Depends on the type of business you run. If they want to take the time, you’re probably going to go down. It’s what they do full time. You have no chance if they really zero in on you. I’m not going to explain all the ways.

check or ACH for me. Fuck cards.

That’s rare. Most restaurants have an extremely low profit margin. One good mess up can eat the profit.

Must have one hell of a location and serve up something that can be fixed fast with a lot of throughput.

You are 52-years-old? You know better then.

Having all those different jobs is an asset. Anyone who works in startups completely will understand. Startups are extremely risky. Everyone knows this, including you.

It’s an asset because it shows people who are hiring that you are into startups and it isn’t a “one and done” type of situation - you tried it then ran back to a large corporate job.

People in startups are full of resumes that look like this. I’ll look through startups, and the peoples’ linkedin profiles and they ALL are 1,2 or 3 years in a company.

Just say what your successes are while you were with the companies.

But you know this. I know you do.

It’s your decision if you should get out. If you like the pace and the excitement and the adrenaline rush, then don’t. If you hate that, then get out of startups. Pretty cut and dried situation.

I say stay in startups.

I think at this point, though, you should try your own thing. Do your own startup. It’s time.

Does she have a business license?

If possible, become friends with the town clerk or county clerk or town police or county sheriff. Or just call them when she rolls by, get them to come by and ask her for her business license. You must have one to do business in all counties and towns.

Have them do it. It’s their job. And remember, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Keep calling them without being a dick. Go by their offices and give it a personal touch. Explain she is taking your business from you, and you have a permit and are paying taxes to the town or county and she is not. Money talks, bullshit walks.

This way, it is not on you to be the bad guy.

I had a friend who had zero tech skills, absolutely none. And he did great in his little app. By little, his revenues were about $400K per year, had $50K in expenses. He is the only employee. He just outsourced the programming and other stuff. My friend didn’t even go to university. High school grad. Very smart in business, though.

You don’t have to be a technical savant to be a CEO. You just have to be able to not get ripped off by a person who says that they know tech and take your money and don’t give you your finished product.

If your mobile app is narrowly focused and not complex, I wouldn’t even get a tech co-founder. Just outsource it. But I don’t know enough about what you are doing.

Just make sure you have the bona fides of the person you hire.

Make sure you write on every receipt what the expenditure is for. Office supplies, computer equipment, travel, etc. Same with every deposit. Who, what, where, when, why.

Sort all the receipts into different file folders by month.

That’s the main thing that you have to do, no matter what CPA you use.

If people take anyone’s word on gospel truth, that’s the issue right there.

That said, there are certain ways to go that one should do. For example, have a fantastic bookkeeper and accountant and have excellent financial controls.

Base your business on marketing.

Make sure you have a contract for every deal if required.

People can make great money in all kinds of things. A brain surgeon can make $2 million per year in income. Same probably with a top lawyer.

However, services do not scale well. There’s only so many hours in a day, in a year. A surgeon or web designer or other service person can only work so many hours and that’s it, end of story. Doesn’t mean that they can’t get “rich.”

The only way to get bigger in service businesses is to hire more people, and they they can only charge 40 hours per week maximum. There are a lot of huge accounting firms, law firms, advertising agencies with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees. The hiring of one hundred thousand people in a week might be difficult… (joke)

Products are completely different. I once read of a company a guy started and had distribution rights of monitors in all of the USA. This was a while ago. They shipped (not drop shipped) $60 million monitors per year with 6 people. 275 monitors per day, every day. They reshipped in bulk to distributors. This is not remotely possible in services, with 6 people.

Apps are fantastic as they have no distribution costs. One person could do $20 million per year with online app.

People in service businesses can get rich, but it just depends on how you define rich. It depends on how you define service. It depends on how you define product.

There is no one way. It depends on one’s goals. I think a fantastic goal would be to have $150,000 per year coming in on MRR, and I don’t have to do too much work. I don’t need $500 million in my bank account.

I’ve known lots of businessmen who have a service business, who go to their business location once per week for a few hours to check on things, and their employees run the business. One I remember is a well drilling company. All the employees are long-term - 10+ years. They don’t need the owner around. The owner just goes in to keep everyone honest.

VC’s - they are all looking for the unicorn, and with excellent reasons. Seed stage investors invest in 100 companies that are duds or eke along. They need to get the hits to underwrite all the loser companies, and try to make a profit on top of that. VCs will see 10,000 business plans, chose 5-10 businesses to invest in per 10,000 business plans. They see it all, have a ton of experience, yet even they can’t tell who the winners and losers will be.

All this being said, there are some pretty hard rules that all businesses need to know and abide by to have a chance of winning. Get my newsletter for $40 per month and find out what they are. (just joking again. Pretty funny guy, no?)

I don’t know how or what your marketing is.

However, I’ve talked to thousands and thousands of small business owners during my career.

I cannot begin to tell you the number of business owners who have told me, “It has been SO quiet. A lot of my colleagues are also saying the same thing” exactly as you did. Tens of thousands of times, in good times and bad, business owners say this. Trust me.

Without fail, the ones who always do best and never worry about customers are the ones that invest heavily into marketing, and marketing correctly, of course.

The major problem is almost all business owners say either of these two things:

1. “I have enough business, why should I waste money on marketing?”

and

2. “I’m not making enough money, I don’t have money to spend on marketing.”

It’s much better to start marketing when you are in the position of “1)” above.

.

Coca-Cola has the top 5 brand/logos in the world. You have no chance of every having that much logo/brand recognition.

However, do you think that Coca-Cola, because they are the most recognized brand in the world, don’t have to market? Most everyone knows that they can and shout and do market the shit out of their products. They spend $4 billion with a b on marketing every year.

Yet business owners, while knowing this, don’t apply marketing to their own business. Probably because they don’t know how and have spent money with no return before. They’ve done it for themselves, hired people to do it for them - no luck.

However, when you have enough business, you market even harder. This is the time to test, not when you have no customers. If you are in the situation that if you market and get too many clients and you don’t have the room for more, there are a lot of things you can do. You can raise your prices. You can add other add-on products and services that you charge for that require almost no time and effort and give you great profit margins. You can fire your shitty customers. You get so many more options, and there are a ton of them.

Do they make a spectacle of pouring the cereal and milk into the bowl, or do they just slap in the cereal and milk in 2 seconds?

Because if they juggled bowls that were lit on fire while juggling them and were able to pour the cereal and milk in the bowl as they were juggling all 3, that would be worth it. Once, anyways.

I can coach.

Good coaches are in demand. Football coaches, baseball coaches.

I like coaching. Teaching. Why can’t I do something I actually love to do?

For sports coaching, you don’t even have to be good at the game - Bill Walsh led the San Francisco 49ers to a bunch of Superbowl victories in the 1980s, and he sucked at playing football, for example. Just because you can’t do it well, doesn’t mean one can’t coach/teach well, and actually have valuable information.

Being able to teach is a completely different skill than doing it.

There is a need for coaches, otherwise that word wouldn’t even exist.

We all have had great teachers, and shit teachers. Some coaches are shit, some good.

And of course, the coach has to know the material and how to apply it.

I could explain more, but I think you take my point.

And to repeat, I AM making a distinction between people who don’t understand and know the material, vs people who do understand the subject matter and are not just regurgitating what others say, and actually can think and synthesize and formulate and systematize and write interestingly and all that.

I’ve been paid to coach, some stay with me for years. They are NOT stupid people that I coach. They pay me. They get value.

Yeah, but that’s not what you wrote.

And high barriers to entry means exactly that - high barriers to entry. I suppose I could start a nuclear power plant for $10 billion. High barriers to entry - I’ll have it made when I bring that power plant on like in 20 years.

Barriers to entry include:

• Economies of Scale

• Capital Requirements

• Brand Loyalty and Reputation

• Patents and Intellectual Property

• Regulatory Barriers

• Access to Distribution Channels

• Switching Costs

• Network Effects

• Experience and Expertise

• Government Barriers and Licensing

• Access to Resources

• Cost Advantages

• Predatory Pricing

• Brand Advertising and Marketing

• Cultural and Social Barriers

• Supply Chain Control

• Government Subsidies or Support

• Exclusive Contracts

• Customer Loyalty Programs

• Barriers to Exit

• Time and Learning Curve

• Environmental and Sustainability Standards

• Crisis Resilience

etc

.

Which of those barriers should I select when starting a new company and have no money, no brand to give loyalty to, no patents, no regulatory barriers, etc.

I got fuck-all of any of those things above.

I’m curious as to your response.

Only if the segment is not saturated. Good luck finding a niche.

I’d like to pick my ass with my fingers, and then smell my fingers, but my arms are too short. I created some arm lengthening products specially designed to pick my ass and allow me to smell them - the tips of the arm products, at the false fingers, were some materials to maximize the collection of the stinky.

They worked perfectly around the problem I had.

I went to work, I massed produced them and came up with the original name of “Butt Picker^TM”

I poured in millions of dollars into this groundbreaking product. People say business is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration, well I poured in perspiration. I spend millions on getting the best operations person, the best marketing person, the best salespeople, the best CFO. I kept the business afloat for 3 years, because I believe in the maxim 99% perspiration.

Unfortunately, we never sold one Butt Picker^TM

I solved the problem I was having and got a solution, but alas and alack, nobody else picks their ass and then smells their fingers afterwards, I guess. Just me.

If it goes to hell and you have too many claims, your insurance company will drop you.

Any new insurance company will charge you up the ying-yang, if you can even find it. No insurance companies don’t want to take on guaranteed loses.

Just the absolute worst idea in the world to buy that building.

The Paypals and Stripe and Square are inexpenesive and fine up to a point. That point is what you can afford to lose.

If you are charging a few hundred dollars a month, or a few thousand, if they take it you can recover. It sucks but won’t stop you dead.

