The other day I was meeting with Nick Timmins, an extremely bright entrepreneurial-spirited business student who is the VP of operations at Orderin.ca, an online platform that is trying to change the order-in business from phone-focused to online. They have a simple step-by-step website that works flawlessly and really does improve the customer’s order-in experience. I had heard about Nick’s attempts, and I contacted him to learn more about the company and how they were trying to achieve their goals. I learned some lessons.
Lesson #1: Contact people that interest you, even if you don’t know them, you’d be surprised how many are willing to sit down for a cup of coffee, and you’d be even more surprised how valuable these contacts can be in the future. Never stop expanding your network. Reach out to people of not just your field, but of all backgrounds.
Nick Explained to me the approach that Orderin.ca was taking, which was putting most of their resources to expand there 150 restaurant affiliates. Yet, they were struggling to get enough orders to meet expenses.
Lesson #2: Expanding your customer base is vital, especially when money is tight. Even though your product may not be perfect (i.e: not the majority restaurants are signed up with orderin.ca), focus on the customer in order to increase cash flow, build traction and generate feedback to further improve product for quick iterations.
I asked Nick about the marketing strategies that they were using to attract customers, in which, immediately, he pulled out beautiful flyers and pamphlets used for flyer distribution.
Lesson #3: Find out your customer, and market appropriately. Here, Orderin.ca’s customer base is tech-savvy people , who frequently order-in and are early-adopters. Also, Orderin.ca’s marketing should be primarily on the web so its just a click away to order-in and that makes it just one more reason why its easier.
Orderin.ca has no social media strategies.
Lesson #4: If you are a company, especially a web company and you dont use social media, you are losing out on an opportunity to build a brand, generate revenue, improve customer relations, get feedback, increase your brand’s online presence, find employees that are believe in your mission and drive traffic to your website for FREE.
Nick told me how he enjoyed working for Orderin.ca because he had the chance to work with an entrepreneur with a proven track record building successful companies and was able to learn about the thought processes and the lifestyle of such a person.
Lesson #5: When you surround yourself with remarkable people, you become remarkable. Try to always play tennis with people better than you, that way, you will get better.
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