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Food Industry

I'm looking to extend my business relationships overseas in the industry of exporting/importing, any advice?

4

Answers

Ignacio Schindler

Clarity Expert

Hello. I hope you are doing well! Are you trying to get your products into the EU through Croatia? Are you producing anything or only trading? Based on the information you provided, I would try contacting the local authorities or customs, you will have different fares depending on the direction of the shipment. Hope my answer was helpful, kind regards, Ignacio.

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Humberto Valle

Get Advice On Growing Your Real Estate Business

I know a few, send me your details and I'll see what I can do to connect you with them.

Karnati Kiran

Love Coach: Transform your relationship today! 

To speak I do not have contacts in the Industry. Saying this I would have a suggestion The subject of Revenue Valuations has five main principles Through having a very imminent finances to overcome debt. Then trying to find a solution to just capable ways of under following through preparatory subjects. I have a very knowledge through the related study. Then to trying to propose a solution I need to understand your key parameters to include an overwhelming process of deep justification to report the entered agreements. The given subsidy to evaporate the gathering info related to predetermined aspects related to funding and then approaching the veteran leaders of natural tendency The evaluation generally coincides with the negotiated matters of degree at which the main components of valuation are needed The approach is to find the details and then ask a negotiating financial advisor on your behalf to overcome the tendencies of natural inclination to prepare the differentiated models Saying these I request you to contact me if you are interested in another opinion not directly related to the subject but try to analyse the situation through elements and concepts related to building net worth individuals of highly regarded mentions. Thank You Karnati Kiran https://clarity.fm/karnatikiran

David C

I help you buy, sell, plan, value a business

There are many consultants, brokers, appraisers and other experts who value businesses and cash flows. I do Most Probable Selling Price evaluations for my clients in most of the Western World. The problem with a pre-revenue enterprise is that you'd be relying on projections. Anyone who wants to buy a business is doing so because they wish to make money. This comes in one of two forms; cash flow from the subject business or savings because the subject business helps the acquirer save money. Acquirers sometimes also consider synergies. For example: how much money could they make if they offered your product/service to their existing customer base. The difficulty in the valuation process is deciding upon the reliability of the projections or trying to guess/estimate the savings or synergistic value to a potential acquirer who may not be known. If you did want to hire a valuation specialist to create an opinion, it would likely have a stern warning to readers about the subjective nature of the input data. Please arrange a call if you'd like to discuss your scenario and why you're looking for this type of expert. David Barnett

Humberto Valle

Get Advice On Growing Your Real Estate Business

Great question! I love questions like this ones. First off forget about Silicon Valley. If you are not here with that sort of relationship you will spend a lot of resources before you make something sustainable here. Second, you mention you've had some success - ok, why aren't you simply making that effort that has worked more efficient and thus grow that effort scale to in return scale up your success rate? Emails are for long term nurturing not for quick generation. What I would suggest is first never show up empty handed, when you do make contact with one agency, know what they do and who for, offer directly related solutions for 1 client only. If you do a good job there they might build the relationship on their end. With that said, don't pitch for long term pitch for an opportunity to save money or time or etc once. Sorry but I gotta go, short reply. If you have any further questions let me know :)

David C

I help you buy, sell, plan, value a business

What I've done is write a book... Eventually there were 4 books and other special reports. I sell them on Amazon but often give them away to prospective clients. There is no greater pleasure than to submit a proposal to a prospect which includes the words...' I am an expert in this area and the author of the 2014 Best-Selling book on the topic... The second step is to implement a social media strategy based on groups. Set up a call with me if you'd like to know what else I've done. Cheers Dave

Humberto Valle

Get Advice On Growing Your Real Estate Business

Technically. Zero. Is just an image source change. If you're hiring someone then whatever they charge per hour x 1 hour lol. Good luck

D. Mathew

Tax Attorney

The return is due March 15 for the previous year. Your S-corp doesn't pay taxes, it files a form 1120S informational return. The 1120S produces a form k-1 that states your share of the companies income and other items. You report that k-1 on Schedule E of your Form 1040 in April. You have to file the 1120S every year whether you made money or not. Definitely find a professional, the 1120S is not easy to do.

Early-stage Startups

How do you validate your startup idea?

