How to actually start a business not just keep dreaming it small business |
- How to actually start a business not just keep dreaming it
- How to start a business for the first time guide
- I've created a digital marketing agency. Now what?
- Tossing around the idea of starting a food truck, looking for advice.
- Can't get packaging for small number
- What should I do about my dumb, lazy uncle?
- Always overpriced! How much would you pay?
- How to use Wifi as a marketing tool for your business
- Watch out for LegalZoom overbilling
- How to Handle Taxes for LLC paying Contractors?
- I want to start a new bussiness, but i don't know where to start
- Quick Question about Small Business and Subsidiaries
- Free ways to market your website, other than FB and Twitter?
- Online Print Selling
- What are some ways to take advantage of a block party weekend on the corner where my small business is located?
- Any success stories of hiring sales people online?
- Starting a GRE prep course
- Here is my Step-by-step process to starting a commercial location... Is it right?
- Temporary retail/office space
- How do I file taxes if I will be away from home for 2 years?
- Are business checks any different from personal checks?
- Stepped up to manager duties because owners/staff that have no idea what they are doing. Should I just revert to basic duties and let the ship sink or ask for a raise and be manager—if so how would I go about that?
- Reimburse Vehicle Lease in Single LLC
| How to actually start a business not just keep dreaming it Posted: 02 May 2018 01:19 PM PDT Hi guys, so I'm 25, work in IT and don't very much enjoy it. I've wanted to and mused over the idea of opening a coffee shop/deli. It started out as just chatting with a friend and has turned into a fairly well fleshed out idea. Does anyone have any advice on making the leap from idea to first steps of making it happen? Finance is a big issue and I'm aware it's not the best market to be in but I'd rather try and fail than not try and I've no plan to fail. Thanks Sam [link] [comments]  |
| How to start a business for the first time guide Posted: 03 May 2018 02:29 AM PDT Covers whether you actually have what it takes, raising finance, hiring for the first time and marketing including a review of Groove's content marketing mastery course: [link] [comments]  |
| I've created a digital marketing agency. Now what? Posted: 03 May 2018 04:20 AM PDT I created success-x.com and hired a cold calling expert to call 100 business owners and sell them a free trial for Google Advertising. I had mild success with 2/100 interested in the free trial. 1 ended up cancelling and 1 ended up paying. So it's a good start? Hoping to find inspiration and tips on improving the foundation I have created. [link] [comments]  |
| Tossing around the idea of starting a food truck, looking for advice. Posted: 02 May 2018 06:05 PM PDT This will be a mouthful, but many thanks to those who bear with me. Backstory: I'm 26, married with two kids. I have been working at a grocery store (Publix, for those of you in the southeast US) for ten years, and last year I grossed $60,000 as a bakery manager. $15000 in bonuses, $45k salary. I've been in that position for a few years now, but am realizing more and more that I can't see myself at the company for the rest of my life. The lure of owning and operating a small business is weighing on me. This job has high standards, the brand is known for being top quality, sanitary, service oriented, etc. I consider myself a good, servant style leader, I'm responsible for being evaluated by steritech and the department of health, I keep track of my weekly P&Ls, hire, train and retain a team, quality control, premier customer service, forecasting sales, inventory management, etc. I say all of this because I feel like with that skill set I can function in the environment of a food truck. I'm salaried at 50 hours a week, but on average work about 55-60 for a variety of reasons. With that said, if I were to step down to full time baker, I would make about ~$35k a year. My wife and I can survive on $45, so she would bridge the gap and start working to make up the other income of ~10k - 15k. Doing this would allow me to have every weekend off, and to be able to get off of work by 2pm everyday, instead of 5 or 6. My thoughts are that I could work a food truck every weekend, putting all of the revenue in paying off the business loan for the truck and initial capital. I'm OK with the workload, weekends have no meaning for me as I've been in retail all of my life, and at the end of the day it'll be roughly the same amount of hours worked anyways). This way we could commit to doing successful events every weekend, while still having the income we are used to having. When we break even on debts and if the truck is doing well enough, at that point I could fully quit my job and transition into operating the truck full time. I know it's easier said than done, but I'm not worried about being burnt out. Stepping down to full time baker instead of salaried manager would make my job stress free, I'm positive I would enjoy putting hours in for "free" on the weekend because it's growing my business. Am I delusional, looking for honest answers and realistic advice. Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| Can't get packaging for small number Posted: 03 May 2018 02:54 AM PDT Can anyone help? My husband has a small craft business. He makes a high end product that we want to put into a nice box. Ideally a sliding box. But I can't find ones anywhere that doesn't have a minimum order of 500! We only need about 20 max! We don't even need a logo on it. Is there anywhere that you can buy nice packaging boxes without a crazy order size? Ideally somewhere in Europe. [link] [comments]  |
