I would like to sit down with you and help you figure out your marketing strategy. This is a 100% free service from me. Please apply here if you are interested.

Why am I doing this?
I enjoy putting together marketing plans. I have helped a handful of friends get their first 10 paying customers and now I’d like to help you. The most vital part in your business is getting paying customers and I’d like to be a part of your journey to success. Getting your first paying customers will instill confidence in your business and get things rolling.

Can you help me get users?
Yes. I can help you get users. However, my real focus is on paying customers. I strongly believe in charging people. We can talk about how to convert your users into paying customers when we meet.

What is the catch?
1. You must have an already launched product. It is okay if it is in beta but it must be something I can see on the web. I will not help you build your product, only market it.
2. You must be able to meet me in person on Friday from 3-5p in San Francisco.
3. I can’t guarantee you 10 paying customers if you don’t follow my steps exactly. You are of course welcome to not follow my guide at anytime, but it isn’t recommended.
4. In order to get the free 1 on 1 session from me you must apply here.

What is a real paying customer?
A real paying customer is someone that you don’t know. Someone that actually went to your website, took out their wallet, and put their credit card information into your website. A real paying customer is the best feeling in the world and the only thing that matters in business.

What is in it for me?
1. I get to help people in the most critical part of their business. Getting paying customers!
2. I love marketing and I’d like to get better at it.
3. Great way to meet entrepreneurs like you!

Who am I?
I’m Rishi Shah. I write this cool blog and started Flying Cart (we have over 11,000 total stores in a heavily dominated market).

Apply Here for a free 1 on 1 Marketing Strategy Session from Rishi.

Some testimonials:

	“I just wanted to say thank you for your time yesterday.  It was very educational and inspiring.  What’s even more awesome is that you’re sharing your secrets to success in a very warm and friendly way.  You rock!” – Alex Le of Marrily
	“my friend @Risk is giving free marketing coaching. Do this — I’ve learned LOTS from him.” Elizabeth Yin of Launch Bit
	“I feel extremely motivated. Thank you.” – Michael Hoisie of Slow Cop.
	“Thanks again for taking the time to meet and go over Unanchor with me yesterday, it was awesome. I talked to Mohammad already this morning and we’ve got a game plan for the next couple of weeks.” – Jason Demant of UnAnchor
	“I really walked away from our meeting feeling re-energized.” – Jim Jones of RunFatBoy.net
	“Got some fantastic advice from Rishi on making the first user experience for http://new.luciebot.com/ better.” Rich Collins of Lucie Bot

A lot of people think “I want to start a company.  I need to create something.”  Another way to think about starting a company is “What can I market?”

There a ton of businesses that know how to make things (all manufacturers in China for example) but if you know how to give the product distribution you can add a markup and make good money.

So for your next business idea think about what you are good at marketing.  This could be as simple as who you know (if you know a lot of developers build something you can sell to them), if you are good at SEO sell something you can get #1 on google for, if you know something a bunch of wordpress bloggers need create an add-on.

Thanks to Ziad for inspiring this post.

#1 Make a list of people that I think will buy the product

FTD. The business behind selling and delivering flowers is a great business. Here is why:

 
No Overhead.
They team up with local flower shops to supply and send flowers.  Yes you heard right.  One of the biggest flower businesses never actually grows or stores any flowers.

 
Great for Florists.
Why wouldn’t you want to team up with FTD? They send business your way!

 
 Great marketing.
I see tons of ads for FTD. When I think of flower delivery, I think FTD.  (It also helps that they started in 1910).

What other businesses are like this?
Beer of the Month Club (BOTMC)
This business is actually way better than FTD. Beer vendors pay (or sponsor) BOTMC to send beer to their members and then BOTMC also charges their members to get a new beer every month!

HostelBookers.com
Created a massive network of every Hostel and created an interface to easily book hostels.

SkyMall
If you have ever been on a plane you know what this is.  An inflight magazine that showcases interesting products to sell.

Hotels.com (or any hotel/travel booking site)
They figure out which hotels have empty rooms, cut a deal with the hotel to give you a lower price, and take a cut of the entire process.

The hardest part of all these businesses is you need to get the network.

Do you know any business like FTD?  Let me know in the comments.

Jelly Chicago was the best thing that happened to me in Chicago.  This is where I met some amazing people that have helped me tremendously.

I recently moved out to San Francisco and the one thing I missed most about Chicago was the Jelly community that Sean Johnson fostered.  I was curious to know how he pulled it off and here is what he said:

I was involved with the first Jelly in New York when I lived out there. It was at a house, and worked out really well. That might have been the fact that it was centrally located and in Manhattan where people don’t mind hopping on the train. They only did it once a month or so, but got about 10-12 people pretty regularly. It was a lot of fun – would work in the morning, head down to lunch in the park at 34th street, work in the afternoon, go out for a drink at the end.

I started Jelly Chicago about a year and a half ago. For the first 6 months it was in my house, which is pretty far north in Chicago. I’d get a trickling of people – one here, one there. Last April I sat down with this guy Brad who wanted to be involved, and we decided to move it to a coffee shop that was more central to the city. The coffee shop owner is involved in the tech community as well (runs a design firm on the side) and between him, Brad and myself we were able to get a lot more people interested.

Things that made it successful:

• Central location (again)
• Regular time and place: we decided to make Chicago a much more regular thing, which is kind of unique for Jelly. We meet twice a week, every week. I’d say that if you don’t have at least two people who are committed to being there to avoid this – I’m out of town on travel a lot, but I know Brad is there to greet new folks.
• Plan social events: we do Whirlyball a few times a year, and have a once a month happy. A lot of people who are interested in Jelly but aren’t always able to come b/c of work (sales people, in particular, who need to be on the phone a lot) end up coming to these evening/weekend things.
• Get the community involved: We did a 36 hour code sprint at BarCamp chicago last year that was a hit – basically locked a bunch of people in a room for two days and had them work on a web company, with a presentation at the end. We also helped the BarCamp organizer raise money for the event to help out. And last winter, we organized a Christmas party at the coffee shop after it closed. We let any local startups that wanted to participate do so – they just had to bring some booze or food for the party and spread the word. About 200 people ended up coming, and they got some good exposure.
• Use the community and its tools: Amit (the founder of Jelly) is great about helping you get things started. Use the wiki.workatjelly.com site to create a page for your Jelly (it actually gets a lot of traffic), and email Amit (the founder of Jelly) about getting a campaignmonitor account for sending emails to your list. We ended up blowing out a full-fledged site a few months ago after things got a little overwhelming to keep on the wiki, but most Jelly’s just use those two tools and have success with them. I also put a box of business cards plugging Jelly in the coffee shop next to the register, and that gets us some folks as well.
• Respect the community, particularly with email: we try to send no more than 2 emails a month to our list.

I think that’s it. I enjoy it a ton – it’s been a great way to meet super-interesting people and get out of the home office. Just takes some time to get the ball rolling and get momentum – if you start one, don’t get discouraged if folks don’t show up right away. We had 200 people at a party, but also had 8 months of just me and/or me and Brad. Sticking it out is key.

To learn more about Jelly watch this video.  You can follow Sean on twitter here.

Instead of buying and downloading a song for $0.99 from iTunes.  Why not just pay $0.10 to be able to stream it forever on Lala.com?  With the new wave of smart phones, unlimited data plans, and Pandora like mobile apps I find myself streaming over downloading more and more.

Makes sense why Apple bought Lala.

Thanks to Kurtiss for explaining why Lala rocks.