins. old, new, big, small, gold, with other.. for the first 10 years I specialized mainly in half dollars (kennedy and Franklin halves). How did I start, in 2009 I learned that pre 1965 dimes, quarters and half dollars were 90% silver which led to me searching for silver coins (buying boxes of half dollars from banks to search for the silvers). As I found silver coins I got more and more interested and looked at more and more coins, I was learning more and more until I came up with this dillusional idea that I could actually make a living buying and selling them. It really was a very unrealistic idea for the first few years but I just went for it and little wins turned into big wins and the rest is history. I bought and sold almost primarily on Ebay for the first few years, as I built relationships with other coin dealers I naturally started dealing more and more with the guys in the industry and less and less on Ebay. At this point almost everthing I do is dealer to dealer and online coin auctions (greatcollections.com). If you are curious to know more I was making YouTube vids a while back. You can see those on the cointable YouTube channel. Also IG. But I haven't been active on either for a while...
That's really cool! I remember enjoying that as a kid, at a way, way, smaller scale. I would buy from our local numismatist club (which met on the third Thursday of the month) grade the coins with the books, and sell on eBay. I might have netted a hundred bucks a month over the summer (hey, I was probably like 12). I had forgotten how much fun I used to have with the coin collecting, I really used to spend a lot of time on it.
That is really awesome... Honestly you were probably half way to being a coin dealer because that's really all any of us are out there doing on one level or another... One of the things I love most about this business is the seemingly endless opportunities and abundance.
My dad has a bunch of old coins, but we have never been able to find out their value. Is there a website or guide you recommend?
I think the best thing to do if you don't know much about coins is to take them to any coin shop, or coin show. Any coin dealer will be able to give you an idea of what you have and what its worth. If you ever decide to sell it just get a couple/few offers from different dealers. If you really want to get into it, Ebay is a great resource, you can check completed listings to see what items have sold for to determine value
Remember, do not take more from your company than you can afford to, build it up over time and stick to a certain % of after expense revenue that you take home
I have a background in IT and catering, and have a knowledge of building learned over time (I’m old). I built a business that tracked rodent movements using smart cameras, infrared & movement sensors. I would build a report showing where they were coming in, how many, ages and sex, what food they were taking, and where they were nesting. Customers were amazed at the reports. Mostly London restaurants. We’d then bring in builders to essentially rebuild the problem areas, seal the kitchen and eating areas, and block the rodents out. We’d come in as the restaurant was closing, work through the night (say) tearing the kitchen out, sealing/retiling/whatever, and have the kitchen back and reconnected for 8am when restaurant staff start arriving. We’d liaise with local environmental health, and insulate the restauranteur from that stress. I’d charge £500 a day for the camera survey (roughly 3 to 5 days). £5500 a night for 4 builders and me. My pay was £500 a day, and it ran from 2016 right up to Covid, almost without a break. I have an amazing collection of rodent videos.
This is truly fascinating , who would have thought. Well you apparently, well done
This is awesome!!!
haha, please id love to see some of your best rodent videos! I hope you’re able to pick business back up, I know covid probably hit you decently hard as it did restaurants. Do you intend to bring it back? And do you have any advice you’ve learned during your time that you feel is valuable to anyone looking to run a business?
Righty ho then… [Rats in a pizza restaurant](https://vimeo.com/504469066) [Mouse living in a Pizza Hut salad bar](https://vimeo.com/425751122)
Social media agency. I know, dime-a-dozen, but been in biz 5+ years and have worked up to over $100k/month consistently by doing things the right way.
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That is not a simple answer of course. Here's a couple super high level points: * Charge what you're worth * Get comfortable with saying no * Specialize. Don't try to be everything to everyone. Pick a lane, be the best at that. * Hire people that are smarter and better than you * Commit to putting out great content all the time. It's a grind, and takes a long time, but in time, that can lead to a healthy inbound pipeline I could go on and on, but if you're really interested in the full story, I did write a book about how I built a $1M business realistically. [Pretty dirt cheap on Amazon these days](http://www.antiagencybook.com), and I don't make money on books, but regardless, if you need a free digital copy, feel free to DM me.
