It’s opinion time … I was flipping through my Twitter feed when I saw Justin Jackson post this update: Start and ship something this week. — Justin Jackson (@mijustin) August 18, 2014 Which leads me to ask the question … If you had a banana gun to your head, what would you create and ship this week? Let the group know in our comments section below.
I was riding with Quincy yesterday, a driver for the ride-sharing service Uber, and we got to talking about his day. What he said absolutely floored me: Quincy drives Uber 7 days per week for a total of 16 hours per day Of course, this led to quite a few questions from me: You really work every day of the week? How does your body physically handle 16 hour work days? Do you have a significant other? Because I’m sure that he/she does not love your schedule 🙂 Quincy’s story surprised me so much that I actually sent a tweet from the cab: Just met an @uber driver who works 16 hour days, 7 days per week and grosses $107k+ per year #wow blog post coming — Mike Krass (@mikekrass) August 14, 2014 A tweet that was favorited by sharing economy proponent Jeremiah Owyang: Hey @jowyang you hear about Uber driver who grosses $107k+ annually? Sharing economy at its best … Link: https://t.co/xQbTzLEhwb — Mike Krass (@mikekrass) August 14, 2014 We’ll get to the sharing economy conversation later in this blog post. First, let me tell you what Quincy shared about his experience driving for Uber. Here is what Quincy told me about his decision to drive Uber: “I used to work three part-time jobs and still made half as much as I do driving Uber now” That line totally blew me away. Quincy was working at San Francisco International Airport, for Google and had a third part-time job to help pay the bills. So what happened when he started driving Uber? “Uber let’s me set my own hours. I work when I want, for however long I want and take breaks whenever I choose. Not only that, but I’m set to make 6-figures this year!” Quincy also mentioned that the money he’s earning from Uber is “absolutely addictive” “I’m getting paid for all the hard work I put in every day, and it’s all completely on my own terms. Uber gives me more freedom than any other job I’ve ever had and pays me way more than I could ever earn working two or three jobs like I used to. How can you not be in love with that?” Which made me think: How is the sharing economy changing the working class? The Sharing Economy in one infography : http://t.co/316A3GJEyT pic.twitter.com/N2mnszQlY5 — FABERNOVEL (@FABERNOVEL) July 21, 2014 Before companies like Uber and Air BnB existed, assets like your apartment or care used to be a *debit* on your expense report every month when you weren’t using them. Enter: the Sharing Economy. A term coined for companies like Uber, Lyft and Air BnB, the sharing economy is the ability to share your possessions, or assets, and turn these assets into revenue generators instead of letting them sit idly by when you aren’t using them. Which leads me to ask the question: Is Quincy’s story an early peak at how the “average joe’s” and working class people of this country will begin to change the way they pay the bills? If the answer is yes, then what will happen as middle-class jobs continue to disappear and that crowd moves up in the world to earning 6-figure salaries driving for companies like Uber or Lyft? Would love your thoughts in the comments section below: What will the sharing economy do to the middle...
Lately, I’ve been curious how effective Kickstarter is at raising money. I mean, if some guy named ‘Zack Danger Brown’ can raise more than $55,000 to (and I quote) “make potato salad because I’m hungry” is this really a serious platform for entrepreneurs to turn to when they need to raise funding and build a customer base? Luckily for me I know Aaron Hallerman, Founder of Lexell Watches (and most recently Vincero Watches), a childhood friend of mine who turned to Kickstarter to raise more than $221,000 for their first venture (Lexell Watches) and is at it again with Vincero Watches campaign on Kickstarter that has raised more than $123,000 to date (August 15 publish date). I chatted with Aaron earlier today asking a few tips about raising money on Kickstarter … … and his advice was so solid that I couldn’t help but share it with my readers. Here are some of the top tips that Aaron shared with me. Tip #1: Mine Your Own Network Aaron mentioned that his team wanted to avoid “spamming people” with the Lexell Watches campaign. There’s only so many times you can say “PLEASE BUY MY STUFF” before everybody gets annoyed with you With that being said, Aaron mentioned that his team tapped into their own networks and asked for really simple things such as: Share this campaign with your Facebook friends (one click share) Reach out to your network at least 30 days before your Kickstarter campaign kicks off Tip #2: Build Up Your Network Before Launching Kickstarter For the Vincero Watches campaign, Aaron noted that they spent a solid 2 months collecting email addresses of interested customers and pulled in more than 2,000 names. Learning from their first campaign with Lexell Watches, Aaron mentioned that 60 days wasn’t even enough prep time up front: they really wanted to spend more time collecting the names of those early adopters. It’s critical to build up