-
OK, it's on.
running a small business
- Thread starter sushi
- Start date
dr froyd
__________________________________________________
- Local time
- Today 11:42 PM
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2015
- Messages
- 1,867
i haven't "run" small businesses per se, but i have worked in 2 startup businesses (both of which eventually failed)
the biggest mistake i saw was pretty much a lack of realism and discipline in terms of understanding the competition and what (if any) edge/advantage the business has. I always thought back to a poker saying which said "if you don't know who the sucker is at the table then you are the sucker". These businesses were approached from the mentality of "i want to make a business that does x because i like doing x" and just hoping/assuming that everything would turn out great. Reality is that doing a startup is an extremely cut-throat endeavor, one needs a great deal of rational paranoia to make it work.
the biggest mistake i saw was pretty much a lack of realism and discipline in terms of understanding the competition and what (if any) edge/advantage the business has. I always thought back to a poker saying which said "if you don't know who the sucker is at the table then you are the sucker". These businesses were approached from the mentality of "i want to make a business that does x because i like doing x" and just hoping/assuming that everything would turn out great. Reality is that doing a startup is an extremely cut-throat endeavor, one needs a great deal of rational paranoia to make it work.
Black Rose
An unbreakable bond
I want to make things in my mom's garage.
Cognisant
cackling in the trenches
- Local time
- Today 11:42 AM
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2009
- Messages
- 11,393
I tried to start a business and it failed.
Imo make your first sale and iterate from there, if say your business is starting a fashion brand make one hairpin and try to sell it to somebody.
The time and effort put into making that one pin may not make the profit worthwhile, indeed after buying materials and tools you may not have made a profit at all. But by selling one hairpin you have established how to sell a product and from there you're just iterating.
It's very easy to get caught up making plans to take over the world and forget to actually do the business and learn from experiance.
Imo make your first sale and iterate from there, if say your business is starting a fashion brand make one hairpin and try to sell it to somebody.
The time and effort put into making that one pin may not make the profit worthwhile, indeed after buying materials and tools you may not have made a profit at all. But by selling one hairpin you have established how to sell a product and from there you're just iterating.
It's very easy to get caught up making plans to take over the world and forget to actually do the business and learn from experiance.
EndogenousRebel
Even a mean person is trying their best, right?
I've been developing a business plan since before the pandemic started.
Realistically I won't even be able to start operating unless I have excess time and money. I am coming upon such a scenario, and I'm honestly frightened by the prospect that I will have to put my cajones where my mouth is and I might fail (waste thousands of dollars).
I've been an operations person for a while, and I know several people that have started a business, and have had nominal success. So my opinion here isn't unfounded, though I have no success to speak of myself.
BASICALLY: You have decide/determine what you are going to do. Innovate and or mimic.
I would say the most businesses in general, especially SMB opt to mimic for the bulk of their business model, and attempt innovate in some way on the margins.
Having innovation being the core of your business venture, to start, is expensive, and risky.
To mimic another business that you know already works functions, is a matter of knowing how and why it functions.
No need to reinvent the wheel with an auto-shop, but you can certainly mix up your offerings and services on the side to try to wring out more productivity or profits.
If you're trying to sell an innovative mouse and keyboard setup that is convenient for a airplane, then you would have to spend a lot of money in R&D, manufacturing prototypes, and figuring out the marketing for something new in the world nobody knows about.
I guess the only other thing I would add is that you should layout all the processes that the business does, quantify these processes in terms of costs and returns, legal proceedings, labor needed. Then just get the inputs and outputs of these processes mapped out relative to customer experience.
There a whole other conversation to be had about what business you should choose to mimic, but you ask general advice so yeah.
Also read books..
Realistically I won't even be able to start operating unless I have excess time and money. I am coming upon such a scenario, and I'm honestly frightened by the prospect that I will have to put my cajones where my mouth is and I might fail (waste thousands of dollars).
I've been an operations person for a while, and I know several people that have started a business, and have had nominal success. So my opinion here isn't unfounded, though I have no success to speak of myself.
BASICALLY: You have decide/determine what you are going to do. Innovate and or mimic.
I would say the most businesses in general, especially SMB opt to mimic for the bulk of their business model, and attempt innovate in some way on the margins.
Having innovation being the core of your business venture, to start, is expensive, and risky.
To mimic another business that you know already works functions, is a matter of knowing how and why it functions.
No need to reinvent the wheel with an auto-shop, but you can certainly mix up your offerings and services on the side to try to wring out more productivity or profits.
If you're trying to sell an innovative mouse and keyboard setup that is convenient for a airplane, then you would have to spend a lot of money in R&D, manufacturing prototypes, and figuring out the marketing for something new in the world nobody knows about.
I guess the only other thing I would add is that you should layout all the processes that the business does, quantify these processes in terms of costs and returns, legal proceedings, labor needed. Then just get the inputs and outputs of these processes mapped out relative to customer experience.
There a whole other conversation to be had about what business you should choose to mimic, but you ask general advice so yeah.
Also read books..
sushi
Prolific Member
- Local time
- Today 11:42 PM
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2013
- Messages
- 1,913
the show the bear is really a lesson on how not to run a small business
always delegate and give responsibility to other people
thats true, have to start small and be realistic
always delegate and give responsibility to other people
thats true, have to start small and be realistic
Drvladivostok
They call me Longlegs
My mom runs a small catering company, it's is pretty small and the cooking is done in our house but we can churn out 700 - 1000 boxes of food daily for a week if the circumstances require, here's some of our biggest lessons that we learned from our mistakes:
- Be prepared to bleed, in a high-turnover business like F&B being underfunded means beings dead, so you better save those emergency
funds, we only started making money after one and a half year. - Don't Assume humans work can work like clockwork if not supervised, when not given the proper supervision and incentive, especially in a high-pace work enviroment people will slack-off.
- Have a trusted first officer that is intelligent enough to take delegated order and enough authority to order people around.
- Use your connections as much as possible to promote and market your product, people generally will use your service out of convinience if they know you personally.
- People or social cicles with high spending habit is a Gold mine.
- FAST RESPONSE is extremely important is attractng customer.
You can consider growth when the order of goods become overwhelming, expansion for any other reason is too unsafe, unless you can afford to bleed more.
melin376
Redshirt
- Local time
- Today 3:42 PM
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2024
- Messages
- 18
One tip: get managed IT services. They can cut costs and boost productivity. Don't make the same mistake I did.
Here's a list of the best ones: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-managed-services-small-businesses-jessica-smith-nldke/
Here's a list of the best ones: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/top-managed-services-small-businesses-jessica-smith-nldke/
EndogenousRebel
Even a mean person is trying their best, right?
That's great at advice. If you can afford it.
Honestly the costliest thing is that you can't learn everything yourself and if you did, you'd have to show others how to do it, which also takes time and learning of things.
Hiring other professionals to do something is only costly if the really don't provide value beyond the price of their services.
With chat GPT, you can pretty much just use them to learn enough to be reasonably and know if you're getting ripped off.
Honestly the costliest thing is that you can't learn everything yourself and if you did, you'd have to show others how to do it, which also takes time and learning of things.
Hiring other professionals to do something is only costly if the really don't provide value beyond the price of their services.
With chat GPT, you can pretty much just use them to learn enough to be reasonably and know if you're getting ripped off.
fractalwalrus
What can we know?
- Local time
- Today 4:42 PM
- Joined
- May 24, 2024
- Messages
- 730
Make it a co-op or fuck you