Help Request starting small business small business |
- Help Request starting small business
- Wharton School UPenn | Entrepreneurship 3: Growth Strategies | Free Online Course
- Getting commercial/HOA RFPs - Lawn Care
- Facebook giving false/hidden reviews?
- Power washing service?
- I am really scared to set up my new business because I may run out of money! Please help is you have beaten the fear and come out on top!
- "No Solicitation" sign on the door? The amount of business solicitors that randomly come into my store is too high.
- How to Conduct an Experiment Right & Not Hamper Your Development
- What are the most necessary frameworks to having a legally operating and protected service provider business?
- Need to purchase a new car/suv/van and trying to figure out if it should be a business purchase
- Marketing success with bake shop (or other food retail)?
- Breaking with potential partners and their future claims on my business
- Website for custom stationary
- Freelance contract with my existing employer?
- Having my business pay me rent?
- How to find wholesale cleaning products?
- Taking over Dad's business, what classes should I take?
- Flux: The €85,000 Failed Modular Multi-Messaging Client
- What is the best place to get feedback for my website business content (about ut, product info etc)?
- How do I tell a customer that he is being taken advantage of by a vendor?
- List of businesses expanding into NY Metro Area
| Help Request starting small business Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:29 PM PST I live in Washington state. I want to start a small ebay /amazon/online sales. For magic the gathering to start. I have the application for a distributor. Here is what I need help with. How do i get a State Sales Tax License and a business license. And how much does it cost? Thank you for any help. Update : thank you everyone I have found all the info I need now. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Wharton School UPenn | Entrepreneurship 3: Growth Strategies | Free Online Course Posted: 09 Feb 2018 08:21 AM PST | ||
| Getting commercial/HOA RFPs - Lawn Care Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:00 PM PST Along with my fiance, I run a lawn care maintence business. We run about 15k/month doing strictly residential accounts. I want to start getting into commercial and HOA accounts, but have had no luck in even submitting one bid after multiple tries. How do you guys get RFPs for the private sector? Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Facebook giving false/hidden reviews? Posted: 10 Feb 2018 03:40 AM PST Hi guys, this is pretty worrying as my business is dependent on good reviews. Prior today, I had 39x5 star reviews, and a single 1 star review (shitty customer). All of a sudden, without any notification, I've received a 1x4 star review and 2x1 star review? When I click to see these random reviews, nothing comes up, just the original reviews I got before today. Is anyone else facing this problem? Has anyone experienced it before? Is there anyway I can contact Facebook? This is extremely stressful. I mean, we work so hard, see slow growth but try to stay positive, and a random problem (that I have no clue about) fucks us over. Really disheartening... I'm trying to stay positive and hope it's a glitch that'll soon be repaired by Facebook :\ Thanks guys. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:52 AM PST I've been doing landscaping during the summer for five years and it has been pretty successful. (I'm a student and the flexibility plus seasonal-ness of it works well for me) I'm thinking about adding a power washing service to my arsenal. A good power washing rug goes for like $400 new and less than that used. I already have a Jeep with a large backseat and a trailer as well, so startup costs for me would be low. I would advertise on Craigslist and perhaps build a website. That's all I've done for my landscaping and it's gone great. Word of mouth is awesome too. There aren't really any companies in my area who do exclusively power washing, or there are very few. I was thinking it'd be an easy $200 for like 3 hrs of work if a person was to have their whole house done. Does anyone have any experience in this area? Is this a realistic idea? Are consumers actually interested in hiring a power washer or would they rather just rent a washer to do themselves? What kind of washer will I need? What's the minimum PSI I'll need? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 05:46 PM PST I want to start a new business in botox and fillers. I did the training a year ago but didn't do any jobs pertaining to it. Costs involved will be rent per client, insurance, cost of botox and fillers and also refresher courses. This will equate to roughly £3-4 initially. Current situation: wife is on maternity leave looking after our 8month old. Currently we have one income and she will be returning to work in may. We will be undertaking renovations on a new property we will move into. I think renovations will be roughly around the 50k mark. I have a total of 26k in savings for this. I plan to do the basics in the house so we can at least move in and then do the rest of the work we go along. I pay £300 monthly to a pa who helps keep my clinic busy - this is the first month I'm using her and we've not had much luck so far and the clinic has been slow so far this year. I will use her to market my new venture at an added cost. I am due to pay a tax bill but have no idea how much this will be as my