Boston Young Entrepreneurs Recap

This past Tuesday, I gave a presentation about The 42nd Estate at the monthly business plan meeting of the Boston Young Entrepreneurs. There was a pretty solid turnout (I’m a terrible judge of these things but I’d say at least 30 people were in attendance) and a ton of awesome feedback.

What I love about Boston Young Entrepreneurs meetings is that you get a broad cross section of business owners. There were people there from real estate, technology, banking, law, liquor brewing, government, non-profits and other fields. You really get a diversity of feedback that would be tough to replicate elsewhere.

Feedback from the Boston Young Entrepreneurs

Some of the actionable feedback I received was:

• Raise rates.

We’re a bit overwhelmed with projects currently and customers have been satisfied so it’s an ideal time to raise rates. We were worried we’d lose business with higher rates but it may actually increase the number of customers due to increased confidence and image quality.

• Expand into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Management).

 
We’ve found our projects arrive in bunches, so SEO could potentially provide additional constant revenue stream to balance out the irregular revenue streams from SMC (Social Media Consulting) and freelance writing.

• Provide case studies.

 
We’ve had some success implementing our strategies for clients and could increase our revenue if we provided proof of this success. It would also help better explain exactly what we do.

• Obtain market research (possibly for free from college libraries).

 
A perfect example of not applying your own advice to your own company. We’ve performed market research for our clients and emphasized it during strategy creation. Yet, we’ve not performed the same market research on The 42nd Estate and its industries. One of the reasons The 42nd Estate is the most successful company I’ve started yet is because we dove right in and got cranking instead of sitting around creating plans and never implementing them. However, the time has come to optimize our own business model and market research is a crucial aspect of this phase.

There was a whole ton more feedback that I received. One thing I really wish I had brought with me is a tape recorder to record the feedback so I could refer back to it. I’ve got a solid memory and most of the feedback stuck but I know that in a week or two the details will only get hazier. Alas, that’s why we live and learn.

Thanks to everyone who came out to hear the business model for The 42nd Estate and give that awesome feedback. Thanks to Devin Cole and the Boston Young Entrepreneurs group for organizing the event and promoting it so well. I really, really appreciate it! If there’s anything I can to help your business, let me know.