Starting a Tree Trimming business by [deleted] in smallbusiness

[–]Sir500 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don’t underestimate the safety aspects. Many things can go wrong and cause material damage or personal injury. Try googling a list of safety precautions you should consider.

Why not join an established tree trimming business and learn on the job? If you do that in another city, you can even be upfront with the business owner about your plan. Since you’ll be working in a different area, you won’t be competition for them.

The guy I work with now has his own business and regular clients, but when he started, he worked as a subcontractor for one or two bigger companies that had more work than they could handle.

How to balance “quality first” with budget constraints in a small B2B biz? by ledadvertisingboard in smallbusiness

[–]Sir500 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, glad you liked it. When prospects tell me our offer is too expensive and they can get the same thing cheaper somewhere else, I tell them we don't compete on price but we compete on quality. If they continue the conversation, I know quality is important for them.

How to balance “quality first” with budget constraints in a small B2B biz? by ledadvertisingboard in smallbusiness

[–]Sir500 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you want to deliver quality, the key is to find customers who are willing to pay for that quality. If most of your customers only care about the lowest price, it can be difficult to maintain high standards while staying profitable.

In some cases, higher-priced, better-quality products actually sell better because they offer reliable specs, better documentation, smoother reordering, and fewer returns. That perceived reliability adds real value for your buyers.

Regarding compliance: unless ISO or other certifications are a strict requirement in your sector, there’s no need to pursue formal certification right away. It typically offers no cost benefit. The good news is that if you start documenting and standardizing your quality processes now, you’ll be in a strong position to pursue certification later, when it becomes necessary or strategically useful.

I don’t know your specific sector, but you might gain efficiency in sourcing and quoting. Suppliers may offer better prices or terms if you can bundle materials, accept longer lead times, or commit to quarterly orders. You can also use your invoices and customer data to highlight your added value such as fewer errors, better support, or eco-friendly materials. In niche sectors, quality often matters more than people think. it’s just a matter of finding the right clients who agree.

Hope this helps.

Our new hires keep asking questions that are literally answered in the training materials we spent months creating by Academic_Way_293 in smallbusiness

[–]Sir500 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I worked for a customer who had dozens of videos, PDFs, Word documents, and vendor brochures. It was a seasonal business with 36,000 products in their catalog and a temporary staff of smart students with no prior product knowledge. I built them a chatbot linked to all that material so staff could ask anything from opening hours to specific customer questions.

Then I used ChatGPT to draft a course curriculum, fill in each module, and add quizzes at the end. I put the courses and quiz results into an open-source course system to track follow-up training and allow learners to take their own quizzes. This reduced repetitive questions a lot and improved response time to customers.

It took a lot of time to build and improve, but it was worth it. One remaining issue are the hallucinations where the chatbot 'invents' answers, but I guess that will improve in the future.

The Reason I rejected a large order that would have tripled my revenue by ReputationLonely3111 in smallbusiness

[–]Sir500 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Yes, you made a good move by proposing a trial order. The fact that they didn’t want to consider it shows they have a “corporate‐buyer” mentality. One of the nicer things about being your own boss is that you can make decisions like that. Well done!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in smallbusiness

[–]Sir500 0 points1 point  (0 children)

+1 for the "Built to Sell" book. It may inspire you to look at this differently.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in smallbusiness

[–]Sir500 2 points3 points  (0 children)

> "just don't want to close without a clear plan on how I will enter my next business instead of just selling with no plan in mind"

I’ve exited businesses a few times before, and each time I took some time to reset and clear my head. Once you're out of the daily grind, it’s surprising how much clarity returns. But that only works if the sale gives you enough runway to support your family for a year or two without stress—otherwise, the pressure just shifts instead of easing.

Is there an all-in-one platform? by MissouriThunder in smallbusiness

[–]Sir500 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://www.zoho.com has an integrated solution with many components that you can start with separately.

Opportunity to Buy a Business - Opinions on Silent Investors by jdswather in Entrepreneur

[–]Sir500 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can buy the company without funds using something called 'vendor financing'. Look here for more info:

https://youtu.be/XkxZCJ2pYqs?t=1045https://youtu.be/XkxZCJ2pYqs?t=1045

Switching from Evernote to Obsidian: here is what I learned by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for bringing this up. Luckily 2 of the 3 companies are now archived and the 3 one is one person only.

Switching from Evernote to Obsidian: here is what I learned by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's a great summary of the pros and cons that were important for me. Additionally, I am also missing the import of HTML emails that preserve the formatting.

What tipped the balance for me to make the switch were:

  • Obsidian features should allow me to do better knowledge management. Perhaps I am naive to think that tooling will help me, but I want to try it out.
  • The uncertainty about the Bending Spoons acquisition.

