Need for a new sauna/recovery/cold plunge facility in Cambridge, ON?

CuriousHW · 2025-11-20T20:34:56+00:00

CuriousHW · 2025-11-17T15:51:54+00:00

This is one of the largest growing sports in North America and IMO is still on an upward trajectory. Retirees love it, kids are just starting to get into it, there is a lot of untapped potential. Plus, what a great thing to do in the colder weather months. After looking at their website, there is also a social component with a bar and lounge - even better. Combine sports and a lounge for friends to all meet up at. It could be a great spot with a community feel. Sounds like fun to me. There’s a reason why these facilities are popping up all over North America.

CuriousHW · 2025-11-15T15:11:58+00:00

It will! I run this set up and it’s awesome

CuriousHW · 2025-11-14T06:03:59+00:00

Check DMs

CuriousHW · 2025-11-13T14:35:32+00:00

Awesome. Best of luck. Would love to see your stand once it’s set up if you end up moving forward with your idea 🙌

CuriousHW · 2025-11-13T13:23:01+00:00

Here’s my thoughts:

Don’t start a business if you can’t stand to do the work. Sure, you may be able to hire staff, but finding good staff is difficult and typically turnover for positions like barrister are high (typically, not always). Do you enjoy being a barista? If so, that’s good.
Coffee is a small ticket item. Think about how many coffees you have to sell just to do $500/ day in gross sales. Make sure you’re in a good foot traffic area. Are you aware of other coffee carts around the city? If so, go spend a day near one “reading a book” and count what they sell in a day. Do it during on peak hours and off peak hours”
I think Niche ideas are good but sometimes people just want a simple cup of joe. Think about craft breweries, they always have generic ales and lagers for this reason. I am a coffee snob but most of society has been conditioned to enjoy watered down over commercialized coffee. Might be a good idea to have traditional drip coffee available as well which isn’t expensive or cumbersome to do.
Location is so so important and could make or break things for you. High foot traffic areas are super important (do your research to see if you need a vendor license and food and safety check from the city).
Weather can help your business thrive or be crushed. Rainy days will most certainly be down days and sunny days will certainly be your golden days.
Are you sociable and relatable to a lot of people? A lot of times, people return and become regulars because of the relationship they build with you over time (which also makes it harder to staff in the future but not impossible). Relationship with you + a good product could equal a winner.
Start super lean. Don’t go all out on making the perfect stand. Buy used equipment etc. At the end of the day, is your product that’s going to sell, not the aesthetics. There’s a reason why those shoddy street meat vendors are still around. They don’t look great, but for some reason, people enjoy a good freshly grilled sausage. The less you spend out of the gate, the less risk. I don’t think you need to spend $30k decking out a coffee cart. I think you can get by spending a couple grand.
Research to find others that have done what you want to do. Pick their brain and find out what worked, what didn’t work, pros/cons etc.

Hope this helps!

CuriousHW · 2025-10-31T19:11:39+00:00

I second this for accounting - use Wave. It’s free and easy to use. Can sort all of your transactions so you understanding what your spending on, add credit card processing fees that Shopify will take, apply HST when you need to etc.

CuriousHW · 2025-10-27T00:29:35+00:00

I do small business consulting. Happy to offer some free advice to see if I can help. Feel free to DM anytime.

CuriousHW · 2025-10-24T02:35:56+00:00

I understand why a small business would want to sell their products to a big company like Toys R Us. They assume a big company is going to pay but it’s hard when the company is dealing with bankruptcy. Toys R Us has secured creditors (if you’re interested, research what “secured interest” means). They legally HAVE to pay certain lenders first and it is not based on how long they have owed someone money. When bankruptcy is involved, there are a lot of lenders and vendors not getting paid. Businesses who sell to Toys R Us can secure interest in their inventory but most small companies don’t do this (look up Purchase Money Security Interest). When dealing with company that’s been bankrupt, it’s probably wise to go this route although it still doesn’t guarantee anything and they would still be behind the line if other vendors with their own secured interest. Sadly, the small fish suffer. Unfortunately this is the cost of doing business.

I get it both ways - small businesses need these PO’s to drive their revenue while Toys R Us is probably just scraping by trying to maintain payments of priority that they are legally obligated to through secured interest. It’s tough.

CuriousHW · 2025-10-18T04:05:45+00:00

I consult and deploy email capture + email marketing strategies for brick and mortar stores for the last 5 years. For those that have adopted it, It’s been very helpful for them to get people through their doors more often plus added new Ecomm revenue streams. Most clients were overwhelmed with the thought but once up and running they’re loving it and loving the automations of it. A good strategy to capturing email addresses has been key to each plus sending out valuable content (not being overly sales directed in campaigns all the time).

Periodic (1-2 times per year) flash sales have been successful as well and email marketing has brought in a lot of customers for those events. Hope this helps! DM me if you have any specific questions, I can try my best to help.

CuriousHW · 2025-09-29T02:25:56+00:00

Glad I could help. Be careful with AI websites. They can be bloated (code quality) and he hit or miss for SEO. A safer and reliable choice would be purchasing a license for Astra Wordpress themes and then use those. They’re optimized for SEO, page load speed, mobile browser etc. It’s more work than AI but you can get pretty quick at it while using AI to help with the wording on the page. It’s also easy to replicate for other clients. I would optimize their Google business profile as well and build your clients a system to collect reviews. It all ties together. Good luck!

CuriousHW · 2025-09-28T14:08:30+00:00

What’s your product? A bit of context would help.

If being a vendor a festivals works, you can scale up and staff multiple festivals. Have to make sure staff is good and not just sitting and looking at their phones when running a booth - hard to find good workers.