accountant is useless. The new business will take time to develop but I am really scared of using my savings which should be going into renovations but will be taken up by other expenses. I am really scared I will run out of money and this will put my family in jeopardy. Ultimately I would be grateful for any encouragement and reassurance please as I am stepping into unknown territory. Any advice would be appreciated too. Many thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 10:58 AM PST Has anyone put a "No Solicitation" sign on their building to keep out the business solicitors that show up randomly throughout the week? Does it work? When I first opened it was a novel experience and I didn't expect it to last, but it's become a weekly expectation to see at least one solicitor trying to sell us their SEO program, marketing material, etc. [link] [comments]  | ||
| How to Conduct an Experiment Right & Not Hamper Your Development Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:25 AM PST Conducting experiments is not easy, but it can help your business to grow much faster! Unfortunately, hasty decisions and actions can not only delay the desired result but also harm your company. Thus, an unsuccessful experiment can disrupt the stability of the project, as well as cause discomfort to employees and spoil user experience. Check our guide, to avoid this kind of problems, and conduct experiments like a pro! Step 1. Figure out a problem or gap* Before you start conducting an experiment you should ask yourself a simple, yet very important question: Why am I doing this? Experiments are good for you business, but they put a lot of pressure on development by complicating the code and business logic. So before you start spending any funds on the experiment you should know for sure why taking the risk. We highly recommend figuring out a problem or gap area you are trying to improve first. This will not only help to keep idea generation focused, but will also increase the chances that the changes implemented will have any effect on your metrics and KPIs, which the golden calf of any business manager. Example We have an online store and 80% of customers add goods to the basket and never come back. Let's think about how we can increase the incentive to finish the purchase and decrease the number of abandoned carts. Step 2. Develop a hypothesis Once you know the problem, it is time to brainstorm the solutions to solve it. Feel free to ask what all Team members think since different roles might look at the problem from the different angle, so great ideas might come from unexpected places. Besides, it increases the Team motivation greatly. Once you have a list, think about a couple ideas that you like best. It is a good practice is to validate the ideas with the development Team to know how much effort it might take to implement a feature and whether there are any technical limitations. This will help you to prioritize the features right. Example Well, customers probably forget about their list or don't have enough incentive to buy from us. There are many ways to try bringing customers back: you can send them emails & push notifications. Let's focus on emails since we already have them all. What should we send them? Maybe a discount would work. And what about free delivery? Let's send some of them a free delivery coupon and offer others 10% discount. And let's have a group, who would receive a simple email-reminder, which doesn't cost us anything and has no additional perks. Step 3. Learn how to validate it Any idea is good, but if you don't know how to measure the efficiency, you will never be able to learn whether it was efficient or not. Remember in step 1 you figured out what problem you were trying to solve? It's time to focus on that KPI and make sure that the results of the A/B test are measurable. Besides, you might want to put a benchmark to know what result you will consider as a positive. Example Currently, we have 80% of abandoned carts. We expect this figure to decrease after we introduce our emails. We would consider the result successful in case the % will drop to 70%. Step 4. Document the requirements The next extremely important step, which is skipped quite often, is documentation. One can't but admit that having requirements documented eases things up for both business and development. In cases with experiments, it is a must to document it. Having different behavior of the same feature at the same time complicates the business logic a lot and after a few experiments sometimes it is extremely hard to know what the original behavior was. Make sure there is a professional person responsible for documenting changes and keeping track of all A/B tests making sure there are finished in time, requirements are written down and metrics are collected for them. Usually, Project Manager or Business Analyst is responsible for that. Example We want to test different emails. Project Manager is to create a ticket for each of the behavior types and write down what the experiment is, how long it is conducted and what aims we are trying to achieve. Step 5. Do the A/B tests Now it is time to conduct an A/B test, don't forget to segment Users properly and have a control group with no changes. You will be comparing the results of the test groups against the control group. Mmm… smells like science! It is important to set the limits to the size of the control groups and the time the experiment of the test. Usually, the experiments are conducted on not more than 30% of your audience. The ideal time for an experiment is 1 months, but not all businesses can't afford to wait for so long, so in some cases, it lasts a week or two, but with large audiences taken in a game. Example Let's put 70% of our Users as a control group – they will continue using the current product with no changes. 