Service Business - What should I do about new add-on service that doesn’t fit my company’s name? Start a new business under a DBA..? small business |
- Service Business - What should I do about new add-on service that doesn’t fit my company’s name? Start a new business under a DBA..?
- Office supplies suggestions
- Has anything fruitful happened beyond your talks with your yelp "manager"?
- Insure company car under my name or business?
- Family business is struggling 11 months into operations, need some advice.
- Anyone monetizing with webscraping?
- Advice on splitting with partner
- Appointment reminders based on Google Calendar events
- Rwanda Wages
- New LLC, business out of our home, looking for advice on accounting and taxes
- Buy a active restaurant question
- Taxes on e-commerce site that sources from Mexican artists
- Self-Storage
- Running out of ideas. What else to do to help with ranking or exposure?
- HELP needed Shipping furniture
- Confused about S-Corp
- Creating a business and managing write offs
- Turbo tax 2018 from ebay?
- How do insure a subscription-based product being shipped back and forth from my company to my clients?
- Sole proprietorship bank account problems
- What do you do to maintain good working relationships with business partners and employees?
- Need advice for communicating with employee...
- Best way to go about saving for startup costs?
- Sole proprietorship deductions from personal taxes?
| Posted: 01 Jun 2019 06:54 AM PDT I am a new small business owner. I've been in business almost a year. Service business. I do window and pressure washing. My company's name has the words window and pressure washing in it. Example: "John's Window 'N Pressure Washing" I added paver sealing to my business. I was cleaning a lot of paver driveways and pool decks and I had requests for sealing them afterwards but I didn't know how to do it. Then I learned how over the next several months. There is good money to be made doing this. I had my first job about a week ago and already for next month I have 3k (take home after supplies/materials) scheduled jobs, 3 jobs total. Try to make 1k plus a job. My issue is... although I am highly rated and recommended in the community and the business is only growing. I don't know if my company's name will throw people off. Already I had one person comment on my post, "a window cleaning company that seals pavers?" I don't want to stray too far from window and pressure washing but their is better money for paver sealing. If I could schedule 50 paver sealing jobs a year that would easily be 50k in my pocket. Along with another 50k+ from the window and pressure washing side of the business. I'm torn... Not sure what to do. Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Jun 2019 05:53 AM PDT Morning! Just joined a start up company and am in the process of opening our office. Any suggestions on who to use for office supplies (ie printer, office phones, etc)? Is there a benefit to using a company like WB Mason for a small company (just me in the office at the moment)? Or is it more prudent to just use Staples or Amazon? All suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Has anything fruitful happened beyond your talks with your yelp "manager"? Posted: 31 May 2019 02:05 PM PDT My friend says he paid $200+ to help his new business get traffic, only to get 2 clicks after 4 weeks. This is also when his recent reviews recently got removed, they were his clients too. We've been getting voice mails after voice mails. How are we supposed to pay Yelp if the business is literally just starting out? There's no profit yet, so what are their sales persons trying to accomplish here? Besides the horror stories I've read makes me just want to avoid them even more. People use your service already Yelp, can we small businesses at least get a breather and collect some honest publicity? [link] [comments]  |
| Insure company car under my name or business? Posted: 31 May 2019 07:31 PM PDT Car insurance quote for a car I am buying for the business came in way high vs insuring it in my own name. Any reason not to do this, and just have the company pay the bill ? [link] [comments]  |
| Family business is struggling 11 months into operations, need some advice. Posted: 31 May 2019 08:21 AM PDT Hello everyone, I would greatly appreciate any advice from Redditors with local business experience. My parents opened up a delicatessen/sandwich shop just under a year ago. My father has worked in this industry, never for himself, for over 30 years. We picked a location in a more residential area, but still near a school, a large bank branch, and some other small non food local businesses. At first things were going great - we had a grand opening, neighbors were excited that we had remodeled a run down location, they raved about the food, and we had local support. After about 3 month in business, we saw a downward trend of sales that leveled off at about 35-40% of the initial sales we had in the opening 3 months of operation. We are averaging about 125k/year in sales for the last 8 months, after starting off 4 months trending towards an average of 240k. Everyone who tries our food loves