Starting an online retail business, but distributors want me to have a commercial business address, or brick-and-mortar storefront. small business |
- Starting an online retail business, but distributors want me to have a commercial business address, or brick-and-mortar storefront.
- Give a small % of the business to a very social friend?
- Lease vs buying vehicle
- Doing business with large corporations
- What small business could fit inside a coin laundromat?
- Starting a handwritten note service
- I want offer Insurance benefits. Where do I start?
- Employment Strategy/Retention as the Business Grows
- [FEEDBACK] Staff leave planner - What is missing?
- Which is the mostly used payroll system by Silicon Valley-based startups?
- Growing a business that has an unscalable aspect to it? (XPOST from /r/Entrepreneur)
- Pay a Pro designer $1000 for a website or use AI-powered website builder ?
- Can anyone refer me to any good online resources about, or companies that that specialize in, marketing to public school district administrators?
- [Survey] Long Term Document Storage
- I need capital to start a very small business, but I don’t feel comfortable selling part of the business to an investor right out of the gate. What should I do? What is a healthy way to view this situation?
- Opening a retail boutique store....but I have some questions first.
- Suggestions for quality podcasts or audio books related to starting a small business
- Growing a Local Tutoring Business
- Renewing Motivation
- I'm completely torn on whether or not to charge a CC processing fees. (Service inudstry)
- Ideas For Late Enployees
- Business name change...keep existing brand as a sub-brand entity?
- How to attract web developers as a start up?
| Posted: 05 Jan 2019 03:28 PM PST I have an idea for an online boutique retail business, but can't afford, and don't really want to have a brick-and-mortar store front. (Multiple reasons). Yet, the distributors say they will not do business with online only retailers. Any experience with this? What options would there be? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Give a small % of the business to a very social friend? Posted: 05 Jan 2019 08:53 AM PST So i live in a tight nit community with a lot of rich people. Im talking 1% rich. Problem is I'm shit at approaching people and i dont personally know most of them. Im not saying im awkward, once im in a meeting i can turn the charm on and land the sale, but theres 10,000 faces to know and I know and speak to about 100 of them at most. I have a friend who just knows EVERYBODY. This guys social life is absurd. He's a social butterfly at parties, and comes of as being closed friends with everybody, and you guessed it, me too. My plan is to give him a commission for the first 3 clients he sends to me and if he can do that within a year, give him 10% of the company and bump the commission up, and give him a bullshit title like sales executive. He wont care about the money but he knows my business is growing fast and he's gono want equity, I'll need to at least dangle the equity in front of him. In my opinion if he can get multiple referals in he will be worth it but im wary of giving away a % of my business, especially to someone that could I only benefit from as a lead generator. The business is digital marketing and all these people own small businesses so im a perfect fit. I'm also one of two guys in this community that know how to do this well, the other being my old boss that is established enough to not bother with getting these clients. Thoughts? Edit: To clarify, I'm young. My friend is young. We're in our low-mid 20s. My business itself is just under a year old. Im very aware that WE arent in the 1%. The 1% target I'd like to hit are the older people in our community, who he somehow seems close with. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 05 Jan 2019 07:20 PM PST Can someone run through your experiences on buying vs leasing for your business which may also run as a personal car. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Doing business with large corporations Posted: 06 Jan 2019 01:11 AM PST Own a commercial cleaning business, I send out cold emails to businesses in my area, and heard back from a large hotel chain asking me to send my pricing and scope of work. I've never dealt with a large corporation before, so wondering if anybody had insight on this [link] [comments]  | ||
| What small business could fit inside a coin laundromat? Posted: 06 Jan 2019 03:27 AM PST As title suggests, there is a coin laundromat near a train station that in the rear of the shop has a servery (small opening and doorway) and back room available for a small business. I was trying to think up ideas that might run from inside the laundromat (such as a clothing alterations business). Any ideas or cool things you've seen work near you? (PS. Let me know if you think this question would suit another subreddit instead. ) [link] [comments]  | ||
