There is SO much here to unpack ...... First, congratulations on your past successes. That has certainly shaped you and made you who you are. There are benefits to working for someone to learn, but if they simply see you as an employee - a replaceable widget maker - then it is time to move on. I think it only makes sense for you if the CEO or other executive is willing to mentor you in a formal agreement. I don't think waiting around to hopefully learn something is the best use of your time, and your employer may fault you for not doing your job (because you're looking to learn, first, do your "tasks" second). In short, formalize your expectations with your employer. If it is a good fit for you both, stick around. If you don't feel like you're learning or meeting your objective, move on to something that fills that need. Finally, read these books: - "The CEO Next Door" http://amzn.to/2G2d2re - "Built for Growth: How Builder Personality Shapes Your Business, Your Team, and Your Ability to Win" http://amzn.to/2FnzZV2 All the best, -Shaun

Your question, "What is the best Wordpress theme for my blog" is nearly impossible to answer. There are an incredible number of factors that go into website design to influence conversion, sales, and user experience. A theme out of the box probably isn't the "right" answer for long-term success, but it may get you up and running. I don't think website design is ever "done". Think of megasites like Amazon or Facebook, they are constantly changing an testing. That said, to set yourself up for growth, the ability to A/B test, change details and layouts, etc, I recommend a custom theme builder similar to Divi by Elegant Themes (www.shaunnestor.com/recommends/elegantthemes) They have a number of pre-built layouts that you can use as a foundation, but changes as your needs fluctuate. All the best, -Shaun

Another word for authentic is believable. Meaning the consumer can believe what the brand is communicating about itself, its products and its culture. Apple appears authentic because they demonstrate how their products simplify life and make it more enjoyable. Honda expresses reliability and fun, and their products are certainly known for reliability. Look at struggling brands, like Sears, who tried to be all things to all people, from Craftsmen tools to Lands End. It was too broad and general, and the market validated it with declining sales.

Your absolute first step is to gauge interest. Without demand, you will end up wasting your time and resources building something nobody wants. Find a need, know it inside and out, then build the solution to that need. Don't just talk to you friends and family (they are biased). Talk to the real users of your proposed idea. If you're targeting freelancers, talk to freelancers. As many of them as you can. Learn what they wish was different about XYZ, understand where the pain points are in current marketplaces, and find the weaknesses of the existing competition. All the best, -Shaun

There is so much to unpack in your question. To best answer, I would need to understand much more about your product, vision, customer base, team, and what you mean by "strategic help." You obviously have some questions in mind that need answering, without more details, I cannot answer those questions specifically. I'd be happy to book a call with you to discuss further. I have a few posts on my website that may help, again, without knowing what you're looking for, it is hard to answer you directly. =) 1. https://www.shaunnestor.com/how-to-find-clients-as-a-freelancer/ (Replace "Freelancer" with whatever title you give your platform) 2. https://www.shaunnestor.com/how-to-build-an-online-business-with-little-to-no-experience/ I've found that those two articles generally give people the next steps they are looking for. Again, feel free to book a call with me, if you'd like to discuss specifics. All the best, -Shaun

I don't think being Pinterest-only is too specific. It is an overlooked, yet valuable, social media platform that most don't know how to effectively use for their business. When you're setting out to be an expert, you need to be prepared to answer what makes you different than the competition. In this space, I know Tailwind has a large following and does a lot to expand their territory. If I am your prospective client, I want to know what makes you better/worse/the same as them. You need to answer why posting on Pinterest is valuable and worth the time and expense to the brand. How do you measure success? How do you prove ROI? While you may have these answered in your own mind, or it may be a "Duh" moment, you need to know how to articulate that to your customer. They may know that "Pinterest is where they need to be" yet have no realistic idea on *why*. As the expert, it is your job to coach them through that process. Finally, you need to have your ideal client persona dialed in. Not everyone will be your idea client, and your marketing and language should reflect this. The way you market your services should allow viewers to self-qualify AND self-DISqualify themselves. Be sure you know who you can help and who you can't (or don't want to). This will further your positioning as an expert - and experts get paid big money for their knowledge. If you'd like to discuss more, feel free to book a call All the best, -Shaun

There is a LOT to unpack here, and without knowing a lot more about your process, ideal client, the problem you're solving for them, it is hard to give a detailed and concise answer. But I'll give an "In general" one: Sales are often held up my a lack of accountability or the ability to make a decision. To shorten that, you (the seller or vendor) must anticipate the needs/questions/roadblocks of your customer. Ideally, your sales team has materials that preemptively address these concerns and equip your customer with the information they need, before they need it. For example, if your solution is usually discovered by a middle manager, and you know their boss needs to sign off on the purchase, you should be publishing content that enables that middle manager to inform their boss. "12 Things Your Boss Needs to Know Before Signing Up for WiFi Analytics" for example. Empower your customer to make their job (and, ultimately the decision) easier. If your client reports to the C-Suite, you can usually use money to help the process along. Produce data and research that shows comparable firms save 3% the first year and 10% annually after they have introduced similar solutions. Get in the mind of your buyer, understand the problem they are trying to solve, and be the solution. Sell the benefits to them for using a product like yours. If you'd like more specifics, feel free to book a call here on Clarity. All the best, -Shaun

