it waas a small team over 3 months
But yeah, still is

I have only ever worked with Angels (older/mid-aged dudes with some money).

ahvpaykbaew The partner created a poor perception by making cold calls or telling the clients something negative during the call?

Cold calling too early can be a problem, like if you are still getting product market fit and then you burn through all your leads.

Partner there was one of the first clients who we basically collaborated with on drawing traffic to the product under their name (that was a precaution on our side, to not really deteriorate the brand perception).

Tl;dr they came up with a really poor and not enticing offer for potential new customers (it's a B2B2C SaaS, cold cals were from B1 to multiple B2s). It came off as stingy, B2 had to pay for retail cases, initial items batch, etc, etc. That created sort of "these guys are jerks" vibe across some parts of the community. This resulted in a situation when on 3rd month people would be very sceptical because B2s that enrolled 1st month were displeased with the initial offer and experience.

(B2's community is very small, about 2000 members of business owners across the country)

We were trying to fight hard to change the terms our B1 offered, but mostly in vain. That was a big learning moment in a complex partnerships when you can easily end up between a rock and a hard place.

I see, thanks for sharing

whazqjojngllajwjg You got a good point that 5k isn't everyone in the world (<@USA56NCKE> my TAM would be pretty big here). And about if I honestly expect that, I really don't know. They say 5k at 45% of $19.99 that's $45000. Ofc they say "5k" to be safe. That's why I figured $20k or $30k. It's probably gonna be more like $10k xD But yeah it's a gamble... I just figure that they have to be confident they'll get a big cut (if they really put a copywriter, and a designer or w/e to work on it (probably made up to justtify the cut)). What I mean is that I don't think they'd take much trouble for less than that. Fuck I think I'm just gonna pass, this is already taking too much of my time. Should be focused. Subscriptions ftw 😄

Uhhhgggggg... my new favorite cancellation message is, "make it work"

Maybe add “because I’m a troll” to the multiple choice

the other day I got a 1 star review just because my app on the appstore starts with "e" instead of "E"

How did scggfmefll initially bootstrap this Slack channel/community? In other words, how did he charge an entrance fee when there was no value in joining at the start? (just curious)

Yep

You also initially started charging because you had a lot of spammers join, right?

tfrjmbnhfwhxypy that's the explanation he gives, but I suspect he also (mainly?) just wanted to start making money ASAP. The whole point of his 12-startups thing was to stop wasting time on projects that people weren't willing to pay for.

Honestly, the payment filter is good.

Closed, moderated, pay-for-entry communities are the future, I concur

good god 100% that ovfnbujboeizlptdcmw

I’m very much in favour of the free-market. But if you want to ask me how to skip six years in corporate before launching an online business like mine, I’m going to tell you to fuck off.

Precisely

I feel like when this started there was a lot of self made people who did it and have now left so the ratio of people with income VS those who don't is now much higher.

I don’t value corporate. Or social hierarchies. But i have zero patience or respect for people expect a free lunch; or who want me to help them skip the graft I put in to build my business.

Can’t you just do it for me? For exposure?

The digital nomad reddit is now like 80% backpackers who only care about saving money.

‘Why doesn’t UpWork have amazing job opportunities?’

• Because people with impressive credentials and history get approached directly for awesome jobs, dipshit.

Don't bother posting there if you are even moderately successful.

I'm a fan of Upwork, I was able to get a start there when no one else would give me a shot (for remote programming), and now I'm getting approached on LinkedIn for remote jobs.

I remember when I started and people would ask me how I did it, so many people got disappointed when I told them it took 6 years of building a company.

It’s not their fault you took so long.

I should just tell them I took out a loan for 100k and just took as many Instagram photos as I could.

I just signed an Influencer contract with a major technology company, ironically.

well, this last bit of conversation makes me feel less dumb. Been working on my sideproject for 3 years until I could quit my freelancing last year to fully work on it and now I am finally seeing the light (and finally sort of able) to start working from anywhere for long periods

haha

upwork is going the enterprise route guys and ofcourse there's a Lot of shit, but then there's a lot of Fortune 500 hiring therein too - having worked with 35+ clients and now with upwork itself, they have to correct a lot of stuff, but the Top 1-10% easily go above in 6-7 figures income

I’ve been on Upwork for almost 3 years and I love it 🤷‍♂️

Yeah I don't think it's fair to group Upwork in with Fiverr and the ilk

As an employer, I’ve never had good experiences with upwork.. it’s like all the others in my view.. despite offering full rates, I end up getting crap people who don’t even really try.

