[PINNED] Promote your business, week of November 25, 2019 small business |
- [PINNED] Promote your business, week of November 25, 2019
- [PINNED] In this post, share your small business experience, successes, failures, AMAs, and lessons learned. Week of November 25, 2019
- When is it possible to compete against big companies?
- How do small business owners deal with uncertainty?
- Should I invest on content marketing or ads to get clients?
- Offer to buy my business - a good deal?
- Whats your best call management advice/service/product?
- Is my sale a smart deal?
- Every Winter is Hard, But This One is Different
- Can we collect donations from our customers to help an injured employee?
- How do I know when I need to collect sales tax?
- Need advice with negotiating small business purchase
- Have you ever hired an Artificial Intelligence Solutions provider?
- Business bogged down with orders.
- average profit margin on pet food, does anyone know?
- Should I have the cost up front as a fail-over?
- How can I be a good contractor?
- Responding to a 1 star review in which a customer has lied.
- How to spot emerging trends?
- GIVE ME YOUR OPINIONS PLEASE
- Business with exact same name
- Closing for lunch?
- Small Medical clinic Poland
- Payroll... where to start (service industry)
- Texas multiple sales tax locations
- How do you ensure consistent flow of clients as a marketing agency owner?
| [PINNED] Promote your business, week of November 25, 2019 Posted: 24 Nov 2019 05:36 PM PST Post business promotion messages here including special offers especially if you cater to small business. Note: To prevent your messages from being flagged by the autofilter, don't use shortened URLs. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Nov 2019 05:39 PM PST This post welcomes and is dedicated to:
/r/smallbusiness is one of a very few subs where people can ask questions about operating their small business. To let that happen the main sub is dedicated to answering questions about subscriber's own small businesses. Many people also want to talk about things which are not specific questions about their own business. We don't want to disappoint those subscribers and provide this post as a place to share that content without overwhelming specific and often less popular simple questions. This isn't a license to spam the thread. Business promotion and free giveaways are welcome only in the Promote Your Business thread. Thinly-veiled website or video promoting posts will be removed as blogspam. Discussion of this policy and the purpose of the sub is welcome at https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/ana6hg/psa_welcome_to_rsmallbusiness_we_are_dedicated_to/ [link] [comments]  |
| When is it possible to compete against big companies? Posted: 24 Nov 2019 07:40 PM PST How much money needs to be set aside for R+D, how much money for branding and marketing is needed to compete against certain big companies. If I wanted to make a tooth paste compete with colgate. How would I determine how much money I need for the manufacturing, and the logistics. How does a company grow itself from a niche product/brand in 10 local stores to a small player like 'aquadent' that has a 2% market share in the mass market? How does a company determine what the company is capable of competing against? [link] [comments]  |
| How do small business owners deal with uncertainty? Posted: 24 Nov 2019 08:43 AM PST As a small business owner, it's hard to predict where markets are heading or if competitors will open up nearby. How do business owners deal with that uncertainty when taking on debt or a mortgage on a property? My business isn't very consistent (could make a lot more one year, less the next year) and seasonal. How do you deal with that? [link] [comments]  |
| Should I invest on content marketing or ads to get clients? Posted: 24 Nov 2019 11:20 PM PST Hi everybody! So, as the title says, I'm currently debating if I should run ads or invest in content marketing. My business is really simple, I do websites with a friend of mine that designs them. I've had amazing experiences with content marketing (Found 2 long term clients this way but they appeared long time after the campaign was over). Plus I've never actually had run ads in the past, so I'm really skeptic if they can work for me. The thing is, I don't have a ton of budget to work with, so if I start buying things to start a content marketing campaign (Like microphones, a camera and things like that) I will not be able to run ads, and if I run ads, I will not be able to run a content marketing campaign, so I honestly don't know what to do. What do you guys recommend? Do you think that I should run ads to see if I can get a boost on clients or should I run for the content marketing campaign? Thanks to everyone C: [link] [comments]  |
