Need mentoring or coaching but can't afford it

[SumpinSpecial]

Or possibly just sympathy and encouragement.

My shop is doing better than last year - sales up 148% over last year (this is my second year). But my numbers are still very tiny; just over $5000 in sales this year to date. Which is GREAT! But I'm losing patience when perhaps I shouldn't. More to the point, I'm better identifying my biggest problems, which are:

1. Despite reading about online marketing and brand-building and learning what I SHOULD be doing, I'm having trouble finding time to do it. I also struggle with inspiration: my blog articles don't inspire people to comment very much and images I share on social media are largely ignored. It's possible that I just don't have an understanding of what people find appealing.

2. The large majority of my merchandise can be found in the Big Box stores where I can't compete. My best sellers are - not surprisingly - two items that you can't buy on Amazon.

I have many thoughts besides just shutting it down:

A. It's possible that I was too ambitious with the product lines and I should dump the bird and rabbit stuff (since it's not selling) and rebrand as just a dog and cat supply shop. However, my competitive analysis shows me that everybody else is either just dogs, or dogs and cats. There are some stores that do every species, including fish and reptiles, but they tend to be commodity/volume sales outfits to try to compete with the majors. So I'm thinking that falling back to just dogs and cats will reduce my uniqueness or eliminate my niche.

B. I need to suck up the expense and hire a full time marketing person (and also spend money on the marketing, of course). I'm very worried about "throwing good money after bad" if my whole concept just isn't going to succeed. And it seems impossible to know this in advance.

C. Somehow find a charitable small business mentor to really analyze my numbers and business plan and coach me for six months to a year. I did try a SCORE mentor but he was trying to direct me into jumping right into a medium sized brick and mortar store instead of growing my little shop. Searching for mentors on the SCORE website brings up lots of mentors for small brick and mortar shops but not many that have online retail experience.

December is when I do a "lessons learned" on this year's business plan and draft a new one for the coming year based on what I've learned, so this is a good time for a retrospective or change of direction.

Oh, and I'm also not very good at networking. I miss nuances of social interaction and that seems to turn people off. I'm sensitive enough to notice it when it happens, but not smart enough to do or say the right thing to begin with. So things like meetups kind of scare me.

I'm meandering, so I guess I'll stop. Any thoughts?

[vangogh]

Sharon, first of all I'm sorry things haven't gone as well as you would like, but sales being up 148% is a good sign. You're moving in the right direction and it's possible you simply need more time. I completely understand about the lack of time to do all your marketing and networking. I feel the same way.

1. I skimmed through your blog and it looks good to me. I wouldn't worry too much about a lack of comments. I've been blogging for over a decade and the majority of my posts have 0 comments. When I first started I found a few other people who didn't receive comments either and we agreed to comment on each other's blog. The arrangement didn't last long and I don't know if it every amounted to much, but it's something you could potentially try. Mostly it took time, and by time I mean multiple years before I would receive some comments, but over the years that's fallen off again. It's not something I concern myself with.

2. That can be tough. Let's face it, people will go to Amazon first. The way to get them to buy from you is to build some kind of relationship with them, which I think you're currently trying to do through your blog and through whatever social networks you use. Are there more non-Amazon items you could sell? Maybe you can find a way to get people who buy those items to buy more from you when they order. One thing I did notice is you have the popup (or slide in thing) that says so and so recently purchased. I know it doesn't reveal the person's full info, but I'm not sure I would like that if I was about to purchase something. I think it might turn me off thinking other people would know what I purchased.

By the way, what are the specific items that do sell?

A. If things aren't selling at all, you can remove them. It's hard to imagine that would hurt. There's probably a reason why most shops sell dog and cat products and not bird and rabbit products. Maybe instead of dropping the latter two entirely, you could de-emphasize it on the site.

B. You could hire someone to do your marketing. It doesn't have to be a full time employee or even someone who works full time to market you specifically. It's probably worth a little research to see what people charge and to figure out what you can get for what you can afford. You can bootstrap it some. Hire someone to work a few hours a week and if it works put the extra money into hiring them for more hours.

