What is the quality of that $140 per lead? Does that lead into a $1000 sale? We often think that a lead that costs $100+ or more is an expensive Cost per lead, but if it brings high quality leads that turns into a significant profit, I'll be happy to spend more $140 to get more of these types of leads. The next is to find optimize your working lead generation channel based on specific segments (is this segment get a better ROI).

The best way to build an MVP is to distill the solution to the smaller unit of value to deliver something to a customer. Start small, time box it and focus on solving the problem at it's core even if it's ghetto (I call the best MVP's ghetto but useful). Here's an image that represents my thinking on this https://twitter.com/danmartell/status/516316632126586883

No reason whatsoever. Sacrificing all of your time (consequently trading that in for your health) is a very dangerous and unsustainable approach. I've seen many entrepreneurs burn out quickly because of this. When I'm coaching other entrepreneurs, I always encourage putting yourself first (food, exercise, leisure) to be at your 110% for your startup and family.

The best way to get leads for a B2B solution is to do prospecting research online. What should you look for? Very depends on your type and stage of business. Assuming you are completely new here are some questions that would get you started: 1) What problem are the business you are looking for having or what goal do they have? 2) Do they have a burning need to solve it? 3) How does what you offer help them solve their problem or their goal? 4) What stage of business are they in? What industry? What size? And that is just for starters. Best approach for online research from there on out depends on your answers to the above. Once you have them, set up a call and I can help you further.

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There will be a lot of learning and adapting, but it should happen in a staged approach; much of it before actually 'launching'. Launching generally means exposing your full product/site/whatever to the entire general public. Before doing that you should do smaller scare, more targeted testing. Before launching, but after you have a prototype / MVP, you need to gather data on whether people want to pay for it. There are many ways to do this before a full launch. The methods vary depending on the type of product. Without further description of your product I can't help you further in terms of those methods. Send me a message if you'd like to discuss it further, best of luck, Lee

The previous answers given here are great, but I've copied a trick from legendary investor Monish Pabrai that I've used in previous startups that seems to work wonders -- especially if your company does direct B2B sales. Many Founders/ CEOs are hung up on having the Founder/ CEO/ President title. As others have mentioned, those titles have become somewhat devalued in today's world -- especially if you are in a sales meeting with a large organization. Many purchasing agents at large organizations are bombarded by Founders/ CEOs/ Presidents visiting them all day. This conveys the image that a) your company is relatively small (the CEO of GM never personally sells you a car) and b) you are probably the most knowledgeable person in the organization about your product, but once you land the account the client company will mostly be dealing with newly hired second level staff. Monish recommends that Founder/ CEOs hand out a business card that has the title "Head of Sales" or "VP of Sales". By working in the Head of Sales role, and by your ability to speak knowledgeably about the product, you will convey the message that a) every person in the organization is very knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the product (even the sales guys) and b) you will personally be available to answer the client's questions over the long run. I've used this effectively many times myself.

Quite a broad question. Agencies and publicists that are experienced have learnt many things over the years, which will all play part of best practice. As a staring point, would suggest you think about the following: - Ensure your pitch is concise and to the point. Lead with what is most newsworthy to readers of the publication you are targeting - Be harsh. Consider if what you are sending them really news? - Rearsearch the journalist and tailor pitch to reference articles they have written or areas they have an interest in - Go to the right person. Don't sent an irrelevant story to the journalist. Make sure they actually write about what you are sending them - Be prepared. Have facts and information ready - Use the phone. Imagine how many emails they get each day! You're far better pitching on the phone, and talking over the news and then following up with tailored into based on their feedback If you get the approach wrong then your pitch is going to be sent to the junk folder and you simply won't get a reply or answer. Hope that's not too blunt! Hope it helps. Thanks.

Never launch before your value prop is clear. If your product is new and innovative you must pair it with affordability. If you have that even a buggy incomplete value prop will be preordered and otherwise welcomed. If your value prop is unclear you won't be able to efficiently edit and then re introduce much less price appropriately. Futuristic/new services often get priced out of the customers minds because it seems expensive or not really that useful. You avoid this by following my suggestion. #unthink

Really depends on the content and what you mean by content. You talking video, images, press releases? Need a bit more info to help with this one.

You really have to think about the objective. Why do you want to do it? Assume it is to drive traffic? Best way, is to focus on creating content that people want to read and share, then pushing out with paid support via social platforms, influencers and partners.

It depends on many factors. Are they willing to do it as a convertible note? If you're early stage the debt will be a burden if you don't have revenues in short order to repay it. 20% is extremely high and if you can't repay in revenues it could bankrupt you. Investors outside the U.S. Are not weird at all, in fact often very smart investors. But you have to get to know them first. In sum: how badly do you need the capital and do you think you can repay before it's due? If not you'll need to set repayment terms in case you don't hit your revenues. Just don't get stuck working to repay debt.

It sounds like you already have an MVP, awesome. Now you need some evidence that people want to pay for it. Make a landing page from your MVP which shows visitors its main exciting features. Have a link called 'Learn More', which leads to a form asking for user info (name, email, etc.). To make it even more attractive, you could tell them their first month's free, or 75% off when they 'sign up'. Data from this will give you a form of validation that will be useful for investors, it will give you a list of first clients, and it will give you some training in how to get the site into search results. Once you've got this, or some other form of evidence that it will work, start talking with investors. You should start by 'pitching' to just friends first. They don't have to be potential investors, it's just to get feedback. Then pitch it to strangers (maybe your neighbor, people from relevant Meetup groups, whatever), then to investors you're closest to (maybe you're connected to some on linkedin?), then to investors you don't know, etc. At each of these stages you'll be getting more and more confident about how to effectively promote your product, you'll be working out bugs, and you'll be perfecting your pitch to get the most interest. By doing it in steps you're not putting all your eggs in one basket, and you'll instead be increasing your chance of getting investment as your approach bigger and bigger investors. Some seed stage funds include First Round, Freestyle, Boldstart, Homebrew, etc. Send me a message for a more thorough list. To save time, find investors with portfolios that do not include any failed products similar to yours. Otherwise you'll be wasting time, and it's actually important to do all your fundraising in as short a time period as possible (it looks bad if it's drawn out too much). Also to save time, get in contact with the Partners at these funds. You can try going through companies that they've previously invested in. Best of luck, and let me know if you have any other questions, Lee

Hi, I've worked for years in business to business sales and consulting. You need to find out who works or makes decisions in a company in the area that your potential product could be useful, ie customer service. LinkedIn could be useful for this. Call them on the telephone. Don't e-mail. Open the conversation by asking for help, 'Hi, I'm wondering if you could help me find the person who would be responsible for customer service? I'm looking to get feedback on an innovative new idea I'm considering developing that may be useful to your company.' The most important thing you could ask them during the call is whether they've ever identified the problem that you're proposing to solve as an issue themselves. If they've never noticed, or don't care, then your new product will have a more challenging sales cycle since you'll have to do a lot of education. If they already know they have a problem, you'll need to act quickly because they may be already looking for a solution. Best of luck. David Barnett

Hi, I've spent years working in business to business sales and essentially, you're trying to sell these professionals on the idea of working with you. I also have a large referral network and I've systematized it such that its easy for me to manage rewards back to those who send me business. First off, what's in it for them? Are these professionals allowed to earn commissions or rewards from you in your location? Find out. If you can offer a referral fee to them for sending you business this can be nice. In my system I give people a choice of how they want to be thanked and its really appreciated. Secondly, is there any way their professional reputation could be damaged by sending people to you? Do you project the image and deliver the service that they believe complements their own? Thirdly, how easy are you to work with? Will referring a patient to you require them to pick up the phone? Send an e-mail or manage the contact in any way? The less work the better. In my system, referring professionals just fill in a simple web form and I then contact the client and take care of everything from there. I hope this helps. Arrange a call with me if you'd like to discuss specific details, I'd be happy to work with you to set up a system that works for you and is also easy to sell to the professionals you're trying to work with. Thanks David Barnett

Sometimes what happens, socially with older blogs is that they get picked up by a media writer, think Yahoo columns. They'll credit you and link back but won't even ask you. Maybe someone found it and posted on Reddit or tumblr. Because you have a picture of Gandhi and the title itself is kind of catchy, I wouldn't be surprised someone else shared it on Reddit or even tumblr where the reposts are SO easy, even if they don't get read people repost for someone else... If you have Googles Blogger you should be able to trace it down. Maybe conduct a G search based on date with that title... Unless you have analytics it would be hard to trace exactly. Maybe there is a software not even I am aware of. The question I would ask myself is instead is: Why did people share it. For that you don't have to trace so back. And the answers you get are way more valuable than you finding out who shared it first. #Unthink

I run my own sites in a network installation. You have the same possibilities to customize the sites but you will have the advantage that you can enable plugins network wide. But if you want, you can just enable a plugin per site. So as long as it's data stored in the database, you can customize whatever you want. So let the theme use all the benefits of the WordPress Customizer. What I did for my own sites is to have all plugins of WordPress.org still in the plugins folder and the code I wrote in special foders in mu-plugins. I wrote some custom logic to load the code. You can safely do quite a lot of things. The problem is when code can behave differently in different scenarios. So when you update a plugin, it can work good on one site but not on the other. However, I haven't experienced that myself. If you need more in depth help, then let me know.

Great question. Hi! My name is Humberto Valle, I'm an MBA growth strategist coach with years and exceptional experience. Your dilemma is not necessarily pricing, Airbnb might be a good place to belong but also consider that your ideal companies won't necessarily be looking for a nightly deal. Even if that is how you structure the rentals) Have you heard the term growth hacking? Well I'm not gonna sit here and tell you is a magical engineering solution that only programmers can pull off. The idea of growth hacking as we have established can relate to any measurable marketing approach. For some this might even be flyers. No joke! Flyers is not your solution tho. It seems to me that you need a set of databases set up enabling consumer search results. One approach to this is the 1800 flowers database model. There's a website listing with many server generated domain hosted websites linking back and forth to a single platform (yours) giving you higher search results regardless of geo. area. Granted this approach is not accomplished over night, we are talking a ou configuring a server that can pull/push content and create websites on demand sort of speak. You obviously need to be in relevant social media platforms such as Airbnb, Twitter for customer support, and Facebook for reviews. I don't see companies giving reviews on Yelp, so I'd stay clear of that one. It can work against you. If you like to chat more give me a call, id love to help.

