/biz/ - Business & Finance

> business and finance
> it's just bad gambling

oh lardie

>>53342154
>wants to just start a thriving chain of coffee/retail stores
Lmao. Yes, you''re retarded.
Have you considered trying to open a single coffee shop, first? Do you know the first thing about the expenses surrounding a coffeeshop? Maybe start there first, right?
t. Had a concrete pouring business a few years back

>>53342210
doesn't everyone own a cafe at this point?

>t. Had a concrete pouring business a few years back
is this a euphemism for "I took care of dead bodies for the mafia"?

>>53342154
>EVERYONE OF YOU FUCKS JUST CRYPTO SHIT HEAD?
No, but this is a terrible place to learn/ discuss real business.
>chain of cafes and retail stores.
Pick a lane
Am I retarded?
We all were shewed we were young dumb day dreamers...

thefastlaneforum.com
Read the gold threads.

>>53342154
Yes. I have sever IRL businesses. AMA.

What is your value proposition for your business?

>>53342210
I'm specifically looking for people with experience with dealing with renting commercial property and how risky it is. Did they use all their own money, how much did they loan out, did they pay years up front in rent?... etc.
Ofc I'm going to start small and work my way up, -- 1 property, located around other coffee shops, think hard about location, but how much should I be prepared to pay a premium on location?
How bad an idea is it to try and do this; if I invest all my own money, is it like going all in a shitcoin?

>>53342258
He doesn't have one. He doesn't even have a concept of what market he wants to serve and how. He just wants a bunch of places in trendy cities that spit out money.

We were all there once I suppose.

>>53342239
This is a terrible place to learn about business. However, every once in a while a good thread appears. It think we had two good threads in the last month. One was on Cosmos, and the other was about selling weed.

>>53342282
Ive rented three industrial spaces over the years. It's pretty straight forward. First and security with background check.

You need to think more about who's problems you're trying to solve (that's what a business is) before you start picking out colors for your Cafe furniture though.

>>53342154

I have run my own company the past 11 years, current turning over turning over 8 figures, 7 in profit

I steer clear of retail and hospitality, too many fixed costs, specifically rent and wages. Commercial rent is crazy and foot traffic in most major centres hasn't recovered from Covid with WFH becoming a permanent feature.

Any business I started these days would be B2B lining up distributorships on large ticket items that you don't have to stock.

Good luck!

>>53342289
I know a guy just like this. He is has a bunch of rentals, mostly Section 8. He has seen my retail shop and keeps asking about partnering up for a coffee shop. I keep asking him coffee shop related questions and he just says, "Yeah, but coffee shop tho."

I know another guy, the exact same thing. He brews beer as hobby. He wants to partner up and start a brewery. I start asking business questions and it's, "But beer tho."

The play in both cases are guys with ideas but no idea how to execute.

>>53342154
This is a crypto board retarded newfag, always was

>>53342289
I have a decent vision of how exactly the coffee shop should look, I have an "art-board"/aesthetic laid out so to speak, and an idea of a typical costumer. I've done a bit of chatting with other businesses around the area who have started from nothing, they all seem to have dedicated enormous amounts of capital (much higher than the rent price) for their decor. Should I pay my landlord a premium to gut the previously installed stuff and set up everything however best I see fit?
I figured this was the wrong place to ask, and in the end it is just my intuition vs what the world seems to say. I was just wondering if there were more resources on this kind of stuff I could study.

>>53342210
Opening and running a business isn’t as hard as you think if you’re not low IQ. Anon just needs someone to show him the ropes he’s probably get it pretty quickly.

>>53342324
So you think starting retail atm in recession and post-covid is suicide? I know that the profit-margins on coffee are only really healthy if you're within the top 10/5 of cafes in an area, and other than that its just struggling to break even -- bigger cafes have their own roasts, large premises for attracting footfall, lots of options in terms of bean type and baked goods etc.

My question is how the fuck did they get to be that big? How do you go from a small coffee shop to a large-ish chain? I'm not going to just start a business if I don't have any idea how to scale it up to something like that. The idea of running a cafe for the rest of my life isn't my idea of success.

>>53342318
What's a good way to gauge how much the market wants your business before you start blowing your money on it?

