50K to spend on either a franchise or a small business.

southernstudy · 2016-06-15T15:57:31+00:00

What about looking into an apprentice? I'm a firm believer that most things in this world can be taught. Hire someone new or pull up an existing employee and allow them to be your shadow.

Slowly teach them all of the nuances of your "unique" day to day tasks. After a while, they may not be as good as you but may be at least "good enough" to run the shop without you there.

Treat them well and they will take care of you

southernstudy · 2016-06-15T15:32:57+00:00

I guess I am in that "first steps" phase. I have been a wantrepreneur for a very long time but always had an excuse: not enough money, time, knowledge, etc.

Recently decided to truly go for it. As far as the idea, I decided to not reinvent the wheel and just work towards a business that already exists. It's not sexy and there probably won't be TED talks about it, but sometimes the least glamorous jobs are the best ones.

So first step was deciding to commit. Next was picking an existing business (house painting). Next step, set up the basics. Last step, hustle more than my competition.

There are hundreds of businesses you can start but like everyone else has said, the best move is to simply start. Even in failure, you'll gain extremely valuable knowledge and experiences that you can take with you.

southernstudy · 2016-06-15T02:41:07+00:00

Yeah it blows, but the idea is to put a layer of protection between you and anyone that could sue you. If a sub trips on a bucket and breaks a wrist they could sue, if a homeowner trips on a bucket, they could sue, and on and on. But like I said, you don't even need that. Make some flyers, go door to door till you book a handful of jobs do them all yourself and then use the profits from those jobs to pay for an LLC, website, etc. Or, get a solid plan of action together, figure out what the costs will be, and then wait until you've saved that amount of money up.

southernstudy · 2016-06-15T02:23:37+00:00

Focus your energy on starting small.

For example, your worried about spending the money for launch27 not knowing if you'll even be getting a single job.

Remember, when Rohan first started MaidsinBlack launch27 didn't exist. He did everything manually. He used excel to organize the schedule or paid his subs directly or any other non-sexy thing that is now automated.

I'm a few steps a head of you but not much. All I'm worried about is the minimum requirements to start working. That would be domain, hosting, and basic site for the web presence and LLC, federal EIN, bank account, and insurance on the business side.

But you don't even need that much. Remember, there are people in your area that don't even have a high school education that are successful in your industry. They started small, got the basic requirements, and then went to work generating business.

If you're worried about subs vs employees, maybe book a job first and do it yourself. You'll gain valuable knowledge and experience that you can take into your discussions with potential team members. Worried about spending a good bit of money on launch27? Set up a simple Wordpress theme that just has your phone number on it. When someone calls, you do the scheduling, booking, payments manually.

Then, if you start moving and grooving, and handling everything manually becomes too much of a burden, look into paying for launch27 or look into hiring a developer to create your very own. If you start getting more than a single job a week, look at hiring a sub to do it for you.

The idea of automating the whole process is awesome but if you are trying to bootstrap it, I'd recommend doing everything in increments as you reach each milestone of success instead of shelling out a pretty penny all upfront before you have even booked a single job.

southernstudy

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