C. I wouldn't count on someone analyzing all your numbers for free. A mentor shouldn't charge you anything. A mentor should be someone you know who is interesting in passing on what they've learned, though more than likely they would expect you to do the work. Of course, you can consider all of us here as mini-mentors. We're all happy to share what we know and try to help you succeed.

Where do you post images online? Pictures of pets, especially cats are among the most popular things on the internet. I would think Facebook and Instagram are the best places to post. You don't have to do it a lot, but maybe an image a day or every other day would be enough. You also don't have to post everywhere. Pick one network and follow others who do well and pay attention to how often they post and what kind of images they post. Look to see if they tag the pictures and how. How do they interact with others on the same site?

Pick a few people and study them, though understand they might have more means than you. You may not be able to succeed the same way someone who already has a 100,000 followers/friends succeeds because they already have those numbers. Try to find some people who are that successful, but also find people who are still working towards that.

Overall take the year's growth as a positive sign. I'm sure plenty of people will chime in with more and better ideas and I'll keep thinking and see if I can come up with ideas to help.

[SumpinSpecial]

Thanks for the feedback, it does help.

My best sellers (and almost my only sellers) are the Kenel Kosy double padded muzzles for greyhounds. I buy them from Ireland so you can't find anyone else in this country who sells them. I also have a good markup on them, partially due to the currency rate, but also because of their unique features.

I think I'm getting discouraged because the things I really love, the interactive toys, don't seem to sell well at all. I know I should choose things that my customers want, not stuff that I want. But it appears to me that if I dump everything that's not currently selling, I'll just be a greyhound muzzle store. :)

Also a little discouraged because all of my efforts to attract new customers seems to not be working. Discount codes - in the last two years only one person has ever used one. Publicize special sales, no sales. This weekend I'm running (and publicized on facebook with a boosted post) a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale, so far no sales. Made partnerships with rescues so that they hand out discount codes to people, they get a discount and I donate to the rescue - made one sale on that. I've even posted a couple of my discount codes on Facebook, (worldwide view) remembering stories of that happening by accident to some popular shop and them getting slammed with people using the codes to get bargains. My result? Not one sale. It almost feels like I have to pay people to shop with me.

I post things on Facebook primarily. Yes, I'm trying to build a following. I seem to be in a niche where I'm competing (for social media attention) with a million rescues who also post pictures and feel-good stories.

I'll post a bit more later.

[SumpinSpecial]

I want to add a clarification to my comment about selling things I really love. I also have been listening to potential customers and getting those things in stock, but they're still not selling. For example, over a few months several people have asked me if I sold slow feeder bowls and I didn't, so I checked with my suppliers and stocked a few different designs. While networking with some cat rescue people, they were gushing about this new Cat Amazing puzzle box and how everybody loves them so I should sell them. I got some in stock. None of that stuff is selling, so I'm a bit puzzled as to how do you identify what will sell.

Also overnight I was thinking about my comment above about sharing social media attention with the rescue groups. A new thought was maybe I shouldn't fight it, but instead just join them by sharing the cute pictures they post and be seen as a rescue supporter. Follow and Like them and share their stuff around. I could try that fairly easily and at no cost.

I'm still open to other thoughts.

[Harold Mansfield]

I don't have much to add about blog comments, just to confirm that I don't get many comments either. I don't leave many comments on other blogs either. That doesn't mean that people aren't reading. Stats say that they are. Good enough for me.

Back in the day comments were exploited for "grey hat" SEO. Since people have either closed them, limited them, made them no index, no follow and all kinds of things. From what I see people are more concerned with social media comments, shares and likes than they are on site comments. Which makes perfect sense. Social media engagement has the ability to get you in front of new people. On site comments do not. People have also moved their community building over to social media. Bottom line, I wouldn't get too upset about the number of comments. If you're posting info that you think is entertaining or helpful to your readers and stats say people are reading that's what matters.



Also overnight I was thinking about my comment above about sharing social media attention with the rescue groups. A new thought was maybe I shouldn't fight it, but instead just join them by sharing the cute pictures they post and be seen as a rescue supporter. Follow and Like them and share their stuff around. I could try that fairly easily and at no cost.


This is a good idea. A pet store should be involved with things like this, and there's also the benefit of getting free content.

