Are there any actual business owners on this board?

Are there any actual business owners on this board?

ITT we post our businesses and share tips/ideas/suggestions for growth

I'll start im in the printing business

I'm looking into starting a dating site service where I can write people's profiles for them and possibly offer like $10 per phone number

Maybe offer coaching over Skype and screen sharing. Possibly an e-book if there's demand

Not looking to make a lot of money but as a side hobby that makes me a few extra hundred a month, it would be nice

What's it like being in the printing business? Do you have any experiences, tips or anything to watch out for? I'd be interested in hearing your story.

I mostly deal with architects. Not a lot of experiences that stand out (its a really straight forward business), tips:
>Look at your business as an extension of yourself so in the same way you grow as a person is the same way you should treat your company.

>Always keep overhead costs in mind the can help you take home a lot more money.

>Always be on the look out for other streams of income never box yourself in a true genius is able to view all things:1)objectively 2)As a stepping stone to his/her destination

Be virtuous in business it may not feel rewarding at first but it really pays off in the and you'll be able to sleep at night

t. fedora

Not trying to discourage but why do you think people would pay you to be a middle for dating. Do you have a lot of credentials in the area of dating and relationships?

>Are there any actual business owners on this board?

No.

Thanks for the advice! I'm always interested to hear the perceptive of someone who has ventured into making their own income. Gonna save those notes and apply it to my own independent contracting business I'm getting off the ground at the moment.

I've been the go to guy for everyone I know when it comes to dating. I'll have friends that will get 10 matches on tinder, they'll ask me to help them, 100 matches by the end of the week. I've mentored the most beta meets into Pussy slaying frankensteins. I don't really meet girls anymore from dating sites but it's fun for me to say the most absurd shit and still end up getting the number just to see if I can. I've helped my dad in copywriting since I was 15. I don't have any hard credentials but I was thinking of posting examples of chats with censored info, testimonials, and offering something for free to gain trust.

Again I am not looking to charge a lot like other websites I've seen. They rewrite profiles for 250$, I'm only looking for 50$

Well at least you have a plan which is more than i can say for a lot of people. Godspeed

>you
Wrong! Sad!

Anyone with a decent outlook and moderate technical writing skill can do this. Congrats for applying yourself but I do want to note the main strength and the reason what you're doing works is because there is a level of detachment when writing someone elses profile. You don't feel bad about lying or embelishing for someone else.

Still, it takes perspective and a good grasp on the world to do what you're doing.

well I just detach myself from my own profile treating it like a science experiment more than my "self"
It took a lot of experementation on my account to figure out what gets the most matches and responses
But I have slight sociopathic tendencies so that might be why also

I started a masonry restoration and waterproofing business in January of this year. I've been in the trade for 10 years before I decided to start my own venture.

I'll make about the same this year as I did last year but I've worked considerably less hours which is nice I suppose. Next year is looking good and I've hired my first employee a month ago to help with current influx of work.

I do solely commercial/industrial work. I tend to shy away from residential as the $ is not nearly as good and I'm afraid I'll get some deadbeat that end's up not paying.

Tile guy. Just me. I hired a guy and it did not work out, so I went back to solo.

Gonna have a good year.

My ONLY complaint is psychotic customers. Have a psycho jew bitch right now. Happy to share story if anyone is interested.

I like this idea a lot. I messaged 145 girls on OkCupid and got 9 phone numbers out of it. And 5 first dates. Mostly because I'm a manlet. I'm really sick of having to deal with that bullshit. So the idea of someone administering, messaging, and filtering the rejection, and just letting me know when I have a date scheduled sound great. I'd definitely pay $10 for that. How can I get in touch with you?

Awesome man does it take a considerable amount of skill? The market where i live doesnt have those services any tip or advice for someone looking to break into it?

Sorry to hear it. Do you have any plans to try and expand again in the future? Also i wanna hear the jew bitch story

There is a certain amount of skill that goes into the job. Not every job is cut and paste. A lot of it is detective work as to why something happened and how to prevent it in the future. That has been my biggest hurdle so far. I used to just get a job report that gave me an address and description of what needed to be done. I'd load up some material, do the job, on to the next one. Now, I've got to a lot more variables to juggle.

Getting into the trade can be tricky. Depending on your location, there ought to be a local bricklayers union. If you contact them and express interest in joining, they will walk you through the process and give you a list of companies to contact who might be looking for help. Then, call and call and show up in the morning and call again until they hire you just to get you off their case. Getting hired at a construction company can be like seducing a woman. You have to be persistent, but eventually you'll find somewhere.

> Get a call
> Hey I need some tile work
> Okay cool
> $1 million dollar home, 6BR, pool in back
> Jew broad answers
> "we're selling our home, we need some things done, but don't have much money to do it. Please be kind on the estimate"
> Bull fucking shit
> Give her a very fair estimate to redo 2 showers
> Don't hear anything for two weeks
> Do a follow up call
> Husband answers
> "Hi sir I sent you guys an estimate a while back just wanted to follow up and see if you guys had any questions or concerns"
> Husband responds "The quote is too fucking high"

It was a very fair quote, less than every other good tile person in town

cont...

at this point the rudeness should have been a sign, but I kept moving forward, thinking I could still work with these people and make the money

> "Well sir, the price reflects the quality of the work, and even still is below every other major tile company in town. Tell you what I'll send over another quote with less stuff"
> So I take 1 shower off, and cut the quote in half
> I get an email 1 week later
> "Okay let's do it"

I schedule it for 3 days labor

> After day one the wife starts being difficult
> I ask her what color grout she wants, and she just says "well I hired you because you are a professional so I'm trusting you know what grout looks best"
> Use some off-white grout
> She complains the grout is too bright
> Makes it personal and says "this looks like a child did it"
> Keeps saying "we're spending a lot of money! We're spending a lot of money here!"
> Has said it like 10 times total

Cont...

> Day 2 Husband calls me
> "My wife says you're just doing one shower"
> "yes sir that's exactly what the second estimate was for"
> "oh I thought you just reduced the price, I never would have agreed to one shower at this price"
> Well sir that's what the estimate was for

The shit just goes on and on. Basically they are trying to scam and renegotiate and I guess run me off the job site for no money, claiming poor work, then pay another guy a cut rate to finish the job.

Not actively trying to be an Anti-Semite but the stereotype exists for a reason.

Oh and as for you're question, probably not.

Expansion in blue collar means hiring blue collar guys. Good ones are like finding a four leaf clover.

I'd rather avoid the stress and just work solo. But on this path I will never crack $90k a year. I'm thinking of side hustles though like Real Estate.

>expansion... Means hiring blue collar

This is why i would never start a trade business. Fuck the underclass

You'll get plenty of business deadbeats, too. But, depending on where you are, the laws are more protective of homeowners.

I did awnings for a while, but avoided homeowners because the contractor laws were heavily skewed towards them. (like maximum downpayment is 10%, and things like that)

Well truthfully you need a loyal idiot.

A guy whose smart aint gonna work hard for $15/hr when he can start his own and start making $50/hr overnight.

And it's tough on my end I don't want to take advantage of someone. But I can't pay somebody $20/hr or more and still make a good living. At that point it just makes more sense to do the work myself.

It kinda makes me think Capitalism is intrinsically bent towards making the ignorant suffer.

>My ONLY complaint is psychotic customers.

Oh yeah, I had my share of those. LOL The only way I learned to deal with them is to have enough customers that you didn't have to worry about walking away from a crazy deadbeat.

Those jew titsvare to die for. Anyway those people sound like cunts the cheap fucks. I know how hard it is in the trades and i respect anyone who does it for a living

What's crazy is trades are actually easy money. Especially once you get the basics down. I could lay tile in my sleep. Shits simple.

It's difficult housewives that make it tough.

The tits are just some random lady from /b

The Jew broad from my story is not attractive.

>It kinda makes me think Capitalism is intrinsically bent towards making the ignorant suffer
not really.

we both know it costs more than $15 to legally pay someone $15. You have taxes, office expenses, insurance, advertising, whatever overhead that your employee doesn't need to worry about. You also have more risk.

in return the employee doesn't have to deal with all the hassle of finding work and running a business. It's not entirely unfair, you take on work and risk for your larger cut of the pie. Intelligent employees know this, and most people honestly don't want to be you even if it pays more.

Web design company.

We started back in August and work has been hard to find (mainly due to our limited marketing budget)

It's basically a father son business, with me doing graphic work and my father doing the coding. He can't do that for shit though, so we're in the process of hiring some new talent.

www.thegrandweb.com if anyone wants to take a look (dont bother on mobile though, shit is far from optimized)

Looks pretty good.

Your buttons don't highlight though. Like when you scroll the mouse over they should have some kind of highlight effect. That's pretty much standard IMO.

But anyway as for customers, flyers, Google Ad, thumbtack/5r whatever the fuck they call that.

You do need to spend something. Take $500, spend $100 each on a different idea and see what works. Then spend more on the one that worked.

Local paper, or mailpacket might work for you guys.

Chamber of commerce or networking events, those are both good.

Oh also, put a portfolio on the site. Even if its lies. Gotta fake it till you make it.

yeah, we're slowly ramping up our expenditure. so far we're buying leads and doing some google ads, so we'll see where that goes.

as for the site, we pushed it to live under tight time constraints so we gave up some things like clickable portfolio items and button hovers. definitely a work in progress, and thanks for the reminder to add some more basic functionality.

