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Clarity

Herbert Prokscha

Orlando, Florida

Strategic Advisor to Founders and CEOs. Took a specialty food manufacturer from capital raise to exit sale. Turnaround CEO. Food safety expert. Built five USDA inspected food manufacturing facilities.

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Startup Consulting Small Business Manufacturing Life Coaching Food & Beverage

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Advice on Starting and Growing a Food Manufacturing Company

25 years experience as CEO and Founder of American specialty food manufacturing companies. One company ranked #192 on Inc.500 list. Topics covered range from concept to capital raise and exit sale.

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Reviews 1

Answers

Herbert Prokscha answered

I have a business question.

Social enterprise and "most profitable" are in conflict with each other. It may be best if you focused on one or the other and once the idea works, then either make it profitable or add a social component. Trying both at the same time has a very high chance for failure.

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Small Business

Business Development

Herbert Prokscha answered

What is the best job to get to learn to become an entrepreneur? Working at a VC as an analyst? Work in Sales? Work in Marketing? Consulting?

In addition to getting academic knowledge about accounting, marketing, etc. you need to actually work in an environment that allows you to learn about what it takes to "Make Payroll".

Until you know what it takes to keep the doors open, starting a business and assemble the plane while flying it means that your chance of failure and wasting money is almost 100%.

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Job search

Career Counseling

Career Development

Herbert Prokscha answered

How to offer my services to SaaS and Startups?

Go to the source - i.e. monitor government sites that list new company incorporations and then call the companies with your pitch. In the US that would be the Secretary of State website for each state.

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SaaS

Sales

Marketing Strategy

Herbert Prokscha answered

Looking for the best clone scripts for websites like Fiverr, Upwork, or Freelancer?

Short term answer - yes. However your problem will be execution. A two-sided marketplace takes years to grow and millions of bucks to keep the door open until you are big enough to grow naturally.

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Startups

Business Strategy

Marketplaces

Herbert Prokscha answered

What is the best pricing (business model) to apply to a marketplace?

First you need to calculate your costs.
Then estimate the number of transactions per month
Then estimate your cost and margin per transaction
Identify who benefits the most and charge them 66% of the number you need and charge 34% to the other party.
Monitor and test and be willing to change percentages based on what works.

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Marketplaces

Online Marketplace

Business Modeling

Herbert Prokscha answered

I want to start apoulry business but don't have the financial. Means to start

You will need to start small. If you have a garden use that to raise some chickens from scratch. If you don't have a garden, make a deal with a farmer to use some land to raise chickens. You can sell some of the eggs and use others to get more chickens by letting them hatch.
Protecting the chickens will be a major issue in the beginning.

Alternative is to raise money to rent land and build coops and get an initial amount of chicks.

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Agriculture

Herbert Prokscha answered

can you provide from $25,000 to $2 million (which includes buying a building and starting a coffee/wine shop & for Pro Financial Fitness

At this point, you have to step back and re-evaluate your plan. The possibility for you to raise money this kind of money for what is a non-scalable, hyper-local business are close to zero.

I suggest you focus on making money so that you are not dependent on your wife's income and then:
1) Create a business plan for your concept. That will show you if your idea is viable from a financial perspective. Do the research yourself and do not get fooled by your passion for your idea. Be totally rational when doing the numbers , not optimistic.
2) If the numbers make sense, then start trying to raise funds by approaching people in your network.
3) Do not spend anymore money for work that you could and must do yourself.

For more details:
https://z-niche.com/2020/02/21/how-to-evaluate-an-idea-for-a-start-up/

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Funding

Fundraising

Crowdfunding

Herbert Prokscha answered

Are there success stories of desertification reversal?

There have been many stories of successful examples in the news. The big one is the "Loess Plateau" in China, the "Altiplano" in Bolivia and the "Green Belt Movement in Kenya.

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Research

Herbert Prokscha answered

How do you scale up your affiliate marketing business?

It depends which side of the afiliate marketing businessyou are in.
A) Creating leads for products - get more products
B) Selling Leads - find a way to get more leads by 1) maximize your copy, 2) Create more websites 3) find more buyers

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Affiliate Marketing

Herbert Prokscha answered

I'm launching a marketplace for event vendors to list products/services for planners. Is there demand for this? What challenges are likely to occur?

The issues are:
1) you have to sign up thousands of suppliers to cover geographic issues
2) You need thousands of event planners to make the platform be of interest to suppliers
3) How will you monitize this (i.e. membership dues, commissin on each transaction)?
4) Tech stack needed is expensive

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Event planning

Herbert Prokscha answered

How to find a price and market share for much improved replacement for a disposable medical device?

You can start with the US market and get the statistics from either paid services such as https://www.atozdatabases.com/home or you can go to https://library.doc.gov/company/research#:~:text=The%20EDGAR%20database%20provides%20free,company%20makes%20with%20the%20SEC. where you can select the appropriate data base. I ususally go here first: https://www.census.gov/
For pricing I suggest you cost your product from the bottom up with current data and labor to get to a COG number and from there build it up based on your goals for profit, marketing and overhead to reach your FOB distributor price.
Best of luck!

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Market Analysis

Market Research

Reviews

Herb has deep experience as a food manufacturer, great knowledge of the food supply chain and players. He provided very helpful advise for my business idea. A great person to talk to. Thanks again Herb!

Vu Nguyen Source: Clarity

Member since August 2023