As for finding a mentor/free coaching..that's gonna be tough. You can however hire someone for a short term analysis, most times by the hour, to take a look at your marketing and web presence and show you where you're making mistakes, where you're wasting money, and how to improve things.

I can tell you this with 100% certainty that you will not ever see any gains in your online marketing if your entire presence isn't up to speed. It's not one of those things where you can cherry pick a few things and then hope. You have to be clear on what you want to accomplish, understand who your target is, and then insure that they are seeing your best at every step along the process. If there's a weak link in the chain along the way, your efforts and money are wasted.

I agree with VG that you should be happy about the increase in sales. It's an accomplishment that you should be proud of. Seems like now you just need to fine tune a few things and get clear on your direction for growth.

[SumpinSpecial]

Thanks Harold.

I hear you on the need to make sure the entire presence is on par, but I think that's a bit... unrealistic? It reads to me as that a new business owner needs to hit it out of the park on the first try, rather than learning and growing and succeeding that way. The only way to hit it out of the park first try is to be able to afford (through loans or whatever) professional staff (marketing, content writer, experienced product sourcer/buyer, web programmer, etc.). I could be cynical but I think that's the recipe for the old saying on how to make a small fortune in XYZ industry (start with a large fortune - hahaha).

I'm undoubtedly making mistakes, but taking all feedback and making improvements as I can, keeping my risk level low.

Anyway, back to my questions, I am most puzzled at the issue I had with sourcing the right products, so would love your thoughts on that. After talking about this before, I get the idea that it's a bit trial and error to learn what kinds of things sell. I haven't hit upon that lightbulb moment yet, though. If I hear a bunch of people asking for X product, so I get some into inventory and they don't sell, my first thought is that I'm overpriced. But then if they still don't sell with discount codes or Black Friday sales or whatever, that tells me the problem isn't my prices. Any thoughts?

[Harold Mansfield]

Thanks Harold.

I hear you on the need to make sure the entire presence is on par, but I think that's a bit... unrealistic? It reads to me as that a new business owner needs to hit it out of the park on the first try, rather than learning and growing and succeeding that way. The only way to hit it out of the park first try is to be able to afford (through loans or whatever) professional staff (marketing, content writer, experienced product sourcer/buyer, web programmer, etc.). I could be cynical but I think that's the recipe for the old saying on how to make a small fortune in XYZ industry (start with a large fortune - hahaha).

Yeah, It's called starting a business. I'm not sure where this notion that just because it's online means that it's supposed to be cheap came from, but it has never been true. Online takes skills and money. I don't care how easy Go Daddy and Squarespace tell you it is. They are lying.

Sure you need to learn and grow, but you can't let the world see that. The world expects you to do that quickly. The world doesn't care that you're learning. When people see a company online they expect it to be professional and know what it's doing if they expect anyone to buy their stuff. Sure, maybe that is unrealistic to some, but that's the way it is.

This common thing that I see online is the attitude of doing just enough to get by now with the hope that there will be money to invest in thingslike marketing later. That almost never works.


I'm undoubtedly making mistakes, but taking all feedback and making improvements as I can, keeping my risk level low. .
What do you mean by "keeping my risk level low"? That sounds like you either aren't sure where to spend money so you're dabbling here and there so as not to waste too much on one thing, or that you're scared of giving your business 110% because you're scared.

If you aren't sure where you should be spending money, stop spending money right this second. You need it for other things that you are sure of, that you know need to be done.


Anyway, back to my questions, I am most puzzled at the issue I had with sourcing the right products, so would love your thoughts on that. After talking about this before, I get the idea that it's a bit trial and error to learn what kinds of things sell. I haven't hit upon that light bulb moment yet, though. If I hear a bunch of people asking for X product, so I get some into inventory and they don't sell, my first thought is that I'm overpriced. But then if they still don't sell with discount codes or Black Friday sales or whatever, that tells me the problem isn't my prices. Any thoughts?

I can't agree on what the problem is without seeing everything. Your ads, your traffic, your stats. the website, the product pages, go through the check out process, and so on. One thing I can say is it's not as easy as saying I've done specials and if they don't sell then it's not the prices. Can't really drill it down to prices until you consider and fix everything else along the way. Most times if everything along the way is on point, the price can be the least pressing concern unless it's an item that I know I can get cheaper somewhere else where I'm used to shopping.

