The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
- Thread starter Off The Reservation
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A few thoughts:
- Read The Lean Startup and learn all about Minimum Viable Products
- Don't quit your day job til you've got >1 year savings
- Plan how you will automate the business even before you start it. A business you can't automate and sell is a career (not necessarily a bad thing but just know what you're getting into)
- Assume that your business idea will fail to be profitable. But it won't matter because you should only pursue business ideas which will give you some form of long term value even if they do fail eg a useful skill like sales, high value contacts, niche market knowledge etc
- Bootstrap abroad if your business allows you to be location independent eg many places in SEA are cheap and have fast internet
- Read less. Do more. Don't get caught in the trap of thinking you need more knowledge - just try new things and see what sticks.
- Read The Lean Startup and learn all about Minimum Viable Products
- Don't quit your day job til you've got >1 year savings
- Plan how you will automate the business even before you start it. A business you can't automate and sell is a career (not necessarily a bad thing but just know what you're getting into)
- Assume that your business idea will fail to be profitable. But it won't matter because you should only pursue business ideas which will give you some form of long term value even if they do fail eg a useful skill like sales, high value contacts, niche market knowledge etc
- Bootstrap abroad if your business allows you to be location independent eg many places in SEA are cheap and have fast internet
- Read less. Do more. Don't get caught in the trap of thinking you need more knowledge - just try new things and see what sticks.
Valentine said:
Accept that they won't do the job to the standard that you would. Realise that whilst you would like to deliver 110%, the average customer is happy with 80% of what you would consider a perfect job. Go round and check the jobs, talk highly of your staff to the customer, talk the job up, make slight adjustments if needed with a smile on your face. Build a rapport with the customer.
This was (and still is) a big mental hurdle for me to overcome. You need to slightly bullshit even to yourself, if you are a perfectionist like me.
Chemistry said:
I am in an industry that I cannot trust to other people. As one person put it to me, No one wants to see the nurse they want to see the doctor, you are the doctor. What he told me is true for my and some industries. But it does make me want to start another type of business which could be automated.
I learned a long time ago that having staff was not for me. Too many headaches.
As a result of this I structured my business from the off as a franchise model that fits around my life. A few ball busting years at the beginning have given way to something that requires very little input from me beyond motivation and training others to do the same.
Too many people start businesses with no idea what they actually want out of it and therefore do not structure accordingly.
As a result of this I structured my business from the off as a franchise model that fits around my life. A few ball busting years at the beginning have given way to something that requires very little input from me beyond motivation and training others to do the same.
Too many people start businesses with no idea what they actually want out of it and therefore do not structure accordingly.
aeroektar
Pelican
So check this out.
I have been going back and forth with a manufacturer on Alibaba for the last few weeks designing a product. I had them make me a custom sample and send it to me, it wasn't exactly to my liking but about 90% there.
This isn't like a blender with a different exterior appearance or something, this is a really unique item that stands on its own and would have less then a half dozen competing products on the market, all of which command a premium, even though they're made overseas and quality could be better.
I have been going over the last few details with them before getting ready to place a first order, and I look and see that they have already listed my sample as a product on their alibaba page. This made me pissed.
I'm not sure what to do, cut contact with these people and find another manufacturer abroad or here in the USA (I'm reaching out to one right now), or tell them to take it down and try to move forward (I'm sure I'm on no grounds to tell them to remove it).
I have been going back and forth with a manufacturer on Alibaba for the last few weeks designing a product. I had them make me a custom sample and send it to me, it wasn't exactly to my liking but about 90% there.
This isn't like a blender with a different exterior appearance or something, this is a really unique item that stands on its own and would have less then a half dozen competing products on the market, all of which command a premium, even though they're made overseas and quality could be better.
I have been going over the last few details with them before getting ready to place a first order, and I look and see that they have already listed my sample as a product on their alibaba page. This made me pissed.
I'm not sure what to do, cut contact with these people and find another manufacturer abroad or here in the USA (I'm reaching out to one right now), or tell them to take it down and try to move forward (I'm sure I'm on no grounds to tell them to remove it).
Ebay business is really taking off. We just doubled our biggest monthly revenue last month. It took a year and a half but I can consistently pull in $300-500+ per hour. I took a look at what activities maximized my hourly rate and focused on that.
