Not really related to anything here other than I have started my own business.

 

Website is at www.5seas.com

 

We provide products for wealth management specifically tailored to expats

 

Most of the products are offshore and tax efficient.

 

We have Investments, Property, Life insurance - including travel, medical, term, whole of life and personal bond products (pb) as well as being able to help with wills, tax issues, and setting up HK corporations.

 

Anyway go check it out. Its easier to look at the site than for me to explain it here.

 

I built the site in 2 days but the SEO side looks like it will take more time.

Mike has emailed a bunch of Tea shops and thus far had no response. He has however found a supplier of shirts out of India who seems to be very sympathetic of his position as a new entrepreneur and has been exceptionally helpful so far.

 

With this in mind I have advised Mike to do two things.

Firstly I told him to order 4 of each of 5 styles although he may be able to get away with less as suggested by the manufacturer. who incidentally also asked him to order in his size so that he can wear them...very smart!

 

Secondly I have produced a Direct mail piece for Mike that outlines the benefits of these particular shirts, extols their quality, offers a money back guarantee and implores the customer to order within 7 days or lose the opportunity to order at the super low introductory price of $37.50. Mike need to proof read this, print it in colour on good quality paper and drop it door to door to guage the response. I have suggested an initial drop of 200 pieces which should in theory garner at least 1 order.

 

Initial feedback from Mike was that

a)The price may be too high as Express sells shirts for $30,

b)We should have the company name on top of the flyer

c)He wasn't sure how he would feel if this landed on his door step.

 

Typically unsolicited mail through a letterbox will get 0.5-1% response rate possibly less. You are not selling  to yourself, or people that you know. You are seling to that 1 guy in 200 who likes what you've got and wants it now,and can be bothered to send the coupon back or pick up the phone.

 

I tried in the flyer to stress the quality of the shirts, we included pictures and laid it out in a tabular form, which Mike said he liked. If no-one buys at $37.50 we can re-test at $27.50 on a different street, and this is the approach I have reccomended. Each version of the flyer should get a better response, or we will go back to the previous version.

 

As wedon't yet have a company name, or website or anything else to brand with point B was some what moot, but I suspect that Mike will address this before we go live.

 

Mike is going  to set up a blog and start writing about this but has not yet done so. I am pushing and will let you know once he has a URL

 

 

 

 

As a result of the website I have had a couple of enquiries about starting businesses. I mentioned www.netwonclothiers.com the other day, which we did not help set up but who have used the Tailor www.gulatifashions.com who I reccomended on Jan 19th. I also had an enquiry from Mike, a student in the US who works part time and wants to start a business.

 

We chatted a little while and Mike told me that he is very into sports but does not need to tie his hobby to any business that he sets up. I mentioned my Chinese Teacher (Richie) and the fact that he can get Tea at cost, I also showed him Mat's tailored shirt site and we talked about possibilities.

 

Things moved on a little whilst I was away and Richie and Mike were in contact. Richie gave Mike the prices that he sells Tea at in Taiwan and Mike was immediately put off. After some research Mike discovered that the Tea was available at about the same price in America as what Richie was selling it for in Taiwan. I spent some time with Richie yesterday reviewing his costs and will pass this information on to Mike today to see whether he is comfortable with the potential profit margins.

 

The difficulty for Richie is that he can get the Tea very cheaply but thus far has been unable to market it efficiently. Mike on the other hand is willing to get out and sell, but has no understanding of Tea as a product particularly the higher quality loose leaf variety. We have contacted some Tea shops in the USA and are waiting for answers. Mike is keen that we start something quickly so we have made an offer to provide samples to the Tea shops, which will allow us to test delivery mechanisms, and that we wil provide our price lists at the same time.

 

My intention is to keep everyone posted as to progress through this blog, and Mike will do the same with his blog. I will post the URL later today. If we can get it to work I help  two budding entrepreneurs in one go and hopefully build some credibility for myself outside of the companies that I have started for my employer......which has nothing to do with Tea.

 

 

 

According to the experts one of the reasons that I am not getting many people sign up is because I do not have an offer for potential members. They can get all the ideas from the website and there is nothing in it for them to sign up. With this in mind I wrote a report entitled "Why you Need to start your own Business". It runs to about 3 pages and I have posted it to some article submission sites aswell to see whether it will drive more traffic.

 

So the question I have is why no-one signed up today? I guess that either I didnt put the offer prominantly enough on the page, ór I didn't put a time limit on it, or it simply isn't appealing to the people that viewed the page today, whcih incidentally was the best day yet for pure traffic flow.

 

I also managed to forget my user name for Miva the ad generating site having only signed up yesterday. Actually I think they have some work to do as the confirmation before you can use the site system meant that I just logged out yesterday and then today obviously can't remember the sign in details, and they didn't send a confirmation email with teh details in. I have written to them so hopefully they will be quick to resolve it.

 

Ah, I'm tired and bitching so will end this here.