Again, one weak link in the chain. I get the impression that you know you have things that are not as good as they should be, but for now you're are looking for some other way to compensate that doesn't involve having to deal with that right now.

I can tell you from experience, that's not going to work. You will just waste time and money before finally doing it anyway.

[Paul]

I think you may want to relate more to your name, Sumpin Special. When I visit your site I see more of the same that I can get on Amazon or Petco.
In a sense you answered your own questions. The greyhound harness is “special”. Rabbitt food and stuffed toys are not. Maybe you can actually be sumpin special with higher end products for more professional dog people. Show dogs, hunting dogs , service dogs, elderly dogs may need better products than generally available. I don’t know what but maybe high end shampoos, special training equipment, collars leashes, muzzles, etc.

On your site you might want to better present the items. On the stuffed toys, talk about the features and the benefits more in depth. I saw you mentioned the toys had no hard seams to make it less “chewable”. I think that should be pitched much harder. No chewing, less choking, durable etc.Make the toys “Sumpin Special”, not just another stuffed toy.

I also noticed the pictures are a little weak and do not show the size. I saw the side pic on scale but I think can do better.
It was interesting to hear about the harness for the greyhounds. I think that’s a bit of a clue. Maybe try to find specific products for specific breeds. Again, I don’t know what but maybe a grooming kit for, collies, one for dachshunds, poodles etc.

We have a dachshund and I know my wife buys every thing “dachshund” related. I have a friend with competitive hunting dogs. Once again I don’t know what he needs exactly for training but maybe dog whistles or some kind of training leash.

I don't know much about blogging but maybe start participating on some pro dog forums, show , hunting etc. Just some thoughts for you!

[Fulcrum]

1st - Get rid of that pop up that tells me what someone else has bought. Looks tacky and makes me wonder as to the validity of the sale.

2nd - You need to put your best selling and/or highest profit items on the front page with a quick buy option for them. If the greyhound muzzles are your #1 item, why am I searching to the bottom of a page containing 40 items?

Why should Paul's wife and friend buy from you? What sets you apart from Amazon, EBay, Petsmart and the rest?

[cbscreative]

Sharon, you may be able to find clues in your stats if you're getting decent enough traffic for verifiable patterns and the states are showing the right kind of info.

Look at your top pages for visits. The homepage will be your highest by far so look at what is happening after that. Look at the other pages with the most traffic. See if visitors are continuing on or exiting from certain pages. You mentioned your best sellers but those may or may not be your most popular pages. See if you're leaking opportunity. It may require a certain amount of speculation to explain what your traffic patterns mean but then again I've been able to find surprising revelations to help capture more opportunity.

If some of your pages have high proportions as "entry" pages it means search results, external links, social media, or other factors are the main source of that traffic. It also means interest is being generated. See if you can identify a way to capture more of that interest. If you have high numbers/proportions of visitors leaving on certain pages, try to assess why that might be and correct the problem.

As for the original question/topic of your thread, I second this forum being a source of mini mentors, but in addition, get every source you can find to help you. Read material from proven experts. These are brains you can pick for the cost of a book or subscription. It's not that you can't afford professional council, you can't afford not to have it.

[SumpinSpecial]

What do you mean by "keeping my risk level low"? That sounds like you either aren't sure where to spend money so you're dabbling here and there so as not to waste too much on one thing, or that you're scared of giving your business 110% because you're scared.

Harold, sad to say that the negatives you're describing do sound like me, although I'm trying not to be as stupid as those people... it may be just wishful thinking. The risk thing is that since we're both in our mid-50's my husband doesn't want me to shovel all of our retirement savings into a company that might go under in a year. I agree, although I'm somewhat less risk-averse. He's very much a corporate guy but although most of my career has been as a corporate wage slave also I do have a very entrepeneurial spirit and know that I can run a company. I'm trying to run a SMALL company, though, rather than jumping right into something that's too big for me to handle. Most of the advice I've gotten from people are things that apply to medium sized companies, so I've been struggling to make the advice relevant to my size. Not all of it - most of the advice I get here about improving the images, and choosing better products and such are very relevant and easy to implement. So I have. The parts that I struggle with are things like this: do A/B testing on a marketing program to see which works better. When I have 4 sales before the A/B test, 2 sales with program A, 1 sale with program B, and then 5 sales after the A/B test, that tells me nothing. As my husband pointed out, it tells me that my numbers are too small for any statistical significance!