>>53342345

A lot of people don’t understand that doing stuff like this takes tons of time and lots of specific knowledge. If you don’t have knowledge you hire it which most people dont think about or have the money to do. They wing the business and it fails miserably.

I started working in retail since I was a teen, eventually became the store manager. I have knowledge of retail operations that some retard with an MBA will never have. I can manage a store and not make it go down the shitter, I can deal and know how to find suppliers, I know POS systems like the back of my hand, I know what makes a good story layout/environment.

There’s a lot more to business than simple money manipulation.

>>53342282
It's not risky at all to rent commercial property if you have a solid business. I have a retail location and rent is very small portion of my costs. Commercial real estate has been kicked in the dick from covid, crime, and overall economic downturn. However, if you're business model sucks, you will get rekt. What's your business model?

>>53342423
you can't. not really, that's the point of business I guess.

>>53342345
>execute
Yep. That's where everyone falls flat. I'm the type who needs to do something traction generating immediately if I can. Dudes waste months laboring over shapes of buttons on their sites. Everybody wants to take it slow making that first dollar.

>>53342154
>business and finance
>building a coffee shop in a city
Woah look out Rockefellers anons got ground breaking ideas

>>53342423
Pre-sales.

Get a stack of deposit slips on something you haven't procured or produced yet.

>>53342360
How much will your "creative vision" cost to execute? Start up costs? Monthly costs?

>>53342422
I think it's suicide....
There's a lot of good books on the topic, but I'm constantly baffled by people who never ask themselves why someone would choose their service over someone else's. If you don't have a unique selling proposition, all you have to compete on is price... And that's a one way ticket to bankruptcy.

My best advice is to buy the premises, it is what I did and every month the business pays me rent.

Many businesses only work at scale and few reach it organically. Perhaps someone bought 4 or 5 struggling coffee shops and then bundles them together to buy product at a sustainable rate. Very few businesses go from one store to many without mad levels of leverage.

>>53342474
>haven't procured or produced yet
You can also produce or buy a sample and take it for a walk. Become very comfortable with "NO". Everything is a numbers game and sales is all smoke and mirrors. Just never sell something you can't ultimately deliver.

>>53342422
I forgot to add...

If you are nuts enough to go ahead, don't run the business in your own name, get an LLC and if they ask you to sign personal guarantees to get terms with your suppliers or real estate, refuse! Pay cash, but don't sign guarantees or tyou can get bankrupted personally...

>>53342496
Got any recs bookwise? I'm willing to study as hard as possible before I take a flamethrower to my penis and start this thing

>>53342531
This is hard to do without a d&b profile. Uline will let almost any new business open a reporting commercial credit account for any anons out their looking to actually make a move in that direction.

>>53342422
The big thing is to understand your costs. How much does all of this cost? Start up costs and monthly costs. How did you arrive at those numbers? What will you monthly gross be? How did you arrive at those numbers?

>>53342460
No. Do market research. Have you done any market research? Is there a market for your product?

>>53342449
>What's your business model?
Sell coffee.
Take money.
Simple as.

>>53342564
https://www.sba.gov/

Start here. I did. But you have to be realistic. Don't skip a step because you didn't like the answer. Your great idea may not be commercially viable. It's better to learn that now on note pad before investing you life savings.

>>53342564
Go read the gold threads on fastlane. The new contrived there are dogshit, so don't even get involved with posting. Read icecream kid, againstallodds, and johnnyboy (just his lawncare gold thread... the rest is just gayness).

>>53342639
>contrived
*contributors

>>53342607
Yes, I can think of at least 5 coffee shops in my area who opened in my area with the exact same idea. None of them lasted more than a couple of years.

>be Robin
>run away to join the circus and sell coffee
>be batman
>kill niggers and trade crypto

>>53342154
>a chain of cafes and retail stores
pretty retarded unless its in a developing country without many laws. the first world governments shut down businesses for years at a time on a whim over manufactured pandemics now. why even take the risk? as someone with experience in the restaurant business this is especially true. even before covid restaurants were a fucking terrible business.

>>53342666
Checked Satan. Are you still able to find illegals to work in the kitchen?

>>53342282
I have multiple clients with coffee shops, restaurants, food trucks etc. You wont make any money just selling coffee. You need to sell food and other stuff.

