Small/Medium Business Owners

[olllllo]

I'm curious.

1) What industry are you in?
2) What is the short-term outlook?
3) How will you weather out the longer-term projected economic slowdown?
4) Other insights you can provide...

TIA

 

[Bedlam]

I'm curious.

1) What industry are you in?
2) What is the short-term outlook?
3) How will you weather out the longer-term projected economic slowdown?
4) Other insights you can provide...

TIA

1. Medicine, private practice.
2. Poor. I took home about $40K last year. Most of that profit didn't come from the practice, but instead from working "locum tenens" in another state on long weekends and holidays.
3. I'm taking a teaching position and closing my office.
4. I'm not the best person to ask, as I am pretty jaded about now. I opened my practice (solo) in order to give my best shot at practicing medicine the way I thought it should be done. What I've discovered is that if you don't run patients through on an assembly line, you won't make enough to keep the lights on. Insurance and the big boys have got it all sewn up at this point. I know it will just get worse as the recession deepens, as my fee-for-service patients will have to bail. I happened up on the teaching position and I'm real excited about that, but feel like a big fat failure on this whole private practice. I've lost serious money here and will take me years to recover.

But that's the breaks.

 

[cheezydemon]

Yeah Bedlam, I quit my last doctor because she ran in and out so fast I didn't get to tell her all I wanted to and felt rushed. F&%* that. Sorry to hear it.

My wife is an artist and runs her own small business. She now has other people reproducing and selling her work, so she just gets 50% with no new work. Her overhead is nil and I pay the bills(lucky me)

Her income may slow as art suffers in hard times, but mine should actually go up.

The best advice seems to be "keep a day job"
OR "Marry someone who has a steady job"

 

[arturo7]

1) distribution of size reduction equipment for plastics recycling
2) bleak
3) plastics recycling is on the upswing
4) specialize; identify and attack niche markets

 

[david_42]

Consumer electronics. We've just started selling and it's hard to tell. Too many snarky bloggers that just don't get the basic ideas or grab and re-post someone else's snarky comments because they're too lazy to make up their own. Mind you, none of these people have ever seen or used the product. But, we are scheduled for a shoot 2/7 that will air on CNN. Could make a big difference.

 

[Fish]

1) Architectural Illustrator
2) Not Great
3) taking on drafting as a side line
4) Residential work seems dead unless you are in the > $2million market and that does not seem to be affected. Non residential work is still going strong but I do worry that there is a lag with the big projects that may have been in the works for years.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

I'm curious.

1) What industry are you in?
2) What is the short-term outlook?
3) How will you weather out the longer-term projected economic slowdown?
4) Other insights you can provide...

TIA

1.) Custom Home Theater Design and Installations + Acoustic Analysis
2.) Dissolution post tax filinig.
3.) Getting the f#$k out.
4.) Market is too small and saturated in my area. Business plan requires a Brick and Mortar establishment to be even remotely competitive/sustainable.

At startup I had absolutely no intention of going retail. The BP was strictly installations for commercial projects (Hotels, Board Rooms, etc...) and slowly expanded into a pre-wiring service with Home Builders in an attempt to keep food on the table. Acoustic analysis and treatment was always part of the model but I quickly found that an Okies mindset is that "Bigger & Better means louder" and then the room goes away. So that became too hard a sell for most projects and the really good commissions from those who "got it" and had the cash to "get it" had absolutely no interest in a small company having a personal interest and ultimately got everything from the big box atht brings it all in from China.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Consumer electronics. We've just started selling and it's hard to tell. Too many snarky bloggers that just don't get the basic ideas or grab and re-post someone else's snarky comments because they're too lazy to make up their own. Mind you, none of these people have ever seen or used the product. But, we are scheduled for a shoot 2/7 that will air on CNN. Could make a big difference.

What's your brand card look like?

Will you also be offering any "Value Added Services" to the products (HAA Audio or NSF Video Calibration)?

Best of luck to you. I gave it a crack here for 3 years and got no-where. Toward the end I went through a christmas season without a single customer and that hurt. Wife became impregnated (my fault) and it was time to get a steady check in the mail.

It's been 2 years now and my phone rings more afterwards than it did while I was actively seeking customers but the commissions still arent enough to justify the overhead of a storefront. Lately, I just get a lot of "Joe Smoe wired it and now the garage opens when he pushes play on the DVD" kinda crap. The extra cash is nice but now the baby is 17 months and I have no time for it.

That and I am sick of peoples dusty eff'ing attics. These people never seem to want wiring done in the winter. It's like they wait until it's 100*F in the middle of summer.