10

Answers

Parker Woodward

Referral Marketing Automation for B2B Sales

The one and only thing you should do to validate your idea is... Pre-sell the solution. TAKE MONEY. Real actual money. The only way to tell if something is viable is to take money from people who will buy it. Don't be fooled by people who say you can't do this. Apple does this all the time. The people you are looking for are called "early adopters". This is how I validated my business (www.referralriver.com) I talked to my target market (people I thought I could help and who I also thought could buy or actually had money to buy). At the end of the conversation I asked if they would pre-purchase the solution before it was made. Many didn't but some did. After I had enough people that purchased I could determine that yes this is a valid idea and worth pursuing. My general rule: Pre-sell to at least 10 people. If your solution/service/ or product has a lifetime value (LTV) of less than $1,000 then you need more than 10 pre-sales to validate. I happen to be in software so that's a subscription model so for that industry any solution that costs less than $50 per month per user is very difficult to build and be successful at, so a minimum of 10 pre-sales of at least $50 per month per user would validate an idea for me. Before finding this one I went through maybe 10 other ideas and decided not to pursue them (mostly because no one would pay for the solution before it was built!) Don't ask "hey would this be useful?" or "would you pay for this if it existed?" Ask for the sale now. If people don't pre-purchase this "idea"...then it's crap. Sorry, but guess what?! That's great news. You get to move on instead of wasting your time, money, and resources building something that no one will buy. If you want to know more, or if you find this useful, book a time with me. Happy to help. Please upvote this answer if you found it useful.

Humberto Valle

Get Advice On Growing Your Real Estate Business

Try Google For Startups, StartUp Weekend, and Amazon Web Serices for Small Business. Good luck :)

Shaun Nestor

Content Marketing Advisor & Agency Consultant

With all due respect, this seemingly simple question has a complex answer. Much akin to "How do I drive a car?" The most basic overview I can come up with goes like this: 1. Decide on a niche There are a million freelance website designers. What makes you different and how can you offer something to your client that other may not be able to? 2. Connect with those who need your services to build a portfolio Reach out to non-profits or small businesses to get started. You will need a portfolio and client recommendations as you grow. By getting this done early, you can use them to get larger, better paying clients 3. Build your network by offering valuable advice for those who may not know they need you Use a platform like LinkedIn or Facebook to educate small business owners on the benefits of having a well-designed website. Offer tips on how to manage a website redesign, what to look for in a designer, how to manage a web project, etc. This plants the seed in the mind of your next customer and positions you in a place of authority 4. Have a process and system for growing your freelance business Communication and time management are two areas freelancers of any industry struggle with. Having a process in place early will help you effectively grow without dropping the ball on the many projects you may have going at the same time. Again, this is a very (very) high level overview. There are also considerations for pricing, demonstrating value (vs competing on price), lead generation and nurturing, outsourcing, and moving from project-based work to retainer work. I would be happy to discuss this more with you, if you'd like. Drop me a note. Best of luck! -Shaun

Brian Carruth

Tech Founder, Agile Development, Startup Funding

Every major city has some sort of network of angel investors or VCs. Do a quick google search in your area for incubators/accelerators. They typically have public facing events where you can go in and network. Since you're post-revenue you should be able to find interested people pretty easily. If you need help researching places, let me know.

Kenneth Wolstrup

Value adding advice built on analysis.

In my business, positive bottom line equals bonus for everybody. Percentage of salary to employees - same for all, up to three months salary. That is simple and works well, and is aligned with overall goals. And it is easy to report where we are. We don't have sales targets, which we maybe should have. Depending on your business type that may not be feasible for you-startups don't make money initially. But building on your idea, hitting targets is important. Both growth and quality. People will behave as they are measured and challenging targets will help you create a sense of urgency instead of entitlement. (However, increase risk of suboptimization). I think hitting sales targets, finishing projects on time and budget combined with NPS for both sales and project process should be enough. You don't need many targets, but use them all the time, talk about them with your team, incl. what you are trying to achieve. KPI's are no substitute for leadership; your team needs to know what your intent is. One way of showing your commitment to quality could be to collect NPS yourself through customer interviews. That would also inspire new ideas, and give you better market knowledge. Given the size of your team that should be feasible. Good luck. Should you want to talk more to someone with a business of similar size, feel free to give me a call. Best regards Kenneth Wolstrup

Humberto Valle

Get Advice On Growing Your Real Estate Business

Try the guys at theprintful.com they have made a good niche business providing the services you seem to be needing. Best of luck, learn from them and keep asking questions ;)

