How do I effectively locate the Home Decor/ Home goods retailer buyer for Urban Outfitters for the Southeast Region?

You can only solve a big problem that changes the world if you solve a problem that is deeply personal to you. Two great examples and why they worked: Roy Raymond was a sad pervert. He'd buy bras and panties at the department store and all the clerks thought their thoughts about him. Roy felt embarrassed. He wasn't really a pervert. He just wanted to buy lingerie for his girlfriend. So he solved this major problem he was having. He created a space where men could feel comfortable coming in and buying sexy lingerie for their partners. He called it Victoria's Secret. But Roy, by solving this important personal issue for himself, apparently solved the same issue for many other men. First year sales were over $500,000 and he quickly opened up three more stores. In 1982 he sold Victoria's Secret for one million dollars before trying multiple other businesses that ended up failing. One MILLION Dollars. A decade later Victoria's Secret was worth over a billion dollars but Roy Raymund was nearly bankrupt and had missed the huge run-up in it's value. -- Picture New York City in the late 1800s on a rainy day. It was disgusting beyond belief. 150,000 horses transported people up and down the busy streets. Each of those horses, according to Super Freakonomics, dropped down about 15-30 pounds of manure. That's up to 4.5 million pounds of manure A DAY on the streets of NYC. And now imagine it raining. Would you cross the street? How long could this last? How long would the city survive without being infested with crap and all the diseases brought with it. What would happen as population of both men and horses increased? Was someone working on inventing a gigantic manure scooper? How would this problem get solved? It never got solved. Instead, Henry Ford invented the assembly line to mass produce cars. Every horse lost their job. People began to drive cars. Manure problem solved. -- In both cases there is a common theme. Someone outside the industry solved a problem that was personal to them that then changed an industry forever. Roy Raymund wasn't a fashion designer or a retailer. He worked in the marketing department of Vicks, which makes over the counter medications. Henry Ford, I don't think, ever worked in the manure industry. Instead, each person focused on a problem that was important to them. A problem that excited them at that moment in time. Raymund wanted to avoid being embarrassed in the future. Ford wanted an efficient way to make cars. The ONLY way to change the world is to solve a problem that is important to YOU. They had to choose themselves for success before they could save the world. Raymund had to convince himself that he didn't belong in the marketing department of a division of Procter & Gamble. He borrowed $80,000 and took the big risk of starting a business. Ford had to survive numerous failures and bankruptcies in order to find a cheap way to make cars. He would abandon investors, people who supported him, and even companies named after him, in his quest to solve his problem in his own way. Nobody gave them permission. And neither of them set out to change the world. They only wanted to solve a problem that was personally important to them. It's unfortunate that often we forget that choosing ourselves is not something that happens once. It has to happen every single day. Else we lose track of that core inside of us that solves problems and is able to share them in a way that makes the world a better place. Ford forgot this and became obsessed with Jews. Ford is the only American that Hitler mentions in Mein Kampf: "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence...[from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." And what happened to our embarrassed marketing manager that has ignited the passions of men and women for the past 30 years? Roy Raymund saw the value of Victoria's Secret jump from the one million he sold it for in 1982 to over a billion dollars a decade later. He failed in business after business. He got divorced. Then at the age of 46, my age, he drove to Golden Gate Bridge, jumped off it and killed himself. Before you can save the world you have to save yourself. But you have to relentlessly do it every day. Sometimes the train wakes me up at night and I feel scared. What will the world be like for my children? I won't always be able to help them. I don't even know if I do enough to help them now. And then I remember. I'm alive for another day.

Please clarify ;) the situation : - do you have a contract with developers ? - do you own the app ? or does it belong to the developers until you pay them ? - why are the developers asking payment ? - do you have a running app ? which needs does it covers ? - did you set a company ? - who are your investors ? why they don't help you ? what do they expect ? - do you have schools using your app (even for free) ? - can we see the app features ? - how many competitors do you have ? what is your unfair advantage ? - why did you spend one year on this without a real customer ? - why are you looking for a company rather than paying customers ? - who are your customers ? - what are the 3 main problems you solve for your customers ? - do you know schools that uses classroom management apps ? which apps ? how much does it cost them annually ? - do you want to stop or continue this project ? - have you ever heard of "Lean Startup" ?

Congrats! You've solved the first big problem, having a few happy customers who love your product/service. Questions you need to think about (and the traction book is the absolute best resource I'd recommend to DIY growth). 1. How many customers do you need/want to pick up in the next 6m, next 12m? Without overwhelming your team/resources. 2. If you take a 10X goal, 200 customers, when would you want/expect to reach that? 3. Do your customers have good networks with others like them? If they do then that's the absolute best source for you. 4. Assuming you have a recurring revenue relationship with your customer, how can you touch base with them (on phone perhaps), and actually ask them for referrals? And if they give you referrals reward them with swag/goodies? 5. How many customers do these FB groups have? Can they give you 200+ customers? 6. Does the nature of the end-result you produce give you a marketing advantage? i.e., doing case-studies for each design, posting it on the fb groups, etc. which are value add and not spammy in nature? Referrals are the best channel, since you will have a warm lead who is looking for your services, rather than a cold lead that has to be educated about your benefits, so I would heavily invest in them. If you'd like to know more about how you can grow more strategically in the early stage, first read the traction book, and then I can assist on a call if you still need help :)

2 different categories come to mind. H&R Block or other tax preparation services. The second is restaurants. This may seem like a product more than a service but I think it truly falls into the category of service, especially if you look at the national chains. Think Applebee's, TGI Fridays etc. The reason people go to these places is because of the experience they receive. The franchisors have created a system that generates nearly identical results nationwide. The first thing you need to do is figure out what makes your service superior to others out there, then you need to figure out how and why this is the case. From there you need to document it and make sure that you have a mechanism in place to ensure compliance. Granted that is a huge amount of work, but the basic premise is quite simple. You want all of the people you hire to do things more or less the way you would do them.

If you want long term evangelists you're going to have to think outside of the relationship between your product and the customer and focus specifically on the customer. Identify the influencers who are already engaging your brand through social media channels and see what you can learn about them. If their profile picture is them playing an instrument, you might send then a gift card to Itunes or Guitar Center. In Short: Spend a little money and show your interest in them instead of just rewarding their interest in you. I had Wheat Thins send me a box of crackers and that was cool but I sent one tweet out and was done. General Electric saw that I was wearing a Batman shirt and sent me a really cool book as well as a hand written thank you note. I regularly engage and promote content about GE.