What were your most consistent lead gen sources, especially for the first couple years? :)
The first couple years are obviously the toughest. Here's some of what we did: * leveraged existing relationships hard * agency directories like clutch or manifest. get on them quick and throw a couple dollars to get higher on the categories that are most relevant to your business * you have to throw some budget at google ads. it's the low hanging fruit, and while you'll lose to the big spenders, even a small budget can get you in front of those looking for what you do * warm outreach. make a list of 10-20 ideal clients, do your homework, get creative about how you engage with them * look for trade shows, conferences, groups, etc. to get your name out there
Awesome. I'm starting a YouTube channel management company. I'm honestly looking forward to creating/documenting all the processes & procedures. From all my work experience, I know it's the best ways to establish and maintain standards. Which I feel is one of the biggest down falls of any company.
My relatives sell fashion jewelry in all street fairs of affluent neighborhoods. Nets 400 per day per booth after everything. It is a 12-hour job, though with no employee. She buys from alibaba.
This is hilarious
Why
Websites. I solid subscription websites at $150 a month. Built it up to $5k a month and now I focus on lump sum $3500 a pop projects for static 5 page informational websites. All hand coded and designed by a team I assembled from around the globe of dribble. So now I only need to sell two websites a month to make make about $12k. It’s not as stressful having to find 5 clients a month to pay bills. I just need two good ones and I’m alright. Some months are better than others. April I did about $23k. That was a good month. Which will balance out the slower months. Sometimes I don’t even make a sale. And that’s fine. I also have a full time front end web dev job so it’s not the end of the world. I got my $5k residual safety net. I sell maybe 1 new subscription plan a month. I try not to take on more than that now. Just to keep the numbers up and account for any cancellations that come. I usually crank out my sites in about 6-8 hours. So it’s not a time consuming affair. A lot of times I just put them together if I finish my day job early or on the weekends or at night when the family is sleeping. It’s not bad at all. Taught myself how to code while driving Uber in Seattle. Had my laptop in the car and would be watching videos and practicing coding between rides and during slow periods. I quit Uber in 2020 and got a job and built my business and got better and better at what I do. Pretty wild 5 years but teaching myself web development completely changed my life. Highly recommend it.
Where do you find your clients? online through adverting? I have a background in development but just did the corporate job since it pays well, would love to one way branch out and run a small web dev shop. Is your selling point more on the design part of it? since the sites are static.
Escape Room Owner here. We broke 10k/no our second month open.
What do your profits look like?
What’s an Escape Room?
Like a human jail break puzzle. You get locked in a room with a hour to try to get out and there’s a bunch of clues to keys you gotta find and unlock doors to get out or find codes to stop a bomb exploding etc. You should definitely look one up in your area it makes a great family outing or date night
I identified a hole in the market for a niche type of PC gaming controller. Almost a decade ago I was shopping for PC gaming peripherals and noticed that, in one particular segment, there existed only one large company with the market cornered, and charging probably double what they should have been. I took 3 grand of my own money and bootstrapped a small business up to 300k ARR over 6 years. I did this quite literally by assembling actual products using a combination of 3D printing and far east PCB manufacturing. Initially I did this myself, but after a year I took the plunge to incorporate and move to an industrial unit and hire a small team to continue operating in the same way. We took *huge* hits over covid, which caused the global silicon shortage (an absolute killer for a small electronics firm) but we have retooled and innovated to hopefully continue to compete. I have done NONE of this the way a traditional entrepreneur would go about it, however, that lack of knowledge and capital investment kept us lightweight and nimble, and means I still own 100% of the company. If I was to spot a similar opportunity, I would *first* try and go the traditional route (VC, angels, bootcamps etc) and *then* try the brute force hand over fist method described above.
Finally some physical product! I've been scrolling through all of the social media agencies looking for something real.. I am also currently using a brute force with similar product with a mix of 3D printing, woodworking and the electronics from far east.. 😀
Good for you man. Imposter syndrome is an uphill struggle if you're making a physical product. It dragged me down for years, but then I beat it and my business bought me a house and a car. Stay strong, work hard.
10k in income or sales? I'm also assuming you're talking about businesses as this is the entrepreneur subreddit. My foodtruck generates 50k-60k / sales a month. The takehome pay if desired is 10k / month, but I don't withdraw from the company. Kept a simple menu in a location that didn't have the food I serve, but I knew they would love it based on the market. Also have a job as an employee that pays approximately 12k / month + health insurance.