it. We use premium ingredients, we do not take any shortcuts in preparing any of cuisines, but we struggle to retain customers and we are not sure why. I am not arrogant to think that nothing is wrong (pricing, food quality, location) but from speaking to customers face to face I have not been able to get a sense of what the issue is. We have not had a big presence online (1 yelp review) partly due to the fact that my parents are not online savy and I've been busy with my own FT job. My plan was to revamp the website, focus on catering orders for parties and events (that is my Dad's bread and butter) through SEO and purchasing targeted ads and come up with promotions to drive up UberEats/Grubhub sales. We received an offer to be bought out by someone who has a different idea for the store which will get us about 80% of our initial investment, however it will be very difficult to start another business with this sum in a more high traffic area. My question is - Is there anything else I should be doing to try to expand our customer base to people outside of the neighborhood? Is it possible to have a successful business outside of the main city hub of business or a plaza? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. EDIT: including our Instagram @thedelispotbayonne for those asking. [link] [comments]  |
| Anyone monetizing with webscraping? Posted: 01 Jun 2019 09:23 AM PDT Anyone successful with monetizing webscraping? I've been scraping a site slowly for the past month or so and now continuing to autoscrape on a daily basis. Have some scripts set up for scrubbing the data and am close to releasing it to the wild on a monthly subscription basis. Curious as to how others have successfully implemented something like this as this is my first crack at a SaaS type tool. What has your experience been in maintaining something like this from a technical perspective and as an introverted developer, I'm even more intrigued in client/user acquisition. [link] [comments]  |
| Advice on splitting with partner Posted: 31 May 2019 08:27 PM PDT The only reason we started our company was to touch a specific field of work, but unfortunately never headed that route, and we are now in agreement that we have different goals and splitting would be beneficial to us both. He holds 51% ownership and we have been talking about dissolving the company and starting our separate businesses. Would it be better for me to simply buy him out of the company as to avoid the hassle of reconstructing, etc? (He doesn't want to retain the company as the company name hinders him from getting the type of work he wants). The only problem is that the balance sheet of the company to this day shows a negative 30k equity figure, and would it not be reasonable for him to have to pay to be bought out instead of vice versa? It is worth noting however that I have a company car worth around 30k after depreciation while he doesn't. Any advice or thoughts would be great. Thanks in advance. [link] [comments]  |
| Appointment reminders based on Google Calendar events Posted: 01 Jun 2019 06:51 AM PDT Hello! I've been reading all this subreddit's posts I could this morning but I haven't been able to find what I'm looking for. So I'm currently using a Google Calendar where I keep all my customer's appointment (day and hour). What I would like is some sort of app that would read this calendar and send the customer an email one day before, reminding them the appointment date. No need for confirmation or reply, just a reminder. I don't want a separate calendar on a website where they connect to my GCalendar to check for incompatibilities, I want to only manage a Google Calendar and I'd add some info to the event (like the email) and the app would read it and send it right away. Also, it'd be nice if I had the option to send an SMS instead. So I would create an event in GCalendar with something like "Joseph - 000000001" and it would send an SMS to the phone number 000000001 or "Joseph - [joseph@mail.com](mailto:joseph@mail.com)" and it would send an email to [joseph@mail.com](mailto:joseph@mail.com) I've been looking at some sites where they offer something similar but they force you to have a separate calendar on their own website which will just check your personal appointments in GCalendar. I also don't need customer to be able to make their own appointment. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Jun 2019 06:49 AM PDT I am going to Rwanda next month. Anyone here experienced in what the monthly wages look like over there for the low skilled sector (informal and private). I have looked at Worldbank, Rwandan National Bank, etc and many other sites, there's no clear answer I am hoping anyone of you guys here knows! [link] [comments]  |
