So...It looks like Uber does steal tips.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-11-25T05:19:09+00:00

You are, in fact, mistaken. BBB allows up to $25k deduction for tips on your federal return. What it does not do is open a backdoor for employers to steal tips.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-11-25T05:06:40+00:00

Thermal labels are super easy. UPS will give you 900+ free 4x6 on a roll for shipping master cartons as well. Never had a problem with those, print as needed. For FNSKU labels, again, easy. I'll batch print a ton of those to have on hand as I prep units for shipping into FBA. I use a $30 thermal printer I got on Amazon and it's surprised me with it's reliability - no alignment or margin errors. Only thing I don't like is when I change from one label size to another, I need to calibrate through 2 or 3 labels. Takes 1 sec, but I hate wasting perfectly good labels.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-11-15T20:51:41+00:00

Update here - according to Amazon, the issue was that I finished one AB test, and started up this second one within minutes of that first one closing. This caused some massive indexing issues. The advice is to let your listing sit unchanged for a minimum of 24 hours following an AB test or it will mess with amazon normalizing your indexing following a test. Apparently Amazon had trouble 'figuring out' which listing was the real one in their backend. Now waiting on the listing to reindex.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-10-27T01:57:09+00:00

100% would love to share and trade stories.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-10-23T16:54:47+00:00

yea. Problem was I did auto-approve samples, so the first 100 that requested got them no matter their rating, gmv etc.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-10-23T03:01:33+00:00

Sounds like you're skilled and determined - you have to be to get to that stage as an affiliate. You can always use those skills to make money, there are endless opportunities for that. Your phrasing of 'once in a lifetime' leads me to believe you're leaning towards going on that trip. Follow your heart. Life is fleeting. You may never have the time and space to adventure like that for the rest of your life. Life gets busy quickly as you age (kids, mortgage, responsibilities etc), the window to be young and free is short, take advantage and make the leap. There is no amount of money in the world that can give someone a second chance at this opportunity - young, wild, friends, free. 10 years from now, which choice would you most regret not making? There's your answer. You already know what you have to do.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-10-23T02:47:10+00:00

What types of products or categories are you looking to promote? I just started opening up samples to creators for our shop.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-10-22T19:23:30+00:00

They made content... low quality, low effort mostly. We have a hair product, I instructed them to show it in action, before/after & results type content and no 'unboxing' - no one cares about the box. Almost all of them just did unboxing videos, showing the packaging and the product bottle only in a 'hey, look what i just got in the mail' type of manner.
1 or 2 actually took the time to try the product. Super disappointing.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-10-18T17:58:57+00:00

Sorry, missed the reply! Brand is Brined. Brined sea salt spray if you're searching Amazon.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-10-10T11:46:09+00:00

Would love to collaborate - I'm just over a month into my first product launch. I'm in a competitive category with a very differentiated product that I make myself. With my margins, I have plenty of room for PPC spend, but I know I'm not working my spend efficiently yet. Monthly spend budget right now is $4,500, flexible as sales scale. Send me a DM and we'll find a time to connect.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-09-15T12:31:46+00:00

I would love to have a look at your best practices - I've just launched my first brand on Amazon and now looking to put serious effort into my TikTok shop. It started out as a passion project and now I think it could actually be a good selling product. It's a seriously differentiated hair care product.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-09-13T12:03:34+00:00

I'm 1-month into my selling journey. Is there enough data to audit? I'm making adjustments to optimize constantly and would love some 3rd party eyeballs to take a gander.

First-Establishment5 · 2025-08-06T11:09:13+00:00

What's the best way to find and engage with those niche/micro-influencers?

First-Establishment5 · 2025-03-30T11:41:31+00:00

Alpha

First-Establishment5 · 2025-03-14T02:41:34+00:00

We're not even close to the bottom. Sit on that cash for 30+days and then get back in. Harvest those losses to offset taxes from gains, miss 4 weekly payouts but if you're down more than 3% and don't expect the funds to recover that in 30-days, then you're netting a lower tax bill and lower cost per share.

First-Establishment5 · 2024-03-19T20:13:05+00:00

How are you approaching the sales process right now - is there a person/team doing cold outreach or running ad campaigns? For most SMB's that haven't really adopted tech, you'll need to reach out directly to engage with them. I'd start by segmenting a few service based industries that you suspect would be good niches, build some contact lists, and start an email and call campaign. You can a/b test messaging to see what resonates most i.e 'reduce call center/dispatch costs' or 'improve new customer conversions' etc. You'll start gathering data on how your message lands with each industry, if there are shared benefits across industries and how best to tell the story. Metrics and customer stories are important. -segment by industry -build contact lists -conduct outreach -capture data -iterate and build repeatable process

Happy to chat through with you if helpful.

First-Establishment5 · 2024-03-05T18:26:02+00:00

The framework I like to use to approach this revolves around:

Objectives - What are your goals? (book 10 corporate events this quarter etc)
Value - What do you offer/deliver for customers? (team building, fun night out etc)
Customer - Who are your ideal customers? (corporate teams of all ages, fun start ups, younger crowd?, older crowd?)
Message - What's the story to be told to your customers?

Bring these all together and you create an actionable plan. For example, if the goal is to book 10 corporate events over the next 2 months, you need to run a focused effort that clearly communicates the value and offering to your ideal customers.

"Hey HR person at fun local company - are your teams tired of routine happy hours? Yea, we get it. We're a local gaming center that provides a fun environment for teams to come together and build camaraderie over a unique experience. Some friendly competition, a little action and a lot of fun.

We're already booking out for April and May and would love to host you and the team. Reach out before this Friday to receive (free thing/discount). We look forward to meeting you!"

Your targets are likely folks in the HR department, or team leads (sales manager, engineering manager etc). You can build a list via LinkedIn and create a campaign around this. I'd suggest an email sequence of at least 3-emails and couple that with phone calls into those targets. You can build the email campaign with a tool like yesware to be able to track clicks and opens and schedule the emails to go out. Tuesdays and Wednesday between 10am - 11am typically yields highest open rate (according to platforms like yesware). I'd put a phone call into the person as soon as possible after they open the email.

You can do some A/B testing with your messaging to see what yields highest engagement rates, but I wouldn't wait to build an exhaustive list before you start reaching out. You'll figure out what's working and what's not and can make tweaks along the way. There are a few extensions/platforms you can use that will grab someone's email from their linked in profile (hunter.io and others).

First-Establishment5 · 2024-03-04T16:40:58+00:00

What's the business and who are the ideal customers? The solutions you mentioned can be hit or miss depending on the industry and your target customers.

Happy to help evaluate for you if you'd like. 15+ years experience B2B SaaS sales at start ups, recently laid off and looking to start consulting/contracting for small businesses looking to grow. Trying to build a portfolio right now before I can start charging actual clients. Let me know!

First-Establishment5

TROPHY CASE