Its going well and I could probably do this for the rest of my life, but I want to move on to a more traditional startup, and put in 10 hours a month on the ebay business to pay the bills. The thing I have in mind is going to be big.
Its going well and I could probably do this for the rest of my life, but I want to move on to a more traditional startup, and put in 10 hours a month on the ebay business to pay the bills. The thing I have in mind is going to be big.
n0000 said:
That's extremely impressive. What kind of products are these? What segment?
Any pointers for us little fish? :smile:
Here's a tip - Don't process your payments with PayPal. Get a merchant account or use services like Stripe. Very important. PayPal will not let you run a business, despite upgrading to a business account or even using one of their merchant solutions.
I started a business 5 years ago with $10,000. Last year we passed 4mil in sales. Have 12 employees.
It's hard.
My personal boon and bane has been I always want to do everything myself (excluding routine operations, but including marketing, sales, creative, R&D, etc). On the one hand this is good because it's extremely hard to find dependable people (and very expensive). On the other hand this has limited our growth.
I think my introversion has been both a boon and bane too. It allows me to get technical and look for ways to implement operational improvements via a lot of self-reflection and introspection. However, dealing with employees is hard when I want to be left alone (which is most of the time) but need to interact with them instead (which is also most of the time, lol). And many times against my better judgement I have opted not to do networking stuff in favor of working on things at the office because I hate networking even though I know it is beneficial.
Everyone always wants to give advice on what you should do or shouldn't do, but the fact is 99% of the people giving you advice have never been successful at what they're giving you advice about, lol.
My two biggest obstacles are time-management and finding talent. Time management because all these little things add up to so much time and it's easy to not have time for working ON the company rather than IN the company (The E-myth Revisited is a good book on this). Finding employees is a major pain, sort of like looking for that unicorn. I want people to be generalists and do all these things that I do, but it's the opposite, everyone focuses on just a minor element and wants to depend on someone else to do what they don't know how, but if you don't provide them with that other person they have no idea what to do. For example, marketing: I'll design the t-shirts, find the printer, coordinate the shipping, find models, do the photography, then do the social media. Good luck finding anyone who can do more than one of those things. And then it seems to me that talent often over-values their worth by a good margin.
One thing I've learned that is apropos to the other elements found on this forum is this: on RVF women get a lot of slack for being hamster-driven, for being entitled, for being mindless, for having self-important & inflated egos & more. From all the human resources work I've done over the last 6 years, just as many men or like that too & just being a lousy person with the aforementioned negative qualities is not gender-specific by any means & in fact pretty normally distributed among both genders.
But to counter that negativity I must say when you do find a good employee it's a brilliant thing to have them by your side to carry out your vision in an effective manner.
It's hard.
My personal boon and bane has been I always want to do everything myself (excluding routine operations, but including marketing, sales, creative, R&D, etc). On the one hand this is good because it's extremely hard to find dependable people (and very expensive). On the other hand this has limited our growth.
I think my introversion has been both a boon and bane too. It allows me to get technical and look for ways to implement operational improvements via a lot of self-reflection and introspection. However, dealing with employees is hard when I want to be left alone (which is most of the time) but need to interact with them instead (which is also most of the time, lol). And many times against my better judgement I have opted not to do networking stuff in favor of working on things at the office because I hate networking even though I know it is beneficial.
Everyone always wants to give advice on what you should do or shouldn't do, but the fact is 99% of the people giving you advice have never been successful at what they're giving you advice about, lol.
My two biggest obstacles are time-management and finding talent. Time management because all these little things add up to so much time and it's easy to not have time for working ON the company rather than IN the company (The E-myth Revisited is a good book on this). Finding employees is a major pain, sort of like looking for that unicorn. I want people to be generalists and do all these things that I do, but it's the opposite, everyone focuses on just a minor element and wants to depend on someone else to do what they don't know how, but if you don't provide them with that other person they have no idea what to do. For example, marketing: I'll design the t-shirts, find the printer, coordinate the shipping, find models, do the photography, then do the social media. Good luck finding anyone who can do more than one of those things. And then it seems to me that talent often over-values their worth by a good margin.