| New LLC, business out of our home, looking for advice on accounting and taxes Posted: 01 Jun 2019 06:30 AM PDT My wife and I have started a side hustle of sorts growing gourmet, edible mushrooms and selling to local chefs, farmers markets, and the occasional food coop. We both have full-time jobs otherwise and do this in our spare time on weeknights and weekends. The operation is currently taking place on our two-acre single family home. Some of the products we sell are grown outdoors in prepared beds and such and some are foraged from the wild, but the bulk of what we sell (>80%) is prepared and grown out of our home. Not sure how relevant this is, but I would say that we use approximately 1/3 of our houses sq. footage (~1000 sq. ft) for purposes of the business. I'm not quite sure at this point how much of our utilities go towards operations (I'll determine that soon as an average), but there is definitely a utility cost to operations and I suspect some our household utility bills can be captured in our taxes from a business perspective (but not absolutely sure). Sales are low at this point; we've just gotten started, but sales tally ~$600-800 per month. As we've progressed down this road, I'm positive there is ample room for growth in this market and our sales may increase quite significantly. As such, we're already thinking of expanding, still within our single family home, but to fill more square footage and to produce more. I've formed an LLC to protect our personal assets (as much as possible). I've kept tally of our start-up costs and log all costs/expenses into a spreadsheet software. As sales occur, I log what, when, and how much we sell. These all seem like basic steps to capturing information for tax purposes, but I'm sure that I'm missing things. Where do I start? Are there good, digestible books out there that you can suggest for us to learn how to move forward tax wise and to know which deductions apply to us? Should I be speaking with an accountant at this point or are we small enough that that is unnecessary (until we make our move to expand)? We're not terribly concerned about litigation, but does the LLC status really protect were we to be sued? Really, any advice or thoughts would be appreciated. I'm looking to learn best next steps and best management practices, but don't know where to begin. Thanks in advance [link] [comments]  |
| Buy a active restaurant question Posted: 01 Jun 2019 06:07 AM PDT Tomorrow I'm going to meet with the business owner who is looking to sell his restaurant. The location is good as I quite frequently pass and notice other restaurants doing well- his is quite older, dated and a bit tacky feeling. Hes surrounded by younger more vibrant restaurants. It would def need a face lift. The food is typical nothing special or thoughtful. I come from a restaurant background and I'm quite young so I understand what people my age are looking for. I went into the shop the other night and saw the owner working with some employees who were horsing around too much. He says hes making around 15k a week in sales. I'm trying to figure out what i need to ask to gauge if his numbers are right and possibly other questions. The lease is up I'm 2 years. Says he has 5 part time employees- I think hes full time. Thought? [link] [comments]  |
| Taxes on e-commerce site that sources from Mexican artists Posted: 31 May 2019 08:26 PM PDT I've got an idea for an e-commerce site, and the products are going to be sourced from local producers, in Mexico, and sold in the US. I live in Mexico in a border city so I plan on doing the transport myself. No special products, mostly shirts and paintings and some other handmade stuff, basically what you would find in Etsy. Also, I don't know shit about taxes. So, I've got several questions: 2) For tax purposes, how do I prove what I pay them? Unless they have a storefront, they deal entirely in cash. Do I tell them to make a bank account so I can make bank transfers so I have proof of the amounts I pay? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 May 2019 05:26 PM PDT I am a law student interested in either creating my own self-storage company or franchising from an REIT storage company. While I have most of my money in the stock market, my goal is to have a low-maintenance investment that I can eventually manage upon graduating law school and potentially grow into a bigger project. I have accumulated a fair amount of research on the local self-storage market in my area as well as nationwide. Moreover, I have met with a land developer and he seemed to think the market was niche because developers are building apartments at a high rate in the area. Throughout my preliminary research process, I have encountered conflicting data on whether self-storage is a profitable investment. On the one hand, I come across reddit users and databases suggesting that I am 15 years late to the self-storage party and that it would be fiscally-wise to keep my money in the stock market. In part, this may be due to other variables, rather than the market itself, or an investor wanting to make more than a "small profit," which is the route I am interested in pursing. On the other hand, data has shown that there is still a high and growing demand for self-storage units because of low percentage of home ownership in recent years, a growing number of individuals renting apartments, and the frequency at which individuals move. Thus, my question is: Does anyone have any insight or information on the market trend for self-storage? If so, would it be smarter for me to keep my money in the stock market