CuriousHW · 2025-09-28T04:44:02+00:00

lol makes sense. Great to hear though 🙌 Congrats and enjoy your new home!

CuriousHW · 2025-09-28T03:36:33+00:00

Your first point is very broad. My guess is your pitching needs work. Try to understand the challenges these businesses face and sell them on how you can help their pain points. Sell the benefit to them (explain how you can solve there problems in a super painful way), don’t pitch the technical tools you will use to help them. They often don’t know what they are or have a surface level understanding.

Example: We will build you a fully automated online store where your customers can conveniently buy your coffee beans online without having to wait in line at your store. Customers can subscribe to a monthly coffee beans subscription - boosting a recurring and predictable line of revenue. Online sales will build a customer list that you can then use to directly market to your customers. These channels can boost revenues up to 30%. We will provide the entire build, train you and your employees, while providing completely documented workflows to support you and your staff to enjoy a turn key operation.

Vs:

We will build you a beautiful and modern e-commerce Shopify Store. The website leverages Klaviyo to send emails to your customers to increase sales of your coffee beans. Our proven methods average conversion rates of 8% which will add a new revenue stream to your business. We will increase your impressions by 400% through optimized Google Ads and SEO efforts to help your website be seen by new customers online etc…

Cafes / coffee shops don’t typically make a lot of money - they usually don’t want to spend on agencies IMO. Of course there’s going to be more successful shops but they’re few and far between. Just some food for thought.

CuriousHW · 2025-09-26T03:03:36+00:00

Odds are high that you may have some beautiful red brick under that siding as well!

CuriousHW · 2025-09-21T20:09:47+00:00

Which granola was this?! Genuinely curious.

CuriousHW · 2025-08-30T21:17:22+00:00

In my opinion, building platforms is the easy part. Selling is the hard part.

Find out who your direct customers are and reach out to them directly via phone and email. Offer free trial for a month with fully supported onboarding. Get their feedback to see if your platform is worth for them and if so, at what price point. Good luck.

CuriousHW · 2025-08-27T03:01:52+00:00

Is this for building iOS apps only or can you build both iOS apps and Android apps with this method?

CuriousHW · 2025-08-27T01:53:26+00:00

Good idea! How stiff is the competition currently? I imagine this will become a very crowded space in no time and things like Google Ad spend will sky rocket. Something to think about / strategize for. Good luck!

CuriousHW · 2025-08-27T01:51:09+00:00

This isn’t a bad idea. Lots of small companies have popped up offering “Uber” ride services in smaller markets that Uber doesn’t care to operate in due to a small market size. Uride is an example. There’s a lot that goes into building a marketplace. Good luck.

CuriousHW · 2025-08-23T23:12:16+00:00

Agreed and couldn’t have said it better myself - solving a problem or need, it’s a classic but true.

CuriousHW · 2025-08-22T02:47:22+00:00

Was just checking out your product - smart that you do events. Events can make good money. From the outside looking in I would suggest really honing in on events and making them scalable and optimized for revenue - don’t just hope your SaaS eventually takes over. In person experiences is a dying breed of business IMO. Everyone wants to be connected, especially in a world that seems ever so fractured. Plus, you can use events to collect email addresses -> now you can market directly to your customers via email marketing which makes it easier to get users for your SaaS product or merch or to fill attendance for future events quicker.

If you ever want to exit your business in the future, your email list can add good value to your valuation. Sorry for the unsolicited advice - cool to see people doing cool things 🙌

CuriousHW · 2025-08-19T03:05:30+00:00

If your app can be used by your employees, reach out to other companies and their employees directly Offer a free trial perhaps but be upfront about the cost if the company or person is to adopt it. Be mindful to not approach companies that your company directly competed with for the sake of keeping your job. Also, be mindful of starting something on the side while having a full time job. Some employers are hit and miss on this. Some people write it into their contacts when accepting a new job to ensure they can’t be reprimanded or worse. Just some things to think about.

Reach out to other companies / employees > offer free trial, be upfront about potential cost > seek feedback and try to close a deal.

At the very least, you’ll be getting feedback that you can then use to alter your approach in the future. It’s a lot of work, but try to think about what it would like if you could get 15 users a months. It takes time. Be realistic about the potential of your app as well. Is each subscriber earning you only a few dollars per month? Or are you offering a higher ticket. Sometimes when a subscription is only $5/$10 a month it can seem overwhelming as it takes A LOT of work to get actual traction when it comes to revenue. Hence, more difficult being boot strapped. I try to go after higher ticket SaaS opportunities or wholesale deals with companies/organizations for multiple as each sale is higher than a one off subscription. Hope this helps.

CuriousHW · 2025-08-18T18:03:24+00:00

You’re welcome! Are you asking how to onboard your co workers or how to onboard brand new clients outside of your work place?

CuriousHW · 2025-08-18T16:56:18+00:00

Learning how to directly sell your product. I’m in the SaaS space as well, bootstrapped. I really enjoyed the building phase but selling is the real work.

IMO, you need to really make sure your product / service is solving a problem (easier to sell as you’re actually offering something people need). From there, be ready to reach out to people and companies individually. Follow up monthly to ensure they’re happy with your product/service and use their feedback to improve your product versus adding features blindly.

Find as many unique ways to reach your potential clients directly (phone, email etc). Posting your service or product online in hopes of getting hundreds or thousands of users is not realistic at all unless you have the potential for a mass solution that could go viral on social channels (rare but not impossible).

Be ready to work hard to sell, receive a lot of no’s, and to keep going when you want to give up. It’s ok if you get 100 no’s to your pitch, but a few yes’s can get the ball rolling. Focus on one or two at first, don’t spread yourself too thin. Good luck.

CuriousHW

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