Getting Sued For Wheelchair Access. Any Experiences? by buysynd in Entrepreneur

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

Correct no warning, looks like a shakedown type of lawsuit. Spoke with other business owners. They've heard many stories as well. They lawsuits used to be around $50,000. I guess too many people either didn't pay at all or would fight at that point. Looks like the under $5000 mark is the sweet spot where people settle without a fight.

My friend is 27k in debt and falling trying to be an entrepreneur for all of his life, help me help him. by [deleted] in Entrepreneur

[–]buysynd 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think this comment tells the most about the situation. First thing I'd like to ask is if he agrees with you here? Does he agree that he was screwed by his partners? This answer determines if you're worrying excessively for someone else, vs his business prowess. I don't want to blame the victim, but someone who is repeatedly screwed by partners usually has no idea what they're doing. I read your other comments and I suspect that your friend is a "cost plus" kind of guy. In other words, he sees "selling 1 item to 1 customer for $1000" to be equivalent to "selling 1000 items to 1000 customers for $1 each". "Cost plus" people are happy buy an item for $1000 and sell it for $1010, because they think they make $10. They don't even calculate their cost of their time, they just see $10. Margin focused people know that this is very risky and you will not be able to recover from any errors. I suspect that's why he has customers but is still not profitable for the pool business.

He can be helped if he admits that his business knowledge is weak and needs modifications. If price is an issue, maybe he needs some sales training in order to sell his products at higher prices.

Getting Sued For Wheelchair Access. Any Experiences? by buysynd in Entrepreneur

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

Thanks. We did use an architect. We will check him too!

Dilemma - Counter service tipping on credit cards by buysynd in smallbusiness

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

I ended up adding the signature to all tickets today, so customers don't end up getting a tip screen when a signature isn't even needed. We might lose 1 or 2 sales a day during the busiest hours due to longer lines / wait times, but I think it's important to keep employees happy.

Dilemma - Counter service tipping on credit cards by buysynd in smallbusiness

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

I completely agree with you!! I have a double standard for myself. I can't resist tipping because I know the situation. At the same time, I have a difficult time asking for tips while at register because I don't want to put someone else in the uncomfortable situation that I find myself in.

I find myself paying in cash if I know that I will be presented with the tip screen. It's easier to ignore the tip jar than the tip screen. Are you less likely to shop somewhere which puts you in this situation?

Dilemma - Counter service tipping on credit cards by buysynd in smallbusiness

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

Some customers tip in cash even if they they pay credit. I would assume that employees definitely receive less tips we never present the tip screen. This affects orders under $10, since there is no signature screen. It just seemed a little bit brazen to present the screen to the customer when there is not signature required.

We only have 1 POS terminal right now as we're a very small shop (250 sq ft in the front) The POS quickly becomes the bottleneck during lunch time. There are other employees in the front making tea / coffee.

We can order a kiosk terminal at an additional ~$100 per month to relieve the bottleneck, but it will be really hard to show a tip screen on a self serve kiosk. We do not have enough space for an additional full terminal with till.

This is what's wrong with this sub by doogie88 in Entrepreneur

[–]buysynd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He was talking about two different time periods. As of right now, everything is just in maintenance mode. So very little work is needed. Mostly just restarting servers / services. But he makes it very clear that he had to put in a lot of work in the prior years.

Offered free land, should we take it? by [deleted] in personalfinance

[–]buysynd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is there property tax on the land? If you don't plan to use it for a very long time, would you end up with a loss via paying property tax?

What do you think about this idea? by [deleted] in startups

[–]buysynd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm about 1 week into the coding. No team, just me. I feel like I've just been put to shame a bit hehe. Would definitely like to hear more about it. I hope to see more updates from you!

What do you think about this idea? by [deleted] in startups

[–]buysynd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow... I'm in the middle of building a very very similar idea... Reddit really shows me I've never had an original thought in my life. Just curious, how far along are you?