So it looks like I'm dabbling.... I sort of am, but I'm trying to dabble intelligently. Does that make sense?


Again, one weak link in the chain. I get the impression that you know you have things that are not as good as they should be, but for now you're are looking for some other way to compensate that doesn't involve having to deal with that right now.


It's not that I don't want to deal with it. It's that I don't know how to deal with it in some cases (marketing) and don't have time in other cases. I admit the business is starved for both capital and my time. I'm working on that, though.


I think you may want to relate more to your name, Sumpin Special. When I visit your site I see more of the same that I can get on Amazon or Petco.
In a sense you answered your own questions. The greyhound harness is “special”. Rabbitt food and stuffed toys are not. Maybe you can actually be sumpin special with higher end products for more professional dog people. Show dogs, hunting dogs , service dogs, elderly dogs may need better products than generally available. I don’t know what but maybe high end shampoos, special training equipment, collars leashes, muzzles, etc.

I also noticed the pictures are a little weak and do not show the size. I saw the side pic on scale but I think can do better.
It was interesting to hear about the harness for the greyhounds. I think that’s a bit of a clue. Maybe try to find specific products for specific breeds. Again, I don’t know what but maybe a grooming kit for, collies, one for dachshunds, poodles etc.

I get what you're saying, but somehow things are veering off course. The Something Special was targeted to my elevator pitch/business summary: Selling products that promote the mental and physical well-being of pets. That's why I wanted to really sell the interactive toys, they fit in that vision. Muzzles don't, really, even though they're turning into my best selling product. I know sometimes a business just has to pivot based on market drivers, and this is looking like one to me. But it seems like a super narrow niche that I'm not sure is viable: Something Special Muzzle Co?


1st - Get rid of that pop up that tells me what someone else has bought. Looks tacky and makes me wonder as to the validity of the sale.

2nd - You need to put your best selling and/or highest profit items on the front page with a quick buy option for them. If the greyhound muzzles are your #1 item, why am I searching to the bottom of a page containing 40 items?

The popup is gone, thank you guys for the feedback. It's been on there for a few months and I haven't seen an increase in sales because of it. But after I read the comments here, I went and asked a group of fellow business owners on Facebook and every one of them said they hate those things also.

The muzzle is on the front page in the featured items list. That list isn't 40 though, it's only 8. However, is it your perception that there are too many listed there?



Look at your top pages for visits. The homepage will be your highest by far so look at what is happening after that. Look at the other pages with the most traffic. See if visitors are continuing on or exiting from certain pages. You mentioned your best sellers but those may or may not be your most popular pages. See if you're leaking opportunity. It may require a certain amount of speculation to explain what your traffic patterns mean but then again I've been able to find surprising revelations to help capture more opportunity.

If some of your pages have high proportions as "entry" pages it means search results, external links, social media, or other factors are the main source of that traffic. It also means interest is being generated. See if you can identify a way to capture more of that interest. If you have high numbers/proportions of visitors leaving on certain pages, try to assess why that might be and correct the problem.

As for the original question/topic of your thread, I second this forum being a source of mini mentors, but in addition, get every source you can find to help you. Read material from proven experts. These are brains you can pick for the cost of a book or subscription. It's not that you can't afford professional council, you can't afford not to have it.

I attached google analytics to the site and have started setting it up and did a couple of google analytics free classes. But I haven't had enough time to really set it up. For example, there's supposed to be a thing you can set to count purchases (so you can measure behavior of people who didn't buy against those who did) and I set it but it's showing 0 even though I have had a few sales. So something's misconfigured and I need to spend some time to figure it out. So far the primary behavior I'm seeing is that people come into one page and then bail. Most often it's the home page, as you said. But if I link a product page to social media, then I do see people coming to that page and then bailing out. The second most frequent behavior is people coming into one page, going to one more page and then bailing out. I really need to fix/improve my analytics reporting to be able to really analyze those behavior patterns.