Lee von

Unique Insights, Creative Solutions

Paid option: Do a paid press release on prweb.com. Free options: 1) To respond to reporters that are looking for content related to your product, subscribe to HARO (helpareporter.com) and check it daily and respond to relevant requests with information on your product. 2) To actively pitch your product story to reporters, first find the right ones: A) In google type in keywords relevant to your product. B) Click on the 'news' category C) filter the results by 'recent' or 'blog' Some journalists cover a particular topic, others cover particular region. Find the ones in each category relevant to your product. To contact them, look them up on Linkedin, Twitter, etc. In your correspondence, make sure you show them that you've read what they've written about in the past and describe your product and how it's relevant. They need reads / hits on the article to get paid, so make sure to frame your story in a way that would help them do that. If you'd like more specific advice on how to frame your product for particular stories, etc. let me know, Lee

Stoney deGeyter

Author, Speaker, CEO

You have to make sure the images are uploaded somewhere and use absolute URLs to link to the images.

Nick Custenborder

Clarity Expert

You can easily find boilerplate legal wording out there. If you run a Google search for each key term such as "boilerplate terms of service" you'll find quite a few resources. If you want to copy and paste, make sure it is covered under the appropriate licensing that allows this, such as Creative Commons. You can read more on that here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license The extent of protection you provide to yourself and future customers will likely depend on the amount of time and money you invest in legal advice. Your best bet is to consult an attorney that specializes in copyright law so your exact platform and business model is adequately covered. You can copy and paste boilerplate language but you could run the risk of opening yourself up to legal liabilities that are not covered. Do plenty of research! *I am not an attorney and this answer should not be construed as legal advice.*

Pete Ryan

Sales Hacking and Marketing Growth

This is a really tough question to answer without more context. Market(s) your selling into? Vertical(s) your selling into? Average deal size? Pricing model? Competition? How long your team has been selling? Experience of the sales reps?

Humberto Valle

Get Advice On Growing Your Real Estate Business

Hello, I have some experience with this from past companies and startups. I'm a current investor in 2 and have experience pitching. Email me whatever thoughts you have and I'll try to help. Humberto@unthink.me

Lee von

Unique Insights, Creative Solutions

To validate your idea you need to show interest from potential students. To do that you need to show them something to be interested in. However, a teacher isn't going to go out of their way to create content for a site with no students waiting. To get around this issue, I would start off by getting a bunch of existing content that you can collect and curate on your website. This is how you do that: Go to YouTube and Instructables (and similar sites), and spend a week searching through videos and instructions, collecting all the best content you can find. Try to get ones that are good, but are not universally recognized already with millions of subscribers/viewers. Then A) Contact the creators of that content, telling them that you're starting a new website and you'd like to embed their content to attract new students. Tell them that you'll be tracking the popularity of their videos and the most successful teachers will be invited to be instructors on your future (more developed) website, with some special offers (e.g. lower % of their profits go to you). Also tell them that you will not be making any money off of the initial Beta-validation version of the website that you're currently building, it's solely to start attracting students. B) If as you reach out to these teachers you find a big negative response (e.g. 90% say no and then set their videos to not be embeddable on external sites), then stop telling the teachers, and just use their videos. You won't be doing anything immoral, because you won't be making any money off of your initial Beta-validation website anyway. And when you launch your more developed site you can still reach out to the creators with the most successful videos on your Beta site. To add some unique added-value to the embedded content, you could maybe even somehow couple your own additional clarifications, etc. with the content, to clarify things you feel they didn't fully explain, etc. As you start getting students visiting your site and watching videos, make sure to be collecting email addresses so you can do a drip campaign to keep them coming back for content you suggest. As your student visitor # starts increasing you can also slowly start reaching out to teachers (either the ones from YouTube, and others from Udemy, etc.) to get more content created specifically for your site. If you'd like more detailed advice relevant to your specific ideas I'd be happy to help, Lee

Brian Bagdasarian

CEO, Build A Big Idea Marketing Group & Obii.ai

I've been where you are - it kind of sucks :) I think you need to do a bit of a reset on your personal mindset - Effective agile management is never a "nice to have" - its what keeps things flowing, working, and on time. To that end - do you know who your ideal client really is? Let's break down your options (per your question): Startups - If not funded, move on. You don't need equity, you need revenue. If they are funded it could be a good fit.. Creative Agencies - I think you're giving creative agencies too much credit here - you need to narrow that down. Are you looking at marketing and advertising agencies, or software development shops? The former usually is...lost?... when it comes to Agile, so you'll have a bit of educational work involved, the latter more than likely is already agile by nature. I've also found that sometimes agencies will shy away from outsourcing things like project management (its a control issue). Solo guys - this all comes down to one question - "Do they have money?" I'm sure you feel a bit like you're in a rock and a hard place. There are clearly some variables here that I'm not covering, but would in a chat. The bottom line is that you need to get a handle on WHO you want to work with, WHAT you are solving for them, and WHY your services are better than what they are currently doing. People buy solution, not prevention. With that in mind, you should be able to find a starting point. If you would like to have a chat, schedule one with me - My team and I do growth strategies for businesses of all sizes, and if we have a chat here on Clarity, and I think I can help, I'd be willing to do an in depth 45 minute session with you for free.

