Are you a business owner?

[Rocketman]

I have been putting together a business for about 2-1/2 years now. We're just launching and have started getting some sales. This is a business where we manufacture product (milled wood plantation shutter components) and are marketing to manufactures/fabricators of custom interior shutters.

Anyone else ever start a business? If so - I have a couple of questions for you.

1. Did you fund it yourself or get outside funding?

2. Do you have partners? If so - how did you decide to divvy up ownership of the company?

3. What pitfalls have you discovered in your business practices?

4. What elements made your business successful?

This might be uninteresting for some... but I'm just curious what and how you've done. I have other questions -but I don't want to take too much of your time.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[fsusux]

I started a TV/Electronics & small appliance repair business about 10 years ago with  a partner.  We funded it ourselves as the startup overhead was minimal. The pitfalls that we encountered were having to deal with idiot customers and the eventual growing mentality of "Don't fix it, it's cheaper to buy a new one."  

For us advertising was our biggest challenge.  How to best spend our $ to get folks in the door.  We never sank to doing anything gimmicky, just good yellow page ads and the occasional newspaper run.  We also contacted the business editor at our local paper and were a featured small business a couple of times.

We weren't getting rich, but were making a comfortable living.

I sold my half about 2 1/2 years ago to my partner and made out better than I started.  I now work for a company as Field Engineer in the banking industry.  My former partner just shut his doors about 6 months ago after not being able to find a suitable employee to pick up the slack that I left behind (we were a 2 man operation), he was still making money but was tired of doing everything by himself.

The advice I have is very simple, and if you are partnering with a friend and want to remain friends you MUST follow this advice:  GET A LAWYER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (did I put enough !! in there?)  Put EVERYTHING in writing.  Depending on how large you particular endeavor is, your agreement should end up in the 15-20 page area to start with.  You have to answer all those 'what if' questions in writing!  And after you've gotten going you must re-visit the agreement and ammend it on a regular basis (at least once a year or whenever more 'what if' questions arise).

In the end, I and my partner left the small business world with no regrets (and no financial ruin!) and because of careful planning and having EVERYTHING in writing, we remain best friends to this day.

Hopefully this has been helpful and has made you think about some things you hadn't before.


Jason



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[05BusaLe]

I agree with Jason, put everything in writing. I had what I thought was a friend and we went in to bussiness together, he just ran it to the ground with his spend spend spend way of living. So I just walked away and now dont ever want to see this person ever!