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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
03-31-2016, 07:35 PM
So check this out.
I have been going back and forth with a manufacturer on Alibaba for the last few weeks designing a product. I had them make me a custom sample and send it to me, it wasn't exactly to my liking but about 90% there.
This isn't like a blender with a different exterior appearance or something, this is a really unique item that stands on its own and would have less then a half dozen competing products on the market, all of which command a premium, even though they're made overseas and quality could be better.
I have been going over the last few details with them before getting ready to place a first order, and I look and see that they have already listed my sample as a product on their alibaba page. This made me pissed.
I'm not sure what to do, cut contact with these people and find another manufacturer abroad or here in the USA (I'm reaching out to one right now), or tell them to take it down and try to move forward (I'm sure I'm on no grounds to tell them to remove it).
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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
03-31-2016, 07:41 PM
Ebay business is really taking off. We just doubled our biggest monthly revenue last month. It took a year and a half but I can consistently pull in $300-500+ per hour. I took a look at what activities maximized my hourly rate and focused on that.
Its going well and I could probably do this for the rest of my life, but I want to move on to a more traditional startup, and put in 10 hours a month on the ebay business to pay the bills. The thing I have in mind is going to be big.
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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
03-31-2016, 08:56 PM
Here's a tip - Don't process your payments with PayPal. Get a merchant account or use services like Stripe. Very important. PayPal will not let you run a business, despite upgrading to a business account or even using one of their merchant solutions.
Maine and Canadian lobsters are the same animal. Prove me wrong.
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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
03-31-2016, 10:26 PM
I started a business 5 years ago with $10,000. Last year we passed 4mil in sales. Have 12 employees.
It's hard.
My personal boon and bane has been I always want to do everything myself (excluding routine operations, but including marketing, sales, creative, R&D, etc). On the one hand this is good because it's extremely hard to find dependable people (and very expensive). On the other hand this has limited our growth.
I think my introversion has been both a boon and bane too. It allows me to get technical and look for ways to implement operational improvements via a lot of self-reflection and introspection. However, dealing with employees is hard when I want to be left alone (which is most of the time) but need to interact with them instead (which is also most of the time, lol). And many times against my better judgement I have opted not to do networking stuff in favor of working on things at the office because I hate networking even though I know it is beneficial.
Everyone always wants to give advice on what you should do or shouldn't do, but the fact is 99% of the people giving you advice have never been successful at what they're giving you advice about, lol.
My two biggest obstacles are time-management and finding talent. Time management because all these little things add up to so much time and it's easy to not have time for working ON the company rather than IN the company (The E-myth Revisited is a good book on this). Finding employees is a major pain, sort of like looking for that unicorn. I want people to be generalists and do all these things that I do, but it's the opposite, everyone focuses on just a minor element and wants to depend on someone else to do what they don't know how, but if you don't provide them with that other person they have no idea what to do. For example, marketing: I'll design the t-shirts, find the printer, coordinate the shipping, find models, do the photography, then do the social media. Good luck finding anyone who can do more than one of those things. And then it seems to me that talent often over-values their worth by a good margin.
One thing I've learned that is apropos to the other elements found on this forum is this: on RVF women get a lot of slack for being hamster-driven, for being entitled, for being mindless, for having self-important & inflated egos & more. From all the human resources work I've done over the last 6 years, just as many men or like that too & just being a lousy person with the aforementioned negative qualities is not gender-specific by any means & in fact pretty normally distributed among both genders.
But to counter that negativity I must say when you do find a good employee it's a brilliant thing to have them by your side to carry out your vision in an effective manner.
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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
03-31-2016, 11:11 PM
Quote: (03-31-2016 10:32 PM)monster Wrote:
Quote: (03-31-2016 08:56 PM)Il Bersagliere Wrote:
Here's a tip - Don't process your payments with PayPal. Get a merchant account or use services like Stripe. Very important. PayPal will not let you run a business, despite upgrading to a business account or even using one of their merchant solutions.
PayPal is fine. Actually much better than merchant account services and amex merchant services. I can send an email directly to my guy at paypal and he takes care of any issue within a day. With my merchant account and amex merchant account I have to call in and provide five million pieces of security information and get transferred 3 times and then still not given a solution. PayPal's fees are about the same as everyone else's too.
Haven't used square too much personally but met them at a number of tradeshows and they all seem friendly and knowledgeable and I'd consider checking square out if I were to start all over again.
Ok. You've got 'a guy' or 'a plug' at PayPal, which leads me to believe that you have some clout or never travel. If you don't mind me asking, what kind of business do you do and what is your monthly volume? PayPal has an implicit policy where they limit or lock your account if you are under a personal account and using it for business and processing lots of payments. If you are under a business account or even a merchant account, you get the same problem but less pronounced. Simply put, PayPal isn't just a good platform for ecommerce, which is why I tell all my friends who want to dropship or have a high expected volume/income to avoid it altogether. In the past, PayPal would give you some leeway and allow you to respond, but now they are moving towards automatic limitation and permanent lock for infractions. I've had friends who have been blindsided by this, with 5-10k stuck in their account for 6 months.
I've used PayPal for nearly 8 years and they have evolved quite a bit. Many things in their company have now become 'proprietary information' and 'off-limits' because consumers are wising up. PayPal is very fond of unscrupulous behavior, which includes limiting your account for vague reasons, an ethnic sounding name, selling materials that are against TOS, etc. I've managed to learn how to bypass and manage these things effectively, but the juice is not worth the squeeze, especially when you just wanna focus on running a side-hustle instead of playing head games on the phone.
I have never used amex or square, but Google Wallet is good, albeit not automated and so is Stripe and Authorize.Net.
Maine and Canadian lobsters are the same animal. Prove me wrong.
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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
03-31-2016, 11:21 PM
For two pages this thread is getting full of great info!
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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
04-01-2016, 09:45 AM
I totally agree that you should generally do more and read study less
however a smarter way is to read, take action on what you read
and then read some more...take more action etc.
That way you stay connected to new ideas/new strategies
and get things done at the same time.
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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
04-01-2016, 12:01 PM
Quit my job a few months back and have been full time with my own shop since. Nice to see so many hustlers here. I'll post some thoughts shortly.
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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
04-01-2016, 01:43 PM
In some other topic I have mentioned that I have started selling on Ebay...here is my report.
So far, I am relatively happy - I made a profit of several hundred dollars. For a relative beginner, such as myself, I do not thing it's bad.
The main problem is supply - the supply of the products I am selling (high end clothing) is relatively low in my area, and that inhibits my growth. I have to say that I am a little jealous at you Americans - you have Saviour's and Salvation Armies at every street,, so supply is generally not a problem for you. Us non - Americans are not that lucky, lol.
Once I get some more money, I may branch into PC hardware ( I am thinking laptop motherboards, for example.)
I have tried on Bonanza as well, but I have received barely any traffic.
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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
04-01-2016, 06:56 PM
Great thread. Some current/former colleagues and I are starting a business in our spare time. Nothing to contribute as I'm new, but looking forward to learning from the guys who've been at it for awhile.
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The Entrepreneur / Business Owner's / Self Employed Lounge
04-01-2016, 07:49 PM
I hope Nemencine shows up in this thread. El Mech too. He could probably start up an auto/mechanic-related hustle incubator with all his knowledge and help get some to self-employed status and make some money off it as well via an up front or back end fee or piece of equity. We do have a lot of good hustler spirits here.
Would be great to do a semi-annual meet up too. Socializing is one aspect of life that I know gets put on the back burner for me during busy times and I suspect it happens to lots of others as well.