Business Contents Archive

Need help evolving my wife's business

My wife is a hairstylist that currently rents a chair to perform her services. She is great at what she does, but I feel as though she is only limiting herself and therefore stunting her potential by staying where she is at. I've been thinking about what we can do to evolve her business and it seems obvious that the next step is too purchase or rent some space and then rent out chairs to other stylists. That way we can ride on that extra income to support her goals further instead of stagnating. This where this sub comes on. I don't know anything about how I should start. First thing that comes to mind is getting a loan, but I'll admit that it scares me to take on debt. Tl;Dr I need to know where to start when it comes to getting space to rent out for other hairstylists.

Ideas for a business in a growing distribution heavy area

I live in the US and in small town that is growing fast. Within the last 5 years dozens of companies have bought land and built warehouses/RDCs. I currently co own a very small irrigation company with my friend but we’re wanting to lean away from it as it is very labor intensive. I’ve been trying to brainstorm ideas for a company that would go well along side these huge corporations. For example this guy down the road has owned a pallet business for as long as I’ve been alive, he never was hurting but with these companies moving in his business has grown 10000x

1099 Contractor and S Corp

I'm a contractor paid via 1099 to my LLC. All my revenue is from 1099 (usually from 1-3 payors each year). I have very little business expenses. I've seen people establish an S-Corp in this situation to get the benefits of lower payroll taxes as the distributions are not subject to payroll tax (as I understand it). What I don't understand is how someone can credibly claim that their W2 salary should be meaningfully less than the 1099 income. For arguments sake, if company X is paying me $125k for my labor, what is the justification for saying that my labor is worth $75k? I mean, the market is literally telling me that my labor is worth $125k. Can someone explain this to me?

How would you deal with customer's wanting their deposits back?

For my business, we require a 50% deposit to get started on production. This usually includes cleaning up their provided artwork, creating samples, structural design, the actual production, etc. When the order is ready to ship, we ask for the remaining 50% and ship it out. Occasionally we get clients that try to cancel a few weeks/days after placing a deposit. Legally speaking, we're in the clear because the signed contract says that the deposit is non-refundable and covers all the work that we put into it. How would you guys handle a client that asks for their deposit back? Would you take out a certain amount for work done and refund the rest? Refund the whole thing if you haven't done anything yet? Fully refuse?

Is it legal to skip payroll for yourself? (S corp)

I am a single employee corp on payroll for myself however my truck is down indefinitely so I cannot work for the next few months, and thus cannot pay myself. I don’t even think I can “delay” because making up 2 months of payroll will be difficult. Is there a way to just pay myself 0 dollars or below the usual amount for the next 2 months until I am set up again to work?

What are your biggest challenges when it comes to marketing your small business?

Hello everyone, I run a small business in California and I find it very difficult to promote my business and attract new customers. Is this also a big problem for you guys? How do you guys currently advertise/promote your business and the products? Please let me know! Thank you in advance.

How to sell to RESTAURANTS

Seafood guy here again. This time with a different question. Basically, I am going door to door, restaurant to restaurant trying to sell my produce. I find restaurants that are near my shop and I just do some quick research ( size, fancy place or not, what kind of seafood they use ) before bringing my produce there to show them. But not much luck so far because they have already had a supplier and seem hesitant to start working with a new one. I tried contacting them via their fb page first and send some images but am usually met zero respond. So how should I approach restaurants? and what is the best way to convince them to switch to my produce?. To any restaurants owners here, how would you prefer a supplier approach you? Online? In person? Thanks you so much. Please help this 22 years old get out of the 9-5 (actually 8 - 5.30) life.

Starting a Web Consulting Business

Hey, I'm in the process of starting a web consulting business since I'm an incoming college junior that wasn't able to get a SWE internship for this summer. I specialize in building business processes (inventory management software blah blah), UX updates to improve website leads along with maintenance and support. My main issue is thinking of newer and creative ways to make me stand out. So far, I've thought of, specializing in business process software, being extremely transparent with everything unlike other firms, focusing on personal relationships, being very flexible with payment/billing, no hourly rate as well as a few other things. I'd like to have a short feedback session with any 1+yr business owners in order to improve my offerings and get input from actual business owners. If you're interested, feel free to comment, I'll do a free 20 minute consultation for your choice of UX improvement, business process improvement or general consulting with your current/future website.

Comedy and Electronics whole sale- one llc

I have a single member llc small business in texas where I buy used electronics in bulk and resell them. I also do stand up and sometimes get paid through venmo for shows. I'll also pay an editor to create online videos etc. Can I include these expenses/profits as part of my llc? When I file my taxes the llc is essentially just a pass through for my schedule c.

Full send

How did you know to go full time with your business? Hold backs? Money tips?

Can a business be dissolved while having open debts?

Not sure if that’s an option?

How to convince clients to pay in advance?

My business provides online services to professionals in an industry where it is standard to collect payment at the end. We often have clients change their mind and cancel after we have already rendered a third of their services and spent weeks communicating with them. Not because we did anything wrong, just because they weren't sure what they want and weren't fully committed. How can we start collecting payment in advance without loosing business to our competitors who still collect payment at the end?

Questions to ask when buying motel/bed and breakfast

Hi all, checking in to see if anyone could recommend any major questions or concerns to ask when buying a small B&B /motel. Would be grateful for any insight

Instagram growth strategies for small business owners

Fellow small business owners, how do you leverage Instagram to grow your business and attract more customers?

I've spend the last 30 days building a niche dating app. Today I found out Apple has banned any new dating apps from being on the app store. What should I do now?

Over the past few months I've been building a dating app for the sober community in London/UK. I did the usual due dilligence in terms of market research etc. I even document [everything I do every day for full transparency](https://faileveryday.substack.com/p/documenting-every-failure-in-my-business). I posted these results in another subreddit (entrepreneurRideAlong) and someone explained to me that they'd worked with a client who's app had been rejected from Apple's App store solely on the basis that it's a dating app. **Have any of you experienced anything like this? Being rejected from the app store? Is there anyway around it or do I have to settle on changing my app?**