Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles
Thank you.
I've always placed a great deal of stock into the advice of a mentor.
I learned a lot from mine, only I never developed the appetite to bet it all on the last card.
He was a gambler, I prefer a calculated risk.
Chas
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The strange twist to all of this is I am acting as a "middle-man mentor" to the product inventor, who is a close friend, and who's now moving into a more entrepreneurial phase of his life. My role here actually will not encompass production, but the marketing function, but I'm trying to look out for him there as I have a little production experience plus the mentor I visited.
At any rate, using himself and his family, my friend believes he can produce cheaply. So I asked him if he was OK when the first 100 orders came in? He answered yes. The first 500? Yes. The first thousand?
And there I could see he was stumped because he knew that was his ramp up point where he would need to pay, train and manage others to produce.
We went through the exercise of estimating what that would cost and he realized then and there he had been pricing himself too cheaply (almost at zero). Additionally, he's reluctant to put a cost on himself if he is only managing and not hands-on producing (an error many new business owners make).
So, he's still going to forge ahead and I'm still going to do what may turn out to be some pro bono marketing work. I can't help myself because first, he's a close friend, and second, the thrill of bringing something new to market is like pure adrenaline to me!
I don't know if it's against forum policy, but I will post a link if allowed when we roll out.