After hitting $75k/mo, I sold the Day Spa. Let me share with you the biggest thing I learned over the years. small business |
- After hitting $75k/mo, I sold the Day Spa. Let me share with you the biggest thing I learned over the years.
- Was getting a company vehicle wrapped/branded worth it?
- 6 months before I go back to Uni...
- Niche or Broad when starting out?
- I owe way more taxes than I estimated. What the heck??
- What are the drawbacks of using dropshipping?
- How complete should my business plan be before I start working a downtown partnership group
- Question about LLC and dba.
- NDA with Accountant
- BE YOUR OWN PRODUCT IMAGE EDITOR
- To take partial ownership of a company or not...
- Does anyone here own an appliance store/business?
- I need advice on small business loans, and what to look out for.
- Starting a welding business and need help figuring out how to market
- Any cell phone distributors/dealers here?
- Telemarketers are disrupting business. How do I stop them?
- Need help - filling 1065 for the first time and hung up on the Schedule K-1
- How do you spend your available time?
- Alternatives to Slack?
- The 3 Most Effective Email Flows For Ecommerce
- Claiming VAT back in the UK
- How much of purchase value to charge for event rentals?
- Please guys I need reviews for my online store.www.bbabyb.com. Thanks
| Posted: 28 Mar 2018 07:23 AM PDT For the past 4 years, I documented the growth of my day spa on Reddit. From being a complete novice and having no idea what was going to work to turning it into one of the greatest day spas in Scottsdale. Why We Sold?Last year, my wife & I ended up travelling a lot. We flew to travel to Germany (2x), France, Tokyo, Spain (2x), Belize and Poland all between Sept 2016 & Oct 2017. We travelled a lot to Europe because both our families originate from Poland. In June, after hitting our best record month in May, we went and visited Alicante, Spain. Absolutely fell in love with the beach, the climate, the people. Right then we decided that we were going to sell the business and move back to Europe. The Biggest Secret: Optimise Your Revenue Generating Process.Before I became a business owner, I was a marketer… so I was always extremely aggressive with my marketing. I would consistently spend 10–15% of my monthly revenue back into advertising, because we wanted to grow rapidly. However, if you don't optimise your processes internally — your marketing dollars are going to go to waste. Let me explain what I mean… E-Commerce Stores spend huge amounts of money/resources/time on Conversion Rate Optimization. Finding ways to improve their conversion percentage. Because if they can move from 1% > 2% conversion rate they will effectively double their revenue from the same amounts of traffic & work. As service business owners, we also have conversion processes — but ours are not strictly just online. They include your phones, response time, and so much more. Your Front Desk Operations are VITALI help out other businesses with their AdWords as a side gig now-a-days. I was listening to a call a few days ago and it sounded something like this… "Locksmith, What do you want?" How would you feel if you were calling a locksmith because you were locked out of your car and you heard that… The way you answer the phone sets the tone for everything. It's not just the tone, it's the way you communicate things as well. Let me give you two examples. When I was running the day spa, I listened to a call that made me furious. One of my front desk girls was talking to a gentleman about getting a $300+ couples package that included in a skin care treatment. When the gentleman started asking about the treatment, she went on to talk him OUT of the treatment. She effectively talked a client from booking a $300 package into a $99 package. And at the same time, don't ever judge what is expensive for your clients, EVER. I have seen some amazing things happen at the spa. It is hard to remember that sometimes what is expensive to us, isn't expensive to someone else. And at the very least, Answer Your Phones!A few days before we left for Spain, we decided that we wanted to try ourselves to an IV Drip. We did want most clients would do — we went to Google and did a search for IV Drips. As culture has defined us, we want things right away. So we started calling places. We called one place, they told us they would call us back (they didn't). We called another place — they called us back 3hrs later. Ultimately, we settled on the 4th place we called. I'm going to share with you the story about the 3rd place in just a second — but I want you think about something first. Three Other Businesses had the opportunity for us to spend $300 with them that they all passed up. The fourth business that we called made it extremely easy. They accepted walk-ins, they had availability, and told us to come in right away. And make it easy for people to book!Back to the 3rd business we called… We almost had an appointment with them, until they made the process so complex that it turned us away. Let me explain to you how the call went — They had an opening in 3 hrs. However, in order to reserve the appointment, you had to put a credit card on file. Once they grab the card from us, they told us that all first time clientele paperwork must be submitted prior to arriving. If you do not fill out the paperwork, they won't be able to accept you. And if you don't actually do the appointment, then they will charge you a no-show fee. But it gets better — in order to do the first time paperwork, you had to print it