>>53342607
OP here, my business model was to create a kind of open-space, no-nonsense coffee shop model, all card payment, no big counter with baked goods, lots of odd art stuff of a particular vibe that ran counter-intuitively against everything else that the city's coffee-culture b.s. currently pushed. This is why I'm asking about gutting the premises: most hospitality/restaurant premises have these clunky kitchen-area counters that take up so much space when you could have more people sitting there, buying stuff and enjoying the ambience, with coffee gotten to them faster. I'm not going to go fully into the business model but I have a number of ways I intend to create a kind of urgency and salience to being involved with the cafe itself. I have the money ready for about a year or two worth of rent on a certain property and decor -- do I do it all with my own, do I use all this seed capital for a better idea that I'm going to have later?

The coffee shop business isn't really my area of expertise, but selling stupid objects I seem to be good at (so far). The idea "feels good", but I just lost out on one very good bit of property bc I hesitated slightly. I definitely feel crazy enough, but I want to time it correctly.

Every shop manager I've spoken to thus far has been like "Eh, coffee is ... tricky." so I'm a little worried.

>>53342659

>>53342704
>Starbucks
>DD
>Pete's
>7/11
>Tim Hortons
Every other coffee outlet in the world has this figured out. The only guys I see making it on coffee are street vendors with a cart, and even these guys have fresh pastries. They are also all brown people, sole proprietors, and live the Dave Ramsey rice & beans lifestyle.

>>53342732
>but selling stupid objects I seem to be good at (so far).
Want to elaborate? If you're good at something, press that advantage. Can you scale selling stupid objects in a way that'll finance your terrible 5 per street corner coffee shop idea?

>>53342761
you can live like Robin and sell coffee and suck cock
Or you can be batman and kill niggers while staking link and shit posting with alfred

>>53342732
About the 3rd time I am asking this question, how much does all of this cost?

>>53342798
>staking link
It's a fund raising token for a shit token price checker service. You're staking it 2 years for more of the same token. It's evolved into a 2020 binance scam circus animal scam ponzinomics farming token...

>>53342787
I think this is the best bit of advice. I can scale up the odd object business to the point that I'll be more comfortable with knowing at least where the ceiling of that business is, and I can do it without any rent. BUT I do want at one point to make the transition, I don't like how everything is driven by online business nowadays

>>53342154
>>53342202
>>53342282
>>53342360
>>53342422
>>53342564
>>53342732
>Asks for business advice
>Gets asked specific questions by people in business
>Provides no answers
>Leaves
>Refuses to elaborate
What did he mean by this?

>>53342154
No you will make shit margins, work with absolute subhumans, and compete against multi-billion dollar globohomo corporations that will destroy you. You will go out of business in less than one year and lose thousands of dollars.

>>53342962
>Scale up
Scale up from what? What is your baseline?

>>53343015
Listen to this advice.

Lmao has a ngmi ever been so obvious before

>>53342982
That's why I almost never even open the real biz threads on here. I get more bang for my buck in imagine the smell threads. I love and hate this fucking place but I can never leave.

I work in software engineering making $240K annually and have several other business interests:

>eBay selling
I import stuff from Alibaba in 20-50 unit increments, and resell for typically a 10x mark up. This stuff isn't high demand so it takes some time to sell but it does eventually sell, and I really only need to move 5 - 10 units to breakeven on my investment. It's very passive which I like, and I'm never out more than a few hundred dollars for inventory at any given time. I make about $500 per month from this and it's less than 10 hour commitment per month.

>Pressure washing company
I bought a pressure washer a while back and did some weekend projects for people. I don't have an interest in doing this full time obviously, but I've built up a website and local lead base. When someone reaches out I quote them and get the deposit and pay a friend to use my pressure washer and actually do the job. It's spotty, but there's a consistent ~8 gigs per month which translates to $6-800 for me (that's profit, so after fuel and paying my friend a decent wage).

>Equity in an adtech company
I worked at a startup early on and exercised my employee stock options. The company took off - I've since moved elsewhere - but my equity pays me out just under 5-digits in dividends each year.

>Newest venture is in progress
I'm building out a SaaS company right now on the side. It's very low touch and self-service. It will be $400/month per company and monthly costs are sub $100. I hope to use this to replace my f/t job income and enter a state of "semi retirement".

