You need a shareholders agreement which effectively acts as your insurance policy for these kind of eventualities. A lawyer will be able to draft an appropriate agreement according to the legal entity your business operates as. Before you start any venture you should have one drafted. Having it in black and white will allow you to sleep at night ;)

Either way, the success of your execution is dependent on the quality of your knowledge capital I.e. What you execute on. Getting out of the building may require a combination of skill sets which you may find more readily available in some places versus others. Ultimately your most important partner is your customer - execution skills you can get anywhere...

It depends on what vertical you are in. There are pointers available by industry. You can either define that future value based on internal data or external data. Either way, it depends on what you think you will be worth - financial 'thumb suck' models will only get you so far...

Interest in your box subscriptions doesn't mean you should play there. Your margins are too small to pass that cost onto the customer - because they are potentially paying more for the shipping than they are for your subscription box. That's a special set of undies! I would suggest spending more time on setting up a local operation where you can really compete on localized and contextually relevant value creation throughout the supply chain... instead of thinking about how to scale your business outside of the U.S. when on the face of it, there are simply no economies of scale in play at that price point.

This ultimately comes down to two things:

1) What's your vision / end game for this business
2) If you do scale your business... will it become more valuable or less valuable?

IMHO, you don't want to start an agency unless you want to enjoy the fruits of a negative cash cycle, dealing with pissed off clients on a daily basis and the very real probability of a difficult earn out period should you ever wish to sell the business.

So, do you want to sell it one day?

The fact that you're contemplating starting an agency means that you're probably offering a broad scope of services, and as a solo outfit... it's impossible to deliver 'everything' unless you consider outsourcing the work or starting an agency... hence your current predicament.

You can scale as an agency, but ultimately it doesn't mean you will make more money or provide a better service for your clients, and if you want a business you can sell in the future you probably don't want to start outsourcing or start an agency.

Sure, you can start an agency, but then you need to specialise in something if you want to scale it effectively and perhaps one day sell it.

The hardest part about being an entrepreneur / business owner...is to say the word NO.

Scale doesn't always = more profit.

This all comes down to your vision.

How you scale is by deciding on the service that you offer which creates the most value for your clients and which makes you the most money / profit.

Once you're there, develop SOP's which you can hand over to a sales team and or a team of resources that can deliver the work on your behalf.

You then spend the rest of your time selling your company and not the service itself.

You'll be happier for sure - you'll make more money (by scaling effectively) and if you do decide to sell you can... and without the hassle of earn out periods.

But again, this comes down to your vision :)

Good luck :)

This all depends on your budget.

But fundamentally... you have two options:

1) Buy media

Using AdMob or some other ad network provider

2) Generate buzz

These can include things like building a website for your app with some basic SEO running on it and perhaps a small media buy (budget restricted) using adwords

Then, contact app review sites - there are loads of them

Facilitate a JV partnership with other app owners in your niche / vertical.

Would suggest avoiding doing press releases - they just don't work very well.

There is a 3rd option, but sounds like you don't have a budget to work with and that is by working with an app marketing agency (e.g. app promo)

Good luck :)

You can find customers or sell products until you have a great story...

Hi there,

Well let's assume that you have 500 customers which you acquired via your podcast and sold them your consulting / coaching services. So because you have this customer base, then your job is not to find more customers ("having the phone ring") your job is to find more products / services for your existing customers to buy.

Now because you're a consultant (coach) - it's the same as being a freelancer - in other words your return on equity is low, because you can't leverage your time.

So by selling more products to your existing customers you'll be able to significantly drive the bottom line of your business.. and you'll be able to generate far more revenue in the long run.

Happy to chat further...

Try this:

1) Write a single page letter (or email) that describes not whats on offer but the sort of offer it is - i.e leave mystery to the question

2) Go to their website and find 6 people who might be in charge of answering the question (Senior VP of this, director of X, etc)

3) Print 6 letters and highlight one name on each letter and put them into 6 envelopes and write the highlited name on the front

4) Phone the company and ask the for mail room - and ask his name

5) Fedex the envelopes to the guy in the mailroom and request "please distribute" - it's his job to distribute them so he will

6) Each of the 6 letter will get delivered and when they open them they'll see the other names on the letters, so they have no recourse but to phone the other and find out who is going to deal with your letter - one of them will invariably contact you to find out what you're offering

This will save you tons of time spamming email boxes and cold calling - each time I've tried this it has worked

The question you need to be asking is: How do I change the business itself so that it gets more efficient?

The act of running your business has to make your funnel better - and this is what you need to figure out.

Without knowing the intricacies of your business it's hard to guess - but you need to evaluate the distribution of your customer base, because it could be that there is no clear path between the early adopters and the early majority across each of your value propositions - and this is why you're not growing. Happy to chat further