I really do value the opinions and feedback from you guys! This forum is extremely helpful, both from a peer perspective but also as customer-proxies. Also, very exciting, there's a lady who launched a brick and mortar pet shop in this local area some years ago, got it extremely popular and successful and the sold out. I reached out to her and she said she's now consulting with small businesses for a small fee. I'm going to take her up on that. I think she'll be more helpful than the SCORE mentor because he was primarily in furniture sales (large commodity) and she was in pet supplies - exactly where I am.

[Fulcrum]

I doubt this will help much, but I came across this video on another site and thought you would get a laugh out of it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=99&v=BWAK0J8Uhzk

This dog drives better than some people I see on the roads every day.

[SumpinSpecial]

LOL, that's very cool!

BTW, just to update you guys, I may have hit a home run on the mentoring (along with finding this forum, of course). There is a well-known dog-focused pet store in this area that was was super popular. Small mom and pop shop, did so well they opened a few more branches in nearby towns. A couple years ago they sold out. I reached out on Facebook to find the former owner thinking I could ask if I could pick her brain, and found her. Turns our she's not only open to mentoring me, but she had already positioned herself as a small retail business consultant as her next thing. She charges $100/session, setting her prices deliberately low for the starter people like me to afford. Because she was successful in almost the exact niche that I'm in, I think she'll be a great help!

[Paul]

Congrats on that find!

[cbscreative]

Sounds like a great match, Sharon, I'll ditto Paul's congrats.

[Harold Mansfield]

Harold, sad to say that the negatives you're describing do sound like me, although I'm trying not to be as stupid as those people... it may be just wishful thinking. The risk thing is that since we're both in our mid-50's my husband doesn't want me to shovel all of our retirement savings into a company that might go under in a year. I agree, although I'm somewhat less risk-averse.
And this is COMPLETELY normal. EVERYONE has that terrifying doubt in the back of their mind at first. For most people it's what stops them altogether from ever trying. How many people do you know that have some business idea that they never do anything more than talk about? For me it's everyone I know. Everyone Every one of my family and friends at one time or another has said to me "what do you think about this idea?" or , "I've always had this idea..."

I would never be the one to tell you to throw everything you have at it when there are other concerns. You do have to determine how much effort and money you're willing to give. However very few things work on minimal effort of with scared money. Generally you want to determine your level of commitment before you leap off the ledge.

Starting and running a business is a full time job whether you want it to be or not. It can take years before you can step back and make it that residual income that you were dreaming about.

Patience can also be a business killer, especially when others are looking over your shoulder wondering how many weeks it will take to make a profit. Yep, weeks. I know people who gave up or loose interest because things didn't work out in weeks. We all know that's unrealistic.


That was my long winded way of saying the fear and doubt is part of it. I still have it, but it's quieter these days. At this point I understand it's all a risk and it a could all fail and I go into new opportunities fully aware that I could waste a lot of time on something that may not work. But if I believe in it, and the numbers and plan looks good, I give it 110%.

Fear can also be good. When you're constantly worrying about what could go wrong it's good sign that you're realistic. Take the things that you can control and prevent from being issues and tackle them head one, one by one. Along the way through that list you'll be improving your business for the better. The more you learn with hands on experience ( and some failure), the more you'll start doing for yourself and make decisions more confidently about where to spend resources.


Most of the advice I've gotten from people are things that apply to medium sized companies, so I've been struggling to make the advice relevant to my size. Not all of it - most of the advice I get here about improving the images, and choosing better products and such are very relevant and easy to implement. So I have. The parts that I struggle with are things like this: do A/B testing on a marketing program to see which works better. When I have 4 sales before the A/B test, 2 sales with program A, 1 sale with program B, and then 5 sales after the A/B test, that tells me nothing. As my husband pointed out, it tells me that my numbers are too small for any statistical significance!

Yes, those numbers are too small to tell you anything. Depending on how much info you have about the buyers it could alert you to patterns to look out for.
For instance if both buyers from program"A" are women, the sample size is too small to make that determination, but a least you can be on lookout for patterns that support your hypothesis.