out, sign it, scan it, and email it back. Even though we explained to the lady that we are out in the city and there is absolutely no way we would be able to do it — she stated that there are no exceptions. What would you do? Yeah, we didn't book either. They had $300 in their pockets that they threw away because they made the process insanely complex. Little Changes have Big Impacts. These are stories that I have personally seen or experienced. And it doesn't take much for this to have a HUGE Impact on Your Business. Take that place that lost our $300 — it might not seem like much. But if they lose just one appointment like that a day, that's over $100,000 of revenue they lost for the year. Now maybe stack that with a rude front desk, or a front desk that doesn't answer and you can easily see how your own internal processes can be holding you back. TLDR
It can quite easily be the single thing holding your business back from growing. I am also putting together a 5 Day Challenge to help you create a better front desk starting on April 9th, where I'll show step by step things you can do to improve your systems & processes. You can join by visiting https://boostmyspa.lpages.co/5daychallenge1 [link] [comments]  | ||
| Was getting a company vehicle wrapped/branded worth it? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 03:43 AM PDT Regardless of your business, did you find it brought in any new customers? Got a business idea around vehicle wrapping but not sure if it'd be that effective. Thanks [link] [comments]  | ||
| 6 months before I go back to Uni... Posted: 29 Mar 2018 02:25 AM PDT I took a gap year after my degree to test the corporate world. I need not comment further on that. I am going to study a course that'll qualify me to teach basic skills to "unfortunate" individuals - something I have wanted to do for awhile anyway. So, I don't really anticipate getting another job yet and have been working on my first eCommerce business for the past 2 months (launching soon). I am also considering freelancing if things are somewhat slow with my new store. I think this is a good idea before going onto my 1 year course and I wish I did more of this when I was doing 3 years in university. I just thought I'd document this and maybe get some opinions and example stories of those who done something similar. You live and you learn. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Niche or Broad when starting out? Posted: 28 Mar 2018 09:58 PM PDT Is it more beneficial to start a company with a niche or start broad and then funnel towards the clients you attract? Long story short I'm getting my virtual bookkeeper business in order and trying to figure out the niche or broad situation for marketing purposes. If I roll the niche route I'm thinking Sports such as sports companies, sports team, sports leagues, athletic associations, etc. Also thinking of cloud based entrepreneurs such as internet marketers, digital marketers, web designers, IT, app publishers, SaaS , etc. I Feel this niche would respond very well to a virtual bookkeeper because they understand cloud entrepreneurship, want to save cost, efficiency, and they can complete all transaction on their platform of choice, the cloud. Any insight from people with companies already owned in these industries or other businesses that service these industries? [link] [comments]  | ||
| I owe way more taxes than I estimated. What the heck?? Posted: 28 Mar 2018 02:13 PM PDT I saved minimally 30% of each check as a Sole Prop. I paid estimated taxes. I itemized deductions, though my accountant filed a standard deduction instead of itemized. And I still owe 27% of my gross income. This is $5.5k MORE than I have in my savings account, and the account also includes tax savings for income from 2018, so I'm digging into savings I shouldn't be yet. I'm going back to my accountant for an explanation, but does anyone have any specific points I should ask about? Should they not have filed a standard deduction and done itemized instead? Did they miss deductions? Did trump's new tax plan screw over all small business owners, rendering 30% per check no longer a safe amount to save? This is terrifying and ridiculous! [link] [comments]  | ||
| What are the drawbacks of using dropshipping? Posted: 28 Mar 2018 08:45 PM PDT If you guys have tried dropshipping, what are the biggest drawbacks? The idea kind of sounds too good to be true [link] [comments]  | ||
| How complete should my business plan be before I start working a downtown partnership group Posted: 28 Mar 2018 08:43 PM PDT I want to start dialogue with my city of choices downtown partnership team. My business plan isn't completely finalized. What information should I be able to offer them before I start creating a dialogue with them to bring my business into their community. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 28 Mar 2018 08:18 PM PDT I have currently own a LLC in Texas. I am about to use it to become a dealer for a similar product, but would prefer to use a different name for this venture. I went to the county clerk's office and filed for dba using the new name. I then added the dba to my business bank account. Now, the company from which I am applying for the dealership is saying that my ein needs to be tied to my dba and that all documents must contain my ein and dba. My two questions are 1) Do I also need to update my sales tax certificate to show my dba name? 2) How do I go about "tying" my ein to the new dba? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 28 Mar 2018 07:46 PM PDT Getting set up with my accountant. Should I get a NDA with them? [link] [comments]  | ||