Oh, DEFINITELY ask Clarity for help on how they target their customers and make their money. C'mon man, would you give that information away? It's called Intellectual Property and Competitive Advantage. What you should be concentrating on, if you're interested in having a similar business, is the Barrier To Entry. Your scope is far too wide right now. "Online advice"? Niche it down. You can always expand later, but for now a generalist approach is not going to attract a target market. The tech, you'll find, is the easy part. Attracting experts and inquiries...that's another story. There's the barrier to entry into this market. A minor part of it is putting up the tech...the major part is attracting experts and drawing traffic from those wanting to ask questions of said experts. You will need systems in place for both objectives. And numbers to support them. How many experts do you need on your platform? And how many people booking calls to them to support your revenue target? And how many people visiting the site to book one call? Lots of freebie seekers out there. Last two inquiries I've had have run once they saw my (publicly displayed) fee. Kind of funny and fortunately not relevant to me as I have real businesses. Or maybe this is a homework question for you? In that case, you again should niche down, and look for data on those niches. It'll be much easier to find. Maybe target the three or four most popular niches of questions people ask about and add them up. 80/20 Rule, y'know.

You could easily do this via MailChimp or Klaviyo. More info: Klaviyo: https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005255808-Integrate-with-WooCommerce#install-the-klaviyo-woocommerce-plugin Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/integrations/woocommerce/

First, perhaps you're overreaching. Do you have proof of concept or not? If you don't then you need to work your way up the ladder. Try dropping your target 2 levels down at first, and as you build up a roster of "wins" start to set your sights on higher and higher levels of business. If 2 levels down is still impossible to reach, then you may need to go even lower down. And at least some of the issue is that you haven't gotten creative enough with how you're looking. You're saying you can't even find a name in the organization? You need to know which department you need to get in front of. Then you have to do some Sherlock Holmes tricks to find names within the organization. Now, you need to figure out how to get an introduction to the people behind those names. Negativity will get you nowhere. This is an exciting adventure. If it's so easy to get an interview with the Queen — if that's where your social circles go — then I bet that she could make some introductions for you. If not, you have to look from where you are now to a path to where you want to go, and stop trying to skip ahead. Find the person who knows/likes/trusts you with the highest ranking business in your circle of influence, and get into THEIR company to prove what you do. Then ask them to recommend 3 of their suppliers, collaborators or allies in the business world to recommend you to. Climb the ladder. I help people with business brainstorming sessions — strategy and creativity. I may not be the right fit for you if you want to come up with ideas and strategies, but hopefully these ideas are helpful to get you moving. Oh, and having said that — get moving and keep moving. No more negativity because that shuts down your creativity and makes you feel helpless. You're not helpless. Start from where you are, the reach you already have, then STRETCH that reach. Stop trying to teleport to somewhere where you have no influence.

Very interesting concept - I could see how parents would certainly gravitate towards a feature like this. So, freemium apps, models, features are quite common of course and people have grown accustomed to most applications or platforms at least offering a trial period (as you do.) But, if you were my client my first question I'd ask you is: do you need to even offer a free option? Typically a freemium model is offered as a means to maximize your "front of the funnel" conversion and use tools inside the platform to get people to continue utilizing the application (and thus expand into the paid services section.) You have 200 paying customers, why use freemiums at all? you know people will purchase and use your service. Why not consider say discounting or trial period pricing? from a product development standpoint it will be much easier on your engineering team to manage one product version, not to mention that you potentially diminish your service perspective by at any point offering it for free. Unless a direct competitor is out there and they are beating you because of the freemium model they offer I would strongly consider avoiding it altogether. your product, from what you described, sounds simply enough to understand as a concept (it is not a digital cure to cancer you are explaining): plus parents know the value of curating and protecting their children from salacious/inappropiate content, so why try to get them familiar with the idea? As long as it does what you say it does and they are able to fairly easily use it I say go full price, or at the very least avoid free features and just do a discounted trial period. People often underestimate how shocking moving users from free to paid can be and how it actually can be a liability (e.g. Netflix has never offered a freemium model - Hulu has though.) That being said, it is possible that a freemium model makes sense for your app, under the right circumstances and context. but before diving in I'd advise going through a quick exercise to make sure it is the right move. If it is, there are some pretty common themes and feature trends you can follow to reduce friction (many of which require specific demographic and psychographic information about your target users etc.) Feel free to reach out if you'd like to chat further directly and talk through your options/evaluation.

Have you considered licensing?

It depends highly on the company's stage - number of employees, money raised, revenue, etc. I'd recommend you look at comparable companies by stage on www.angel.co and see what others are being offered from an equity + cash comp standpoint for Head of Marketing / CMO type roles.

This question leads me to believe there are a limited number of people in the company. With that said, and I mean this sincerely; why do you need a title? If you are a key person in an early stage start-up what will the title do for you? Will it pigeon hole you into a specific role or skill set when you are responsible for so much more? One more question; Did you mean the right title for [responsibilities] in a startup? If not, please explain what a "startup title" is?