or is the self-storage market more lucrative? Additionally, If I were to choose the self-storage path, is the smarter decision starting my own company or franchising from an REIT? As for my personal notes on having my own start-up, I have a few potential business partners in mind that would be willing to manage and market the company. However, I am not able to dedicate my entire schedule to this project for at least a couple years. How much of a problem would this cause in either situation? Also, Does anyone have any information on the difference in self-storage start-up REI compared to self-storage franchise REI? Any comments or information that does not specifically answer these questions is more than welcomed. Thank you. P.S. - any information at all on this subject is useful and appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Running out of ideas. What else to do to help with ranking or exposure? Posted: 31 May 2019 06:19 PM PDT I am helping a small business with their event-related services, they are mobile but don't have a commercial lot/office yet. Google didn't want them to have their address verified because it's a home, or it looks like a home address. The funny thing is, there are numerous same business verified on lots which look like a typical home. I feel as if this really impacts their lead potential because I myself turn to google to see which business is the closest to where I am. Furthermore, I've written numerous blog posts, updated their website (though it's ran by WP) but it's as organized and clean as I can make it. I guess I can continue scheduling future posts on all platforms (IG, FB etc...) Next, I'd want them to move into small budget advertising, I feel like Craigslist can really help them (for only $5 a post) I don't feel like turning to FB because I don't think it works. Yes they're doing physical canvassing, posting their ads on public bulletins, flyers and more. But what else is there to explore? They're only 5-6 months in after establishing their www. so it is not like Google or Yelp will notice them. Can someone point me a way on where to go next? [link] [comments]  |
| HELP needed Shipping furniture Posted: 01 Jun 2019 12:59 AM PDT We starting to target the international market but shipping is insane. I asked for a quote on a small coffee table to go to the UK and they want to charge me R12000 its madness. thats 3 times the price of the table. does anyone have any idea on the best method of shipping that would be cost effective. Ideally id like to ship 10 at a time and the price they gave for that was R64000 i cant believe that. Any advice please? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 May 2019 07:54 PM PDT I've been watching and reading about creating S-Corps for their tax benefits, but am bamboozled about how it works. My job is at Company X as a full time employee. Can I create an S-Corp, and make Company X pay my S-Corp, then add myself to my S-Corp's payroll? Also, can I basically live under the umbrella of my S-Corp? Suppose I want to get a house, can I buy it with my S-Corp and manage my wealth using my S-Corp? For example - I'm just an employee of my S-Corp and pay myself a REASONABLE salary, and all of my assets are under my S-Corp. I'm not trying to do anything illegal, I'm just not clear on how S-Corps work. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| Creating a business and managing write offs Posted: 31 May 2019 11:38 AM PDT An acquaintance of mine runs a review website and writes off certain expenses which left me with a lot of questions. I would like to setup a site focused on mountain biking where I would have reviews, videos, components, etc. Reading the IRS rules for write offs is a little fuzzy so for example could I purchase a GoPro and write it off because it is used to film all of my reviews and rides? If there is a new shock or other component I want to try can I write that off? Tougher example, let's say I want to go on a biking trip and document everything for the site how much of that can I write off? I know there are limits and/or percentages but am curious as to how all that works or if anyone has experience with this sort of thing. I like the idea of running a small business that I also enjoy but don't want to get in trouble because I tried to expense something that I shouldn't. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 May 2019 06:11 PM PDT Yo guys do I have to buy Turbotax business from the official site? Or can I get it cheaper somewhere else (Yes I filed an extension) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 31 May 2019 04:03 PM PDT Hey there - I'm building a new business (hence the vagueness), and an integral part of the model relies on a customer being able to ship a product back and forth to my company. This is part of a subscription service, and their product will be shipped about once a month. How should I go about obtaining proper insurance to cover the item being shipped back and forth as part of this service? The items would typically range in value from about $20 - $500. Thanks so much! [link] [comments]  |