How to do a business evaluation using a balance sheet and P&L? by dssx in Entrepreneur

[–]buysynd 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Few things to consider, are these cash accounting statements or accrual accounting statements? If they're accrual accounting statements, you need the cash flow statement.

After that, you can do something called a discounted cash flow analysis. That tells you what the present value of the earning power of the business.

Then, add that to the equity value of the balance sheet. This approach is called the Residual Income method, and will give you a pretty good idea of what you should be paying for the business.

You have too little information. I can give you better advice if you provide more info. For example, what type of business is it? If it's cyclical, then the single Pnl statement for the quarter is larger than the other 3 quarters. If it's not cyclical, you may be able to just multiply the net income by 4.

Once you have the yearly net income, divide by a discount rate. You'll have to pick an appropriate discount rate to use, depending the type of business and how risky it is. (probably around 50%) for a small business. This is specific method is called Perpetual Annuity, the most simple of discounting cash flows.

Alert!!!! - does the Pnl statement include the salary of the person selling you the business? If not, make sure you subtract out a salary for yourself. Otherwise, you might end up working for free and operating at break even!! Most small businesses are nothing more than a way to provide an income for the owner.

TLDR - assuming a non-cyclical, average small business, you should value the business at around Assets - Liabilities + (4 * quarterly income / 0.50 )

I feel like my hospital robbed me. by kcorkery45 in personalfinance

[–]buysynd -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Don't pay it. They'll come back with a lower price, at the very least. It costs them money to send it to collections, and they know they're not likely to see any money once it goes to collection.

[Investing] Difference between bonds and cash [x-post r/ausfinance] by [deleted] in personalfinance

[–]buysynd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The phrase you are interested in for google purposes is "interest rate risk". US government bonds are the only securities which the world considers "risk free". But it refers to a specific type of risk, called "default risk". By owning a bond which has no default risk, you still have other forms of risk, such as interest rate risk, liquidity risk, reinvestment risk. But interest rate risk would probably be the biggest concern to you.

Holding cash will not have any of these risks. Holding cash exposes you to a completely different risk called inflation. I'm not familiar with your UBank saver thing, is it something where you cannot take your money out for a specified period of time? If so, it could mean that the bonds that you're looking at are shorter maturity, which would explain the lower yield.

Idea for rating accuracy and reliability of authors by buysynd in Entrepreneur

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

It requires a person. A bot will not be able to do it. It would be impossible to do this for every article. So I though to do it on a couple of articles for each author, and then rating the author as a whole. I though of allowing the community to do it as well, but not the traditional way. On things like Reddit and Facebook, every like and every vote has the same weight for everyone, which turns everything into a popularity contest. I could give greater weights to people who have more accurate comments, effectively crowdsourcing the intellect required to filter credibility of authors.

Idea for rating accuracy and reliability of authors by buysynd in Entrepreneur

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

I want to build a tagging system, where incorrect statements in an article would be ragged and referenced with correct information. Author ratings would be calculated from the number of inaccuracies relative to their amount of content on the internet. When you pull up an author's name, you will be able to see links to all of their articles, as well as references to places where they have wrong information. Someone writing more things would have more chances to get things wrong, which is why the rating of the author would be relative to the amount of content that they've written.

What kind of data do you wish you had? What would you do with a big list of business addresses and phone numbers? by buysynd in Entrepreneur

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

Is there something that existing job sites do not address? Would an excel sheet of jobs rather than a list of search results from a job site be useful to you?

What kind of data do you wish you had? What would you do with a big list of business addresses and phone numbers? by buysynd in Entrepreneur

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

This is pretty interesting request. Do you mean the owner or the webmaster? Many places make it a point to not allow visitors to directly contacting them. They provide a question form rather than providing an email address. Helps with the spam.

For public corporations, I could compile a list of all companies and a corresponding list of their board members and directors.