your email database of early adopters. Those are going to be your first customers and you want as many of them as possible. Tip #3: Show, Don’t Tell Eventually, buyers are going to want to see the product. Aaron’s team spent their 60 day build up period producing product videos, taking photography and networking with journalists to show them how awesome and unique their watches were. That being said, the “SHOW, DON’T TELL” mantra comes into play here: Buyers need to connect with your product early and often! Tip #4: Prepare to Fight for Space Kickstarter has changed quote a bit in the past 6 months: It is crazy crowded and everyone is fighting for position on the homepage as well as being selected as a ‘staff pick’ Staff picks go out to millions of people on Facebook and sit on the front page of the website, giving your product tons of exposure. Prepare to fight for premium position by mining your network, contacting Kickstarter and driving as much traffic as humanly possible to the Kickstarter page. Some Closing Words of Advice Aaron mentioned a few other things that were helpful: Kickstarter tends to have much higher conversion rates that e-commerce stores and websites. Take advantage of that. Using Kickstarter comes with a 9% fee on all money raised, so make sure to budget correctly as they take a cut of your funds. Kickstarter themselves takes 5% for using the site while Amazon payments takes 4% for powering the payments aspect of the site. Any Questions for Aaron? Drop them in the comments section and I’ll have him weigh in on a follow up post. Aside from being the CEO at MKG Media Group, Mike is a dark beer aficionado with a healthy appetite for travel and pushing personal boundaries. A proud graduate of Washington State University, Mike currently calls San Francisco...
This post is part of the How to 100 article series; 100 word snippets of advice on how to grow your small business. Receive email updates the second new advice is published by clicking here It’s importance to set the pace of your companies pulse Prior to starting my own company, all I knew at work was GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! I moved fast, broke lots of things, and then moved faster to fix them again (which I always did). In the past two and a half years of running my own small business, I’ve learned a lot from an old saying: Measure twice. Cut once. Taking the time to slow down, evaluate options and then move forward confidently with the best one has been an invaluable ability to learn. Learning how to measure twice and cut once has helped me … Remember to make time for team building conversations, lunches and activities Develop a culture that rewards working smarter, not necessarily working longer or harder Set boundaries between my professional and personal life (not easy to do for an entrepreneur!) Take some time out of your busy day next week to measure twice and cut once: Promise yourself to work smarter, not harder. Enjoying this advice? Click here to receive email updates the nano-second new advice is published on the How to 100 blog. Mike Krass | CEO MKG Media Group Aside from being the CEO at MKG Media Group, Mike is a dark beer aficionado with a healthy appetite for travel and pushing personal boundaries. A proud graduate of Washington State University, Mike currently calls San Francisco home. Twitter // Google+ //...
This post is part of the How to 100 article series; 100 word snippets of advice on how to grow your small business. Receive email updates the second new advice is published by clicking here Do you know how much your time is worth? As our marketing agency closed out the calendar year, we took some time to reflect on tasks or projects that were necessary for our business to operate but quite mundane and time consuming. A few examples included: Simple data aggregation across multiple spreadsheets (i.e. copy/pasting massive amounts of data) Day-to-day bookkeeping We kept asking ourselves: Are these tasks really worth our time? Ultimately, the answer to many of our necessary but mundane and time consuming tasks was NO; they weren’t worth our undivided time and energy. Most importantly, these were not profitable ways to use our time. With that in mind, here is the exercise we went through to help maximize our time and energy: Step One: Write down all the tasks you perform over the course of the week as well as how much time it takes to complete them Step Two: Review this list the following week and circle or highlight tasks that are necessary for business operations but quite simple and mundane Step Three: Write down the process to complete the highlighted tasks so there is a clear start-to-finish instruction manual Step Four: Time to outsource. Find a part-time hire or intern in your local area or assign the work to an individual out of country. Be patient; it will take a few weeks to get the process really dialed in. Enjoying this advice? Click here to receive email updates the nano-second new advice is published on the How to 100 blog. Mike Krass | CEO MKG Media Group Aside from being the CEO at MKG Media Group, Mike is a dark beer aficionado with a healthy appetite for travel and pushing personal boundaries. A proud graduate of Washington State University, Mike currently calls San Francisco home. Twitter // Google+ //...