[SumpinSpecial]

Thanks Harold, for the reassurance. I hope I'm balancing that fear of risk fairly well. I seriously consider my husband to be a financial investor (we pool our personal funds so when I invest in the business so does he by default) so review my financial reports with him every year and check with him before putting more money into it. I think I've got enough track record now that he knows I'm not going to go crazy, although when I told him that SCORE mentor was advising me to jump into a brick and mortar store he got worried again. He KNOWS that I don't do things impulsively, but sometimes needs a reminder just to calm his nerves.

So I met with the new mentor today and it was fantastic. She also has a conservative approach but has the experience of launching a brick and mortar combined with an online channel. Her store also expanded into several local towns before she sold out, so she knows a LOT that she shared with me. She's disagreeing totally with the SCORE mentor and advising me to stay online only, with occasional vending at pet expos and such. She also agreed with the advice I've gotten here in terms of better focusing my vision and strategy. She was able to share with me that she tried selling things for all pet species and how it went crazy out of control. In a nutshell, she said you have to go all in on something because customers will always want a different brand than the one you're carrying and before you know it, you have an out of control superstore on your hands. She advised me to come back to a very narrow focus. Just do muzzles, since they're my best sellers, or just do enrichment toys. She also advised that at my size and business age, I'd be better off spending money hiring a marketing person than a brick and mortar store.

I'm still digesting everything we talked about, but meeting with her really jazzed me up. I am going to rework my business plan, and have a lot of work to do, but I'm happy about it.

[Paul]

She's disagreeing totally with the SCORE mentor and advising me to stay online only, with occasional vending at pet expos and such. She also agreed with the advice I've gotten here in terms of better focusing my vision and strategy. ..... She also advised that at my size and business age, I'd be better off spending money hiring a marketing person than a brick and mortar store.

I'm still digesting everything we talked about, but meeting with her really jazzed me up. I am going to rework my business plan, and have a lot of work to do, but I'm happy about it.

For whatever its worth I agree with your new mentor. Specialize and stay online. If you think online is stressful try a brick and mortar! Rent, utilities, covering hours, weekends, big inventory…….a nightmare waiting to happen if not fully financially prepared.

[SumpinSpecial]

One thing she pointed out as a lesson she learned hard is that you don't just pay the rent/lease on a store, you also have to put up a "personal guarantee"... which I understand is something like a promise to pay out the full term of the lease even if your business fails. Overall it's an exorbitant cost, so yeah, you have to have the financial wherewithall to go the distance.

[cbscreative]

She also agreed with the advice I've gotten here

You're welcome. Seriously, there is a lot of great business experience in this place. If you totaled the experience of every SBF member, it might be more years than the time of Adam and Eve.

Wouldn't that be a great slogan for the forum?

SBF: More years of business experience than man has been on the earth.

[Oscarp12]

Who purchases the greyhound nuzzles? Can you market something specifically to them that they couldn't find anywhere else? That definitely seems like a niche market, what else would that niche be looking for?

[SumpinSpecial]

People who have retired racers as pets, primarily. Also some owners of whippets, borzoi and other sighthounds. It's a tight-knit community and we all get together at a few large social events throughout the year. Lots of crafty people have gotten into the business of making coats and collars, and they pretty much have that business locked down so I won't bother going there. (Also, I suck at sewing.)

But I'm going to try to widen my "safety products" product lines to include doggles, goggles, GPS trackers and similar stuff. I need to do some in depth research into car restraint systems (word is none of them are really useful yet) and mobility aids like doggy wheelchairs or carts.

[turboguy]

Another thing to consider adding would be cat trees. I just got a Groupon that promoted a "Go Pet Club 62" Cat Tree" for $ 83.00 and they sold 580 of them so far with 80 being in the last hour from the first time I looked until I looked to post this. I also noticed you can buy it elsewhere for $ 56.00 so Groupon isn't much of a bargain.

[SumpinSpecial]

Nah, sorry but cat trees are all over the place and generally expensive so people bargain hunt for them. Also they're costly to ship. they're a better option for a brick and mortar store