| What should I do about my dumb, lazy uncle? Posted: 02 May 2018 01:31 PM PDT Besides firing him, of course. I wouldn't ask if that were possible. I work for my family business. We have 5 full time employees and two part timers off-site. We sell medical supplies and, more recently, commercial equipment (of some kind). I am in charge of marketing and a portion of our sales while my dad, the boss, works on his part of sales. Lately he has been growing his own business off site, leaving the office without a manager. His brother, my uncle, is a lazy asshole. He never accepts blame and gets defensive about routine business. He does purchasing and has had less to do as we moved to drop shipping a large part of our business. For the past few years, he has been watching Fox News and playing Clash of Clans pretty much the whole time he's in the office, which is sparsely. He was quarantined. Given a high wage to do maybe 4 hours of work per week. Our medical supply sales have been dropping pretty dramatically for a few years now. I think its a combination of us putting almost none of our time into marketing it the past 2 years as we focus on growing our commercial equipment business, big companies with better pricing than us getting smart about the internet, and to some degree, my uncle for pissing off so many customers with backorders. We have started transitioning by putting our office & warehouse space on the market and drop-shipping everything or nearly everything. Part of the plan is to use the money to replicate my dad's successful business (he started profiting a year in) and putting my uncle there in charge of customer service. I think this is a really bad idea, but I can't think of a better alternative. I think the obvious answer is to give him the least amount of responsibility possible, but there aren't any unimportant positions during a transition like this. My power in these kind of decisions is very limited, but there is a chance I can persuade my dad to reconsider. Any suggestions on this particular situation or how to deal with this type of person in general? [link] [comments]  |
| Always overpriced! How much would you pay? Posted: 02 May 2018 09:49 PM PDT Hey Guys, So I am at the point where my clients are asking for maintenance tasks on their sites again and again. Mainly helping with small changes, back-ups & other regular tasks. I have just been doing this hourly but I want to make it a subscription kind of like a product. What would you pay per month for someone to do maintenance on your site? I think businesses with their main sales being online would be more interested in this! My main features I think I could provide are: Up-time monitoring Back-ups Maybe 2 x 60 minute sessions for varoius fixes/changes (per 2 weeks or month?) Analytics from Google Managing speed via database clean-ups/ cache optimizations Maybe even handling spam such as comments etc. but unsure about it for bigger sites. Do you think that is something that would be viable as a package? How much would you pay? [link] [comments]  |
| How to use Wifi as a marketing tool for your business Posted: 02 May 2018 06:54 AM PDT Wifi = A great marketing tool. Sounds a little strange, I know... Hear me out: This year, ~82% of people in Canada will own a smartphone ⛄️⛄️⛄️ ...and when you own a smartphone, you're probably on the lookout for wifi whenever you can find it so you don't burn through your data and get overcharged like crazy. Here's what that means for you (small or medium sized biz owner): Literally something as simple as offering (good) free wifi for your customers could start to bring in more business and help you get a leg up on competitors. Quick example: People love wifi and will go to certain coffee shops to work PURELY because the wifi is good... People actually suffer through mediocre coffee just to get their bars up. I know this because I do this. I'm not proud of it, but I'd rather not deal with the bad wifi headaches just to sip on some slightly better tasting coffee. Offering wifi at your store may seem obvious / minor but trust me when I say FAR too many brick & mortar businesses aren't actually doing it. I'm not saying you'll make an extra 100 million a month, but it could give you a nice bump in foot traffic. Check out this quick post that breaks it down a bit more & shows you some of the benefits a good, free wifi connection can bring: Why Small & Medium Sized Businesses Should Consider Offering Better WiFi [link] [comments]  |
| Watch out for LegalZoom overbilling Posted: 02 May 2018 06:06 AM PDT So we discovered today that LegalZoom had billed us $249 for the renewal of registered agent services. We signed up at $159/year, and this price is still quoted on their website. Upon calling them, we were told that they had added a service called "Digital Service of Process" to our account for an additional $90 per year. This service basically entails them sending you an email if they receive something for you. Not sure why this is "extra" to begin with in 2018, but I digress. We never gave them permission to add this. At best, they tucked it into a renewal email somewhere and said "Let us know if you don't want it." I have to wonder how many other businesses have unknowingly been charged this way. The rep didn't sound surprised to be getting a call about this, and I got the impression that they field these calls regularly. They refunded the $90 without argument. TL;DR - Check your payment history with LegalZoom (it's in your account dashboard) and make sure what you see lines up with what you expected to be charged for their services. [link] [comments]  |