| Starting a handwritten note service Posted: 06 Jan 2019 03:20 AM PST Hey guys, I'm starting a service where we handwrite letters for our customers and send them to their recipients. Use cases are sending thank you notes to customers, sending holiday greetings to all your family members, etc. [link] [comments]  | ||
| I want offer Insurance benefits. Where do I start? Posted: 05 Jan 2019 01:47 PM PST
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| Employment Strategy/Retention as the Business Grows Posted: 05 Jan 2019 02:09 PM PST I own a small entertainment business in Canada and things are going really well. The business is growing and I am hiring more staff and expanding the entertainment services that I offer. Currently I have 3 staff that work on an on-call/contract basis. The business is open by appointment only and, when customers make appointments, my employees come in and run the activities booked for the appointment. This model has worked so far but my employees have told me that they dislike the on-call nature of the job. It is possible that as I expand I will move from appointments to set business hours in the future but that change will increase my staffing costs significantly as that would cause there to be hours where the staff are paid to be there without customers paying AND I will end up paying a significant amount in employment taxes. What is the best strategy to transition over to a business hours model? Do I raise prices of my services? Find other sources of income for the business? Expand my entertainment services so there is less down time? So far I have done all of our major changes very gradually and that has worked well. What steps should I take when making this transition? [link] [comments]  | ||
| [FEEDBACK] Staff leave planner - What is missing? Posted: 06 Jan 2019 01:28 AM PST Hello, We are just launched our small web application which allows small teams to manage and track staff leaves instead of spreadsheets. It's a free service and specially designed for small and mid-sized teams (under 100 employees) so we tried to keep it dead simple. I want to gently ask your feedbacks about the idea, the software, anything what you think is welcome. In these early days, our main focus is on to collect the missing parts. What feature is missing to you to get started using it? Thanks in advance, David [link] [comments]  | ||
| Which is the mostly used payroll system by Silicon Valley-based startups? Posted: 05 Jan 2019 03:06 PM PST Hi I'm wondering which is the most commonly used payroll service provider used by the Silicon Valley startups? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Growing a business that has an unscalable aspect to it? (XPOST from /r/Entrepreneur) Posted: 05 Jan 2019 09:42 PM PST I'm in an industry very similar to Home Owners' Association (HOA) management. It seems to be in high demand, with low supply, and high barriers to enter (there's a lot of licensing to deal with before you can offer HOA management services). So, I think there's an opportunity for a good business in this space. However, I can already see where the major bottleneck will be: HOA board meetings. They are essential for the HOA, and they require my (or one of my [future] HOA manager's) attendance. Further, the meetings usually happen in the evenings or weekends because the HOA board have day jobs, so need to meet at night/weekends. A typical meeting is about 2 hours long. I see it as a bottleneck because I see no way the process itself can't be optimized or made more efficient. With some quick math, a single HOA can require anywhere from 4-10 meetings a year. If each meeting is around 2 hours, that's roughly 8-20 hours a year -- strictly evening and weekend hours -- per HOA. A single HOA manager can handle around 8-10 properties. So, that's anywhere from 100-200 hours of just meeting time, all in the evenings and weekends. I see this as a bottleneck because it starts to look fairly unappealing for someone wanting a job where up to 200 hours will happen in your evenings and weekends. And I don't see a way around that yet. It's kind of nagging at me because I like the idea of knowing that almost all aspects of the business have opportunities to be optimized and scaled. But this... these meetings... there's no getting around the hard ceiling of a single HOA manager only being able to take on 8-10 properties because the evenings/weekends start to get eaten up with meetings. Just wondering if any of you have portions of your business that are totally unscalable? Where, it just comes down to how many hours you can put in? How do you get around this? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Pay a Pro designer $1000 for a website or use AI-powered website builder ? Posted: 05 Jan 2019 09:35 AM PST Hey guys. A friend of mine has a dilemma. He runs a small consultancy company in Brooklyn helping SMBs to fill their taxes. So, time for a new website. Now the choice is:
I vote for the 1, what is yours ? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 05 Jan 2019 11:44 AM PST It's difficult to sift through the results I get when I search for information and services related to marketing to public school administrators. It's a challenging market for many reasons, so I'd love to find someone(s) with experience and expertise. Specifically, I'm marketing school district management/administration software. [link] [comments]  | ||
| [Survey] Long Term Document Storage Posted: 05 Jan 2019 01:47 PM PST Hello Reddit ! This is my first post! Please feel free to respond, it would be greatly appreciated! This questionnaire is about individual long term storage of physical documents. To clarify, physical documents is used to emphasis that these documents have some sort of legal significance, which requires the original physical document for authenticity purposes, meaning digital copies won't suffice. Lastly, there are only 6 questions!! https://goo.gl/forms/yoL30TzMPBmIgXce2 Thanks! JM [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 05 Jan 2019 06:15 AM PST I'm going after a $10,000 loan to get a very small business started. I've offered the lender a flat ROI or an interest rate. He prefers to own part of my business instead, but I'm only JUST NOW getting into business. I don't like the idea of forever giving part of this to someone when I'm still gaining a grasp on what this is going to turn into.
I'll look for posts and articles related to this situation. Thank you for any help or insight you can afford me. EDIT: This is a small post, but I've been to this sub several times before and of the serious subs this is one of the more helpful and positive. Thank you everyone for the feedback. Hopefully this is useful for others as well. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Opening a retail boutique store....but I have some questions first. Posted: 05 Jan 2019 04:48 PM PST So I am looking at opening a store that is focused on selling local foods (packaged), drinks, beer, wine, kombucha, dog products, creative products, etc. (Think what you would find at a Saturday Market) All products will rotate weekly, with priority going to the top sellers. The goal being to create a fear of missing out for customers walking by, as many boutiques keep the same stock year round which does not cater to repeat business as much. You already know what's in there, so why go in again. This will be a place for small local creators to be able to sell their stuff there for a week or two, for the 50% commission on all sales and no monthly placement fees (unless they want more space). The location im looking at is only 1700 a month and is on the busiest block in down town. Some other store owners next door said they have days around the holidays that are around 7k just selling kitchen utensils and olive oil. The town I'm in has a huge young/hipster population downtown and luckily I am one of them. I am looking for people on here that can speak to any costs that they did not expect when opening their store, what the challenges were, daily sales, etc. As well as negotiating a lease that is stated as a 5year right now. I would love to get some advice on whether or not to take a 5 year lease. Sorry if this isn't well organized, but I always find I get answers to questions I didn't know I had, just talking with people who have done something similar to what I want to do. Side note: I will be keeping my day job as a digital marketing manager while paying someone else to manage the daily operations. I expect to be working late from 4-who knows when every night and weekend on this boutique. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Suggestions for quality podcasts or audio books related to starting a small business Posted: 05 Jan 2019 04:08 PM PST Hello everyone, I hope to be starting up a small business in the frozen dessert industry in May. I'm trying to learn as much as I can about small business start ups, do's and dont's etc.. I started watching "The How of Business" podcasts which are pretty good, but looking for more suggestions. I spend quite a bit of time in the car and am looking to utilize that time for gaining knowledge rather than wasting it. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Growing a Local Tutoring Business Posted: 05 Jan 2019 03:54 PM PST My wife and I purchased a tutoring company (HG Tuition) from a friend of ours in Manchester, UK and I was looking for some feedback on my efforts since the purchase. My first move was to set up a SaaS to run the operation. We have around 45 children/parents to deal with each week as well as 10 tutors. We've now got a tool called Tutorcruncher that manages the scheduling our lessons, billing clients and paying our tutors. This has worked a treat. It has freed up a lot of time and as we now charge parents monthly, we don't have any late or missing payments anymore. My next move was to get my accountant to work on the business and run our accounts through Xero. We now have a much better handle on the accountancy but basically, do no work on our accounts or bookkeeping. With these systems in place, I've