>>53343158
You're probably wondering "if you make $240K a year why do you do stuff for $500/mo". It's a valid question worth explaining given the audience here is typically younger (I'm 30).

Each income source is a step towards becoming antifragile. If I lose my job tomorrow, I can still cover my bills each month which puts me in a position of strength when negotiating or setting workplace boundaries. If I lose my job, I can almost cover all my monthly bills with these income sources.

Second, these are all low-touch and require minimal time commitment. If I were to focus purely on financial investments it would take quite some time to build up stock positions that pay dividends equivalent to $500/mo, so small businesses like this are a great complimentary step. Additionally, I find it a bit of a fun challenge and they've become more of a "profitable hobby" than "work".

Last, businesses sell for a multiple of revenues. You can't "sell" your job to exit. But my eBay business for instance, say it produces $500/mo profit or $6,000 profit per year. I can likely sell it for $12-18K. These are small, but if I scale them up 10x over time I can exit for a decent injection of cash that puts me well ahead of the person making the same income from a service based side hustle.

>>53343158
On the pressure washing gig. Do you have a contract? What about insurance? Any concerns about getting sued if you damage someone's house?

>>53342154
If I had a business I'd already be rich and wouldnt need to be here

>>53343277
>Every small business owner is rich
Citation required.

>>53343158
>>53343259
Good posts mein neger

>>53343259
>>53343158
This guy fucks.

Thanks for the contribution. Hopefully it helps a lurking kid passing through.

>>53342154
Absolute retard
Go find out what margins are

>>53343263
Contract with clients? It's generally "one off" gigs for homeowners that need their driveways / patios cleaned but I have a local preschool that is monthly. I use free service agreement templates and have no idea whether the contract is enforceable. Keep in mind the stakes are low so if I were to get screwed out of a gig it's not a big loss. It hasn't happened [yet].

I use an LLC for this (costs $110/year) which keeps my other assets separate in case someone were to sue me. I don't really see a lawsuit happening given the scale of the projects but I guess it could happen. Insurance is only about $500/year if I did want to get it.

>>53343330
>>53343404

>>53342154
>No one talks about business
>OP starts business thread
>Does not discuss any actual business
>Abandons thread
Where did OP go? I thought he wanted business advice.

>>53343158
>I import stuff from Alibaba in 20-50 unit increments, and resell for typically a 10x mark up. This stuff isn't high demand so it takes some time to sell but it does eventually sell, and I really only need to move 5 - 10 units to breakeven on my investment. It's very passive which I like, and I'm never out more than a few hundred dollars for inventory at any given time. I make about $500 per month from this and it's less than 10 hour commitment per month.
I've been thinking about doing this for a while and I massively appreciate you sharing this since it validates that it's good enough to live on without much time commitment. Thanks anon

>>53342154
nobody really has any advice here. and thats not an insult. truthfully you have to pick something and go out and do it, like today.

>i want to start
well start. do something. usually people recommend power washing or window cleaning if there's virtually nothing you can start with. there's also some advice that says you should go work for a company that does it, before starting your own thing.

I started an amazon store and sell used books, haven't optimized my prices and set up a repricer but i've made $300 this month with 200/1000 inventory. Once I optimize my pricing and fill out my inventory I think I can pull an extra 2k+ a month.

>>53342732
>no big counter with baked goods
retard do you even drink coffee
baked goods bring more revenue and profits

This is not a business forum

This is a crypto shill forum

I own several businesses, a number of which are only known to me

I have been witness to several murders and a number of my ventures have zero digital traces

I am a hood certified original gangster, my cashflow is mysterious and untraceable

>>53344620
Do you know anything about self publishing on Amazon?

>>53344634
OP is peak ngmi. He doesn't believe that he has to sell 100 cups of coffee to put just one dollar back in his own pocket. He has a new angle. His place is different because it's artsy!

>>53344685
We actually had a good drug dealing thread the other day. It was actually business related.

>>53342154
>stores
>in a city
Enjoy getting your businesses sacked by criminal apes. Lots of store chains are pulling out of my shithole city in the U.S. because of it.

>>53342154
Hehehe you tired of crypto being that beautiful ass gf that stays through thick and thin.
Well I'm an Uber driver, in the streets of Nevada and I got lots of 4stars and a 20% 5star rating, I'll want to purchase holoride retrofit device package and an additional htcvive headset although the package comes with the htcvive headset but incase I got two passengers onboarding I really want them to feel relaxed, have fun via gaming and the edutainment aspect of these experiences. Lots of peeps drift off in thinking so much so possibly I could lighten their minds a little.

>>53342154
Not OP, but do any of you guys run a SaaS business? I'd like to get input on how to build and run a SaaS effectively.

I'm a software engineer, been working out of college for a solid 5 years and used a lot of different software stacks and worked on software in a few different industries. I have the knowledge to build and run a small or medium scale B2B software platform, but have no idea what needs are out there and clients would actually want.

Any tips on finding a profitable niche, and how to effectively do marketing and sales? I am completely good on the technical aspects of a SaaS platform but don't know shit about business.

Always, always start by looking at zoning laws.

>>53342202
Because there is no free will and John Calvin designed capitalism for securing Church ultimate power over things and pinch movement every form or paganism.

You either become an artist (read inspired by God) and create original new things like Edgar Allan Poe and Steve Jobs did or being trapped in the samsara

Remeber, there is no other God then God. This means that everything you see is, ultimetly, a scam

Bump

I sell books on the internet.

>>53347566
educate yourself or find a partner you dingdong we're not here to spoon fed you

>>53342154
Negative I am crypto shit head

>>53342732
Check out Henry coffee in sf

>>53342154
the most I have is my father's store, which is not going to be mine until he dies, I am using what I earn in my part time job for my daily investment in xor, maybe with it in a couple of years I can open a small bar with my friends, or starve myself in the attempt

>>53342154
"Does anyone have a business?!"

Yes.

Each cell is 1 hr of work, I fix brakes while being a full time wagie and college student.

Zero overhead, it's not hard, you people just have no work ethic and don't have that dog in you. It's not for everyone.
If I doubled my adspend I'd probably make more.

You cucks just sit around all day doing nothing and hope to become millionaires off bullshit crypto pumps and zero analysis. Can't manage to put your pride and ego aside and go to work for a year or two.

>>53343021
My baseline was small runs of £350 landed sold for about 1500 net profit. Although biz seems to think anything "artsy" is just pie-in-sky bs, the margins are actually v good if you know your customers and the market. However, it's not like a service, it doesn't scale linearly, and I think will respond badly to aggressive growth.

>>53355513
wow, a job

I run a commerical roofing business specializing in large loss commerical insurance claims for weather damage. Normally I would say this is an excellent business to be in, but GODDAMN do these faggots not want to pay. I had to write a fucking dissertation to give to my engineer because the carriers consultant apparently doesn't know how to read a fucking installation manual and wants to argue the semantics of the definition of the word "retrofit". I've 10x my sales numbers moving to strictly commerical, but it's taken 3x as long to resolve them. As things get worse economically, the less these faggots want to pay anything. They have gone so far as to hire consultants and engineers that are literally paid to make shit up in hopes either my PA, engineer, or myself are too stupid to read. I have three that had to go legal to stop their nonsense.
>>53343633
How do you run a business where you go onto other people's property to perform work and not carry Comp or GL
>This is not a question

>>53356627
God damn it I keep running into you same people on this site. I need to leave. Fuck.

>>53357448
You're here forever. It's been a while since I posted any of this shit on /biz/.

>>53352390
I am a business owner and a cryptocurrency investor. I pay the salaries of our 4 employees, who work on our farm, each month. If I ever make a lot of money in farm, I utilize the cash to acquire all of my favorite alts, such as Hbar, Xpress, Zil, and Iost. I'm also guilty of making love toward women lol. No money, no honey. Kidding aside.

>>53344418
My only advice is to start small and start with things that other people are already selling (ideally, the same thing but the existing sellers ship from China vs you shipping from inside USA).

>>53356627
>How do you run a business where you go onto other people's property to perform work and not carry Comp or GL

Workmans comp exempt and GL is only formally required for commercial projects whereas these are 99% residential driveways. I also live in an area where most trade work is done by illegal immigrants off the books so any air of legitimacy goes a long way.

bump for interest.

Also; is going bald a necessity to being an evil billionaire tycoon? or does it just help

>>53342154
>cafes
over saturated and will most likely have shit head customers
>retail
just do online shops