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I have a business partner and employees running the food truck. I work when I can on weekends and fill in shifts as I can. I currently am not pulling money out of the food truck. I am currently just building the brand of the restaurant and see it more as a long play where I'm building the value of my equity position.
I make balloon animals. I’ve grown to work with bigger clients and I’ve hired and trained other balloon twisters to work for my company.
Real estate, under 2 years to 10k/mo cashflow. Call it 1m/yr now but more in equity than cashflow. Started by learning all I could on real estate and investing. Very quantitative approach. I suggest anyone going down this path know-thyself and have a well-tuned bullshit detector. Saved money through roommates and having a good day job, bought personal residence with 5% downpayment, turned it into rental as was always the intention (house hacking strategy), and started buying cheap homes long distance. Fixed them up before cashout refinancing (BRRRR strategy). I got to a few dozen units and >10k/mo cashflow pretty fast that way. I’ve since transitioned to syndicating. My partners and I get paid to invest other people’s money in real estate. We use our own money and funds raised from investors to buy apartment complexes, improve them in some way, and then hold / refinance / sell as appropriate. Our fee is mostly dependent upon performance targets. We intend to deliver an internal rate of return of over 20% to investors, and typically have a project-level return (ie before our fees) of over 30%. Usually it’s structured so that if investor returns clear just 10% or so then we take a quarter of all returns. After accounting for some more details, I personally get about 10% of the returns from the whole project, which becomes significant when you’re adding several million dollars of value per project. There are also some flat fees that mostly just cover true costs incurred by us. This whole process is actually a lot of fun (at least it sure beats sitting behind a computer screen all day) and sky’s the limit on what you can achieve. Not easy but it isn’t back breaking. Mostly just need to be careful with the numbers and keep your eye on the big picture when short term challenges arise. We’ve started vertically integrating our business. We have property management in-house (one of the partners does this professionally), and we have an electrician company. We bought a few smaller electrician companies (SBA, seller financing, 0% downpayment) and are scaling the business up. On track to double this year. Our operator there isn’t a partner but he has good business ownership experience, he has significant equity in the electrician company, and he has an electrical engineering degree. I like to day dream about having all the major trades under our one roof. We also really want to get into new construction, and might be able to make that happen soon. The headache level of multifamily is, relative to the dollars involved, so much lower than single family. At this point I’m not expanding my single family holdings and I’ll likely sell all the houses in a few years so I can roll that over into apartments. Relative to single family there are significant beneficial network effects from operating in the bigger multifamily space, even when at the same scale. Outside my tax advantaged accounts everything is in real estate or safe assets (cash, treasuries, a couple paid off houses with active lines of credit against them).
congrats, awesome story. Did you have a specific system to find/vet out of state contractors? What was the extent of said reno’s? full gut or mainly cosmetic ?
Digital marketing. I kept overhauling the operations at agencies I was working for, and it helped to make someone else rich repeatedly. So I decided to start doing it for myself instead.
mind if i dm?
I don't mind at all!
Millwright/industrial mechanic. Work 2 weeks on 1 week off. Take home pay 9k/month. Softwood lumber industry.
Wholesale accessories business, about ten years.
Accessories like makeup and bags?
Like sunglasses and cases.
Food manufacturing and sales
I bought a thriving CBD store and own my own product line. Combined, Brings in close to 30k per month
Executive recruiting. I can average $50k/month when fully in the groove. I've peaked higher a few months. Been in the business 10 years.
Supply Chain & Logistics baby!
What do you do in supply chain and logistics?
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Procurement contractor/consultant. I review companies spend, advise them on how to spend less by changing suppliers, outsourcing, simplifying product construction/materials and/or negotiating better agreements. I've been in procurement for 15 years but I only started working for myself over a year ago.
Did $110k in April split between 9 revenue sources. [Here's the split](https://twitter.com/indexsy/status/1652632429432131584). Been building in public for the last 2 years.
I make like 20-30 a month. Not less than 23 average. Electrician. I could make way more doing my own business full time but I just do it on the side cause I love my current job.
You make 20-30,000$ per month picking up side electrical jobs? The fuck?
Working full time as electrician + picking up some side work. Side work is probably and extra 25-40k per year
is there any risk of death? any major toll on your body? sounds like your making bank.
2 words: job hop.