First you'll need the 'sellers'. To get them to sign up you'll first need a website set up that looks professionally made to the extent that one could conceivably believe that it would attract 'buyers' to use its services. Then, do research on how best to find sellers that would be appropriate for your site. You'll have to do grunt work to reach out to them individually at first. For instance maybe you're looking for experts on certain topics, you could check out slideshare.net and find the most popular decks on relevant topics, and then reach out to those authors. Or maybe you check out Linkedin or Quora and find the right people there. Help them with the sign up process as much as possible, and give them some extra early-sign up incentive, like maybe say that you'll feature all early sign ups at the top of the website for 1 week after you go live, or maybe you'll actively email market for them for several days each. Once you've gotten sellers to populate the site, start advertising to buyers. Give the sellers easy ways to do advertisement too. For instance give them text and/or photos for social media posts, etc. If you onboarded some already-popular people as sellers, they will be able to help a lot in terms of generating their own traffic. Although eventually P2P marketplaces can be somewhat self-perpetuating, initially you'll have to do a lot of manual work behind the scenes to get everything going. best of luck, Lee

i was once a freelancer all the time i am accepting payments from different clients around the world.you can setup an account on a online company the supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. the most common is PayPal. you can make a call if you want other details. Thanks.

I consulted with someone in this space. He was extremely knowledgeable and could answer questions quite professionally. It was my recommendation for him to focus on speaking engagements. Many groups are looking for people to come in and speak. If you are experienced in, and knowledgeable about, health insurance and can conduct a good Q&A after your speech it won't take long to carve out a reputation for being an expert in the field. Your phone will start to ring with requests for you to come speak.

WooCommerce is what you would use to bridge the gap between your customers and your vender (Printful or Printify). Both of those vendors have pros and cons. What did you find in your own investigation?

Hello, I would go for a Phoenix framework (backend) / ELM (frontend) based platform. The use of these two functional languages will allow you to support high user concurrency and to serve real-time user experience. Feel free to reach me if you want to talk about it. Cheers

To start out the definition of "marketing" has been totally been siewed for the last 10 years. Most young people today think it means advertising online, SEO, and the remainder think it means graphic design and flyers. Just like marketing could mean a lot of things digital marketing can also mean a lot of things. Most newbies in digital marketing are going to be dealing with compiling Analytics, designing ads that someone else gave them specific instructions to create, I'm physically placing, uploading, and deleting ads on various platforms. You can imagine how tedious this all can be, that the Newbie probably doesn't understand the ultimate objectives of the campaign, that the work is very repetitive, and that a lot of mistakes can be made which are there have to be corrected at a large cost or at least managed. Most of these newbies do not know the most fundamental aspects of marketing as a practice: the P's, awareness, emotional drivers, etc. Without that how can they really make the right decisions or understand what they're doing in context? This is a roundabout way of saying most of these entry-level people lack fundamental and foundational knowledge of marketing as a practice, so managers are frustrated because the people they hired really don't understand what they're doing outside of what they're doing

I believe you have not had any answers to your question because it is not detailed enough. There are too many variables for someone to provide a comprehensive answer. Why are you closing the corp.? Were you the sole shareholder? Was the capital infusion listed as a loan on the corp. books? Who is authorized to take on debt on behalf of the corp? and many, many more... Furthermore, you are basically asking for free legal advice or, at a minimum, free Accounting advice that would be provided by a CPA. The old adage "You get what you pay for" applies here. Contact a tax attorney and or your CPA.

In my experience, classified sites have always been a total waste of time. I've been in business for 15 years now and here's what has worked for me: - Referrals - absolutely the best method hands down - Facebook Advertising - Becoming a trusted expert in the forums of whatever platform you use - Guest blogging/guest on podcasts - Community involvement (trade groups, conferences, forums) - SEO using long-tail - broad keywords like web developer are impossible What hasn't worked well: - Bidding out jobs on sites like Upwork (the competition there is tough to match on price) - Direct marketing (mail, personal emails, cold calling) There really are no geographic boundaries when it comes to web development - many of our clients are in Europe and Australia so don't limit yourself to just your home country!

The general rule is as follows: 1) Create a profile that identifies who your target customer is. 2) Estimate how many of those customers are in the region you are planning on targeting. 3) Estimate your demand rate. Is your product or service mission critical and every single target customer would need it or, is it a product or service that people would buy if they see it otherwise they would not go out of their way for it. 4) multiply step 2 and 3 above. Estimating your market size is not an exact science and there are many business/sector specific variables to consider that would increase the accuracy of the analysis. If you would like to talk about this further, do not hesitate to contact me.

Digital marketing is broad but can be plainly described as: the creation, distribution of and engagement with, relationship or brand building content in an electronic format.

Depending on the age group your strategy should vary from international fairs or international catalogs great companies like sunwing or Catai are always looking to expand their reach! Strongly recommend real state corporations to publicise your product!