Entrepenurship and business

Hey you guys I made an earlier thread about entrepreneurship and it went pretty well. I got a very informative comment about scale.

In the end it ended pretty quickly, probably due to the board's speed and superfluous popularity of bitcoins.

I would like to continue discussion about the topic as before:

Hi guys I'm interested in starting a business and I wanted to see if anybody else has a business of their own. Non-founders with constructive advice are of course welcome.

I want to hear about struggles and failures. I'm not a pessimistic person (maybe a sadist, but not important right now),but I feel like I learn more from my failures than from my successes so I wanted to hear others' stories. Right now I am struggling to keep up my motivation. I don't know why, but it's super easy and natural for me to help others develop their businesses (I am currently advising one start-up formulate their business model and financial statement), but I have a hard time doing that for myself. Whenever I do work for another company it seems so fluid and I lose track of time and it's so much fun. However, as soon as I start working on my company I drag my feet and become easily distracted.

I'm not specifically looking for psychology on myself, but if anyone can relate or understand what's going on with me I am open ears to any suggestions as well.

In exchange here's some cute husky puppies. Thanks Veeky Forums I love you guys!

I'll post the previous comment that was pretty interesting. tldr: go big (7figures) or go home. To the user who posted, thank you.

I started a business 7 years ago, still in 'open'.

-decent 6 figure salary every year, yet I don't have nearly as much money tucked away as I thought I would have

-employees are a nightmare, I do not understand how any businesses exist, just because dealing with employees is the biggest pain in the ass there is. Be nice to them and take care of them financially? they take advantage of you. Be and asshole/strict boss? they hate you and leave. then you spend most of you time finding new people just so your business can operate, rinse was and repeat.

-depending on your state, insurance/disability requirements will funnel large amounts of your money out. In the state I'm in, I need to have insurance to cover injuries that happen OUTSIDE of the work place, New York=shit

-dealing will customers will cause you to hate the entire human race and you'll be praying an asteroid hits the earth wiping us out for good.

-expect any relationship with your SO to be totally ruined... divorce, etc.

-its your life 24/7.. you will have no personal life, get over that as soon as possible, there will be no such thing as a holiday or weekend anymore

-you are the last person to get paid, if you get paid at all

-substance abuse will become your new norm... booze & pills to get you through the night, speed in the day time to get you through the day

-do everything by the books, and you'll still be raped when you get audited, and you will get audited.... insurance companies, state, IRS, department of labor.

-

Unless you have something that is going to make you millions, don't bother.... low 6 figures are never worth it. Its much better to be an employee. You leave at the end of your shift and have your life. Being an owner, you leave at the end of the day, and sit and pray nothing bad goes wrong that will require your immediate attention.

Make sure you get scripts of antidepressants and benzos, otherwise there is no use even trying

hope this was helpful

Your points remind me of something Tom Ford said, I'm paraphrasing but he said
>When you start, decide how big you want to be. I always liked the idea of World Domination, if you're going to work so hard you might as well aim high

Having run a successful business for just over 10 years here is my 2 cents:

do not listen to gurus, business advisers, business books or the market in general. the way you out perform any industry is to be outside of current thinking. even mates i know in large fortune 500 companies are fucking dumb when it comes to running a business.

to follow on, people are overspecialized. if you want to see opportunity you need to cast a bigger net then everyone else. this leads to a lot of reading and interest in general.

be the smartest man in the room - this comes from research, knowledge and is underpinned by experience. that said, having all the answers needs to not come across as being a cunt.

don't deal with the general public if you value your soul. b2b is frustrating enough.

debt is bullshit, don't fall for it.

smaller is better - small and highly specialized business make ridiculous profits with greatly reduced workload.

magic numbers: 83% profit margin, 33% after tax.

its not easy, most got lucky and everyone fucked someone over at some stage.

you fear failure, that is why you have no problem dealing with other peoples shit but wont deal with your own.
i view it like this, if you have 100 things to do and you do none of them you have got nowhere, however if you do all 100 and get all 100 wrong you have now seriously progressed, as you know what not to do.

failure is much more informative then success.

