I’m 26, 1.5 years out of college (took extra time due to being a lazy pothead) working as a software engineer. Work for a small startup with a lot of funding (owned by a blue chip company) in a big city but not SF/NYC. Making the average software dev comp.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my life and have been thinking about transitioning over to Enterprise Software sales, by taking a position as a BDR and going all in for at least 1 year to see how good I can get. I want to do this for several reasons…
I’m a little shy. Not super weird (have dated girls, was in frat, etc.), but I *know* this is something I need to work on, and I want to take ownership of the situation and dive head first into something I know will be a challenge in this regard. Getting good at sales would have a lot of carry over to fixing this part of my life.
I’m fairly gifted numeric wise, call it top 15%, but to be in the top 5% of coders I think I will have to dedicate 100s of hours each year to upgrade my engineering skills continually. I don’t want to do this, as there won’t be much carry over to the others side of my life.
That being said, I have some concerns for a few reasons
Pay cut/loss of seniority. If I go straight into a BDR role I’ll be at the bottom of the totem pole again, not to mention a hefty pay cut for my base (20-30%). I’m already 2 years behind the top coders who graduated at the same time as I did and this way I would be 4 years older than most entry level BDRs
Loss of flexible schedule and won’t be able to control my schedule to workout / work on side biz as easily as I can now. End goal is to build 2-3 income streams so that I can live off those as opposed to a career
In the event of failure – say the year is up and it turns out I’m shit at it (don’t think this will be the case thanks to this site but who knows) – and I have to go back to engineering, I’m now 3 years behind my competition.
What would you suggest to someone in my situation? Would you say to go for it, take the pay cut and suffer the punishment of getting good at sales for the year, or redouble efforts improve skills to get a better coding job / work on biz on the side.
Thanks for taking the time!
Not even worth it, just start a side business… makes way more sense. Don’s see the point of the life story over a job/career difference that is probably $20-30K… doesn’t matter.
In fact if you took the paycut it also wouldn’t impact your future 99/100 times
Sounds good. Am already in the process of starting the side biz, but been thinking about this for a while.
Thanks for the reply!
You need capital.
Even a singing bonus at FNG would be enough, just grab one.
Been running traffic as an affiliate for 2 months and right around break even at 6k spend.
Do you think the highest probability move to make it is to stick down this path as an affiliate (pretty “whitehat”)and put $ and time into getting really good at this or going down a more blackhat nutra route which I’m assuming would be easier to get positive ROI faster? I have the technical skills/infrastructure and offers for BH route
Goal is to generate $ to do this full time and transition to bigger more long term ventures.
Doing it legit is always the highest return, so that’s the right path you’re close already
Should your side business be kept private while you are still working a career or is it OK for your employer to know?
Same as in book, private ideally under your parents name
I’m in the process of releasing my first amazon FBA product. I’ve sourced it on Alibaba and am currently in the process of discussing price, personalized printing options for the product/packaging, shipping options, etc. The product is something that I haven’t seen before and I believe it’s genuinely neat. Others have released this exact product on amazon, probably from the exact manufacturer that I’m in talks with (since they’re the only manufacturer from what I can find), but they’re marketed horribly on amazon. No PL’ing, nothing. Just stock photos, MS Paint-like addition of words on some photos, the whole 9 yards. This is great, except for the fact that these sellers are selling for around $8-$10 a piece. The margins aren’t there for me to sell at $8/piece, especially since I’ll be dropping more on the PL / marketing aspect of mine. They are all selling well nonetheless, and are all relatively new additions to the amazon marketplace (4-5 months old at most). Is it feasible to drop my product in this marketplace, make my product “look” far and above the highest quality one with the only logo printing / customized packaging, all the while it’s the same base product from the same manufacturer, and ask $15 a piece?
Not gonna like this one but, only know if you try! No guaranteed answer here
friend told me that weed business in states like in NJ or so are about to taking off. any exp and thought of this type of weed growing or dispensery business. or an online business related to it.
Sure it is a growing space, we’re not involved but agree there is potential there. We don’t know about NJ specifically as we don’t operate in the marijuana biz. Would go to conferences if interested in that topic
I know I am late, if you can respond great. If not, I understand.
Have a prototype of a physical product designed. I want to drive traffic and confirm demand. My question is about selling via emotion and not logic.
An imperfect analogy is something like an electric pencil sharpener where all other products are either manual or very poor quality. Biggest difference is product is used for a leisure activity.
What emotion do I target? I’m thinking:
-frustration with poor quality products
-wow factor, look how easy/quick this is if you don’t have to do by hand
Seems similar to infomercial/QVC, maybe I should look there for a similar successful product.
Thank you.
using logic practically never works. Based on your description it sounds like an infomercial type set up makes the most sense.
Sounds like one where you’d use the classic online chalk board video to suck the user in. You have to make the user feel the “pain” of the alternative solution and then lead them into your solution.
As usual use your closest competitor as the starting point for building your sales pitch/ad etc.
