I wouldn’t go that far…there are certainly niche and there are some pure online stores that are building a B&M presence.

However clothing is a different story when companies like Shein, Temu you can order clothes for a few bucks and follow the latest trends on Tik Tok.

Whats the context? Unless you just want to complain, it dowant help without knowing industry, location…

How’s a business owner even survive if not profitable for 9 years. Was it not profitable on paper only and the business owner was running tons of personal expenses through? Seen this happen and they increase the multiple to align more with true value…

Also are you going through a business broker…because they can explain how they valued the business (usually bullsh-t but at least you hear a story)

Could be a made up story to get people to DM him for SEO services.

This is a pretty nice post. I’m actually not in ecom but have a brick & mortar and wanted to bounce an idea off you. We are in the after school education space. So people come to us because their kids aren’t doing well and need more practice, or their kids are too smart and need a challenge and are working several years ahead of their grade level. It’s individualized after school education.

Any gift ideas? There’s the easy “gift a subscription”…those come in for new students, where it’s like grand parents who wanna get their grand kids in. I’ve never been about to think of a way for current customers to introduce new customers - because I feel there’s a stigma where it’s like…“hey your kids are dumb, so I got you a few months of xyz”.

The other thing is that several months of tuition isn’t cheap.

There are things like, book bundle, school supplies, workbooks, etc. The other thing is since it’s an actual sales, I think we’d need to collect sales tax (though I think technically if we aren’t tax exempt and pay for sales tax when we purchase at Office Depot, we don’t need to collect & remit idk not a CPA).

Also, suggestions on how to do packaging? Is there a store you buy supplies from, custom design?

Try it for a month with a square reader and compare sales to the same month the year before. No other stat matters.

I think what you needed is a C Corp. Otherwise profits are pass through and show up no matter what.(confirm with CPA, financial advisor…)

If you’re married another option is have your spouse own a decent chunk of the S corp so distributions shows up as her income and not yours. I can’t imagine the rules of your pension penalizing your spouse for making money. Again talk to a professional…

I’d be curious what steps you took to get your consulting business up quickly. Congrats!