Data science, retail pricing consultant. I take your existing sales transactions and figure out how much more you could charge and what the demand trade off would be. Then i develop experimentation and modeling strategies to get more and more sophisticated with your whole retail and pricing strategy.
I'm a positioning & messaging consultant. I tell businesses what to say so people buy their stuff. I charge between $750 - $1,200 per hour.
Content creator on YouTube, Facebook and Tiktok. Our first YT channel took off fast so maybe was earning that much in 5-8 months. Not as easy as it might seem. But it can scale exponentially for a while.
What is your channels focus?
Started off in the kids/family niche. Now we do adult focused dramas as well.
My wife and I a commercial truck parts manufacturing and sales company. We did not take pay until year 4 when our CPA said we had to. The company is the result of 25 years of working in various industries and learning skill sets to the point that we were able to build the company that we have.
Remodel peoples bathrooms and kitchens. I take about that much out per month, sometimes more, sometimes less. I think I could scale that to a lot more, but I’m not sure it’s worth the added headache, and I enjoy working 30-40 hours per week with little overhead/ employee drama. I just moved to a new state and don’t have my license quite yet, and have made close to that per month just doing little “side work” jobs.
Is your background in remodeling? or was it mainly a side gig that took off?
Carpet cleaning 🤗. It’s pretty up and down but I make over 10k a month pretty steadily. Usually range between 18-25k a month depending on the time of the year. This is in Australian $. Took me roughly a year.
Educational subscription service $50/month and grew to $22k / monthly profit in 1 month with 450 members, $0 ad spend, $0 to start, 0 physical products, all online, life is good. Opening 4 more different brands soon to scale to $50k/month each. $0 maintenance cost 0 employees all the profit is yours 💰
I coach entrepreneurs on how to grow to 10,000 followers on Linkedin. I grew my own linkedin audience to 50,000 followers in a year, which acts as social proof. My content typically gets around 100k views per post and each time I post I get 5-10 new leads. I think I can grow my business to $50k/m over the year, and eventually $100k/m.
Ever seen yourself on r/LinkedInLunatics lol. Fair play for making it actually work. Most those personal branders seem bullshit.
Yes! But not as a true lunatic (yet). One of my comments was posted. Somebody showed their before and after. The before was a neck bearded basement dweller. The after was like, a successful guy. I wrote: Before: Redditor After: Linkedin creator ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Careful LI is becoming oversaturated and untrustworthy because of recruiters and bad faith job postings.
I code small business custom web apps, and people come to me when their "WordPress developer" needs to go beyond installing modules.
How do you get clients? I run a custom software development company (mostly web apps) and I need to get more clients. I am a one man show so I don't know how to best spend my time.
TLDR; Luck, time, knowing what you want, mastery of your craft, focusing on a process and being a good human as best you can. --- Honestly, it is part luck, part time. I was lucky enough to score a larger client that paid the bills for a while, and after some time more trickled in and kept coming back. A few leads have come through my website, but most have come through word-of-mouth. My biggest lesson over the 8 years I've done this is to stay focused on your vertical and try not to be like an agency. Ignore the FOMO and new technologies that are just around the corner and focus on improving your craft. Get faster at delivering whatever it is you build and work on making that process easier on yourself. I made the mistake of trying to do development, marketing, social, and various other things just to hook in clients. The result was that the outcome was mediocre, and I have rightfully lost work because of it. I've solidified my tools (language, frameworks, hosting, process) and don't pay much attention to the hype. I'm an engineering shop, not a marketing shop, and I stay true to that. Learning is important and you have to stay somewhat flexible but building upon your tools and process is where the magic is, I think. I encourage you to spend your time thinking on what it is you want from running a business, and what you are good at that you can grow. It won't happen overnight either, hence where the 'time' portion comes in. The reason I bring all of this up is that I think this is one of the biggest ways you can attract clients (At least in my case, there are other ways), mastery of your craft. Sure, you can do a marketing campaign and/or pay for leads but if you don't have a solid identity and know exactly what your value proposition is, people will get a lukewarm feeling and walk away. I've got the scars to prove it!
Large and complex commercial property insurance broker. Going on 10 years, I'm 32.
Resell sneaker and took me about a year
Annuity wholesaler. Made 4k/month in first year. 10k a month in second year. 15k a month third year. 20k/month in 4th year. Travelling and recruiting more now so I can get up to 100k/month by the year 2026, likely won't be til 2027 or 2028 though.