>Don't specialize; cast a wider net
>Smaller is better; highly specialized businesses turn high profits

Post disregarded

What business/industry are you in? Were you the founder?

>be the smartest man in the room - this comes from research, knowledge and is underpinned by experience. that said, having all the answers needs to not come across as being a cunt.
Do you mean be exegetic? Does research make you the smartest person in the room or original but insightful thinking into problems?

>debt is bullshit, don't fall for it.
What do you mean by that? Especially if you're starting a business at some point you will be in debt to someone.

>i view it like this, if you have 100 things to do and you do none of them you have got nowhere, however if you do all 100 and get all 100 wrong you have now seriously progressed, as you know what not to do.

>failure is much more informative then success.
I don't understand that. 100 failures and I'm still failing, then I'm failing at succeeding. How often do you find that patterns of behavior or problems are recursive, that just because you fucked it up 1, 2, 3 times eventually you start to fix problems?

I mean how do you keep an accurate assessment of your failures even being informative? Are we talking incremental improvements? Exhaustive self analysis?

Is it as simple as triangulating other people's opinions on your progress?

That's not a contradiction though. Specialize the services/market positioning - as an individual within the company be multi-disciplinary. It actually makes sense.

pretty much this

Another word of advice from me: the secret to keeping clients is to give them attention. After 4 years I've realized that it's not the quality of the work that's important. What's important is if they believe you give a shit about them. There's an art to this, cause you don't want to be their bitch since their sense of entitlement will skyrocket, but you also don't want to be too autistic and extremely professional in the corporate sense. I don't know if this can be taught or it's natural.

There's also a huge study on the top 10.000 companies in the world (don't rember who did it) and it showed that 70%-80% of business relations go cold because the client "feels" he is not recieving the same attention like in the beggining. It's fucking ridiculous, but it doesn't surprise me. We're all animals.

>What business/industry are you in? Were you the founder?

oil and gas service company, yes.

>What do you mean by that? Especially if you're starting a business at some point you will be in debt to someone.

In general both people and business are too comfortable around debt.

in a startup debt puts huge pressure on a business which usually leads to bad decision making.

in middle sized businesses it leads to unhealthy growth.

in large businesses it leads to loss of direction at the board level.

>I don't understand that. 100 failures and I'm still failing.

yes but you learn from failures. if you do nothing you get no where. you need to fail to get better.
i can speak to this personally, when i started making a lot of money i totally took my eye off the ball and just enjoyed it, a year later and i had to work twice as hard as id let things slip - had you looked at my revenue i looked like a total success and this totally hid problems developing in the business.

> Exhaustive self analysis

running a business is 24/7 of running scenarios in your head about everything to do with your business and yourself. its an obsession and anyone who owns their own business and says they can separate their life from work is either lying or has a shitty business.

business is hard, you need to better then 99% if you want to make decent money.

>In general both people and business are too comfortable around debt.
Ah yeah, now I understand what you mean.

>i can speak to this personally, when i started making a lot of money i totally took my eye off the ball and just enjoyed it, a year later and i had to work twice as hard as id let things slip - had you looked at my revenue i looked like a total success and this totally hid problems developing in the business.
How do you keep perspective then? Or is it just impossible to do?

>running a business is 24/7 of running scenarios in your head about everything to do with your business and yourself. its an obsession and anyone who owns their own business and says they can separate their life from work is either lying or has a shitty business.
That sounds like an invitation to me. I'm self conscious about how when I'm out socially all I want to talk about is professional stuff. Maybe I should just embrace my one-dimensionality.

>How do you keep perspective then?
Never be satisfied, keep resetting targets. I went on essentially a year long blow out working about 2 weeks a mo the, clearly not sustainable but fun and I need to get it out my system (I have been doing this all my adult life and just wanted to enjoy it). Had I just taken 6 or 8 weeks off I would have got board as fuck and hungry for work.

