I started off the day with a successful follow up call for a sales meeting. Another tip of advice for entrepreneurs… I’m sure I said this many times… but following up is important. If you don’t follow up you can lose a sale just because of that. I lost a few sales early on because I didn’t follow up correctly. Next is learn how to follow up correctly. Sometimes I wait a few days via email, but then if its more than 3 days… Call them!!! Just an important tip. This was a good follow up because just as I called, he said, “I was just about to call you.” Good stuff for me, which means the client is still interested.
Another thing I am currently working on is a logo. Your logo really says everything about your company. People are very visual now-a-days. People can tell by a logo, how your company is, the company’s personality, work environment, how professional they are, etc. You can just tell a lot of things from a logo. Colors too! There are certain colors for logos that give off certain psychological effects. But anyway… so I am getting my logo done from fiverr.com. So my experience on Fiverr has not been great so far, which is fine… because on fiverr you can get a logo for $5. Some sites you can host a contest for $50 and have people submit designs. Or you can go to 99designs and get a bunch of other designs for like $300+. Or you can hire a freelancer, get a friend to do it, etc. As a lean startup my first option was go with one of my team members. So I asked my creative director, Chris. He didn’t do that well at it. So we went to Fiverr for $5 and picked a designer, submitted what we were looking for… and the results… not that great. So you can email back and get a fixed design… I emailed back and said this is totally not what I was looking for.. he emailed back and we tried to get a design done, then he shot me an idea, and then sent the re-do… not good again. Then he mentions… let’s not make this hard since it is only $5. My response in my head was… if you want this good review do a good job… since the designs I kept getting looked like they were made within 5 minutes. $1 a minute is a good pay rate buddy… So I am displeased and I am going to be smart and keep asking for revisions until he decides he will no longer accommodate. Why you ask? Because I am the customer, and this guy sucks. I read some great reviews and expect great results, but these literally look like he is spending a minute on it. He picks a font… 30 seconds. Changes the color… 30 seconds. Adds 4 triangles in the right colors. 30 seconds… CRAP. What am I paying for? But anyway… I am going to keep asking for revisions till its done right or I’ll just write a bad review like the guy deserves… if he can make a good design… I’ll give him a good review. Just a lesson in customer service and quality of work. Give your customers good quality work!
Last main thing I did today was investor appointment setting. I took my list of 30+ investors and started contacting them. If they weren’t interested, I asked if they knew someone who would be or some sort of lead… which did pay off. Another buddy told me to post a Facebook status… so I did… I got about 8+ responses. Then I proceeded to email the people and all this stuff. Some people asked me for business plans, which goes against what I learned in my UCLA class, but oh well. I actually got nervous because I had a few business majors ask for information, and they were asking some good questions, and I don’t want to make a fool of myself… So I got nervous, but I sent them the business plans and executive summaries anyway. Sometimes I kind of get worried when I send someone a business plan since they are not signing a non-disclosure agreement or anything, so I added a confidential note at the bottom of my emails. I also have a confidentiality thing on the front page of my business plan. If any marketing people asked me for the business plan, I kinda said no because I see them as potential competition, well for certain marketing people at least. But yea… I learned in class that if you have your idea, the more that you have done on your business, the more ready you are to implement and carry out your business idea that people cannot take your idea. The good thing is that I know my idea so well, and how my company will be that, I really don’t think anyone can replicate it from a business plan until they see what I am really doing. So I need to be in business first for anyone to really try to copy my idea. But people aren’t ready for this yet… or no one really has an idea of my future plans for the company and what I plan on getting into. Its more than a marketing company, I can tell you that. But anyway… yea I had a lot of success with responses, sent them some info. Tomorrow I will follow up and lets see if we can get any investors… This microloan approval thing needs to hurry up though. Just saying. Oh and I did set up some appointments to pitch to people. So we’ll see how this goes too. Making progress….