| BE YOUR OWN PRODUCT IMAGE EDITOR Posted: 28 Mar 2018 06:26 PM PDT I recently started my journey with drop shipping and have spent days looking for freelancers to do work I am not familiar with. The main one being...EDITING IMAGES BUM BUM BUUUMMM!! FEAR WAS HOLDING ME BACK I spent multiple occasions, for the past 5 years, trying to learn how to use Photoshop since that is the most well known software used for that type of work. Unfortunately, I could never get far because I was intimidated by how much time it would take me to master it. Plus, I was nowhere near as good as my classmates. Fast forward 5 years, and now I began a drop shipping company (checkout my bio if you're interested in my company). The freelancers I contacted, would charge me, on average, $15 per image...PER IMAGE. All I needed was someone to crop out an image and hide texts sent from the manufacturers I am working with. Sooo I said to myself, F*** it, let me take a swing at it. CONQUERED MY FEARS WITH A SIMPLER APPROACH I started editing the images I had using Microsoft Paint, instead of Photoshop, and I could not believe how easy it was to do. The images I cropped, resized, and edited text from looked amazing and I saved well over $100 for the 8 products I have. POINTS TO TAKE HOME What was the main point of my long rant????
[link] [comments]  | ||
| To take partial ownership of a company or not... Posted: 28 Mar 2018 02:02 PM PDT I have worked at this company for a few years now. This is a small company, privately owned by three people, all related to each other, and they have offered me to buy 10% of the company at a very low price. The company has debt. The company has loans owed to its majority owners and pays them interest yearly. They said that I am not expected to loan money to the company but nor am I expecting to get dividends from its profits because it is a very small company. The interest rate on the loans they stated is very low, close to the prime rate I believe. I don't get any indication that they use the company as a cash cow, it's just needed cash in the past and thus the debt. Comparing its income to its debt the company has no theoretical value, yet it sells about 2 million a year, likely more this year since we've been unusually busy. As far as I am aware the debt is slowly being paid off. Suppliers are paid mostly on time from what I know. I do very unique, specialized design work for this company and I happen to be very good at it so I believe the reason they want me invested in it is to keep me from looking for work anywhere else. I am happy with my salary, I get paid fairly well but the benefits are nothing to write home about. I have not considered going to work anywhere else yet and I know I get paid above average for what I do, compared to similar jobs in the East Coast (US). I am not sure why they want me to join in now. The majority shareholders are very invested in this company and are very morally upstanding people. I've known them for many years. I don't see them ever selling but the majority owner is fairly old and may pass away in a few years. I think part of the reason for doing this move is securing valuable people to the company as future owners. One being his son and the other myself (we are not related but I've been told I am like family to them). Here are my questions:
Sorry if I am just rambling, I am just a little confused at the moment. The conversation we've had so far about this topic hasn't been thorough enough. They brought it up during a performance evaluation. They stated that many more details will be shown me soon, once we have a more formal sit down. Thank you in advance for your expertise! I am supposed to get back to them in a few days (not that they are pressuring me) and need all the advise I can get. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Does anyone here own an appliance store/business? Posted: 28 Mar 2018 05:45 PM PDT In my area, there are no appliance stores. The ones that were the stalwarts in the community have retired and hung up their service gloves. A few small, part time stores exist, but as it stands the only way in my county (pop 50,000) to get an appliance is to go to Aarons or out of county. I run another business primarily and ive begun to carry a small selection of used appliances, and its doing phenomenally well, but its still a part time thing. I am curious about expanding the business, but am curious about anyones experiences in this field. What would you do different starting out? What major mistakes should I look out for? Should I stick with used and scratch & dent or is there a big advantage with going to a major manufacturer and buying - even for a small store like I would have? Thanks! [link] [comments]  | ||