To your last point it helps to have some hobbies/sports/activities that require high level of skill and dedication/commitment. Don't lose sight of what business is; a means to an ends. For me life is about ultimate freedom of choice and that can only come from money. Each to their own.

Thanks for the response user.

I just finished a massive chapter of my life and now want to start taking business (with a specific personal goal in mind) seriously.

you sound like me.

i have a surprising number of business assets and shell companies floating about and am too 'lazy' to bring them all to fruition.

If i do it for someone else i'm immersed in it until its complete.

i don't get it.

you're a dick.

I did some network installation and accounting software programing for a company about 20 years ago that used to mill large steel rollers.

very specific. to make it more interesting. they used to do this for Sanitarium and 3 other companies that were unrelated in the area.

that is specific. If you're not Australian, look up any Sanitarium breakfast cereal. This company used to ensure the 3 meter by 1 meter rollers were still round.

they were worth a fortune!

Its called WIIFM

Sales people are taught 'Whats In It For Me'. It sounds ridiculous but the premise is simple.

Every interaction in a business is a customer and customer experience. It doesn't matter what or who it is; Employee, Supplier, Business Client or Walk-In customer.

Every customer for each transaction has an perceived 'value' that must exceed its assigned 'price'.

One of the easiest ways to 'build value' is to increase the personal interaction. Light chatter, banter etc - be a human. The other is to meet the need through features and benefits.

Both need to be directed at the 'Customer'.

At the end of your interaction, if you reverse role-play in your mind you should be able to see that you met the finer points of the customers need, and exceeded the value by making the transaction personal - on a very simplistic level.

WIIFM Is also the basis for overcoming objections. A customer says 'no', they are basically asking you "Yeah, But Whats In It For Me?"

Forgive the fragmentation, I've been drinking and i'm a bit scattered.

Good post.

Specified Job. but I'm sure they have a bunch of different guys all with different skill-sets working for them.

yup this sounds pretty accurate. I went back to work and the they pay me 100k a year, 3 months of days off, for basically watch movies, eat snacks and monitor pressures in a screen.

>magic numbers: 83% profit margin, 33% after tax

thanks, I was always looking for a number from someone with experience.

Yea I am running slightly better than this as I changed market (same material cost but much higher sales price). Not easy numbers to get, most will tell you it's not possible but it is if you specialise. Just remember to black box all your pricing and never ever tell your clients your margins!

Hey guys OP great to see the interest.

Thanks for the great post. I do have some questions though.
>that said, having all the answers needs to not come across as being a cunt.
I'm actually a victim to this. I always come across as a cunt when I know better than someone else and I need some advice on how not to. I only know this because, thankfully, someone finally put me in my place and told me me to stop being such a cunt.

>debt is bullshit, don't fall for it.
Yeah I agree with the other user who questioned this. I don't know why you are credit averse. Is this related to the industry you are in or is this advice in general? I thought credit is a pretty good idea. I am though averse to getting a huge loan to bootstrap my company. Now that I think is insane when there are huge grants/investors everywhere.

>magic numbers: 83% profit margin, 33% after tax.
You mean 33% profit after tax right?

>you fear failure, that is why you have no problem dealing with other peoples shit but wont deal with your own.
i view it like this, if you have 100 things to do and you do none of them you have got nowhere, however if you do all 100 and get all 100 wrong you have now seriously progressed, as you know what not to do.
And thank you so much for this advice. I think you are 100% right I am afraid of failure. I am very risk-averse. That's why I am taking more risks and doing things I've never done before to increase my tolerance [spoiler]like this thread for example[/spoiler].

[spoiler]By the way are you in the gas delivery industry? I've thought about entering it in the east America.[/spoiler]

Yea it's more how I was brought up. Cut up my first credit card when I got it. I just don't like debt, I thinks it's bullshit both practically and ideologically. But it's dumb, as having some debt would be more tax efficient.

I work mainly in the North sea and ship yards around Europe. USA is the world toughest market, if I ever get there it will be when everything else is already done.