I’m 26, 1.5 years out of college (took extra time due to being a lazy pothead) working as a software engineer. Work for a small startup with a lot of funding (owned by a blue chip company) in a big city but not SF/NYC. Making the average software dev comp.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my life and have been thinking about transitioning over to Enterprise Software sales, by taking a position as a BDR and going all in for at least 1 year to see how good I can get. I want to do this for several reasons…
I’m a little shy. Not super weird (have dated girls, was in frat, etc.), but I *know* this is something I need to work on, and I want to take ownership of the situation and dive head first into something I know will be a challenge in this regard. Getting good at sales would have a lot of carry over to fixing this part of my life.
I’m fairly gifted numeric wise, call it top 15%, but to be in the top 5% of coders I think I will have to dedicate 100s of hours each year to upgrade my engineering skills continually. I don’t want to do this, as there won’t be much carry over to the others side of my life.
That being said, I have some concerns for a few reasons
Pay cut/loss of seniority. If I go straight into a BDR role I’ll be at the bottom of the totem pole again, not to mention a hefty pay cut for my base (20-30%). I’m already 2 years behind the top coders who graduated at the same time as I did and this way I would be 4 years older than most entry level BDRs
Loss of flexible schedule and won’t be able to control my schedule to workout / work on side biz as easily as I can now. End goal is to build 2-3 income streams so that I can live off those as opposed to a career
In the event of failure – say the year is up and it turns out I’m shit at it (don’t think this will be the case thanks to this site but who knows) – and I have to go back to engineering, I’m now 3 years behind my competition.
What would you suggest to someone in my situation? Would you say to go for it, take the pay cut and suffer the punishment of getting good at sales for the year, or redouble efforts improve skills to get a better coding job / work on biz on the side.
Thanks for taking the time!
Not even worth it, just start a side business… makes way more sense. Don’s see the point of the life story over a job/career difference that is probably $20-30K… doesn’t matter.
In fact if you took the paycut it also wouldn’t impact your future 99/100 times
Sounds good. Am already in the process of starting the side biz, but been thinking about this for a while.
Thanks for the reply!
You need capital.
Even a singing bonus at FNG would be enough, just grab one.
Been running traffic as an affiliate for 2 months and right around break even at 6k spend.
Do you think the highest probability move to make it is to stick down this path as an affiliate (pretty “whitehat”)and put $ and time into getting really good at this or going down a more blackhat nutra route which I’m assuming would be easier to get positive ROI faster? I have the technical skills/infrastructure and offers for BH route
Goal is to generate $ to do this full time and transition to bigger more long term ventures.
Doing it legit is always the highest return, so that’s the right path you’re close already
Should your side business be kept private while you are still working a career or is it OK for your employer to know?
Same as in book, private ideally under your parents name
I’m in the process of releasing my first amazon FBA product. I’ve sourced it on Alibaba and am currently in the process of discussing price, personalized printing options for the product/packaging, shipping options, etc. The product is something that I haven’t seen before and I believe it’s genuinely neat. Others have released this exact product on amazon, probably from the exact manufacturer that I’m in talks with (since they’re the only manufacturer from what I can find), but they’re marketed horribly on amazon. No PL’ing, nothing. Just stock photos, MS Paint-like addition of words on some photos, the whole 9 yards. This is great, except for the fact that these sellers are selling for around $8-$10 a piece. The margins aren’t there for me to sell at $8/piece, especially since I’ll be dropping more on the PL / marketing aspect of mine. They are all selling well nonetheless, and are all relatively new additions to the amazon marketplace (4-5 months old at most). Is it feasible to drop my product in this marketplace, make my product “look” far and above the highest quality one with the only logo printing / customized packaging, all the while it’s the same base product from the same manufacturer, and ask $15 a piece?
Not gonna like this one but, only know if you try! No guaranteed answer here
friend told me that weed business in states like in NJ or so are about to taking off. any exp and thought of this type of weed growing or dispensery business. or an online business related to it.
Sure it is a growing space, we’re not involved but agree there is potential there. We don’t know about NJ specifically as we don’t operate in the marijuana biz. Would go to conferences if interested in that topic
I know I am late, if you can respond great. If not, I understand.
Have a prototype of a physical product designed. I want to drive traffic and confirm demand. My question is about selling via emotion and not logic.
An imperfect analogy is something like an electric pencil sharpener where all other products are either manual or very poor quality. Biggest difference is product is used for a leisure activity.
What emotion do I target? I’m thinking:
-frustration with poor quality products
-wow factor, look how easy/quick this is if you don’t have to do by hand
Seems similar to infomercial/QVC, maybe I should look there for a similar successful product.
Thank you.
using logic practically never works. Based on your description it sounds like an infomercial type set up makes the most sense.
Sounds like one where you’d use the classic online chalk board video to suck the user in. You have to make the user feel the “pain” of the alternative solution and then lead them into your solution.
As usual use your closest competitor as the starting point for building your sales pitch/ad etc.