| I need advice on small business loans, and what to look out for. Posted: 28 Mar 2018 05:34 PM PDT I am a Chef that has been presented an opportunity. A person I know through my local chef circle has asked me to become partners with him in his food truck/catering business as he has plans in the near future to expand his brand. He has three trucks and a catering business on the side and does very well for himself. He is adding another truck with the goal of a brick and mortar location in the future as well. The deal is, I pay him percentage of the company's worth and I own that much of the company, and receive quarterly payments of the net profit for each truck and the catering business. I will work the new truck full time as well as developing new ideas for the company. If for some reason we do not work well together I can sell off my portion (so I would still make a little money). Only problem I have is that I don't have much money at all, so I have to get a loan. I also don't have anything to put up for collateral. So I need advice on what kind of loans I qualify for, and which ones should I avoid? I also should add that I have a credit score around 725 if that matters at all. Thank you for any help. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Starting a welding business and need help figuring out how to market Posted: 28 Mar 2018 05:28 PM PDT As stated, I'm starting a welding business and don't really know where to start as far as marketing. I've got 20 years experience and all the tools I need but I'm just not sure how to get jobs!! I don't have a huge budget, maybe $1500 to start, for marketing. I dont have a website or anything yet except some business cards I ordered. I was just wondering the most effective use of that 1st $1500. I'm willing to give any time and energy to marketing as well of course. Anybody that has any experience or any general advice would be much appreciated!! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Any cell phone distributors/dealers here? Posted: 28 Mar 2018 03:37 PM PDT My company (www.DieselLaptops.com) sells diagnostic tools to the truck and off highway market. We have numerous clients asking us if we sell the CAT line of rugged phones, so we want to get into the business. I'm not making a lot of progress with Google, but plan to hit the phones tomorrow. My assumption is that these phones are put into distributors somewhere, so I'm just looking for some guidance on how this industry works and where I should be looking. Thanks! [link] [comments]  | ||
| Telemarketers are disrupting business. How do I stop them? Posted: 28 Mar 2018 03:02 PM PDT My business takes reservations online and also over the phone but while I may only receive a call from a customer once every few days, auto-dialers grab my number and call as many as 16 times on a busy day. It's driving me mad! Has anyone dealt with squashing these pests? I have zero experience with this kind of thing so I'm entirely lost and frustrated. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Need help - filling 1065 for the first time and hung up on the Schedule K-1 Posted: 28 Mar 2018 02:50 PM PDT So, long story short, I started consulting with my partner last year and I'm filing our 1065 for the first time (I know, we're late - we're prepared to pay the fees). When we first started, we were 50/50 on ownership and still are. However, throughout the year I did the vast majority of the work. Out of our small handful of clients, I saw them all, she saw one, and all the other work (the stuff we don't get paid for like business development) I did, so when it came time to pay she decided to leave her piece of the check in our business account to cover various fees. So, now, I'm faced with the J part of the Schedule K-1 form, where it's asking for percent profit, loss, and capital. We're both still 50/50 on the ownership; I took 100% of the payout profit, but that only amounts to about 78% of our total profit. What do I put? She made $0 off of this venture last year and has already filed her taxes because of this. How do I split this up for section J? Also, what, exactly, is "capital"? For what it's worth, we made very little - less than $8,000 when it's all said and done. Thank you, in advance, for any help! [link] [comments]  | ||
| How do you spend your available time? Posted: 28 Mar 2018 01:13 PM PDT Hello everyone, I am in the beginning stages of a digital marketing business I have a couple clients I am doing some freelance work for at the moment. I have not reached a point where I am busy all the time working on my business. I do not want to be busy for the sake of being busy but I would like to spend more energy on building my business. What are some things you do to better your business when you have extra time? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 28 Mar 2018 12:41 PM PDT We have been using Slack to communicate with our facilitators about upcoming events and have reached our limit in available space. Slack doesn't allow me to fully delete old channels and files. Has anyone found a viable alternative to Slack? [link] [comments]  | ||
| The 3 Most Effective Email Flows For Ecommerce Posted: 28 Mar 2018 12:37 PM PDT
 | ||
| Posted: 28 Mar 2018 12:28 PM PDT Hi, I am starting up a business with a friend of mine, where essentially we will be re-selling purchased goods. Say for example, a crate of 24 beers costs £25.00 (exc VAT) and £30 (inc. VAT). If we were to re-sell these 24 beers, would we be able to claim the VAT back on it? Thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  | ||
| How much of purchase value to charge for event rentals? Posted: 28 Mar 2018 12:06 PM PDT If some is renting floor mats, or chairs, etc. for an event: what is a rule of thumb for how much of total purchase value to charge a customer for a 1 day use? Including delivery and pickup How much to charge for installation, or setting of the items? Thanks! I sell flooring pad materials and am often getting requests for rentals. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Please guys I need reviews for my online store.www.bbabyb.com. Thanks Posted: 28 Mar 2018 08:18 PM PDT |
| You are subscribed to email updates from smallbusiness: Starting, owning and growing a small business. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment