Ben LeeLead Gen Expert. Founded 2 agencies and exited
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Co-founded award-winning 8-figure design and development agency with 150+ employees and 4 offices around the world.


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Hey – I'm an entrepreneur with extensive experience trading stocks and crypto. Both of them are online broker platforms that will let you do the same basic things. Robinhood is branded and packaged as a disruptor and designed more for the digital native set, whereas Charles Schwab is a little more of a traditional online broker in the vein of E-Trade.

Yes, you own all shares of stocks you buy through either platform, and you're able to buy stocks, futures, and options on either one. Robinhood is a little more geared towards brand new investors, whereas Schwab has a fuller feature set. Robinhood also allows you to trade cryptocurrencies.

I'd personally recommend Schwab, but both platforms will allow you to trade, learn, and grow. If you have any more questions I'd be happy to set up a call. Good luck trading!


I haven't spent much time in the philanthropy world, but I've worked with a lot of digital product startups to help them refine their pitches and raise millions of dollars in funding, ranging from seed stage late-stage startups.

It sounds like you have two separate, but related, questions here:

1. How to make money from a free directory site
2. What you need in order to raise money to build the site

For the first question, there are many ways to monetize a free-to-use digital product. You can charge for advertising slots on the platform, collect and sell user data, set up affiliate links for revenue sharing, use a freemium model... really the options are endless. It ultimately depends on your target user.

For the second question, the answer is really that it depends. It could be, but looking at what you're written, I'm unclear on what your differentiator is. Why will people use your site as opposed to another one? Is it simply that you would be the biggest after having built the site? Why should investors go with you as opposed to another entrepreneur? What's your plan to attract traffic and users?

From just what you've written here, I don't think this is enough to raise money – but if you've got a more thorough plan or you have some other differentiator or key advantage things could look different.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like to set up a call to discuss this further. Either way, wishing you luck!


Press release sites have always been so-so for me. I've used PR Newswire in the past and have had success with getting the release picked up. If it's a well-written press release with an interesting hook, you can definitely get traction. The question is what is the traction for and does it actually convert into sales.

So I'd say it depends on your goal – if all you care about is eyeballs and your press release is good, go for it. But make sure you've thought about how best you can spend your time/money to make sure there's not a better outbound approach you could be taking.


There are so many answers to this question, but really it depends on what the market is. The first question to ask yourself is, where do your users (both kinds of profile) already hang out? Where do they live online?

Maybe there are certain social networks, certain forums, certain publications. Go there first.

Even more critically, the best way to growth hack for something like this is to take an experimental mindset. Choose 3 or 4 different user acquisition techniques and run a small, time-bound test to see which one performs best. Then, ask yourself why this method outperformed the others. Take that knowledge and choose a few more methods and test them. Rinse and repeat.

It will be high effort at first, but you'll learn fast. It's always better to just start and get your hands dirty than spend much time trying to find the 'best' strategies.


I cofounded a development agency that's grown to over 150 employees, so I know this topic intimately.

First off, you're on the right track. Even recognizing that you want to get yourself out of the minutiae puts you way above most founders. What you need to do is learn to delegate. The trouble is, that's a lot harder than it sounds.

It sounds like right now you're wrapped up in doing a lot of daily tasks. That's a natural impulse for a founder – after all, you want things to be done right.

But here's an exercise I'd recommend: make a list of every single task you have to get done within the course of a day. Everything on your to-do list. Then, circle every item on the list that only you are capable of doing – so only circle the items that no other person could do.

Chances are, you'll circle very few, if any tasks. Now for all the items that aren't circled, write the names of anyone else who could do the task next to it. Then, pick a person and delegate each task. It's that simple!

Delegation is hard at first, but it's vital if you want to grow. Once you free yourself from minute detail work, you're free to think and act like an agency head and see the bigger picture.

It's amazing how much clearer things get when you can give yourself more room to breathe. Trust me, you'll thank yourself for it.


I think a better way to think about it would be to choose based on your own skillset. Blogs can succeed or fail in any subject matter, but what sets you apart is the value you provide. Choose a topic that you're most knowledgeable about and that you can provide a unique perspective on.

And, even more important, don't limit yourself to blogging. It's a lot easier to go viral on TikTok right now than it is to go viral with a blog post – so by all means start the blog, but amplify it by repurposing your content for other platforms.

If you write a great blog article on a DIY subject, you can repurpose that into a TikTok instructional video and link back to the blog. That way you're amplifying the reach of both your platforms and doubling your chances of getting traffic.


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