Business Contents Archive

I need $10k for startup of a coffee roasting business. I have great credit, is a personal loan my best option?

This money would cover the cost of a small roaster, bulk grinder, marketing, design, packaging, and beans for a year of selling locally. From what I have researched, it seems a true "small business loan" is off the table until I am able to show my history of sales and reports. Personal loans seem to average about 10% interest, but I was hoping to find something lower. Am I not considering a different option that would be better? Thank you in advance, if more context is needed I would be happy to give it.

Timesheet App?

I run a business that has 15 employees. Does anyone have recommendations on time tracking apps where I can leave an IPad at the office and have all of my employees clock in there? I keep seeing apps that allow employees to use their own phones to clock in but we would like to avoid that. Thank you!

Does income tax need to be paid for a granola business?

Creating my Shopify account and not sure if I'll need to a) report income (we're talking a few $k a year now), b) owe any taxes on that income

How Has Having A Website Changed Your Service Business?

I live in Chicago with a lot of upper-middle-class mid-twenties men who I believe do not clean their bathrooms too frequently. I would like to target this demographic who went to college and likely joined a fraternity with a cleaning service. This service would be gimmicky such as being called Pledge Cleaning Services or such. It would be just me with only cleaning the bathroom, perhaps one-off cleans, weekly and biweekly. My main hope of attaining clients is to print flyers and hang them up in my targeted neighborhoods. With an extremely low cost for cleaning and convincing marketing ("You have women over with these conditions?") I feel that I can bait people in. So, I ask you, do you think that having flyers with my email/phone number and manually texting will attain clientele, or having a website that legitimizes the business and helps to schedule needs is better? A website is great, but it feels like a barrier to enter as I want to do things correctly.

Boosting Instagram followers and engagement for small businesses

Seeking effective strategies to grow my small business Instagram account and increase audience engagement. Any tips or experiences would be appreciated!

Customers asking for a refund

I provide a recurring web-based service. Some customers have been with me for years, we automatically rebill on fixed dates and provide 3 warnings before: 14 days, 7 days, 3 days. Something generic, like: you will get billed X on \[date\]. If you wish to cancel or modify, please go \[link here\] and make the desired changes. More often that I'd expect, some customers only wake up AFTER they were charged. They wanted to cancel in fact, or they wanted to downgrade. The problem is that we get charged fees by our processor. For example, on a 100$ transaction, we get charged 3.80$. Granted, it's not a lot but I don't want to pay for their mistake. If I refuse to, they immediately threaten to charge back. And the entitlement, damn, it's unbelievable some of these people - they got plenty of warning, failed to act and then expect no consequences. How would you guys approach this behavior ?

Web Hosting HELP

I own a business that services patients inside hospitals and nursing homes. The nurses from our contracted facilities have to call us to book and have a nurse come out and treat the patients. I am currently adding a better website for our vendors, and would like to have our main page as a ticket/booking page with easy requests for service. For example: It’s 9 am, a nurse from a hospital 35 miles away calls my company and says they need a STAT wound care. We dispatch a medical provider, and tell them we will be there within the hour. At 9:05 am, a nursing home calls and asks us to come start antibiotics on a patient, and we also tell them we will be there within the hour. I need a booking/software that allows for service requests, but doesn’t require a time slot to be to be slotted or booked off. It seems like every software I’ve looked into allows for easy booking, but then blocks off said time after 1 customer books. Can anyone recommend a service or some advice?

Promotion Brainstorming

Hello I work for a local family entertainment facility. The facility has a focus on American Ninja warrior courses. In addition to that we have bouldering walls, a rope course, café and a few other attractions. I am looking for ideas on monthly promotions to drive more business. Since we are indoors our summer months tend to be slower than winters. Our largest audience is 6-13 age range. In the past we focused promotions on that age range. I am trying to make it more broad for a larger audience. For example June they had bring in report card and get a dollar amount off a pass. It is on theme with June being the month school ends but limits the promotion. Let me know if any ideas come to mind were just trying to avoid to repeat the same promotions. Thank you!

Successful clothing boutique?

My sister and I would like to open one, any tips from someone who has done it?

Single Member LLC W9?

I'm a single member LLC being taxed as a sole proprietor for now, so am filling out my W9s as follows: Line 1 personal name, Line 2 business name, and using SSN. Vendors keep wanting to address payments, etc as "my personal name DBA my business name" and say reason for that is the way I filled out the W9. I need everything addressed in my LLC, it is not a DBA though as far as I understand? I filed an article of organization with CA SOS for SMLLC. What am I missing here??

SBA Funding for new franchise

Hi all, Am looking into starting a brick and mortar high margin service franchise in my area. Estimated costs are about 250k-350k to start up with franchise fee, lease etc. My wife and I both work and bring home about 250k annual, have about 150k in home equity and 790 credit score. I know the drawbacks of franchises, understand the risk. I’m not trying to ask if a franchise is the right move. I spoke with one person about finances and she mentioned it would be difficult to obtain an SBA loan with the liquidity I have available (I know common scenario). She said that banks would be hard pressed to loan the amount I would need even with 10-15% down. Currently have about 40k liquid and need ~80k she recommended buying a smaller business or going for a business term loan. She’s well experienced, but curious if she’s all the way correct? Would it be worth even trying to go the SBA route and talking to lenders and seeing what they say? Thanks all

Looking to offer a niche to a digital company.

I’m not techy so I apologize on the language. If a person had an idea to add/embed their skills remotely to a software/web developer/ digital marketing company, who, isn’t a software developer, but believes it can greatly add a uniqueness to a start up business, how would you approach this? I’ve searched for this for sometime but it’s only offered to large corporations, slim to no offering to the small businesses as the price is always high.

Security camera recommendations

My colleague and I have just started a tutoring company. Because we work one on one with children, we think it is wise to have a camera in our office to protect us as well as the student. I've been looking at "nanny cameras." I like the option of being able to save to a memory card as opposed to storing in the cloud. Any recommendations??

Contract Signing / Proposal Editing

Looking for a program that makes it easy to edit a proposal and have my customers sign in person on a tablet/iPad. We own a small construction business and are just looking for a way to quickly edit templates and give customers an opportunity to sign on the spot. Thanks in advance!

Business credit

Does opening a business credit card through your bank build business credit ?