| Offer to buy my business - a good deal? Posted: 25 Nov 2019 02:48 AM PST Retail with 4 years established, 5 year remaining lease (can be transferred). Owner operated. 1 Employee (part-time). The business grosses 180k running 50% of the year stretched over 10 months (seasonal, but could expand as the area is booming). I take a salary of the available 'cash flow' - 75k after all expenses/improvements/inventory/wages (though due to self employment deductions pay income on just under 30k - so if we're looking at it from a 'job' perspective its equivalent to 90k job). 2 months off per year (travelling on points as its retail, there usually enough to off set expensive international flights and a portion of accommodation). I still pay overhead while the business is closed. I've had an offer for 100k, paid as 65k down, the remainder over 18 months (monthly payment). I've had a divorce, the area is majority married and far from major cities, so there is a personal motivation to leave - I also need to diversify income streams (which is hard strapped to brick and mortar), the down season doesn't appeal to me as much as it once did, and personal life goals are driving the decision. I was accepted into a program that would be a stepping stone into what's next. This purchase is for a turnkey space, lease and goodwill. Thoughts on the value? [link] [comments]  |
| Whats your best call management advice/service/product? Posted: 24 Nov 2019 09:49 PM PST So, company is getting 500-700 calls a day. For a couple reasons, calls are not going through, getting answered, wet cetera. We've gotten complaints that people have been on hold for over an hour. With a drop rate of maybe 30% we're losing realistically thousands a day. Is there something I can implement tomorrow that's going to be able to guarantee that everyone who calls gets through? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Nov 2019 01:06 PM PST I own a limo business which will close out the year around 2.3m in sales. I own 63% of it with my partner owning the balance. Sales are down... Insurance is way up and not really making a profit. One reason probably is our salary from it which with all benefits included is probably about $150k a year each. Because it's been rough keeping it a float and usually having a negative balance in the checking account i started talks to sell to another company. My cut would be $115k down and 115k paid off to me over 3 years. They will give me a part time job there for a year paying 25/hour for 20 hours a week and also pay my health insurance for a year for my family. Basically i will have a shortfall for my family income of about 5k/month which also scares me. Based on the position my company is in.. does this sound like a good deal? Get out while i can or try to make some serious cuts and make it profitable? [link] [comments]  |
| Every Winter is Hard, But This One is Different Posted: 24 Nov 2019 08:12 AM PST I always look at the numbers. Every month is a new record. Every year is a new high. But winter always hits hard. I still smash prior records but winters usually account for a 20-30% drop in sales. Even so I make up for it. Not this year. Holy shit I was planning on losing 15k max. Now I may not beat out last years November. Which means I could lose up to 30k. I've done investigating into why. It seems major companies have come to my customers and are hardcore attacking. One has already poached one of my top customers who I picked up last January. Now what I don't understand is why now? I I mean I know their sales drop too but why not last winter? Why are they seemingly hitting me super hard now? I've scaled up significantly so this is why it pisses me off. I can easily scale back by cutting staff but I'm a person I like my people this is shit that I'd have to let them go for Christmas. Anyway. Now they attack. Well I'm going on the offensive as well. I never hit the road as I'm not a sales guy I'm an administrative guy. I wish this one person I knew would do it as he's charismatic as hell but he's lazy. Anyway everyday I'll be hitting the road fighting back now against these billion dollar franchises. Love to hear some tips on my situation. I plan on toughing our this winter and eating the loss. I also hope to learn what to say and how to better pitch my company. My problem is really I'm too honest. So I won't lie and be grandiose about things. Problem there is that people expect sales guys to be liars. So when I tell them I'm the fastest there is they don't believer me they just shake their head and say sure we'll call ya. Well if they did call me they wouldn't stop. So that's what I need. I need to be able to sell myself better and The only way I've been successful is by buying them stuff and I feel like I can't sustain dozens of relationships like that. [link] [comments]  |
