I could probably talk about this exact issue for hours but there are so many variables without really knowing your store/location, etc. So I will just tell you my stories…

I opened a vintage clothing shop at 23 in my college town. In a 400 sq ft store in the first year only being open 12-6, 6 days a week, I was able to pay myself $70k. So I scoped out a similar situation - big college, 2 hours away, downtown location, good rent, next to a coffee shop…and I got crickets. That shop essentially broke even. Why? Well, I learned that those people already traveled to another city (AUSTIN) for enough reasons including vintage clothing that my store was never going to be as cool, never going to reverse the flow of traffic, and was always going to be a local spot some people frequent.

Lesson learned I guess. I found someone to take over that lease (gets you out of the personal guarantee. I sold the shop for its contents and they inherited one year of blue sky. It hurt, but it was the right move for sure.

Fast forward a year and I sold the other store and moved to Boston for personal reasons. I found a great spot in Harvard Square at 10x the rent of my Texas stores…and I found out that Bostonians weren’t keen or aware of what vintage clothing was. Shocked me as much as you. I went deep into debt, changed locations, and finally the crowd caught up and I started killing it. Just in time for the housing crisis to hit. Assuming it would all be okay, I took on new debt to ride it out. Ended up working 2 years straight, 7 days a week, with no time off and having to lay off all but one employee. Became suicidal. Barely sold the store for its contents to get out of a $50k lease guarantee. Ended up living in a van for a year. Definitely learned a ton about business the hardest way possible.

So I have been taking a break from small business for about 11 years now. The good news is I know a LOT MORE than the average MBA because I personally learned many lessons on my own dime. In the corporate world, I quickly stood out based on my incessant work ethic and ability to see issues on the horizon and plan for them. Ended up going from a social media specialist to a CMO in a decade. I know I couldn’t have done that without everything I learned but would I tell someone else to follow that path? Hell no. I lost a lot of good years of my life trying to prop a once-successful business up and I spent the next decade paying off high-interest debt at jobs I usually hated.

Being a good business person is knowing when to pivot when to dig in, and when to GTFO. Only you know what to do next. I wish you well my friend.

I did an online seminar with about 300 business people on the West Coast when covid hit and I told my story. I had one person whom I struck a nerve with who took the leap and shut down his operation. He emailed me a year later to thank me and told me it was the best decision he ever made and he was watching his other friends suffer. This might be your way or it might not - I’m sorry I can’t tell you what to do.

Just because you don’t have a product doesn’t mean you can’t start telling your story.

I agree with this. When I think of people who are into this I think about geologists. My uncle is a geologist and he isn’t on tiktok or insta. He googles though like a mofo and he has a lot of disposable income. Content marketing, SEO, and probably Facebook would be better for you.

What have you tried? Do you need any official licensing? Are you black? Do the cards reflect the desires of a young black audience? Do you have contacts in purchasing for those bookstores? Are those bookstores run by a national firm or are they run by the college?

I would ask him to stay on as a silent partner for a while. There is so much you don’t know since you’ve only been in for 3 months. A business like this is very hard to sell so I wouldn’t worry about a line out the door. Is he in good health? Can you count on him being around? Is there any debt? Are you in a lease? What assets does the business own? The other thing to remember - and this is shitty - if he can’t sell the business then the business will just close. Leaving a space, and a clientele who wants the service. You could wait for that day and scoop it all up at a discount. However, I don’t recommend that as your first choice. The first choice would be continued mentorship, a silent partner, and he gets a monthly or annual payout from you for his help.

Do y’all have an idea of how you can make it work since he can’t? If you buy in how long will it take you to recoup? What are you getting in the sale? How long is the lease? What happens if one of the parties wants to sell their portion in a year? There’s a few for ya.

SEO and content marketing are solid ways to get consistent traffic for a very low cost per visit. One of my clients (a large e-commerce firm) averages $0.006 per organic visit with their blog and an average of 500k organic blog visits per month. This obviously took years to build up but it just continues to grow and deliver year over year.

are these fresh herbs or dried? why are these better than store bought?

I think it would depend on the state and the cost to fix. I live in an all glass house and it has old single pane windows. We experience cold winters and my wife likes to wear shorts in the house all winter. Even with that, I can’t justify the cost of new windows or insulation because our heating bill just isn’t that crazy.

However, if I lived in Texas, where it seems electricity can have wild prices, I might be interested.

To me the audit seems like more of the hook to sell the solution.

congrats! I bet that feels awesome! Was the course free? Do you have a link?

I would imagine every single one of us feels that quite often. You have to believe in yourself, prepare for the worst, and get motivated. Plan and then plan again. Don’t get yourself into anything you can’t get out of.

What do you hope to gain by changing the name?

Most companies don’t realize how much employees do off the clock and outside their job description. Most companies don’t do the math on lost revenue when high turnover happens. Most companies don’t realize that they need to pay new employees more money than current employees and those new employees take time to ramp up.

I agree with you on the part of they should be doing a mix of everything but paid marketing is expensive from a financial sense as well as an employee cost sense. If the agency is using their employees to complete projects for clients that doesn’t leave much time for marketing themselves. If they run a big paid campaign and can only handle a few new clients at a time, then the money is being wasted.

As far as can a SMMS with 700 followers help with a business with 15k followers, I would say the same thing. Who cares if their agency has a lot of followers - how have the agency’s clients fared with their services?

Many industries naturally get more followers than a marketing agency. I’ve been in marketing my whole life and I don’t want to follow agency accounts, nor do I take the time to appear as an internet guru, but my clients will speak volumes about what I’ve been able to accomplish for them - and the reason I accomplished it for them is because I was being paid to.

Does that make sense?

I know this might seem low-brow compared to what you normally do, but this might be a good time to put together EXPENSIVE unforgettable video packages. You could edit/remaster (especially with AI) people’s old wedding videos or home videos into amazing family gift keepsakes. Run these as a very personal gift. Any day you aren’t out filming you can be editing and with the AI tools for video my assumption is this wouldn’t be too much work and wealthy people don’t mind paying for personal gifts. Just a thought. This is what I do for work so it’s fun to try to help brainstorm!