Adam Pieniazek presented The 42nd Estate to BYE in May. These are his thoughts on the experience of presenting:

Having participated in previous Boston Young Entrepreneurs presentations as an audience member, I was excited and admittedly a bit nervous about presenting the business model for The 42nd Estate, a web media firm started by myself and three other individuals.

Excited because I’ve seen that the BYE crowd is knowledgeable and doesn’t hold anything back, which leads to great actionable advice. Nervous because it was my first presentation in years.

A key focus of The 42nd Estate is to help other businesses with their web strategy. We help our clients improve their web design, tighten up their copywriting, and streamline their social media campaigns. Since we mainly target businesses, it was great hearing about our strengths, weaknesses and possible improvements from entrepreneurs.

After flying through the presentation, the Boston Young Entrepreneurs offered a ton of feedback. Overall, the advice given was positive and encouraging but also showed us a new perspective in a few areas.

Many members recommended that we don’t expand our services, but increase the amount of help we offer in our existing niches. For instance, we currently offer social media consulting, where we help our clients increase sales and drive traffic to their sites by reaching out and connecting with their target audience via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social arenas.

A great tip that we’re currently preparing to roll out is to also offer social media management, where our firm plays a more direct role in the client’s social media campaigns, freeing the client up to focus on their core business.

Another great piece of advice was to obtain market research for our industry. When we started The 42nd Estate we purposely dove right in and went with the flow to see where it would lead us. Now that we’ve found some success and received positive feedback from our clients, market research would help us better understand our competitors and provide accurate metrics against which to compare ourselves. One entrepreneur pointed me to a resource that has up to date market research while another group of business owners alerted me to the fact that the local public universities also have access to market research, though it might not be the latest reports.

We were also encouraged to expand our client base. Prior to the BYE meeting, we were focusing on individuals and small businesses, but as we’ve found success in that niche the BYE members encouraged us to broaden our horizons and actively seek out large businesses and organizations to work with, as it would increase our revenue and provide longer term projects that would stabilize our cash flow.

Another suggestion offered by several members was to increase our rates. When we started out our goal was to compete on price and quality, but now that we’re relatively saturated on those two points it’s time to reconsider our rates to stabilize our revenue and expand our services within our niche. One member let us know that he and likely other entrepreneurs would be interested in case studies and in-depth information about our methodologies and their impact. It’s an area where we’d love to share as much knowledge as we can, but also must be careful not to reveal any trade secrets. We’re considering releasing case studies and possibly e-books to deliver passive income and share our findings.

A final note to future presenters at the Boston Young Entrepreneurs meetings, bring a tape recorder! The feedback will come fast and furious and taking notes will prove to be arduous. It’s the one thing I wish I would have done differently as there was a mass of feedback that deserved to be preserved for further review later. If there’s any feedback you have for us or are interested in our services, feel free to contact us via e-mail.

Regards,

Adam Pieniazek | The 42nd Estate

Cell: (617) 418 - 1055

Blog: www.adampieniazek.com
Twitter: http://www,tweetadam.com