Business Owner of a mildly successful thrift store AMA

I've been pretty lucky I suppose. My only customers have been municipalities, property management companies and references from certain property managers. Never have had an issue with payments or how expensive my rates are. I've actually had 2 clients ask me to increase my numbers and resubmit.

>I've actually had 2 clients ask me to increase my numbers and resubmit.
I got that from a purchasing agent once. Weirdest thing. He's like, "double that and we've got a deal." I said, "ok."

Nice.

I wish I knew masonry.

As for pricing, someone once said to me: "the price is always what the value is to the customer"

You can hire some young guy to work for $15 an hour

It's because, at least from what I've seen, is that when working in a department for the govt or a corporation if your department underspends by x amount the next year when planning budgets they'll reduce how much you receive by x.

So departments want to hit that number so they don't get their funding decreased.

Anyways, you do pretty good work with fixing those bricks user.

>if your department underspends by x amount the next year when planning budgets they'll reduce how much you receive by x.
makes sense, I've seen that in gov work. Supervisors maxing their budgets at the end of the fiscal year.

The guy that asked me to double my rate was a corporate buyer though, and he got fired less than a year later for severe budget over-runs. In large part because my contract was based on a number of units delivered which he proceeded to multiply by 30. My portion of the job alone ran about a million dollars higher than market price by my estimation. A good couple years for me, not so great for him.

How did you get into the business in the first place? Like, just decide you want to print for them and set up a shop?

>web design company
>has a sub par website
How can people be THIS stupid

currently developing a for profit charity underwear brand

kek'd
please tell me this is real

>we both know it costs more than $15 to legally pay someone $15.
That's pretty damn insightful.

Clientele? Peak hours? Most popular type of items?

You brought that on yourself bud. As soon as someone tells me they want a good price I walk away. I charge 275/hr for a 2 man crew with machine and tool truck. Find the high dollar work.

Jewish former contractor here.

$5 says the women never worked before and is a housewife and the husband never looked at the estimate and "trusted" his wife not to do anything stupid (like remove half the work scope). she blames you to not look stupid to him, he is not really interested in this shit and just wanted it finished.

I've had similar where the husband is like why is this taking so long user? I'm like, your wife added over 9000 things to the scope of works on a rolling basis so I gave her my hourly rates. He was just like WTF how much is that??? tell him it is $X and he is like ah ok whatever and wonders off to make a sandwich or some shit. seemed he realized im not charging lawyer rates and stopped caring.

never had pay disputes, just general poor communication between the husband and wife on what needs to be fixed.

problem customers: cat ladies!!! and lawyers...jesus

picture unrelated

I just realized my id changed beacause im home, but i saw that there was a market for it and just went for it. VERY NAÍVE of me, but it all worked out in the end

yah, we just finished up the current site we're using now, so it's pretty WIP for now. thing is, most of the clients we've gotten so far hardly care about how our site looked.

This is why I love being on the wholesale end of business. I run a food processing company and we sell hundreds of thousands of units a year but only have 5 (corporate) customers we deal with currently. Back in the earlier days when we were building our base I did a lot of direct sampling events, most people were fine, but jesus there are some real human wastrels out there. With contracting at least your making bank when dealing with those people, unlike working retail.

I do real-estate on the side so I work with a few contractors, have nothing but respect for the work they do. Does kind of suck to see some of the old timers struggling if they are in a field that has been undercut by illegal mexicans.

Cafee business reporting in

I took over my grandfather's career consulting firm a year ago after he died because no one else in the family wanted to and otherwise it was just going to close down.

It made a good living for him for his whole life, but I'm still learning all the ropes with basically zero mentorship as it's just me in a dingy old office that I'm slowly trying to update for the 21st century.

This is a business I would never have been able to start on my own, but because my grandfather ran it for over 40 years, he has built up quite the reputation and most of my business is referrals.

I really have little idea what I'm actually doing most of the time, but people are still willing to pay me. In this line of work, what people are paying me for is to give them confidence. You need really good people skills.

How did you find this opening in market?

I'm thinking of starting a kind of thrift/resale store. Where do you get your inventory? How long have you had your business? Is it profitable thus far, or have you lost money? Any tips or advice for someone wanting to open a thrift shop?

It's hard to explain it's just a skill you grow when you're constantly on the lookout for something profitable i guess. Plus google is always your friend just look up [insert business idea here] in [your location] for starters

Nice man what got you into it?

Ever feel overwhelmed? Got any stories? What exactly does your job entail?

I don't really ever feel overwhelmed. If I start, I just don't accept new clients or tell them it will be like 2 weeks until I can meet with them. Not really any interesting stories. My job entails meeting with individuals and helping them find jobs. This involves interview coaching, skills assessment, resume/cover letter writing are the biggest things. Depending on the services, people pay me between $200 - $800. Its a pretty niche service, but there are people out there who want it.