handed over the bulk of the running of them to my Serbian VA who is very cheap and very diligent. I've made some efforts to reduce costs with our energy supplier, internet provider etc but appreciate these are marginal gains. There are lots of questions about tutoring in the UK, so I've got a content marketing firm writing content around common questions. We're putting out an article each week but not really doing anything to promote or share it beyond posting it on our Facebook page. We have some decent shares, depending on the content, but have still been approached by parents in the local area who tell us they've never even heard of the business. The business is running well and is profitable but I'd really like to put us in a position where we were full this year and had people queueing up to pay for the next academic year. How would you go about driving local business? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 05 Jan 2019 01:03 PM PST My Wife and I have ran a pharmacy/retail store for the past 5 years. We used to have no problem spending 16-18 hours a day at the store helping to organize and grow sales. Over the past year we have had a few key staff members leave - babies, school, retirement - and have yet been able to find equally qualified replacements. I have lost the drive and enthusiasm I once had and sales have started to become stagnant. When we took over the business, there were many improvements that we were able to make to increase sales - I feel like I am at a point in the business where I have maxed out my motivation to keep pushing on. It is still a very profitable business and once the loans are paid off will generate a very health flow of cash. What do other owners do to reset/renew their motivation? Especially when they reach stagnant or negative business cycle. [link] [comments]  | ||
| I'm completely torn on whether or not to charge a CC processing fees. (Service inudstry) Posted: 05 Jan 2019 12:40 PM PST After years of only accepting check and an occasionally CC payment (via Wave), my small (single person) consulting and marketing firm is releasing a recurring web based marketing service. I'm super excited as I can start expanding and delivering service outside of my geographic area, and without exchanging so much of my time. The premise of creating the new service extension is to save time in business processes. So recurring automatic billing is an obvious choice.. however I really, like REALLY, want to avoid paying 2.9% on each transaction. The solution that seems to come about is charging my customers a convenience fee. Which, up until now, as a customer myself have to totally against. My margins are already slim. Around 7% for this first roll out. Of course, the goal is to increase that to 15%-20% with efficiency fixes, however that will take at least 6 months to a year before being fully realized. Paying the nearly 3% in merchant fees will render this service extension close to not worth it (other than developing a larger customer base). How have you solved this. Especially those of you in consulting or service industries. tl:dr launching a new service and need to billing recurring, which adds service fees. Don't' want to pass the charge to customers but I may have to. How would/have you solved this before? [link] [comments]  | ||
| Posted: 05 Jan 2019 06:19 AM PST What are some creative ways to deal with late employees? I don't want to outright fire them, but I would like some creative ways to deal with them. [link] [comments]  | ||
| Business name change...keep existing brand as a sub-brand entity? Posted: 05 Jan 2019 11:41 AM PST I'm having a bit of a dilemma. I have an existing brand that I've worked hard to build for the past few years. It focuses on a specific type of manufacturing process (i.e. using foam). At the time, focusing on this material made sense, but it's now limiting our growth since we're now offering other services (large machining services using robots, etc). My question is should I take this existing brand name and get rid of it entirely AND replace with the new name...OR should I keep the existing brand name (since it's specific) and make it an entity under the new name? I'm trying to avoid the costs associated with keeping two entities up and running (branding materials, hosting, etc) but I will if it makes sense to do so. Thoughts? [link] [comments]  | ||
| How to attract web developers as a start up? Posted: 05 Jan 2019 10:51 AM PST Hey all, happy new year. Essentially i'm from the UK and have a online business idea for a slice of a £21.1 billion market. I've done market research and looked at competitors ect but what i really need now is just the people to make it happen. But unsure of the fields / programming areas of the people i would need? as far as i can tell i need Web developers, front and back end. Data base, online booking system. any suggestions as to rates of pay or how to attract a group of people would be great. [link] [comments]  |
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