1. You need a vice president, or manager (another you) to field all of your phone calls and emails.

When you answer phone calls and emails let your current clients know and that you have a new vice president manager assistant etc so that they are prepared to have to deal with somebody else.

Also make sure that they know how capable you believe the person is and how wonderful they are.

2. You need a second phone. One just for your family.

Small business administration. Find what customers want, build around that.

In my Bookkeeping firm I have done manual payrolls, (pen paper & 10-key) used Excel, used Intuit to offer payroll to my customers, used Intuit full service payroll, used paychex, used ADP, used gusto, used sure payroll, used ebacon,.

By far the best in the way of knowledgeable employees and ability to fix errors is ADP & paychex. The easiest to use is gusto, the worst reports is sure payroll and the worst customer service and lack of knowledge with the most errors was Intuit online.

Intuit desktop was better, but trying to reach a knowledgeable employee staff member when there was an issue always had to get escalated up to be engineering department.

I was on many panels at headquarters for Intuit trying to help them figure out how to fix errors in their software.

The only one for government contracting was ebacon. One of the few certified payroll compayny’s on the market.

Go door to door in your neighborhood with a flyer. "Wanting to start a thrift store. I will be making rounds to pick up items you don’t want on xx date. "

Ask in the flyer for phone calls.

List what you won’t/can’t take.

Rent a truck to pick stuff up. Rent a store front (short term at first with a lease option after 30 days)

Only one way to get started, just get started. Then hire someone and hit the storage auctions.

It’s better to get good advice. Hire a consultant.

Do not close down your business, sell it instead. If you offer it with an owner payments through future sales… You don’t have to take a Loss.

On YouTube look up Cody Sanchez 200 books she’s read the top 20 that you need to read for a business owner. She gives you the highlights.

Go to your local small business administration they have free books on businesses different types of businesses and they can help you with research for free.

Sue them first, to get an official ruling on the canceled contract. Then they can’t harass you.

I used thumbtack to get my business logo done. There were several people that I have looked at their portfolios if I didn’t like their work I didn’t hire them.

My logo is at www.Vincentbookkeeping.com

General rule of thumb, take your costs for supplies, wages to pay yourself, travel expenses, insurance (break this down by the monthly expense by the number of hours that you work it might be like a dollar per hour or a dollar per minute but add that to your total)

once you have a total x2 if you have a lot of competitors or x3 if you do not.

There is a story I heard once that might help.

There was an older gentleman in a Chinese village and his son was the best fighter the best horseback rider. One day he was climbing a tree and fell out of the tree and broke his leg.

All of the other villagers came around and said oh what a shame your son has broken his leg.

Several days later the Chinese army came around looking for young men to be soldiers. They took all the young men in the village except for this man’s son who had a broken leg.

Moral of the story is that you could have a broken leg, or you could have a broken leg. It all depends upon how you look at it.

There may be some economic downturn that you missed out on that could have taken your business down. Or maybe this was a stepping stone so you could learn how to make the product that they were offering and sell it yourself and make more money.

Any credit union.

Find your buyer first

Hire outside help in the areas you are not good at.

Accounts receivable before accounts payable.

Learn quickly who your bad customers are and fire them.

Timing the economic markets is key to staying in business.

Be flexible and bend or pivot when things slow down, because there will always be slow downs.

Hire a certified tax strategist. (I am not one, this is not a sales pitch)😆

Don’t close your business when you retire, sell it. There are company’s out there that list businesses for sale.

**Your competition will most likely be your buyer if you have run it right, because they will want your customers.