The biggest headache was clearing out all the garbage my grandfather hoarded in the office. He had three different old typewriters, two fax machines, bags and bags full of american gardening magazines dating back to the seventies, stacks and stacks of old classified ads, just a whole lot of old, useless stuff I threw in the dumpster.

One of the biggest struggles is that I'm just so young, at 25, and most of the time I'm helping people twice my age and sometimes I feel they resent me for that.

Lad, some of that shit probably had value and there could have been reasons he had that shit.

Threads like this are motivating and that's how I like Veeky Forums.

I can't contribute because I don't have enough money and time since I'm a student, but reading your experiences is very interesting.

I don't think there was any reason he had stacks upon stacks of newspaper classified ads from the early nineties. There were literally 4 bankers boxes full of them. The typewriters I kept, I might try to find a way to display them in my office as decorations. But nearly everything was junk.

I know quite a few people in business and have a "side business" with rental properties.

Does anyone else notice that business owners are either fucking loaded to the hilt or no-account late-on-every-bill scrubs? I've never met a business owner who was doing just ok.

If anyone needs a mobile game, business app or any other kind of mobile application, let me know, I am currently part of a company which will do any work for reasonable price. The best part is that the employees have enormous experience, great skills and they are quick. The reason for this is because we are in a shit country where we were forced to push out the maximum we have in order to live averagely, now we are open for business. We also offer marketing and market research, as well as auditing at first. We have a solid portfolio too.

He's gotta start somewhere fag.

Sam Walton started with a shitty little grocery store in nowheresville.

Yes you are right

Yeah I agree. I'm going hard on the Jews, when really it's a cunt housewife who never worked a day in her life. There was a painter crew working there the same time as me, and they told me she was making their life miserable as well.

I overheard a phone call where they were talking and distinctly heard "honey I've got a business to run, what do you want?"

i own a 20% share in a ecommerce incubator. We have a team geared towards growing online businesses very quickly. We have a marketing team, a development team and a finance/funding expert.

We either spend our time starting businesses that our company owns, or we take equity in other companies in return for our services.

If anyone has any ecommerce questions feel free to ask.

Ask someone who just set up there business anything.

>vpn niche

How did you go about it? Did you manually set up servers around the world? What payment methods are you taking?
If bitcoins, do you immediately transfer it to cash or save it in a wallet?

How are you planning to grow your service? Ads? Post on forums?
If you have a site did you create it or pay someone to design it for you?

>tfw setting up potential SaaS niche

I have previous experience in this niche. My last venture was very successful after months of nothing. I'm not going to go into it because this niche is already way saturated.

Anyways, to answers your q's.
How did I go about it? I coded the CMS from scratch (needs to be very custom tailored), I freelanced network developers to help with infastructure but my basic shell scripting knowledge paid off and I set most up by myself.

Currently only taking Paypal/CC because only ended up with maybe a half a bitcoin over a year of buisiness last time. Save it in wallet though, spent on cam sites/random shit.

How am I planning to grow my business? PPC ads, affiliate reviews etc. No posts on forums though seems pointless.

The site was coded from scratch by myself, use a basic bootstrap theme with a lot done to it. Everything I did by myself.

Good luck to your SaaS business but please don't join my over saturated niche lol.

Oh, no worries mine isn't even remotely related to vpn or what it sounds like you're doing.
Just that we're both creating our own thing and was curious about payment/set up.

Yeah, I'm going the self created way. I'm a CS major so it's not too bad just more time consuming to learn all this backend stuff and bootstrap but I'm actually finding I enjoy it. Plus the fact that I'll know exactly what everything is doing if something goes wrong or I want to change something.
I'll probably also do ads, some sort of promotion, and maybe facebook/instagram ads because it can be somewhat local service.

Only thing I'll probably pay for is some graphic artist to make me a dank logo or theme. They'd do a better job than anything I could hack together. Figured it's worth the money if it looks/feels good since I can handle the backend logic.

No probs then. I am a highschool dropout so when I hear that a CS major is having to learn bootstrap/web lang haha. No offence intended. I love creating something from nothing but I find more and more that when I am doing web dev for money it takes a bit of that away from me.

So I just went my own way and started it by myself and it helps with that a bit. I have OCD and am I perfectionist so my service is top notch for a one man show.

FB ads are good (includes insta ads to now)

I bought my logo from a stockphoto website for like $1 and edited myself (brief graphic designer experience) but will probably pay for some advertising material for my affiliate program to be designed later on.

None taken. I'm just not too experience in web frameworks but learning quickly.
I'll have to look into FB ads and the stock photos could probably work but I still will need at least one logo and a few other things designed for me.

Hopefully this can generate some income for me but if not at least I got good at web dev. One more skill under my belt.

>all these pleb tradesmen
I just import chink shit from alibaba and make multiple 10s of ks a month.

The internet has a large market so finding people isnt that difficult.