There is an awful lot of gate keeping in this sub and in people’s minds of what is being an entrepreneur.

Go to the grocery store and buy a case of water and a bag of ice, take them to a place where a lot of people are gathered and sell them for something around double the price that you paid for them.

Take your profits and buy twice as much water next time.

Rince and repeat until you have enough money to invest in something with a higher margin.

Once you have a bigger amount of money, get a couple of friends. You set them up with the water, they sell it, you get half the profits, they get half the profits. These guys don’t earn you as much money, but there are more of them.

Live with 9 roommates, and eat nothing but rice and beans, don’t spend money on anything, keep reinvesting it into the business, growing it, buying assets that make you money.

I make my living as a handyman. What I did when I was starting was advertise on my local Facebook page.

But, you need to be a part of that community, not just show up with your hand out. So you show up regularly and answer people’s questions. If you have a great supplier, post their picture on the page and tell people how they helped you. I also ran a few “contests” I asked the community who did the most for the community. My post became this giant “love in” for the people who were doing great things for the community. So big that someone reached out to me and offered to pay for a second hour of work. And they chose the person…

You want to establish yourself as a helpful person.

Don’t be cheap. When I raised my rates by 20 percent, I got rid of all the “price shoppers” you are far better off not dealing with people who just want the cheapest price. They will never be happy.

“diamonds” as a product are dying. Largely because young people are rejecting them. And largely this is because of the stigma attached to them. But also their grossly inflated price.

Do wholesalers care about human suffering? Probably not. But their customers do.

So maybe your campaign needs to be on insta instead of LinkedIn. Because that is where the end consumers are. But with the tag at the end “available from…” listing the retailers that stock your products.

Consider the original debeers diamond campaign. They invented the whole “you should spend a months salary on your engagement ring” and “diamonds are a girls best friend” (debeers partially funded the film)

You are going to have to think about reverse engineering that campaign to create demand for your products.

Get on LinkedIn. Start creating content especially content about the human suffering of the diamond trade.

Start connecting with wholesale suppliers to the jewellery industry. Don’t spam their inboxes but keep creating content that will help them to grow THEIR business by selling a product that isn’t awash in blood and human suffering.

No. Online betting is destroying families. If you take their money you are complicit.

Most cities have a start up community. I would find yours on LinkedIn and start showing up to meet ups. Don’t say anything about your access to capital. When you meet the right person with the right project, approach them.

B2b is all about long term relationships. I would be getting on LinkedIn and creating content to teach people how to not get ripped off by their Web developers.

Off hand, my biggest pet peeve is websites where I have to go through 5 different drop downs in order to find their fucking menu.

I had a young graphic designer go through my website and show me all the problems like inconsistent buttons and lines that do not line up that make it look like amateur hour.

LinkedIn is a community. “cold spamming” people is like handing out business cards at a funeral. Instead, work on building relationships with people and helping them to grow their business.

5 months is going to be no where near enough. With a business like this, you are going to be far better off doing it on weekends while keeping day job. Spend your evenings during the week creating content that will build your reputation and your weekends shooting.

If you quit your job now, you are far more likely to make decisions about your work that will damage your brand because you are desperate.

If I were young again and just starting out, I would be studying the following in no order of importance

Public speaking. I was a member of toastmasters for four years. If you are wanting to get funding, you are going to be spending a lot of time talking to people, get good at it.

Accounting. You don’t need to be good enough to do your own books, but accounting is it’s own language. You need to understand that language. I know 4 people who lost their businesses, because they trusted someone else with their accounts with no understanding themselves. Or consider that, in the last 10 years, a hundred million dollars has been embezzled from the not for profit sector, and those are just the ones that got caught.

Marketing : I have seen a number of businesses that have a great product or service, far better than the competition, but fail, or just get by, because they don’t have any knowledge of marketing. They are either not spending any money on marketing, or the far worse, spending it in the wrong places.

You will need enough understanding of marketing in order to do your own marketing in the beginning, and to talk to your marketing people once you can afford them.