I have some Ukrainians I hired off it that are excellent but I had a ton of filtering questions.

When I was sourcing devs for a couple of jobs I had to ask to start the proposal with a list of dev stacks required from the candidate. 6\50 managed to do it. 12%

Ya you have to ask filtering questions. I think you run into problems when you have non technical hiring managers because they can't detect bs

ldxxkuiuqk how strict were your filtering questions, checks for old testimonials, live video quick interviews before hiring etc?

nmmgpwoq I had at least one person where the interviewee was not the person I got. Which is pretty disappointing. But more generally, I felt I asked decent filtering questions. And who the heck hires a full time position without interviewing them before hiring? That’s unthinkable for me

My experience was more like “ seems like there is another candidate with lower rates who is spoiling the clients”joy

there always will be mate, you have to decide to not play the low price game, simple 🙂

I joined Toptal, clients look decent. Rates are
Good. Lost my faith in Upwork :(

I’ve also had success with hiring Ukrainians on Upwork

did you guys collect email addresses from them? I hate Upwork and would prefer to hire directly

Btw, the hidden economy of upwork is when clients invite you and not when you bid for jobs - so of course eat frogs first and then grow
But toptal is awesome, good luck!

I usually hire them initially through Upwork and then transition over to a direct relationship, once the initial engagement is complete.

Hmm, yeah. I was not really motivated to try Upwork deeper as a freelancer. I use it a lot as a customer though. As a freelancer I was invited and people basically asking for free work. I was trying to help hoping they would take the bait if good will and hire me for some paid hours but they never came back 😂

Hey, I was wondering where you all set your businesses ‘location’/address on Google maps? I am a fully nomadic coach and my clients are from all around the world. My business is registered in Finland but I’m not really ever there so that seems to make little sense.. 🤔

xgmyaxtt I don't have a google maps entry, since I'm not connected to an actual area

I’m guessing your physical location isn’t that important to your clients either? Why bother with business location in the first place? ps. nice to see a fellow Finn here, I think there are all 3 of us

Good to know UJT9E93EYbr />
Haha that’s a good question <@U03FHDBMD> 😂 I know I have to go back for a few months 2020-2021 so figured I’ll start there and then explore other options after I leave ‘permanently’. But yeah, Finland is definitely not the best country to set up a business for sure haha….

yeah, I used to own a consulting business incorporated in finland, now that I’m in singapore my corp+personal taxes combined are about 60% lower

Yeah, I’m going to look into that at some point definitely. Currently still building the foundation for my consulting/coaching business so I am merely trying to make sure I pay taxes somewhere where I have people who can receive mail for me 😂

ah, ok. But if you aren’t going to be in finland for more than 6mo in 2020-2021 I’d suggest you’d start looking into limited tax liability things (rajoitettu verovelvollisuus) now as it’s the most problematic part in optimising your nomadic setup

That’s a good tip, I definitely will 👍 I was also a sole trader in the UK last year so had to dip my toe in that pool a bit but still trying to unravel that mess with the two tax authorities.. 😂

yeah, either you need to be out of finland for current years + 3 years after that or setup a personal tax residency somewhere else, if you have questions when you start looking into it in more detail feel free to PM me, I’ve helped a couple of people in similar situations after doing it myself

Cool thanks I will! 🙂

My business is registered to the last place I was actually living, which is in the heart of San Francisco, making it great for picking up clients in SF. They send you a postcard with a code to your registered address in order to verify that you are there. You could theoretically set it to any place where you could get that postcard or a friend could get it and read you the code. Hope that helps.

Thanks! jvtmhejreb that really helps 🙂 So I need to figure out whether to get that or not I suppose and where it would make sense if it does 🙂

note GMB now has a list of all PMBs in the US and will refuse to send to it

Good to know, thanks ofughnprfc 🙂

+1skin-tone-2

vilojjrpibizbnbdd are we moving to Singapore? 😂

I don’t reside in SG but incorporated there. You need to figure out a good combo for peronal and corporate tax which usually means they are in 2 different countries. The personal tax residency is the trickier part

🤣