| How to Handle Taxes for LLC paying Contractors? Posted: 02 May 2018 06:00 PM PDT I manage an LLC with another manager that works in music production. I've always heard that LLC's should stack 30% of their gains away for taxes but I'm not sure if that applies to us since we aren't paying ourselves as employees, but as contractors. I know that we can write off our payments to ourselves as contractors as tax deductible, but should the LLC take 30% off of the net project cost or should it only withhold 30% of the money remaining after the contractors are paid? I would think the latter since we will be taxed personally for the profits made as LLC managers AND the profits made as independent contractors. Any help would be greatly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| I want to start a new bussiness, but i don't know where to start Posted: 02 May 2018 09:50 AM PDT Im a 21 year old girl, i've had this huge desire of starting my own bussiness for a while now, my dad and i started talking about and we decided to do it together since he's been wanting to open a bussiness on our house for years and we both have the same ideas of what we want to do. He used to be an accountant and helped people money wise on their stores, so im happy we are not completly clueless. Im still not sure what we are going to do, i have a few ideas but im pretty nervious since i don't want to spend a lot of money and not succeed. I might start at the flea market before i rent a place so i can make a profit before starting to pay rent and such. But i don't know how to make a plan and i need as many information as i can get so i can have a good start. Any tips? [link] [comments]  |
| Quick Question about Small Business and Subsidiaries Posted: 02 May 2018 09:45 AM PDT My father has been doing business from home and out of his home office for the past 6 to 8 years and been successful, he wants me to take over. We initiated our plan about a year and a half back with training, LLC forming, etc. I now have a business name, LLC, logo, and branding, but the website that he operates on, the infomercials/commercials and any video content has his logo, business name, and branding on it. I'm trying to understand how to work them together since he wants me to take over from here. The business as a whole is digital marketing and the website that we operate out of now offers software as a service and cloud services to small businesses. Do I need to form a subsidiary or somehow merge the two entities? For instance to explain the situation, my company digital marketing media (not actual name, just placeholder for this example) is the company that will be collecting the checks and the actual acting holder and LLC, and the website, Local marketing (again, not actual name), is the website that we direct customers to and sell them on. Any advice for a smart choice on what to do with this? I ask because on all of my media, business cards, etc. I don't know if I should just put my company, that website, or both. Thanks for any help and sorry if I'm complicating things, first business ever that I've owned. [link] [comments]  |
| Free ways to market your website, other than FB and Twitter? Posted: 02 May 2018 03:52 PM PDT Any good resources for online marketing that don't just talk about FB, Twitter and link building? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 May 2018 03:35 PM PDT I'm in the process of starting an online store to sell prints of my original artwork. I'm looking for a company such as Cafe Press to take care of printing and mailing the pieces to my buyers. Any advice on who I should use? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 May 2018 07:44 AM PDT I own a computer and cell phone repair shop (and also website dev/design). I opened a retail location a year ago and haven't done much advertising since we're already established and worth of mouth has always kept us busy. But one of the reasons I opened a retail location was to continue to grow the business. The local chamber is hosting a block party weekend which will close down the block to traffic and have music, food from local restaurants, family style seating down the middle of the street, vendors, etc. It corresponds with a couple other events happening in the area that weekend so we're expecting a good mix of locals and out-of-towners. I sell a few <$50 accessories but only out of necessity. I don't care to carry much inventory for the relatively small payoff compared to our services. So selling items isn't a priority. The main goal is exposure. If I do any advertising I try to do something specific to that event so I can track it's success rate. Some ideas so far:
Has anyone used any successful tactics for raising awareness during events like this? [link] [comments]  |
| Any success stories of hiring sales people online? Posted: 02 May 2018 03:12 PM PDT I've hired locally and outsourced, and I'm wondering what others experiences others have had, where you've managed to find the most reliable sales oriented people. So far, my best luck has been outsourcing, but I've also found multiple team players by using my network and growing my LinkedIn, finding partners with solutions that we can each sell under our own umbrellas. Curious to know how others have curated their sales relationships for sure. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 May 2018 02:53 PM PDT I'm in an interesting dilemma. I'm a college faculty member at a few different colleges and received an offer from one of the schools to start a new GRE prep class for students. I have years of experience with another prep company, which is why I was offered the position in the first place. They are offering about $1000 total for a six week class. I see rates online for students to sign up at $1200 up to 1800 for other GRE classes in the area. Meaning, I make less in six weeks than what just one student would pay. This got me to considering just starting my own group and charging students $300 instead, so I'd only need 3-4 students to make up the difference, and am certain I can get a lot more. There's already a lot of interest from my students, but I'm uncertain about it. However, I don't think it would take me that long for word to get around to make it an ongoing thing. Thoughts? [link] [comments]  |
