Thanks for sharing.

TLDR: Use the copyright, trademark, and patent office to protect your intellectual property like people have been doing since 1836.

Once I went full time in my business I hired a CPA (accountant) to meet with and review numbers and tax payments quarterly.

They can help you setup something like quickbooks, teach you how to log income and expenses, and read the reports.

As a business owner you’ll eventually need to learn all this stuff so you might as well start reading up on it, get some accounting books, and cut your education time down.

But it can take years to learn, having someone who does this available to you hourly when you need them is the way.

Expect to pay $100 - $250/hr depending on experience.

Also, it never hurts to pay yourself as little as you can live on for as long as possible.

Despite having a successful business I lived on a college kids expenses for 10+ years after college. This allowed me to have money to invest in retirement, stocks, and grow the business as needed.

vs lifestyle inflation.

I highly recommend going that route if you do well delaying gratification and don’t compare yourself with others constantly.

Keeping your lifestyle in check makes running your business much easier, then one day it will be very clear you can start to open up the wallet more if you want. Longer you wait the fatter the wallet will be though.

Based on the relationship you have with the owner that’s also in both businesses would it be easy for you to sell out of the agency and truly get out completely?

Or, is it one of those things where they would still try and pressure you or you would have some obligation providing your skill set over there even after you sold.

If you can make a clean break, and you truly don’t like doing that type of work - then I can understand selling your share. When you have work you really like doing then life’s too short to do the work you hate.

In general due to similar people being invested and owning each biz it might be tricky to remove yourself and still be in good standing? I don’t know.

Also, if you don’t see the agency 10xing in 3 to 5 years then you’ll likely do a lot more work you don’t like for not much more revenue and not really that valuable of a biz.

I know real people who are old and gray who spent all their entrepreneurial years paying their employees and not paying themselves even a decent wage. They dealt with all the stress, all the sacrifice, all the problems and were paid less than their employees. In the end, they sold but not for anything worth celebrating over. Their entrepreneurial success measured by rational outsiders would say they were a failure.

If you’ve busted your ass on the same business and concept for many years with only failures and no glimpse at a pathway to huge success then it’s time to Google Sunk Cost Fallacy and then move on with your life.

You’ve likely learned a ton you could try and use at a different endeavor but sounds like you should and that you’re ready to move on… getting a job could be your next permanent step or maybe just until you find your next entrepreneurial passion.

If it’s a home appliance like you mentioned work on all the marketing, slick brochure, and if it’s something that doesn’t exist today… go to your nearest rich neighborhood and talk to some people about the product.

Could tell them you’re thinking about “repping” this product but don’t even know if people would buy it, do they have 5 minutes to hear about it, to get their feedback before you decide if you should sign on as a sales …

Get real feedback from your target market first before building or making anything. Maybe during this process you can collect a $1000 deposit for their order :P

But in general, I do high ticket service sales. Usually it helps if people are actively searching for problems this device can solve for them.

If you have to tell them about their problem and that this solves it… it’s probably not a painful enough problem.

Only tip I’ve got is that people buy the end solution or results. Any real business with money to spend not looking for a free solution is willing to pay real money for the result, not a script they have to figure out how to use to get results.

Sell a service, use your tool behind the scenes for them. Or make it so they just give you money and results happen.

People willing to setup scripts and do technical work are either a) technical and not likely to pay for a script they could write or b) cheap looking for a free script

Pivot how your client gets their results.

Ouch. That’s a tough position to already be in debt with a life line of money that you might be able to get if only you could extend your debt another month or two. Could be recipe for real disaster.

Is this consulting/services or product build and sales?

Digital agency: web design, app development, marketing.

Sector: 80% manufacturing/industrial clients.

Tip: What works for someone may not work for you. What worked in the past for someone may not work today.

I lead my team by knowing a ton about everything we do… I can design, I can program, i can come up with marketing strategy and run them. I’d say my company is successful because I’m able to train team members and pick up slack if something needs to get done or identify what needs to happen and make sure it gets done. For me, that works. I could tell you that’s a key to success, learn a skill, get great at it, start a business around it.

However, I know a guy who has a firm similar in size who is a good salesman but knows little about how the services of his company are delivered. He doesn’t know anything about the details of the work yet he’s also able to run a reasonably successful shop because he’s been able to at least know enough to hire the right people around him.

Another tip, it never hurts to know people. Get good at networking, attend local events, go to chamber of commerce mixers, join toastmasters, get involved with volunteer work, get on a board of an organization. Having a big network helps you connect others and can help others connect with you.

Read. Go to your local library, get a free library card and go to the business, money or other non-fiction sections. If you’ve never been you’ll likely shit yourself on the amount of knowledge you can pick up and walk out with. Build a habit of learning. You’ll learn way more from experts spending months writing a book than I have from someone’s information regurgitation on TikTok

Right now your creative scope is way too broad. “What problem do I encounter daily”

Many businesses start because someone had a problem at their job/work and wanted to improve it and made something.

But where you are in life and school you maybe not naturally run into those often at this phase of life.

Narrow your scope: What can I due to improve this pencil. What bothers me when I turn my tv on to watch it What about this lamp annoys me When I reach into my fridge is there anything that could be improved about how i use the inside.

Deliberately narrow your lens and scope.

What do I hate about owning and wearing tee shirts…

Who knows, you might stumble on something at least good enough for your class!

If you’re looking to learn to code and build something you could look at Ionic Framework and watch video tutorials and do some online coding classes.

It’s not the shortest route, but a lot of people love learning to code.

Shortest route is finding someone who codes, document what you want. Have them make it, pay them.

It’s funny people are upvoting or downvoting comments on this post.

How is anyone going to know if tiktok or Pinterest or whatever will work you have no idea what this person is selling.

But yes… Google per click costs are indeed more expensive than 3, 5, 10 years ago. Some services and products can be ridiculously competitive and you have to have great conversion to leads and marketing and sales process to make it the whole thing work.

Google keeps adding features to help you spend more money unwisely. They also now have reps who email and call you to help convince you to spend more money.

Yes, negative keywords and turning off all the shit content network and broad matching all helps.

But no disputing that it’s way more expensive for everything than it used to be.

I assume what you’re after is how to move upstream and get more valuable clients.

When I talk to people about this I use this simple mental exercise. There are solo startups or people who are doing a side hustle who just don’t have money yet and they’re a fine fit for DIY or a cheap contractor.

However, there are TONS of businesses out there with 15+ employees, even that is a pretty small business. 15 plus employees * average salary of $5,000/mo and that business is spending $75,000/mo just on salary to existing employees.

Now, this business wants to get an increase in traffic, leads, conversions and sales. They need to think of their website as part of their sales and marketing team.

Sure, you could pay $5,000 one-time and get an okay new website.

But what if you invested $5,000/mo in what is a sales and marketing employee that works 24/7 for you. What could $5,000/mo investment in getting more leads and sales do for their business?

This shifts their mindset a ton. People want to buy things. People love to buy expensive things. People want the best.

Maybe you sell them a website they pay off over 3 months at $5,000/mo.

Maybe you get them in a digital marketing agreement that the first 3 months is for a new website and the next 8 months of that year is for marketing investment.

People selling cheap things will never get big clients. They can try and justify it’s better, and maybe they are able to make a better one. But REAL, PROFITABLE businesses want to spend money on things.