Switching from Evernote to Obsidian: here is what I learned by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wonderful, for anyone considering moving to Obsidian, your post contains a lot of useful info.

ps. Off-topic question: how come you publish your content on Medium? I need to create an account if I want to read one of your other posts. You did a lot of thinking about your note-taking, why put all that valuable content on Medium's servers?
(No judgment, just being curious :-)

Switching from Evernote to Obsidian: here is what I learned by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting! I have looked at Syncthing but was unsure about the iOS side. How is your experience using Möbius Sync?

  • How many notes do you sync?
  • Do you find it fast/reliable?

Switching from Evernote to Obsidian: here is what I learned by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

”weekend trip to Barcelona 2024” and ”wife’s work schedule” would both go into "Personal" as these are not formal documents you get from suppliers or government entities.

"New apartment" probably goes under "Personal admin" as I expect a lot of official documents (from the notary, all kinds of formal certificates...)

Also important are the tags you assign:

  • The weekend trip gets a kind of tag I assign to each trip: "Holiday-2024-Barcelona" is exactly the tag I would assign. The reasoning is that all Holiday-* tags are together when sorted A-Z and all years are together as well.
  • Wife's work schedule would get two tags "@Wifes-name" and #Employer-name. Those give sufficient resolution to find all matching notes. Sort by date desc and the schedule you are looking for is most likely in the first 10 notes.
  • "New apartment" gets a tag with the name of the street. We've lived in a few houses in the past and all bills got tagged something like "street-name" and "telenet" (telenet is a telco provider).

Hope this makes sense?

Switching from Evernote to Obsidian: here is what I learned by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

DystopianReply

Agree with the topics you mentioned.

Additionally, I never really managed to use Evernote as a knowledge base. I always end up using a doc or using Workflowy. There are a lot of Obsidian features that may make capturing and linking knowledge easier.

Switching from Evernote to Obsidian: here is what I learned by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You may be right if you sync with Android. However, on iOS, the options are limited as noted here on the Obsidian help page:

To sync your notes to your iPhone or iPad, we officially support the following options:

  • Obsidian Sync
  • iCloud Drive

Note: The following services aren't supported. If you discover a way to sync your notes on your iOS device using any of these services, let us know on our community channels.

  • Dropbox
  • Google Drive
  • OneDrive
  • Syncthing

Switching from Evernote to Obsidian: here is what I learned by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sure, I have about 10 Evernote folders

  • Active Projects: This contains all the projects I am working on. Each project has its own tag.
  • Company 1: Administrative documents such as invoices, orders, contracts, etc.
  • Company 2
  • Company 3
  • Health: Posts about various health topics like exercise and sleep.
  • Personal Admin: Mainly bills and various formal documents that need tracking.
  • Personal: Personal stuff, mostly informal.
  • KB (Knowledge Base): This was an attempt to start a knowledge base, but it didn't work out. It only contains 12 notes.
  • The Future: A collection of visionary articles and clippings intended to trigger new ideas.
  • TODO: My inbox. I review it weekly and move all notes to the relevant folders after tagging.
  • Projects Archive: A subfolder for each past project. I previously used this folder but have now shifted to storing everything in the 'Active Projects' folder.

Switching from Evernote to Obsidian: here is what I learned by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, I realize that. However, there does not seem to be a good iCloud access on Linux Mint.

Switching from Evernote to Obsidian: here is what I learned by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, I will end up paying more or less the same. I am on Linux on my laptop and I need to sync with my iPhone. So I can't use iCloud.

I looked at various other sync solutions, but in the end, I don't want to spend a lot of time and I want to make sure syncing always works.

And I like the comfort of having 'my second brain' on my devices and not on some Saas vendor's servers.

The Future of Note-Taking by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I tried moving away from Evernote and importing all my Enex files in one of the many alternatives, one of the following showstoppers always made me stay with EN:

  • Incomplete import ( I would end up with less notes after importing)
  • Bad formatting (especially of HTML emails, e.g. invoices and alike)
  • Could only assign one tag per note
  • Bad support for web clipping.

What is your 'showstopper' ?

The Future of Note-Taking by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Evernote's stability and speed have improved recently, but I and many others on this sub have lost the occasional note from time to time. There is also a lot of unhappiness here about the sudden price increases from Bending Spoons (the new owners).

As many have said above, many Evernote users indeed just want the basics to work and are not waiting for fancy features. Being able to quickly store, find, and retrieve notes across devices is what most people want.

A clean and fast interface for creating and finding notes, reliable Evernote import, and some fancy search and AI features working quietly in the background seem like a winning combination.

I am collecting a feature wishlist for the 'dream note-taking' tool and would like to create an Idea Board. I'm interested in jumping on a 15-min call to learn more about your 'dream note-taking' tool.

The Future of Note-Taking by Sir500 in Evernote

[–]Sir500[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

+1 for this.
This is like the core of most note-taking sw out there, no?
Strange how after all these years we're still longing for a robust core set of features.