| Sole proprietorship bank account problems Posted: 31 May 2019 11:48 AM PDT I'm working part-time at a tech startup, just 3 days a week, and they're paying me as a 1099 contractor. First time doing this kind of freelancing thing for me. I don't plan on doing this beyond just this year, but I want to have clean and simple accounting. Because of this I've decided to just have a sole prop instead of an LLC. I filed for an EIN with the IRS for my sole prop, and gave it just the same name as my personal name. I use Schwab for personal banking and brokerage. I applied for a sole prop bank account there, and they're blocking the process on asking me for proof of registration with New York state (I live in NY). They're asking for a business license, or fictitious name registration, or trade name registration. The problem is that I can't find a way to register as a sole prop with New York, and everything I read online says that sole props only need to register if they're using a business name other than the personal name of the sole prop's owner. In that case I'd need to file for a DBA (doing business as). In other words, as a sole prop just using my personal name, I should not need any such documentation from NY state or the federal government. Schwab's senior account rep agrees that that's true, but their verification department is still having trouble accepting this. Seems like they just haven't handled such a case before. FWIW, Vanguard didn't give me any such trouble in setting up a self-administered 401k for myself. Question for you guys: - Maybe I should just use another place for business banking instead? - Is the simplest thing just to have a DBA name and pay the money to register that trade name with NY state? Kind of annoying but perhaps this is simpler? Kindest thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| What do you do to maintain good working relationships with business partners and employees? Posted: 31 May 2019 03:33 PM PDT What warning signs mark the deterioration of business relationships? How have you addressed them, and learned from your mistakes to prevent recurring issues? [link] [comments]  |
| Need advice for communicating with employee... Posted: 31 May 2019 08:01 AM PDT So, I an a 21 y/o small buisness owner in MI. I have 1 employee who is way more experienced than I am and also brings in 70 % of our clients. My problem is, she recently has been going off on me. I do the bulk of the cleaning as she dosnt stick around at all once shes finished. We are pet based buisness and one of her pets just came down with a maybe sickness(really flemmy) so we where deep cleaning with pet targeted disinfectants. As I walked by our gates between rooms with a spray bottle, i sprayed the gates down sence i already was there and had a bottle. She got very angry with me stating. " you know I already did those twice?" Okay... sorry. I didnt know you did. I just apologize and decide to let it roll off my back like I do with her too much as it is. After some time, we come to washing the pet bowls. I mention we should dip them in the disinfectant as well, I dont think she heard me though. I gather up a few bowls she missed in her first cleaning with dish soap and do all of the bowls with disinfectant as well. This is when she exploded on me. About how she dosnt feel like shes good enough for anyone and I didnt need to go behind her back on all the cleaning and redo it all. Hold up... I didnt mean to offend. Just making sure everything is safe for our buisness... and usually I am the one to have to clean EVERYTHING anyway. I need to sit down with her and tall her I dont appreciate the way she tends to take her at home frustrations out on me at home. I know this is from home, shes told me her family has been cleaning and rearranging while she works and its stressing her out. I need advice guys. I cant keep getting bullied in my own place. [link] [comments]  |
| Best way to go about saving for startup costs? Posted: 31 May 2019 02:57 PM PDT Hello r/smallbusiness! I am a young entrepreneur looking at starting a Mobile Car Detailing company and I was wondering the best way to go about saving up for the start up costs. I'm expecting startup costs to be around $1000 - $1500, and monthly fixed expenses to be around $60/month. I currently make $600/mo. (Teenage Pay amiright?) As of Right now my current expenses go as follows: Gas = $120/mo. Insurance = $100/mo. Car Payments = $120/mo. Monthly Subscriptions = $29/mo. Which gives me $231/month left over after bills, and of that I try to save around 1/2 - 3/4 of said money. What would be the smartest, financially best way to attempt to save up for this business adventure? If it helps, I'm 16. [link] [comments]  |
| Sole proprietorship deductions from personal taxes? Posted: 31 May 2019 02:00 PM PDT Im sure this has been covered before, but I am unsure how to word my question for finding an answer. I currently work a normal day job but would like to start a sole proprietorship and purchase equipment for that purpose. If I dont operate for a profit after the first year, can these business expenses be used on my personal taxes to lower my taxable income for my day job? [link] [comments]  |
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