| Can we collect donations from our customers to help an injured employee? Posted: 24 Nov 2019 07:52 PM PST We have a service business. One of our longtime employees was seriously injured in a car accident (not on the job). Over the years she has developed very good relationships with our recurring customers. A friend of the employee has set up a Gofundme for her, and we would like to send a note to her clients explaining her absence and gently asking if they would like to donate. However, many of our customers are elderly or rural and so might not be internet savvy enough to use the Gofundme website to make a donation. Can our business legally accept money (cash, check, or credit card) from customers, and then make a donation on their behalf? If so, what are the tax obligations? EDIT: we don't necessarily need to use Gofundme to donate to the employee, we just wanted to provide the option since one has been started on her behalf. We can give the money we collect directly to the employees family. I'm asking about the legality and tax obligations of accepting money from customers, and then forwarding that along. [link] [comments]  |
| How do I know when I need to collect sales tax? Posted: 24 Nov 2019 07:45 PM PST Hello, I've been looking deeper into sales taxes lately and I was wondering, in MS, when do I know I need to collect sales tax for what I sell? I was considering selling my art online, but I saw that to register for a sales tax ID as an online seller, a $500 surety bond was required. If I sell my products in someone else's physical store, who collects the sales tax? Who files those taxes? I'm trying to figure out the best direction to go to sell my art. I saw that I'd need a sales tax ID to sell at craft fairs as well, but I don't know about for selling in someone else's shop (got an offer to do so.) So far, what I'm seeing is there is nowhere I could sell to make the money to sell. I could be wrong though, I hope I am. [link] [comments]  |
| Need advice with negotiating small business purchase Posted: 24 Nov 2019 02:53 PM PST Background: I buy and operate small businesses for a living. Unique situation for me below: I am interested in a small business for sale. Owner is asking $100k for it. Owner is mostly absentee, does some sales calls, maybe 5-10 hours a week. Has been around for 30 years, made owner a living. Seller takes home anywhere from $50k-$100k for these 30 years. He says he intentionally slowed down in 2019, stopped advertising, only has around $10k earnings on $40k rev this year. Owner says simply starting the ads back up would get earnings back to what it was. Huge drop in earnings is very concerning to me. If I take over this business there is a huge risk that the earnings would not recover. I would never pay $100k for this business. I would realistically pay low 5 figures cash or I would do an earn out to $100k. Question: Have any of you successfully negotiated the price of a business where you and the seller were very far apart on asking price? What was your experience, what happened, what were your strategies, what was the ask price vs your final purchase price? Also, if you have successfully done an earn out before, what were the terms? [link] [comments]  |
| Have you ever hired an Artificial Intelligence Solutions provider? Posted: 25 Nov 2019 01:24 AM PST What's your experience with Data Science, AI solutions, etc.? I'm thinking about hiring a team of Data Scientists and Developers to help with some pressing issues that AI might be a solution to? What would you say are the pros & cons? Ultimately, what business are you into, why did you need them? [link] [comments]  |
| Business bogged down with orders. Posted: 24 Nov 2019 08:12 AM PST We recently started a new advertising campaign and while we did expect a reasonable increase in sales, we didnt expect our sales to jump over 400%. We literally cant keep up with current orders. We're pushing our machinery to its absolute limits and my employees are working way longer hours than they should. (They agreed on it for a larger Christmas bonus+overtime) How should we deal with this huge increase??? Our production just cant keep up. I'm Looking at increasing our shop size, machine #s, and adding a couple more employees but obviously this takes time. And customers are waiting for their orders. Any help is greatly appreciated!!! [link] [comments]  |
| average profit margin on pet food, does anyone know? Posted: 24 Nov 2019 09:04 PM PST I have heard anywhere from 50%-25%, Which for a high volume item, 50% seems pretty high. Does anyone know the average profit margin for pet food is? (not pet treats) Canned dog and cat food, and kibble. Whole sale price to MSRP [link] [comments]  |
| Should I have the cost up front as a fail-over? Posted: 24 Nov 2019 09:29 PM PST Hi Reddit, I run a small, local tech business out of my home. Usually I do repair, maintenance, networking, etc. and then I charge hourly or flat rate depending on the service performed. I'm looking into also selling computers built by me for gaming, home, networking (servers), business, etc. Usually with the other services I regularly do, I don't worry about having to cover the cost of something breaking, as those jobs are usually small or contracted out to me and if something goes wrong, it's covered. (I've only had this happen once and it was because of a faulty part I ordered for my customer that broke in a day, but I covered them with a warranty and replaced it and they were happy). But, for building computers and selling them--since I do this on the side and don't make a lot of extra money, my method would be posting a parts list that the customer can edit to his or her liking and then buying the parts and building it for them. But I have these concerns:
What is the best way to go about this without screwing over my business, myself, the customer, etc.? I want to do this as mature and professionally as possible. I want to grow my business, hence why I am adding new services to my list. Should I A) Ask for everything plus the build fees up front? (I don't worry about shipping as I use Amazon for most of my parts except ones you can't find on Amazon, and I have Prime so I get free two day shipping on all parts and I also get warranties in case a part is broke, that way neither I nor the customer is screwed over.) OR B) Somehow just buy everything myself and then build the machine(s), and then charge the customer? (With this method I'm worried about affording the cost of everything up front and also having the customer cancel the order and then be stuck with having to ship everything back or try to sell the machine as is, etc.) OR is there a better way to go about this? Excluding a business loan or investments, how do most local small startup businesses go about things like this without having to worry about losses, at least monetarily? I appreciate your time, thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| How can I be a good contractor? Posted: 24 Nov 2019 09:03 PM PST I need advice, how can I be a good contractor if I am not known in the business? Is it necessary for me to have a big name in the business? and most importantly, how can I a good contractor if I have multiple contracts. Per example, cleaning contracts, moving contracts and renovation contracts. It is practically impossible to a have a well rounded name with experiences in all of those fields. So how could I do it? Thank you! [link] [comments]  |
| Responding to a 1 star review in which a customer has lied. Posted: 24 Nov 2019 04:00 PM PST I own a furniture store and had a customer exchnage a bed for a new bed. She was treated kindly and given several hundred dollars off her exchnage bed. Today she left a 1 star review berating us for poor service, "manipulation", and recommends no one shop at our store. We literally have 150 other 5 star reviews and this has dropped us to a 4.9. I'm not sure if I should call the customer personally or respond via the review. When she left our store Saturday she seemed pleased with her new bed and experience. Her lies are that we manipulated her and had mixed communication. The mixed communication came from when she said she lived 4 miles from our store and we offered her free delivery. When we ran her address she was actually 20 miles away in the mountains and was told she could get half off delivery. Just feeling super sour after personally working with her, giving her a huge discount in the hundreds of dollars, 50% off delivery and every other item she bought. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Nov 2019 09:27 AM PST I am looking for some market research tools which will help me spot emerging trends in my industry which I can capitalise on. For example, how would you spot ketogenic diets or intermittent fasting as emerging trends 5 - 10 years ago? I have some ideas of certain trends within the market I serve through talking to my customers etc but I don't have any hard data to back it up - nor do I know how to validate them as good business oportunities. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Nov 2019 01:58 PM PST okay so for my candle business I need to decide what people want more here are the options A. a subscription box here you get a different candle, inscence, wax melt, and bath products(like soap, bath bombs, etc.) Each month B. A website where you are free to choose what you want and do bundles with different price points C. A combination of both. This will be my first business so I want as much feedback as possible because I dont have people around me who I can ask. Also now that I described what I will be selling does anyone have any ideas on other things I can sell that relate to the business. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Nov 2019 05:41 PM PST Little background, I recently started my own construction company after 10 years of working for others. All I've done thus far is file my articles of organization with the state, register my fictitious name, get an EIN, purchase the domain name, and get a bond in order to apply for my license. I have not done any business nor am I licensed to do so yet. Friday I went to the bank to open an account, and the banker said "oh do you work in South Carolina too?" To my surprise of course I said no, but apparently they there is an LLC in SC with the exact same name as mine, engaged in the same line of business. I could have sworn I did plenty of research when choosing the name, but apparently not enough, a little more googling revealed a facebook page for the company and what do you know... I checked the SC Secretary of State, it is still very much an active company, and I also checked the state's board for licensed contractors and sure enough they have an active license as well. So now I'm kinda stuck. Do I continue on with my name and risk a law suit or something in the future. Do I reach out and request permission to use the name? Or do I start over from scratch. I'm already into this startup about $500 between filing fees and paying for a bond that I am sure is non-refundable. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Nov 2019 05:40 PM PST I have a service based business with a retail component, with 3 full-time staff. Lately, we've been busy. It's both good and bad, because I won't see that money for at least 6 weeks, but we do what we can. I however am an introverted extrovert. O can't afford another team member right now, and I do all our quotes/invoicing/account queries/phone calls/bookings/retail/speciality work. If one of my staff is free and I try and have lunch, they inevitably asknme questions or make me feel guilty for browsing Reddit instead of doing more work. I work 7 days a week. It's Monday and I'm already burnt out of Smalltalk. I need time away from customers and staff but I can't see how to take it - I'm constant support for my staff, I'm constantly having to deal with customers while they take lunch and if I take lunch, the same rules do not apply My customers don't seem to like my not wanting to engage in smalltalk. Even when I have the spoons, I frankly don't really care too much what someone else is doing - that's their life, not mine. however I had someone complain I was rude for not wanting to discuss my parents health with them, so I feel stuck. My idea is to close for an hour at lunch. Simply lock mg office, my staff can eat and I can recharge - but a lot of businesses want to deal with me in their own lunch hour. Any ideas fam? I'm always polite, just tired of dealing with people and people being demanding of my time. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 24 Nov 2019 08:05 AM PST Hi. I am 6th year med. student and I am managing my parents medical clinic. Manage the website, registration, social media ect. We are owners of an estate where is our clinic. Most of the time offices are free because my parents and one more doctor are occuping it only 3 days per week rest of the time it's empty, unused. So they gave me mission to find more workers - docotrs. I have put job offers all over FB local docotrs groups, linkedin ect. but no response at all. I know this topic is pretty complex and depends on many factors but what I wanted to ask to for an advice, is ther any are other diffrent way to find possibly interesed people, what approche should I use. Our offer is pretty competitive compering other job offers in this field, still no response. flood me with ideas ! [link] [comments]  |
| Payroll... where to start (service industry) Posted: 24 Nov 2019 04:31 PM PST Background: -New salon, just opened in May -Just myself working currently -Planning on hiring soon, trying to figure out everything I need to get in place. -Lots of salons will get away with misclassifying as independent contractors, not technically allowed in my state. Want to hire as an employee. -Still deciding on pay structure, but I'm thinking of something that is paid just an hourly rate during training period, and then transition to a tiered commission system based on how booked they are so that there is built in incentive (but compare that to $8 an hour and give them whichever is more while they are building yo their clientele to make sure they're still getting paid fairly for their time). -I've figured out how to calculate this all in excel, hopefully it's not too complicated for a payroll system? So basically, where do I start from here? After the research I've started into doing your own payroll, I think it will be well worth it to pay a service to do this because I want to make sure the right taxes are being taken out, etc. I just don't want to pay like more than $40ish a month, it's just one employee to start so nothing crazy. Is this a service my accountant could do? Planning on meeting with him soon. Is this something an online company can do everything I need? I've been seeing a lot about gusto and how it used to be good but isn't anymore. Do I need to be looking for a service like this? Thanks for any help! You would think between having a business degree & a business owner dad (independent contractors unfortunately no help) would have taught me something on this issue but it hasn't. Very clueless, any advice would be great. [link] [comments]  |
| Texas multiple sales tax locations Posted: 24 Nov 2019 10:31 AM PST Just got my llc started and I perform taxable service in several cities. Lubbock, San Angelo, Amarillo, Abilene,Odessa , midland. I will invoice each location. Each location will be charged their sales tax. My application is processing for sales and use tax. When I goto pay, will it have me itemize for each location since they are all different taxing entities? [link] [comments]  |
| How do you ensure consistent flow of clients as a marketing agency owner? Posted: 24 Nov 2019 02:41 PM PST |
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