Deanna Erickson

Internet Research

ITT was perceived to be a rip off. To find your loan servicer, call 1-800-4-FED-AID Here is a link to the federal government's site with lots more information about the closing. https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about/announcements/itt/faq Good luck!

Shaun Nestor

Content Marketing Advisor & Agency Consultant

Yes. Let's assume: CURRENT Gross Sales $30.00 Cost of Goods $15.00 Net Profit $15.00 Profit Margin 50.00% NEW DISCOUNT PROGRAM Gross Sales $30.00 Discount $3.00 Cost of Goods $15.00 Net Profit $12.00 Profit Margin 40.00%

Thakor Dhavalsinh

Copy writing articles writing blogpost writing

class MyViewController: UIViewController, UITableViewDataSource, UITableViewDelegate { let tableView = UITableView() override func viewDidLoad() { super.viewDidLoad() // Set the table view's frame tableView.frame = CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: view.frame.width, height: view.frame.height) // Set the data source and delegate tableView.dataSource = self tableView.delegate = self // Register the custom cell class tableView.register(CustomTableViewCell.self, forCellReuseIdentifier: "CustomCell") // Add the table view as a subview view.addSubview(tableView) } func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int { return 10 } func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell { let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "CustomCell", for: indexPath) as! CustomTableViewCell cell.textLabel?.text = "Row \(indexPath.row)" return cell } }

Ryan Rutan

Founding @Startups.com, Clarity, Fundable and more

Over the years I have been asked many variants of this question, and the answer is almost always “yes, you can”, so what we prefer to dig in on is the “why should you”. There tend to be three scenarios where people ask this question: 1. A prior campaign failed and the founders want to try again. 2. A prior campaign succeeded and the founders want to repeat it. 3. The founders want to launch on more than one platform at the same time in an attempt to gain more exposure. Failed Campaign In the case of a failed attempt - there is nothing wrong with making a second attempt, as long as you’ve pinpointed where things went wrong the first time and are prepared to overcome those hurdles. The most common reasons for failure are: -Not building an audience prior to launch -Not marketing the raise sufficiently -Product / Market Fit is off Assuming you are ready to address the shortfalls in your first attempt there is no reason that you shouldn’t make another attempt. Successful Campaign If you’ve run a campaign successfully, there are a number of reasons you may want to roll the dice again, including: -We didn’t make enough money to create operational cash for our business. -We made money on it, and we want to make more. -We saw additional demand for the product after the campaign ended. If you were successful, but the money you raised was just enough to cover making and shipping all the product you sold, then you may be tempted to do it again. If that’s the case, ensure that you’ve achieved a better manufacturing cost, raised prices, or done something to increase the margins on the second attempt or you’ll find yourself in the same position. If you did well, and simply want to repeat the process, consider using e-commerce rather than crowdfunding and start building your own store, instead of building on rented land (ie someone else’s platform). In this was all your marketing is pointed to your own site, giving you more control and the ability to add products over time, change pricing, etc. The same would apply if you saw a great deal of demand after the campaign ended. Quickly move to capture those potential buyers emails and find a solution for transacting. More than one platform I’m often asked if it is “okay” to launch on more than one crowdfunding platform at a time, with the hopes of getting more exposure. The answer is yes, it’s okay, but you aren’t likely to get the exposure you are looking for, and in fact will be more likely to fail on both platforms. This comes down to a simple principle of division of attention, and understanding how crowdfunding platforms provide exposure. If you are forced to divide your marketing efforts across two platforms, you exponentially increase the difficulty of driving enough traffic to hit your goals and have a successful raise. Counting on the platform for exposure is also a major mistake people make. While it is true that the platforms will surface and promote a handful of the hundreds, or thousands of projects on their platform, they tend to focus on those that are already showing traction and success. Said differently, if you plan was to launch on a platform (or two) and have all the exposure come from their efforts, you don’t actually have a plan. TL;DR Yes, you can run a project twice, sequentially or in parallel - but you should strongly consider the why, and whether or not a second raise will help you achieve the outcomes you are really after.

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