Hello, Whether you are selling adventures for entrepreneurs or widgets the building blocks to successful campaigns are the same. A good lead generation program is an art form, not a science. First, you need to determine what the market looks like. How big is it, where are my targets spending their time online and how do I engage them? The price point would be predicated on location, duration, activities provided, gross margin targets and group size. We ran high-end golf vacation packages all over the world and know a great deal about the travel space and narrow verticles. Happy to chat as needed.

Are you generating 50k a month now or is it a total of 50k over 5 months? Depending on your investor they will value your business in one of two ways. How long are your contracts guaranteed? How do you intend to use the money? I have never worried about dilution in a business as its more important to make whatever % of ownership you have worth the maximum amount possible. You might own 75% of company worth 1 million dollars but you might also own 50% of a company worth 3 million if built properly. You can structure a capital infusion deal 100 different ways. Are you looking to only give up equity? What if your investor got his investment $$$ back in an 80/20 preference on free cash flow and took a smaller %. My advice is to focus on exactly what you need the money to accomplish and what value the business will have based on that infusion. Create a monthly rolling forecast for both expenses and revenue as a starting point. Good luck. Raising money is not easy and you really need your business plan buttoned up. Happy to help if needed.

This is a massive project especially if you are thinking of localizing each dealership. To do a proper job you are going to need resources. In my opinion you first need to get each dealership registered as a local business. As you probably know that will require you to have google send out a local business pin to each dealership. I have two clients that required this type of setup. Happy to help as needed.

The hardest thing in business is hiring the right the people. You need to attract talent that can knock down walls for you. What type of equity are you willing to give up to get those people? It sounds like you have created a bottle neck where by every important decision is ultimately going through your office. Sometimes letting people fail a little bit will motivate them to do better. You have to make it okay for them to fail in order to grow. Making the same mistake over and over is grounds for termination however if they fail and learn they will feel empowered. Read the book Good to Great, it has exactly the type of insight you need.

You only need to ask him one question related to the deals you want him to invest in. " Could you ever see yourself investing in one of these deals.....ever?" If he says No then do not ask him again, enjoy your dinner and move onto the next guy. If he says maybe one day....then ask him how long could it take? 1 year, 2 years? What ever his answer is, it is. Bring a 5x7 index card and a pencil. Write down his name and the date and ask him "can we start counting tonight?" Each time you see him make sure you bring the index card and the pencil. Never ask him to invest but make sure he see's you bring out the card and write down the date. If the card gets beat up and crumpled the better it is. After two or three "casual dinners" he will be laughing his head off and telling his friends about your little index card. My predication is that you get an investment out of him within 6 months.

At Bearpaw Partners we get asked the question about content related posts all the time. As we all know Google loves fresh, compelling content. It sounds like you have plenty of content, just make sure its extremely relevant to the topic you are posting about. How often are you planning on blogging? Once a week, once a month? We would advise you to keep some of your powder dry and not fire off all the best content right away. Pending events may happen that you can capitalize on by posting some great content and piggy back on the "event". You also need to play around with the schedule to see when you get the most hits to the blog...day of week, time of day, season etc. There are other variables you should consider as well to really nail down your question. Feel free to ask away. Hope that helps.

We would probably need more information to really answer this fully however in general I would say to make sure that all 50 citation page entries are entered exactly the same and complete. If you don't know where to find those drop me a note and I will share the information.

We use leadsquare, call rail, gather content and several other lead generation tools. Designing bounce pages or landing pages is our specialty. We live and breath A/B testing as a true measure of what works. We often start with 20 ads and narrow them down to 5. Its never the ones we all think will kill it. Its usually the ones we think will just do okay that perform the best. We can show you scores of examples and a very good track record of success should you want to engage.

With that number of attendees its tough. Work hard to get over 100 attending each month as a first step. Once you break that barrier you might get a small related sponsor. Use them to also promote the event. Perhaps a matching marketing spend...good for you and them. Where are you holding the meetup? You could try shopping it around to different locations (bars and restaurants) and seeing if you can negotiate a cut of the spend the group makes. If you want to charge those attending you have to give them value. $20 gets you...XYZ. and negotiate a % of sales. Good luck.

It should be obvious based on the vertical market you are entering. A wise man once told me (when people were getting crazy about throwing money at Internet start ups back in 2000) "there is no new business. Its all been done before it just takes on new and different forms." Unless you are a true transformation change agent and have some ultra unique idea that has never been done before look at what the other competitors are doing in your space, pick the most successful one and model your business to a large degree off of that.