I've gone down similar paths in the past. Here are your options: 1) Provisional Patent. if an implementation of their system to his new market would be patentable (i.e. using machine X to make donuts instead of jewelry), then you could file a provisional patent on the idea. Provisional patents are very informal and cheap. They can essentially be written on the back of a napkin, and filed for ~$100. They last for only a year, after which you have to convert them into a 'real patent', otherwise your idea will become open to the public to use. 2) An NDA. You could have them sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which would have wording in it that basically says, "I'm going to tell you something, and unless you have existing proof that you already had thought of that idea, then you're not allowed to use my idea without my consent". Sometimes the company will not want to sign an NDA because they may have discussed a lot of ideas without writing them down, and by signing your NDA, they'd legally lose the right to use one of those non-written-down ideas. But it's worth a shot. 3) Rely on trust. The way to make this more likely to work is if you are good friends with a big investor in their company, or something like that. Some situation in which, if they steal your idea, they'd be ruining their reputation with someone they care about (they probably don't care about pissing you yourself off). If you don't have such a connection, maybe you can form one (linkedin, etc.). If you'd like to discuss your options in more detail, incorporating actual experiences of mine, let me know, all the best, Lee

First, you need to talk to an accountant to work out those details so everything is handled legally and correctly. The answer depends a great deal on what kind of company you have set up. If you're an LLC then the profits get distributed to the owners based upon the percentage they own. The revenue first goes to the business to pay bills. Whatever is left over is considered profit. 15% of that profit would go to the investor and the rest would go to whoever owns the other 85%. Of course you can both choose to reinvest the money back into the business. For tax purposes that money would be considered profit to you personally, but the money stays in the business to help fuel growth.

Whenever shares (or options) are issued, the language is normally "fully-diluted shares"... and what that means is that you *authorize* the number of shares necessary for all potential [foreseeable] options to vest. You'll need to stop talking "%" and start talking in actual share numbers. Let's say the company has 1,000,000 shares, divided half between two founders. Then let's say a decision is made to "sell" or "trade away" 20% of the company. To do that, the founders don't lose shares — you create new ones. So the original million becomes 80%, which means you'll need to authorize 250,000 new shares. You can then sell 25,000 to the CFO for cash, let them earn up to 25,000 more, and distribute the other 8% to new hires over the coming months. If you do this 2% transaction all by itself, the math will be more annoying the next time you want to hire someone and grant stock options or whatever. In all cases, if you authorize shares, or issue options, and then they fail to vest (i.e. the CFO changes his mind and fails to earn the 1%), those authorized shares simply don't get issued to him, and that benefits all other shareholders proportionally. Does that make sense? It's only "8th grade algebra", but it can be rather confusing... even many founders, lawyers, and investors I know are still prone to getting tripped up here. Feel free to contact me directly for additional help if you like.

Hey there, I trust that your CRM is robust enough to trigger some workflows and automated steps. I would recommend you have an automated series of reminders to both your customer AND their respective relationship manager that fire as the client approaches their end of contract. To your internal staff, getting notified that a customer is opening/clicking on resources included in their reminder emails would be recommended, or if a client has NOT taken any action, to notify more than one member of your staff to ensure that these folks are not falling between the cracks. Additionally, monitoring and being notified of actions of the client, such as visiting your FAQ page or pricing page on your website provides helpful context for your sales team when reaching out. Again, I think it is just as important to nurture the client as they approach this date, they should really be able to see the value of working with you and make the decision to continue their partnership with you regardless of the contract. I'd love to help you more with this, let's set up a call if you have specific questions. All the best, -Shaun

Like any other industry, these surgeons (and their staff) attend regular training. Many of them are coordinated through a regional training organization; contact them and offer to host a free training course on how bariatric surgeons and grow their practice through online marketing. I'd be happy to offer more thoughts and suggestions, let's set up a call. All the best, -Shaun

Are you looking to blast an entire email list of, let's say, tech writers with a pitch? Or are you looking to get on a particular website like GeekWire or TechCrunch? Look up associations related to your targeted niche, you'll find all sorts of writers who are interested. Your question is rather vague, and -- if not handled correctly -- can lead to a real bad experience for the journalist, and, in turn, your chances of getting any coverage. I'd be happy to talk with your more about approaching these people strategically for the best possible results. All the best, -Shaun

I don't have a lot of experience directly with journalists, but in my experience not really. If one of them was interested but couldn't do it in the first place they would send the piece around the office to see if anyone else wanted it. At least that's how it's worked with talent agents and entertainers, and they're very similar process'