Helping the resource(less) entrepreneur

Going from zero to ten million

[jaredreitzin-blog]

Mobile Marketing Watch, mHealthWatch, and mGamingWatch, together with mobileStorm, Arent Fox, and Locaid bring you a special webinar dedicated entirely to mobile compliance. With the upcoming TCPA changes and other future regulation, mobile marketers must be more aware than ever of the constantly evolving regulatory landscape associated with reaching consumers on their mobile devices. We've brought together mobile industry thought leaders to explain what it all means for you and your business, and to break down the impact on industries spanning casino, healthcare and others. Among other topics, we'll be discussing . . . - TCPA & upcoming changes effective Oct. 16 - COPPA compliance and In-App payment compliance - Location privacy & CTIA requirements - How mobile providers can protect clients - State gaming requirements, age verification and much more Join Ross Buntrock & Michael Hazzard of Arent Fox; Rip Gerber of Locaid; and Jared Reitzin of mobileStorm as they discuss the intricacies of mobile compliance and take questions from attendees during a special Q&A session.

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"I love new ideas in the medical space, they are forever if they work" - Mr. Wonderful

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11 things I really wish someone sat me down years ago and told me before I started mobileStorm

1. Learn how to measure recurring revenue and operate the business based upon those metrics.  2. There are really only 6 key metrics that matter, CMRR (Committed Monthly Recurring Revenue), CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs), Cash Flow, Sales Pipeline, CLTV (Customer LifeTime Value), and Churn.  3. Create a set of core values that you violently hire and fire by 4. Annually, create 5 corporate goals and objectives. Then create a set of KPIs for each employee that rolls up into those corporate goals. Put a comp plan in place that rewards people who have hit their goal, and fires people that haven't hit their goals after 3 tries.  5. Focus on big companies that can really pay you 6. Charge more for your service, because you really know more than your big customers and they would pay you for your knowledge. It's not just about that software license fee. 7. Create a hiring process that makes it difficult to get a job working for you. 8. Pricing is not an arbitrary thing. A solid pricing strategy is critical to your success, but most importantly, keep pricing simple stupid. Do not create too many plans.  9. Integrate all of your most important systems so they work together. For instance, integrate your phone system with your CRM system with your accounting platform. Do this before you have too many systems.  10. Get super honest with yourself, and figure out what you are bad at, yet to you know to be successful, you have to be good at. Then, hire people around you who are good at those things.  11. Focus on one thing and grow it from there. Don't try to go international in your second month. Make it work for a vertical or a region, then expand to the next town. Nothing is more important than focus.

[jaredreitzin-blog]

Surf Air Has Gone Live

I am proudly a founding member of http://www.surfair.com/the Netflix of private flying. My friend Wade started the company not too far back, and have recently been a very hot company to invest in. They have a solid list of investors including some celebrities (this is LA of course), and very smart entrprenuers like Jonathan Schreiber.

For a unbelievably fair amount of money per month, you can fly as much as you want. You can book minutes for the flight takes off, all from a beautifully designed mobile app. You can have 4 legs booked at any time. So let's say i have round trip flights booked to San Fran and another one for Santa Barbara, but I want to fly to Palm Springs, I would just need to cancel one of my other reservations. I can bring anyone i want with me for free up to 4 times a month (I believe).  They have a very nice office right on the runway at Burbank. You pull up, park your car for free and hop on the plane. Santa Barbara in 20 minutes and San Fran in 40.  I told my wife I am taking her to San Francisco just for lunch in a couple of weeks. Its amazing that we are in a world where something like this is now possible for people like me. i.e. Not a baller!  And oh ya, #mobileStorm is powering the airlines SMS alerts..

[jaredreitzin-blog]

I Have Seen What the Future of The Music Industry Looks Like, and it's Awesome

                                Want to know what the future of the music industry looks like, in terms of how the business side of music is going to make money, now that nobody buys music anymore?

  Fundamentally its the same reason why I stepped down from my record label (Katalyst Music Group) in 1999, to focus on this little thing called the Internet that I thought had some legs.

  The major music industry players today, are taking the little money they are making from music (and when I say "little" I mean it comparatively, to what the profits used to look like), and are parlaying it into the real rock stars of the twenty century, coder/CEOs of start ups. Below Billboard has a really good article about how music managers Guy Oseary, Scooter Braun and Troy Carter (Madonna, Beiber, and GaGa's managers respectively), have been very focused on investing in tech. Because they are so connected, Scooter Braun (whose 31), had a start up CEO over at his house and liked his business model he makes some big things happen from the toilet.

  This is my favorite excerpt from the article, written from the CEOs perspective:

  “I was at Scooter’s house, and he was saying he was going to get these influential and cool people to invest, and then he just disappeared. I asked Brad, ‘What happened to Scooter?’ Suddenly my phone starts buzzing and I got an email from Mark Cuban being like, ‘Send me the deck, please.’ And in the next 20 minutes I get emails from Cuban, Ryan Seacrest, Ellen DeGeneres and [an A-list actor and a major pop star who didn’t end up getting involved], and Scooter’s still not in the room. Then I go back to Brad and say, ‘Is Scooter in the bathroom?’ and he says, ‘Yeah, it happens all the time. He’s most productive in the bathroom.’

  Read the rest of the article here...

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Oh the irony...

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The power in the whole block just went out. We were sent back to the dark ages.

[jaredreitzin-blog]

Google's support of SOPA. It's a bit half assed. Google, just go dark and for 24 hours have all links to go a landing page where you can read more about this insane bill. Nobody gets the logo thing.

[jaredreitzin-blog]

Been making music with this amazing tool recently. I have played around with it in the past but not with the newest version and I never really bothered to figure out how everything works. Once you get the hang of it is pretty easy. The hardest part is making your own sounds and the software is limited so you need to step it up and buy a keyboard. That might be next. I almost threw out a power cored last weekend to my old Tascam 4 track and was happy I didn't. But after using garage band I realize there is no point anymore to a 4 track. Garage band is hundreds of tracks. It is such a killer program. 

[jaredreitzin-blog]

Who are you?

me

[jaredreitzin-blog]

It was only a matter of time before I gave in to Tumblr. Let's face it, I want to help the resource(less) entrepreneur go from $0 to $10 million in revenue but its not easy finding the time. I am not doing this for money. I am often offered paid sponsorships and guest post revenue opportunities, but I refuse because that's not why I am doing this. If you want to build a blog with a good following the key is consistency. Nothing kills a blog faster than one post a month. I needed to find a happy medium where I could post consistently, but didn't have to write a novel every time.

And that's why Tumblr is blowing up and why I am on the bandwagon. Only difference is I have integrated Wordpress so I write my posts via the iPhone Tumblr app and have to post to my word press blog so all my updates are still coming from JaredReitzin.com

I will still write about business and success, but I plan on mixing up my format a bit to include some of the following:

- Sharing life experiences - Things that make me happy, frustrated, or thankful  - Interesting things I find in my travels - Stuff I am passionate about - Interesting links, articles and videos I believe are funny or have a big impact   - Challenges that I face with trying to build something out of nothing, and the pressure from being a leader and always having to "be on". 

Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks everyone!