NOCUBE is a digital marketing company. They train and teach small and medium organizations on how to drive more traffic, leads and sales with internet marketing.
She also created Nutrient Depletions, which is a medical app that helps you stay informed of what nutrients are being depleted by your medications and helps you learn how to replenish those nutrients with natural food sources.
If anyone is in the process of developing an app, here is a resource right here.
What was your motivation to work from home or start your business?
My motivation to start my business was both out of necessity and a drive to help other business owners be successful at marketing their own businesses. My entrepreneurial spirit was engrained in me early on. My dad was a serial entrepreneur.
Watching and helping him taught me valuable lessons. The key lesson I learned from him, which has stayed with me, was not to give up when things were rough.
Current Job Situation was a Major Driver
I was employed in a sales position for a very large medical supply company and I started to notice some changes happening with my management team, specifically in the alignment of the territories.
Soon I came to the realization that a layoff was coming.
Knowing a layoff was looming, I started to put a plan in place (while still employed) so I that I wasn’t left vulnerable to a poor job market and slow economy.
While researching business ideas I decided that the business I chose had to have the flexibility to work at different hours of the day and not be tied to an office.
How did you go about financing your business?
My business start-up costs were self-funded. My start-up costs were relatively low because I learned how to do a lot of the tactical pieces on my own. My start-up costs were less than $1000.
Since my business is consulting and was run out of my home, I had no overhead.
I registered my business with the state using online forms that are provided by the State of NY Dept of Corporations.
My costs to create marketing materials, printing and publishing were low because I created all the marketing myself and only paid for printing services. I took on the PR work on myself.
To build a presence online and market my business, I did many forms of online marketing and social media including designing my website. I knew my website didn’t have to be perfect from the beginning; I just had to get it started, published and then continue building on from there.
How long did it take for you to actually turn a profit?
For the Nutrient Depletions app, it took 2 months after launch to turn a profit.
For NOCUBE, it took 6 months to turn a profit.
How did you get your first customer? How do you attain them now?
Nutrient Depletions app is sold in the iTunes Appstore. So we got some organic sales from just being a new app in the store. But the majority of our sales came when the word got out about the app. We had our press release picked up by many publications, which led to interviews and reviews. The momentum built from there.
NOCUBE got its first customer from networking. I had a lot of contacts that were old clients, colleagues, or acquaintances from networking events. I started to inform my old contacts what I was working on now and talking to them about the benefits of internet marketing.
I also asked them to let me know if they knew of any businesses that were interested in these services.
Slowly, many of my former colleagues and old customers knew what I was working on and became interested in it. And started to ask what they can do to market themselves online.
So I continued to work with them until I came across someone who referred me to a string of pharmacies who needed help with their website design and marketing their business.
Keeping true to my mobile business model my first customers came from clients in another state.
How did you determine the price to charge?
NOCUBE:
I did research on what the industry average was for the services I was offering, but also keeping in mind my competition.
I based my prices on my hourly rate and how long a project would take to complete. I still do so today.
However, in the beginning I discounted my rate and let my customers know that they could lock in on the lower rate by signing a contract and I would honor the rate for the first 6 months.
Then with each new customer I brought on, I raised my hourly rate by 5% until I reached the industry average. So my initial customers received a discount on the services. They were happy and I was happy.
After the initial 6 month contract expired I revised their rate to the current rate I was charging at the time.
Nutrient Depletions:
I based the price of the app on the value of the information being provided by the app and my competition in the medical category.
There are thousands of apps in the iTunes App Store that are either free or .99 cents.
Many bring value but the majority of them are worthless. Developers are just cluttering the App Store with apps just to try to sell advertising.
So knowing this, I didn’t want the Nutrient Depletions app to be categorized as another worthless app.
I wanted it to be an affordable medical app that is accessible to anyone. So I picked the $1.99 price point because the value of the information it provides.
How did you determine the best methods to market yourself and or your service/product?
From experience I knew I had to invest time in building relationships with potential new clients.
So I decided to start networking with existing contacts I already had.
My advice to other women would be to start building your network ASAP.
- Build an online social following, such as Twitter, FB, Google+, etc.
- Clean up your contact lists and build a distribution list you can use to send email updates.
- Keep people in your network informed of what you are working on. It can be as simple as marketing online with fresh new blog content, updating your status on social media networks, or individually calling or emailing contacts in your network.
- Sometimes family and friends can be your biggest critics and can be a negative influence.
- That’s the last thing you need when you are starting a new business. Think of current or past coworkers, past acquaintances, past clients, past business partners, people you used to work with, anyone you have met, etc. Contact them.
Do you belong to any Business Organizations or Networking Groups?
Yes.
- Connect: Professional Women’s Network
- Network with Gators
- ABCPNG: Always Be Connecting Power Networking Group
- PBM & Managed Care Professional Network
- Digital & Social Media Marketing Watch
- Digital Marketing North America
- iOS Apps in Medicine
- AppRochester
- PeerNet
- Social Media Club – Rochester, NY
- Apple Cider
- New Horizons Network
Do you ever get burned out and want to give up? If so, how do you get past that?
Yes, sometimes I feel like I’m doing everything for everyone and nothing for me.
Some days I struggle to find a balance between running a family and a business.
The upside of working from home is that you have the flexibility of multi-tasking and keeping all your household commitments going alongside your business commitments during any given day.
The downside is allocating enough time so that all your commitments are met. And that may mean working late at night or on the weekends.
Even though it’s great to work from home, the cleaning, cooking and the children still have to be taken care of.
To avoid being burned out you have to learn to delegate.
Delegate, delegate, delegate. Ask for help. In our house, everyone has to contribute to household commitments. Don’t take everything on yourself.
In addition to that, I find that I have to commit an hour a day for me, whether that is going for a walk, working out, or just sitting reading a book or in complete solitude. It helps keep me grounded and recharges me to keep going.
Were you always confident that you would be a success or did that come over time?
I was always confident I would be a success because I have always believed that if you focus your energy on positive things you can be successful.
If you sit around dwelling on why you were wronged or how you are a victim of your situation you will never move forward or be successful.
But if you focus on learning, growing, expanding your skills you will naturally become successful. Even if it’s taking you longer than you thought.
What other advice would you like to share?
You don’t have to be an expert on everything to get started.
- Stick with what you know. And outsource the pieces you don’t know. You can pay people to do your marketing, accounting, incorporate your business, set up your website, or do some of your PR.
- If you’re building a product, partner with people that know about that industry.
- If you’re selling a service, find people you can partner with and split some of your profits and the work involved. Or take on some of the tactical work on yourself to reduce your costs and outsource the more expensive pieces of running a business.
- If you’re marketing yourself online (and I think everyone should), start building your online content as soon as possible. Even if you don’t have a website yet, you can start building a list of topics you will write about and outline the content you want people to know about your business.
Where can we find your products and services and how can we best connect with you?
You can find more information about marketing your business online, website design and social media marketing at our website: http://www.nocube.co. Or you can email me at [email protected] or call us at 585-851-8448.
FreelanceMom.com wants to thank Mary for graciously taking the time to do this interview!