But at some point, you need to cross over to a real processor. Your bank would be great. You can set it up at your bank branch and go talk directly with someone at your bank branch. They cannot hide behind emails. Walk into your branch and you can fucking see them. They are right. fucking. there.

As others have noted here and in posts every week, this happens all the time. So maybe at $1,500 per month, switch. I don’t know if this is the correct amount for you or anyone. I’m just saying.

Sorry bud, but that sounds like a sales pitch again

Yes. Getting new business is a sales pitch.

Again, a sale pitch/tactics.

For sure.

Why? Because it shows I care for them as a person. I send out birthday cards, anniversary cards, congratulations cards if I have that information. It shows I care, and I actually do.

No you don’t and you are lying to yourself. You do that because there is self gain in the hope it will lead to new business. I laugh when people kid themselves into believing “they care” but the elephant in the room is to ask if you would build them a site for lower margin if asked? Would you? Because if you “truly cared” and did what you did because you “cared” then profit wouldn’t be your main objective.

You can’t read my mind. Of course I do it for gain. The person who awards me their business knows this. They are not stupid. They are not going to get fooled. My sister and her husband just got a thousand dollar gift card from their real estate agent because they had him sell our relative’s home. My sister and brother-in-law and I, and everyone else in our family know that he did this to get more business for himself. My sis and brother-in-law are not dumb. But here is the thing: they say this is super smart way for him to get more business. They love it. He also goes above and beyond to help them with issues, far beyond other realtors. But they have a good relationship with him.

What you are saying is so idiotic. It’s like going into a diner every morning and the whole staff knows you, and you all laugh and have fun every morning, and say that the waitress and staff are reptiles and do not like you at all and only doing it for the money and pretending to like you. That is so wrong as to be insane. People can have friendships, real friendships, with their clients, while sure, they still want to get paid and get a tip.

Because if you “truly cared” and did what you did because you “cared” then profit wouldn’t be your main objective.

No. That’s completely backwards. Care goes two ways. A client knows that I have to pay rent and food, etc. They have to pay for their services from others to make their business go.

The only reason they would want me to lower the price like that is if they were exceptionally bad at running a business and can’t afford to buy things. A successful businessperson who makes a lot of money can afford it.

Those businessmen and women also know that relationships are very important. I’ve talked to business owners who have used the same vendor for 3 generations. They don’t even look at other companies, because the relationship is more important than pure price. I’m not saying that they would pay $25,000 for something that costs $5. But they would pay thousands of dollars per year more, because of their relationship.

You are making it all about money, as if nothing else matters.

But maybe you work in ecommerce where everything is transactional, and you have no contact with the end customer. Yes, then delivering for the lowest price might be ok. But people pay more for all kinds of reasons. Brand being one of them.

And in service businesses, the relationship is everything. When I say I care and want the cuistomer to do well, I’m NOT saying that I want them to adopt me or give me their daughter’s hand in marriage. That said, I do care about people I work with. Believe what you will.

It really sounds like you are a bitter person, who does not have friends so everything comes down to transactions. Where people are just objects. There are people like that. They are called sociopaths.

I’m not saying to try to sell a website for $20 million.

However, I’ve actually sold websites for $3K+. This is not theory.

If you want to create websites like they do in Pakistan and want to charge $50, because that’s what Pakistanis can do, hey, knock yourself out. You can make up for the low price by selling in volume.

quite easily achieve by even hiring help from websites like Fiverr.

Most business owners know fuckall about fiverr and websites.

You NEVER sell on price. If a person is that price conscious, they are not a viable prospect and you move on.

There are oodles of companies paying that much.

This is an example of a $350 Shopify theme.

That website comes up a LOT LOT LOT slower than /u/Citrous_Oyster’s website.

what makes your business attractive compared to all the options out there?

Because there are other intangibles that people want that have nothing to do with price at all.

Most people don’t purchase a business product or service until there are at least 7 communications with them. That’s standard. It takes a lot of work to earn someone’s trust. The way /u/Citrous_Oyster builds trust is his complete and total domination of the thing he excels at, which is static websites that come up in less than a second. His website that has a lot of valuable content. And trust is just one part of intangibles that businesses want. Maybe they just want someone who lives in the same city because they want to make sure they can directly talk to the website designer. Maybe that’s not important to you, but you are not them.

I talk to prospects a lot. If we have a series of long conversations, and he or she is serious, at some point in the conversation, I’ll send them a thank you card with a Starbucks card worth $10, and the note states that whether they use my services or not, I appreciate all their time they’ve spent. I can’t begin to tell you how many sales that has closed. Why? Because it shows I care for them as a person. I send out birthday cards, anniversary cards, congratulations cards if I have that information. It shows I care, and I actually do. Sure, I want their business, but if I don’t get it, that’s fine, not getting business is part of the sales funnel. Not everyone is going to buy from you. But people VALUE when I send out personal touches, they WANT to be liked, and to be valued as people. Who doesn’t?

Never compete on price, never.

The response is overwhelmingly to gtfo.