15% of the rest of the Users will be sent a free shipping coupon and another 15% will receive 10% coupon. In 1 month we will finish the A/B test and check the % of the abandoned carts in each of the groups. Step 6. Analyze it right Though it is very tempting, you should never analyze the results of the A/B tests before it finished. It is like having a wrapped gift on your desk, which you can't open until Day X. Once you have the test ready, don't jump with the conclusions: make sure that there are enough people in each segment for results to be credible. If there are not enough people there, maybe you should wait for more time. Quite often there's no a clear winner. In this case, you might choose one of the scenarios yourself or push the test candidates to the extreme, e.g. offer 20% discount instead of 10%. There are also cases when you decide to make no changes and test some other solutions instead. Though it gives you a bitter feeling, remember, that negative result is also a good result, since now you know for sure that it wouldn't work for your business. Example Let's assume that in the control group the % of the abandoned carts was 78%, in group A with the free shipping the result was 75% and in the group B with 10% discount it was 77%. The best decision here is to think about other incentives to decrease the amount of the abandoned carts, e.g. give them special discount right on the cart page. So you create a new A/B test and your experiment continues. As you see, conducting experiments is a very creative journey. It is good for your business to test a different hypothesis. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that it always complicates the development and might lead to bugs and additional refactoring, so make sure to test only the best candidates. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 03:21 PM PST I'm just as bad at wording my questions as I am in getting organized. I had an old business that recently I changed over to power washing. The old business was mainly online and didn't make much besides file for an LLC and get the business account. So this is what I have so far that every small business should have: *LLC (if that's the route you take) *Insurance *Business account *Workman's Comp *Bonding What else is needed and the most important things to have to be organized? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Need to purchase a new car/suv/van and trying to figure out if it should be a business purchase Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:48 PM PST
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| Marketing success with bake shop (or other food retail)? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:45 PM PST Hey all! I'm a partner in a little custom bake shop - cakes, cupcakes, cookies for any special occasion. We're getting some decent referral/word of mouth, but haven't really hit anything out of the park on any marketing efforts. One challenge is that we don't have our own retail space - just a shared area with a cafe who carries some of our products. We've got a decent social media following (Insta and Facebook), but don't seem to get a lot of conversions through it. A few food/wedding shows, have helped, but we're really need more recurring, regular business. Anyway, wondering if anyone has had any success with a business like this - any channels or promotions that really seemed to help? Or in general, if anyone has any ideas, that would be swell! Cheers, and thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Breaking with potential partners and their future claims on my business Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:11 PM PST I am developing an idea in Seattle for call centre technology and have investors/partners interested but we have not yet signed anything. We've had about 15 meetings and have worked together on developing my idea, they have contributed some resources such as paying for some services & subscriptions - maybe $1,000. However I've reluctantly decided that they will not contribute enough to the running of the business -they have their own successful careers and struggle to find the time I need from them. Getting their time is incredibly difficult and as I'm depending on them for the tech development I am quickly starting to see this as a deal breaker. I am working flat out, and they just do what they can in between running their day jobs. The other issue is that they are based in NYC and LA so we get little opportunity for face to face meetings. I have another partnering opportunity and these guys are prepared to go all in with this, 100% of their time; they also have direct access to investors, and a great track record. And they are based in Seattle. My concern - if I break with the current guys, will they have a future claim on the business based on contributing to develop the idea even though we have signed nothing? Their contributions have been really minimal; but we have had 3 face to face and 12 video meetings, documented via emails and minutes. They include a proposed deal structure which has never been finalised. In none of the meeting notes or minutes is there any indication of any final agreement about working together. Any thoughts appreciated! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 09 Feb 2018 01:23 PM PST Anybody know of a site that will take custom stationary design. I want to take some custom design thank you cards, upload to the site and order those. Not interested in Vista Print as I'm looking for a nice quality stock. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Freelance contract with my existing employer? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 08:58 AM PST I work for a company and own a small multimedia business. The company I work for wants to contract out some multimedia work that my small biz could do on the side. Would it be a good idea to suggest hiring me as a freelancer to do that job? Or would my employer frown upon this? Is it bad business practice to offer? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Having my business pay me rent? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:06 PM PST I have a small business located on my personal property. We built a separate building for this business in June 2016. The business is currently paying off the loans for this. Someone in a Facebook group mentioned that their business pays them rent and I was wondering how I never thought of that before. I'm wondering about doing this after it's paid off this spring instead of giving myself a raise. I do plan to bring this up with my tax guy when we meet; just curious if anyone else does this and how it works for them. Thanks! [link] [comments]  | ||
| How to find wholesale cleaning products? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 10:36 AM PST We have a small cleaning company and go through a lot of cleaning products. We prefer to use common brand names since our customers recognize / trust them such as: Lysol Toilet Bowl, Easy-Off oven cleaner, Swiffer dusters, Pledge, etc. Typically we have been buying them at Sam's Club and Costco, but they only stock a limited variety, and have been reducing the variety (they stopped carrying Soft Scrub, so we've had to start buying it at retail from Walmart). And now Sam's club is closing many locations, so we will be stuck with only Costco. Suggestions on where can we order from to get better prices? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Taking over Dad's business, what classes should I take? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 09:08 AM PST Hey all. So I've slowly been taking over my dad's small business. He's successful at it, but not very forthcoming about information that I will need. I've learned a lot about running a business, just through slowly taking over the tasks he does over the last 3 years (and basically by fixing up all my screw-ups...) I have two main concerns. 1. Dad passes away and I don't know WTF I'm doing. 2. He decides (based on certain things) to sell the business and I have to find a job with all these new skills but no certificate saying I have these skills. So...What classes should I take? What books should I read? Is there a subreddit I can join? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Flux: The €85,000 Failed Modular Multi-Messaging Client Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:46 AM PST Hey /r/smallbusiness! Rich Clominson, co-founder of Failory, the website where we weekly interview failed startup owners, here! I have just published a new interview with Jan, CTO of Flux, a failed modular multi-messaging client. His startup raised a small angel round of 70K € and invested another 15K €. A combination of many issues led to their failure:
Read now the story of "The €85,000 Failed Modular Multi-Messaging Client"! [link] [comments]  | ||
| What is the best place to get feedback for my website business content (about ut, product info etc)? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:41 AM PST i write the content of my Web hosting business webpage and i need feedback on my writing, where is the best place get help? [link] [comments]  | ||
| How do I tell a customer that he is being taken advantage of by a vendor? Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:30 AM PST This customer had a relationship prior to our involvement with the customer. On more than one occasion we have received an invoice in which this vendor has up-charged a product by more than 100%. We don't have an issue with collecting the money from the customer, however, 1) The vendor is communicating with the customer without going through us, so we are not making anything on the transaction. 2) the Up-charge is outrageous and I don't feel right taking part in it. Do I talk to the vendor. (I have in the past about another issue in which I felt he was charging too much, and he wouldn't budge) Do I talk to the customer? If I tell the customer I think he's being taking advantage of, then am I throwing this vendor under the bus? Will the customer develop a negative opinion of our business if we bring his attention to this? Any help is appreciated. Thank you. [link] [comments]  | ||
| List of businesses expanding into NY Metro Area Posted: 09 Feb 2018 06:18 AM PST Hi reddit community, Im trying to generate a list of target companies to sell my services to- Companies that have recently expanded into the NY Metro Area. I'm not looking for NY-based start ups. I would like the data to include Foreign companies as well. Are there any GOV websites that would have this data? Newsletters? Etc. Would appreciate any help with this! [link] [comments]  |
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