| Here is my Step-by-step process to starting a commercial location... Is it right? Posted: 02 May 2018 02:45 PM PDT Hi all, I started a ecommerce store thanks to the motivation of this subreddit but it didn't work out after a year of trying. I am trying again but this time, a service business that will do all the service at a brick and mortar location (gym). I now have a good idea what the basic steps are but wanted to check with someone who's done this to make sure I get my steps right. This is what I currently think the steps are for specifically getting and opening the doors to my location. Please lmk if anything should change. Here goes:
I tried to summarize the process above. Would love confirmation or any heads up on what I may be missing specifically to opening my doors. Thanks all for any help! :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 May 2018 10:53 AM PDT I don't want to give out a lot of details as nothing is final yet, however, we just had a meeting with a potential client that could be huge for our business, in fact it might be too huge and we won't have the physical space to handle the orders in our existing warehouse. A rough estimate suggests that if we are able to close the deal, we would need to acquire a 10,000-15,000 SF warehouse or large retail space to receive our raw materials, organize them and prepare them for delivery to the customer locations. As this is a seasonal product, we started thinking that a vacant retail space (Vacant Toys R Us or Sam's club) rented for 1-2 months would be perfect, similar to the Halloween pop up shops. Has anyone researched the short term lease of such a space? Was the lease increased due to the short lease term, or was the landlord just happy to get some income? We're utilities included? Did you need to get an occupancy permit from your local government? [link] [comments]  |
| How do I file taxes if I will be away from home for 2 years? Posted: 02 May 2018 02:31 PM PDT I recently started a window cleaning business (in Utah) established as a sole proprietorship. How will I file my income tax reports next year if I leave home this October for 2 years? Can I have someone else do them for me? [link] [comments]  |
| Are business checks any different from personal checks? Posted: 02 May 2018 10:19 AM PDT Hi all, I need to purchase checks for my business. My business account is with Capital One Spark Business. It's $30 for 50 checks so that is pretty expensive. Is there anything special regarding business checks? Another business pays me with business checks and it looks the same except the bigger size. I would like to just order a regular checkbook from Walmart/Costco/etc to keep it simple. Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 02 May 2018 02:04 PM PDT I recently started working front desk at a yoga studio. It was extremely obvious from day one that while it is a beautiful and busy studio, it was extraordinarily disorganized and poorly managed. It kills me when people work harder not smarter so I took some initiative. By my first week I had cleared out and reorganized the entire back room and front desk. By two weeks I was teaching existing staff how to use the computer system more efficiently and handle customers requests. By 4 was training new hires. And now at 6 weeks I have completely overhauled and updated the way we schedule, implemented a self check in for clients, a new waiver, created a front desk binder from scratch, etc. as I have taken over for the previous "manager". However, I have noticed an alarming amount of what I believe to be illegal practices including no overtime pay, no lunches, and texting to make requests while off the clock. It blows my mind. We constantly run out of supplies, but they refuse to let me set up auto deliveries or order them myself. Instead they go to the store at random. To top it off they just opened a second location that is no where near finished or ready to be open and cannot be adequately staffed. My attempt to help out and make everyone's job easier has left me overworked, underpaid, and stressed beyond belief. I need a huge raise or I need to go back to doing the bare minimum which isn't ideal. Is it even worth the potential raise trying to manage a place that is so unprofessional and poorly run? Should I just resume doing the minimum front desk person job? If I were to ask for a raise how would I go about it? Is it too far of a jump to ask for $20 an hour (from $12) to manage two studios? [link] [comments]  |
| Reimburse Vehicle Lease in Single LLC Posted: 02 May 2018 09:59 AM PDT I'm looking at different ways to handle vehicle expenses in my sole owner LLC. I've read a few places that mentioned having the company reimburse monthly for vehicle expenses but haven't found how that's done. I understand that you take the operating cost (lease payment+gas+tolls+etc) and take the percentage of the business use to determine the amount. Would the company then cut a check every month for this amount? I would be using the newly leased vehicle almost exclusively for business. Are there better options in this case? My main goal is simply to reduce taxable income and get a "nice" vehicle on the companies dime for clients. [link] [comments]  |
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