Being an entrepreneur requires a lot of different personality traits. You mentioned having lots of ideas and being creative, which is what most people associate with being an entrepreneur. What I've found is that being creative and having great ideas may be well suited if you want to be an invent...
My first startup was exactly in this space. We topped out at $500K/year before the 2009 recession trashed our client roster. I'd be happy to discuss what worked for us.
Great situation you have found yourself in! Good for you! What your friends are doing and putting you through is common. When I have given out shares I calculate several things: 1. time they will be involved in the company. 2. the value they provide in the scalability of the business - not th...
Hello, I am not too sure on the US postal services. But 1 option could be to find a fulfilment partner in the regions you are looking to target and ship a box of your best selling lines (via recognised carrier) and then when the sales come in fulfill locally. For example in the UK, the package ...
There are several ways to leverage an existing email list to get more email addresses and/or customers. First, I'd make sure that your emails to these folks are optimized for sharing. Include a call-to-action at the bottom to share the content/product/offer with their friends by posting to socia...
It's great that you have a ton of experience in sales and business growth, and this will likely boost your credibility in many ways. However, startups are often looking to hire folks who can be extremely agile and switch to a new strategy as soon as they learn that the current one isn't working. ...
I would reach out directly, especially to some of the gaming companies who have got this process down to a fine art. Network on LinkedIn and you'll be surprised how helpful some of these folks will be, especially in the nordics where there is a very open culture of sharing , even in some of the b...
I've heard really good things about Ruby Receptionists - http://www.callruby.com/. The should be able to cover all the needs you outlined. - mike
Xero's subscription model helps them grow sustainably. They have trained and positioned Xero experts around the globe. The experts serve a region and sign up subscribers underneath them. By targeting professionals who may already have a client base that is in Xero's target market (for example, CP...
There are good approaches for Elance/Upwork/oDesk if you approach the job req. correctly. There are also private agencies. I've hired account reps more often via virtual assistant agencies directly than from Elance and it's ilk, but many times I'll use that platform to isolate good candidates and...