Buissness partner or valuable friend or ripoff ?

[max duewel]

Hey Guys I need help, especially from people that have some knowledge in the realm of business. 

I decided to not pursue further education, and pursue creating and running my own business in form of a personal brand.

I still have very little understanding of business and zero to no experience.

I made a connection over Twitter with a guy that claims to have 2 Years of Marketing experience and proposed to help me build my brand and consulting service for later getting 20% commission on my sales. 

What do you guys think about having a business partnership that early? 

Does that sound fair and legit?

Any pointer from experienced people is very much appreciated

 

 

[integral]

It’s likely unwise to sign contracts this early in the business. Youtube is the only friend you need for now.

[max duewel]

Youtube is a great friend indeed, like this forum. Thank you for your perspective

[LordFall]

Do you have some sort of valuable product already? Why would he offer to build you anything if you don't have something yet?

I would highly advise building something yourself first and being familiar with your niche and market so you know what is a good deal and makes sense vs what is a scam. If you don't know anything and don't have a base for yourself first it's basically guaranteed you're gonna get ripped off. Think of musical artists or onlyfans girls with no leverage for themselves. 

Hard to say beyond that. 

[max duewel]

The idea was to build an audience with content and then sell a consulting service. But I decided to not take the offer and do more research

 

[LordFall]

Start making the content, that's the only hard part. Consistently making content is a beast of a willpower and work ethic exercise. I've been trying to do it consistently for almost 10 years. 

[max duewel]

What type of content do you do ?

 

[Michael569]

On 08/12/2022 at 11:31 AM, max duewel said:

I made a connection over Twitter with a guy that claims to have 2 Years of Marketing experience and proposed to help me build my brand and consulting service for later getting 20% commission on my sales.

ohh, you need to be extremely careful here. A random GUY on the internet claiming to build a brand in 2 years? In exchange for sales commissions? There are several red flags there. Sounds pretty dodgy actually. You don't want a leeching burden on your business of someone who will probably sell you a cooki-cutter plan and then ask you to sign an agreement that will be impossible or expensive to navigate out off. 

A stable and profitable business in 21st century takes years to build. 2 years is just enough to get all shit together, test waters and get a few clients. If at that stage you will already end up with a leech sucking up 20% if your net profit, you may seriously screw yourself over, 

They might be legit but be aware. Ask a lot of questions and get lawyer to review anything you sign. Be smart and don't look for shortcuts. Being an entrepreneur is a 10 years + initial commitment before real income starts flooding in. 

It is tempting to take those shortcuts. But in reality the way the market is setup today with the amount of competition, you just need to grind and keep working on your thing every day slowly building a name and brand. Shortcuts will cost you shit ton of money and may have questionable results. 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Michael569

[flowboy]

On 08/12/2022 at 11:31 AM, max duewel said:

proposed to help me build my brand and consulting service for later getting 20% commission on my sales. 

Only someone directly helping you close sales should get a commission, and only for those sales they closed for you or helped you close.

If a sale can't be directly attributed to their actions, don't give a piece away, it's asking for trouble.

A perpetual commission like that is basically an absurdly high royalty.

Don't sign that.

[Felliks]

I'm studying marketing as of ~4 years now. Yes, you do need a professional marketer's assistance. It will help you greatly and cut your time to results. You haven't given us much so I assume you are in the commodity niche, just to be safe.

Do you have a clear-cut, obvious yet hard to replicate problem->solution roadmap? What about your unique selling proposition? If I were your potential client and I called you now, would you be able to sell? If the answer is no, then that is for now your job and your job only. No outsider can help, the only thing they can do is take your current naked self, compartmentalize you and make you 'sellable', which might get you a customer or two inside of a few weeks, but will also undermine your uniqueness almost completely.

Did you contact 10 more people of similar qualifications? In 30 minutes you can probably find hundreds. There's many of us, we're a commodity.

Here's what I would ask him, here working like the devil's advocate

• Contacts of previous customers, to which you will reach out and ask of him. You don't need to be head smart for this as much as you need heart and will. Then head comes into play. What do they say of him?
• Market insight. What does he know about Your people that you don't? I am big on psychology, but look for heart and wit. Incredibly important, will show you where he is as a person in relation to others, what he knows about customer behavior, and what you can do that others can't.
• Budget. What is his approach and how does he plan to allocate the assumed up-front-cost? He better not head straight for ads if it's your money you are talking about here. Manual reach-out, content on TikTok and solid social media profile will beat most others. In fact, I'd ignore ads until you've gotten some what? Insight.
• Watch, and make him watch Flint McGlaughlin's FastClass. What does he take away from it? There are more than one type of marketer. When starting out a conservative yet unique approach better than going to untested waters. Will he think of it deeply, contemplate in a journal and reach out to some people, or will he shrug it off and drool over going into action? You don't need the latter, for now. This in itself will tell you if he's a conservative or a liberal.

Go read Jobs to be done and The Marketer as philosopher. I don't see how companies survive for a prolonged period of time without basing their actions on these frameworks. You'll have to buy the latter, but it's written by a true master, one who's literally invented internet marketing research and testing, and one responsible for billions upon billions of increased revenue.

And lastly,

have you consulted GPT3?

Edited December 19, 2022 by Felliks

[max duewel]

@flowboy @Michael569 @Felliks 

Thank you so many guys for your advice !

I rejected the partnership a few days ago, my gut feeling was that I am too inexperienced to make a commitment that early. 

Also, your pointers gave me a better understanding of my shortcut-focused mindset very helpful.