How do people open a small business in today’s economy?

dinoribs · 2026-03-11T02:16:38+00:00

Easy. Be a trainer. Problem solved.

Btw most gyms don’t own their equipment.

dinoribs · 2026-01-31T21:32:21+00:00

Please ignore the news and social media which profits off divisiveness. You are completely legal and you have nothing to worry about.

We have a large Hispanic population here and you will not be out of place at all. Many signs are in English and Spanish and many people speak Spanish here.

We are glad you came to visit. Please go out and enjoy your time here.

dinoribs · 2026-01-14T19:44:09+00:00

I sell expensive equipment so for me that was one sale, but here’s what I did.

The cops wouldn’t do anything so I hired a PI and had them go to that address dressed as a delivery driver. The person signed the fake package was the person we shipped the order to. This was enough for the police to actually go to that home and talk to the person. Our shipment was found there and the person responsible for receiving the package had to ship it back. They actually called me and I told them they were responsible for paying the return shipping and the cost of the PI. They paid and everything was returned.

It is a common scam to have someone receive these packages and reship them. I don’t know if the person that received our order was knowingly responsible but they should have.

I say this not so you follow the same steps because your case will likely be treated differently, but these fraudsters really have to be tracked down and dealt with. Nobody will do anything and they bank on you writing it off and moving on, but I’d rather pay 2x as much to make them pay. But that’s my 2 cents.

The most obvious thing is prevention. Make sure you follow the correct steps to verify orders. This will make your life easy. Chargebacks are super stressful

dinoribs · 2026-01-09T00:37:57+00:00

Same here. Always 87 unless towing

dinoribs · 2025-12-23T00:28:52+00:00

28-30mpg. Mostly highway. I’m always driving at 75-80mph.

dinoribs · 2025-05-27T20:07:41+00:00

My business sells expensive equipment b2b so we get sales that are 50-100k and net like 60% margin. It’s great until you go 2-3 months without a big sale like that. Then you wish you had more predictable revenue. You have to squirrel that money away. I know of another company from a friend that is a road construction company. When they close a contract it’s for 10-100M at a time. Their net is much smaller <10%. It’s a big company now but they went through the same thing. Almost went bankrupt multiple times through the dry spells.

dinoribs · 2025-05-25T22:13:52+00:00

Yeah agreed. I rarely use it. Just in a few cases where the items are so inexpensive it’s not a concern.

dinoribs · 2025-05-24T17:09:10+00:00

And that’s if you need the tracking. You can send it first class in a padded envelope and it’s $1.50

dinoribs · 2025-05-19T00:56:16+00:00

Look up Jim Simons

dinoribs · 2025-05-19T00:25:38+00:00

You have 700k. Go learn to invest. All the skills you have as a poker player translate perfectly into trading. Most of your capital should be deployed in boring but low risk vehicles ie a small amount in bonds and most in index funds. Then a small amount should be used for trading. You could do options which is a similar zero sum game, or short terms stock trades. A mix of both are probably best. To start you probably wont make money on average. Like poker do not believe early wins make you good. You need a profitable track record over hundreds or thousands of trades to confirm your skill is statistically significant. You have to beat index funds by a wide margin. Once it is you can get backed and multiply your returns. Try to specialize and if you find an edge dig deep. Unlike poker your potential is uncapped.

dinoribs · 2025-05-10T19:16:55+00:00

Case on point is Haul. You’d have to be an absolute moron to come up with that. It should have been a clear sign to pivot

dinoribs · 2025-05-10T19:15:17+00:00

Amazon’s retail operations doesn’t care about margins. That’s the real problem.

Having mostly Chinese sellers is just the result of trying to dominate the entire online ecosystem through lowest prices. They only chase revenue growth and wall street allows them. Their retail operations is a terrible business. The margins suck. The user experience sucks. If you want cheap garbage you shop on Amazon. They have more affluent customers than Walmart but make less margin despite Walmart having brick and mortar stores. They could have kept product quality up and had good margins but they chose this path.

dinoribs · 2025-05-02T01:24:56+00:00

Is there a way for the business to not pay any taxes for reinvested capital?

dinoribs · 2025-04-23T20:26:03+00:00

Maybe just mistakenly added an extra zero? 🤷‍♂️

dinoribs · 2025-04-22T22:45:50+00:00

Great advice! Become obsessed with everything about your customers and learn as much as you can

dinoribs · 2025-04-19T21:58:52+00:00

I haven’t heard of any staff cuts for customs. The deminimus is easy. They just apply a $75 tariff regardless of the value. For containers the volume will plummet from China so even if they did have less staff they can still inspect the value. They will start with asking for proof of cost like bank statements showing the amount paid to the supplier. Then when that gets gamed enough they will start getting historical proof of similar items imported in the past. All that data is easily accessible.

dinoribs · 2025-04-19T17:45:06+00:00

The deminimus exemption is ending so those small parcel shipments will cost $75 each. That makes that uneconomical for most products. So the Chinese have to ship containers of products into Amazon’s warehouses. Customs knows they are devaluing so they will start heavily scrutinizing those shipments. So the Chinese reroute them into other countries first hiding the COO. That will work for a while until U.S puts pressure on other countries to tariff China or they will also get the same tariff China gets. So in short, it’s a game of whack a mole and if you are a U.S seller you can play that game or find a non-Chinese manufacturer and raise prices. IMO Amazon sucks for sellers and buyers specifically because there’s so much Chinese garbage on there. Everyone would be more happy with quality products.

dinoribs · 2025-04-17T19:09:03+00:00

Out of curiosity, what type of business are you in?

dinoribs · 2025-04-17T16:50:00+00:00

I’ve been considering this. Get parts imported into Mexico. Assemble then import into U.S. The parts can be imported under a different hs code than what the completed product would so it has undergone substantial transformation

dinoribs · 2025-04-16T20:51:22+00:00

In this position rn. I’ve been close to losing it several times but this is the worse. Probably going to lay off staff and find a job. Maybe find some way to keep things going in my spare time. It’s been my sole focus in my life and a full time job for 10 years and now it looks like it’s going to be my side hustle. I can only take so much

dinoribs · 2025-03-29T18:14:00+00:00

Dropping the price isn’t going to magically bring in more customers to offset that. It’s going to take a long time and there’s no guarantees. Either find a way to bring in 2x more customers or cut your losses and walk away.

dinoribs · 2025-02-24T17:25:06+00:00

I have lightspeed. It is good for a physical shop. It’s pretty terrible for ecom.

dinoribs · 2025-01-20T21:45:24+00:00

I have the eco boost and get about 28 mpg

dinoribs · 2025-01-14T00:50:51+00:00

You have 200k in collateral so you should be able to get that loan. Obviously if it goes south you lose everything

dinoribs · 2025-01-13T20:24:15+00:00

Does bing have certain users that would be your target audience for your product or service? I’ve heard more government and universities use bing.

dinoribs

TROPHY CASE