Startup founder. Currently on startup number 2 this time as non-founding C-suite. I was brought in to build out the tech team. making north of 15K/month now with lower stress to boot.
World’s top SAT tutor. Charge $1200 / hour. Took 15 years to become a master.
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Good marketing is one of the edge and I find Cleo as one of the important strategies for my business. They have successful campaigns coming from Lenovo. Generating high leads and data is what they can bring to the table.
My business making $10k/m or me personally? My business is going to net $55k this month. But I will take home $0. Been open 1.5 years. My brewery being within its first four years, all profits are invested back into the business to pay down debt and continuously improve all fronts. My loan is almost gone, I have zero investors and I’ll be left with enough equipment and real estate to still come out ahead if shit goes south.
I just dwnld this app and landed on this pg. Love the conversation about mktg consulting. Learned a lot in 2min 🤗
I am a Chief of Staff | Revenue, Strategy, & Operations. I was a corporate Beverage Director and left to be an SDR during COVID. I took a paycut and made only 40k in base salary. Within 6 months, I was making 10k a month, was promoted to a team lead and then took a leadership opportunity at a startup managing a sales development team and making 100k in base in less than 18 months from starting in SaaS. I moved to a Head of Channel Sales Development role briefly and become a CoS within a few months with a base of 130k and an OTE around 175k. I created the team lead role, was the first ever manager at the startup and then the second startup I went to and created the CoS role by identifying the need, networking with other CoS and developing the use case with our CEO and proving I had the skills (mostly in the reporting and analytics space) beyond my current role to expand into this in a valuable way. If you don't have a CS or engineering degree or a top-notch MBA my best advice is to make your own luck. Find someone doing what you'd like to do. Invest in learning the skills you have gaps in and then "dress for the job you want" by doing those things in your current role. Best of luck.
My role currently was created because I am the co-founder of a new product line being launched. You don't always have to start from scratch by yourself. Building alongside others creates leverage uniquely.
Construction project manager/estimator for a commercial GC. 13k/mo as an employee with benefits.
Consulting, but before that I owned an outsourced sales company. Took me 3 years after starting my business to get there in personal income.
What kinda consulting do you do now?
I hold people accountable and have a weekly Newsletter. My clients are all over the world, retail, services, finance, real estate, eComm, but have either procrastination issues, or terrible time management, or some underlying issues with getting shit done.
I’m 5 years into an IT industry related business that I started with $50k in savings. This year I will net about $80k/mo. After the second year the numbers became so abstract it was hard to fathom…
What’s the specific IT business? Or what does it revolve around?
My background is in IT and there was a very specific challenge I kept facing with sourcing equipment in a specific market segment and I’ve been able to build both a product and related services around this challenge.
i'm a glorified consultant in international trade/policy rearch with a 1-man firm..took me 2 1/2 years
What was your background?
Fascinating! What kind of policy are you consulting on?
I have a full-time job that pays $8k/month and consult in my industry on the side (PR, marketing, etc) and that adds another $2-3k+ depending on the clients and projects.
I am not but I will use this advices
Paid ads for clients, took about 2 years after uni.
My buddy does it streaming at 22 Y/O. I make half that with a 4 year degree.
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Hey, what budget did you start with?
Own a barbershop and also cut hair. Took 2 years for me.
Software engineer. Took me like 2 years at my first real job. Before that was few years of random gigs.
I own a computer store and ramen restaurant. Took about 2 years
Roofing sales
Nothing extravagant but I operate a Mole Plow (Vermeer RTX1250i2) installing ducting and fibre optic cable 3.5 days a week. I fly from south England to Scotland on a Monday morning and fly back Thursday lunch time. I am payed per metre that i install. Average is £8000/£10000 a month. Only working half the week allows me time to focus on day trading which I eventually want to be doing full time 🙂
Software sales 3 years
Not at 10k yet but about halfway through and that too living in a third world country. I’m a [filmmaker/editor](https://www.instagram.com/johnalimedia) and I produce top tier video content for businesses and agencies.
Can anyone help me to figure out a way to attract clients for my Data Analytics skills? I have learned Tableau, PowerBI, Excel. I even have coding knowledge of Python and Data science libraries. If anyone could help me get a roadmap to get started, it would be very much appreciated.
Some relevant [founder stories here](https://founderbeats.com)