One thing I've learned that is apropos to the other elements found on this forum is this: on RVF women get a lot of slack for being hamster-driven, for being entitled, for being mindless, for having self-important & inflated egos & more. From all the human resources work I've done over the last 6 years, just as many men or like that too & just being a lousy person with the aforementioned negative qualities is not gender-specific by any means & in fact pretty normally distributed among both genders.
But to counter that negativity I must say when you do find a good employee it's a brilliant thing to have them by your side to carry out your vision in an effective manner.
Il Bersagliere said:
PayPal is fine. Actually much better than merchant account services and amex merchant services. I can send an email directly to my guy at paypal and he takes care of any issue within a day. With my merchant account and amex merchant account I have to call in and provide five million pieces of security information and get transferred 3 times - each time repeating the same exact security information I provided the previous agent - and then still not given a solution. PayPal's fees are about the same as everyone else's too.
Haven't used square too much personally but met them at a number of tradeshows and they all seem friendly and knowledgeable and I'd consider checking square out if I were to start all over again. Or you get a customer who's ccs aren't working for whatever reason but his/her paypal is, and vice-versa again.
In the end you want to be using everyone. Some people are afraid to use cc's online but are comfortable with using paypal, or vice-versa. You don't want lose a customer because of that.
texas
Robin
monster said:
Monster, congrats on the growth. Not sure if you're in the US, but I think a lot of people here have just been cultivated to think with the specialist/dependency on others attitude. I hear bozos all the time say that they need to be earning more if they are expected to do more or something outside of their hyper-specific scope, but the fact is, if a job creator did not build that infrastructure for them to work in and make money from, they would have no way to convert their specificity into money. They do not truly know how to make money outside of a pre-built platform. Very entitled attitude. If they can in fact get shit done outside of their scope, they may be too risk-averse/unconfident/whatever-negative-trait-victim-attitude-here to pull the goddamn trigger and do it.
My mindset has morphed since working in small business and starting off with an "hourly" attitude regarding pay versus a results attitude that does not need to take into account actual hours as long as there is production. After observing a few entrepreneurs and their dedication and the ultimate responsibility for them to get shit done when employees or contractors fail them, a great respect has evolved for them and simultaneously a glaring disgust for victim-mentality loser employees who are not proactive and resourceful.
Once you have witnessed the different attitudes and realize that you can be the puppeteer and pull the strings, I think it's hard to go back, which is why lots of people who can be a generalist are and they are not working in a specialist role unless it is to gain experience as part of a plan and then use as a springboard for their own entrepreneurship. You don't even need to pull the strings perfectly, you just need to have the balls to step up and pull the goddamn strings and take responsibility when the contractors attached to the ends of them don't always come through. Very similar to game and approaching: you don't need to perfect approach, you just need to fucking approach.
monster said:
Ok. You've got 'a guy' or 'a plug' at PayPal, which leads me to believe that you have some clout or never travel. If you don't mind me asking, what kind of business do you do and what is your monthly volume? PayPal has an implicit policy where they limit or lock your account if you are under a personal account and using it for business and processing lots of payments. If you are under a business account or even a merchant account, you get the same problem but less pronounced. Simply put, PayPal isn't just a good platform for ecommerce, which is why I tell all my friends who want to dropship or have a high expected volume/income to avoid it altogether. In the past, PayPal would give you some leeway and allow you to respond, but now they are moving towards automatic limitation and permanent lock for infractions. I've had friends who have been blindsided by this, with 5-10k stuck in their account for 6 months.
I've used PayPal for nearly 8 years and they have evolved quite a bit. Many things in their company have now become 'proprietary information' and 'off-limits' because consumers are wising up. PayPal is very fond of unscrupulous behavior, which includes limiting your account for vague reasons, an ethnic sounding name, selling materials that are against TOS, etc. I've managed to learn how to bypass and manage these things effectively, but the juice is not worth the squeeze, especially when you just wanna focus on running a side-hustle instead of playing head games on the phone.
I have never used amex or square, but Google Wallet is good, albeit not automated and so is Stripe and Authorize.Net.
For two pages this thread is getting full of great info!
PapayaTapper said:
Like something like that would work with China...
I believe he's fucked. Trying to negotiate from a position of power is his only way out.
aeroektar said:
Very irritating.
Read this, you might find a couple of useful points in there:
5 ways to avoid being copied in China
Another article, with good point about keeping your supply chain as disjointed as possible:
How to Protect against Copies when you Manufacture in China
