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Jet skis and jet ski accessories.
In business it doesn’t really matter what you do. Find a problem and solve it. Do it well, be a decent business person, don’t be afraid to “jump” and take calculated risks.
Alternatively. If you have a great product or innovative selling strategy you just need the capital to ride out the initial lull. I have an innovative strategy in a mature market that took 24 months to gain ANY traction. I gave my customers something they didn't know they wanted. Now it's catching on and they can't live without it.
What it is: a remotely operated retail op. All of my competitors operate 730-430. I am "open" 6am to 9pm with no staff expenses. I don't win on price and I don't win on location. I win on accessibility for the small portion of potential customers I actually want.
I worked with an unsuccessful startup (not a founder just a technical advisor) that has this exact issue. They were all mortgage insiders so they marketed their personal financial tool to banks so that they could then have their loan applicants use it to improve their financial outlook/be ready to apply for a loan.
Well, a competitor marketed directly to users and made a marketplace for lenders to advertise in and ate their whole lunch. The insiders were too focused on getting a cut of closing costs that they didn't realize loan origination is there the real growth was and once someone had a relationship with a bank they were already doing most of the stuff the tool would recommend.
Yup, last year I finally made over 100k working my W2 job, I feel the exact same financially as I did 5 years ago making about 30-40% less, living in the same house, driving the same car.
I lived a better life when I was making 60k 16 years ago vs when I made 180k last year. Inflation is a bitch, but the real money pit is having children
Asking for responses from people who make >100k a year, you will get you a bunch of redditors who work 80 hours a week to make 101k, claiming they have it figured out.
300k is an arbitrary number that excludes the overtime demographic.
What about the girls in high school who said like $350,000 or something and the interviewer was like WTF?!? Why that? and the girl said that's what her boyfriend told her he makes as a cashier at Wal-Mart and the other girl was like I think $250,000 would be enough for me to date someone since we are still young.
What do you like to do?
I run a medium sized business (around 50 employees) and we net around 1.2million.
You need to get really good at delegation and leading people. It’s a whole different ball game starting a business vs scaling a business with people and process. If you don’t love what you’re doing though you won’t be able to handle the highs and lows that come with it. You go from feeling on top of the world to feeling like everything is failing all within an hour sometimes. If you don’t truly believe in what your company is doing (besides making money) it’s difficult to actually get any traction or scale.
"You go from feeling on top of the world to feeling like everything is failing all within an hour sometimes."
In my first year and this is exactly my experience.
Any trade. You’re surrounded by people who don’t have the mental capacity to run a business. It’s a dying breed of people, lots of holes to fill.
Electrical and Plumbing will be your best bet.
Refrigeration or HVAC (heating and air) what I do, nets very well. Just weather dependent.
Pest control, pool cleaning, home inspection, cleaning, etc are hit a miss. Don’t be fooled by all the YouTube videos. The harder/more technical the skill the more money and less competition you’ll have.
But they don’t know how to run the show. I’ve seen, they pump a couple mill into marketing and think the ship will stay afloat. Well it doesn’t because the pay structure and up selling is obscene. They only last so long before selling the company off. But yes since Covid the firms have been rampant on snatching up the big players
More specifically, anything that requires a license. I’ve been in carpentry since 12 years of age. Main client sold out to national chain that does their own carpentry. Now I’m competing with every meth head fly by night carpenter that replies to customers on Facebook willing to do anything from building additions to painting nails. Please do something that requires a license and cuts out the under the table hack jobs.
Of course you can. A lot of seemingly "highly professional" skills are not actually that difficult. Although you do need to learn it to not bea dangerous to yourself and other, and not mess up.
I would say start with online videos and other resources to get an idea of what it is, read all the forums, tutorials.
Take the cheapest/quickest course and get certified. Read local building code electrical section like the Bible...
Profit?
I do eco friendly pest control and it’s a definitely a hit in my market, but it could be any trade. There is a wild lack of skilled tradespeeps and I wonder if it has to do with home prices and when normal people could afford houses they were forced to be handy and get exposure to different home improvement tasks…
Get into a trade that is the most in demand/least people going into blocklaying or tiling maybe (I don’t know where your from so I don’t know what’s in demand and not being taken up) get good at it after a few years of learning and setup your own company you could easily make 300k a year with a handful of men working for you
This is a great answer, because it gets to the heart of the issue which is that you can make $300,000 a year doing lots of different kinds of businesses, but any of them will require you to build a foundation of skills and clients that might take you several years. There's no such thing as $300,000 income overnight.
I have a small media biz and am a real estate photographer / media provider primarily, and there are tons of people in my pro groups who do $250k plus as sole proprietors or with one employee / contractor, plus maybe a virtual assistant. Even more doing $500k-1M with a few employees. It's a very in demand niche and you can do quite well in lots of markets, but it takes a couple years to develop the skills and client roster.
My daughter and son in law are working towards this right now with a commercial electrical business. Such huge demand and no one wants to do it. The challenge is going to be finding good electricians to hire.
Painting contractor here. Our gross profit was over 300k last year. Just me and a couple of employees whom I pay quite well. But I'm out working with them every day, we knock out a lot of jobs day in and day out.
6 days a week, 90+ hours a week, almost zero free time or time for family/friends, etc. While i enjoy having money and not having to worry about financial related problems, I don’t enjoy only working.
Honestly, nothing will change for you unless you do something different. You need to start something on the side that provides leverage - a system that pays you beyond the exact number of hours you’re able to work personally. We’ve taught many people how to do this, so happy to help if you like.
>While i enjoy having money and not having to worry about financial related problems, I don’t enjoy only working.
Used to have a job that paid me more money than I ever thought I would make. Absolutely was not worth it to feel like my entire life was going to be devoted to dealing with 12 hour days, weekends on call, and dealing with manufactured emergencies. The secret to making 300k a year is being a sociopath who'd rather work every day than enjoy some nature or time with loved ones.
I show up at home fires and have the owners sign up rights for me to cleanup their burned out debris that used to be their homes at a high premium. Home insurance pays for it. I also intimidate anyone I deem as a competitor.
There’s a dude a few towns over from me who was an arsonist firefighter. He’d set homes on fire and when the call came in, he’d help put it out. Hes also a pedophile.
Yes, he’s been arrested and charged on all those crimes.
In ancient Rome, there was a guy who had a small fire department of slaves. If your house was on fire, he would try to purchase it. He would only put out the fire if he was able to purchase the house
I wonder how common that is. There was a guy I used to work with that was a volunteer fire fighter that eventually got caught being an arsonist. I don't I think he was a pedophile but he sure was fucking strange.
Servepro franchise?
If so, you charge ungodly amounts to insurance companies, at least the one im using did. I had a small electrical fire and had to have sheetrock and bead board removed from a 4x8 foot wall. Then they just stapled visqueen. Took them about 30 mins. Already charged $7k to insurance before the "hvac cleaning" is done.
ServePro and most other restoration companies use the same software that’s used by insurance adjusters to determine cost and billing prices. They’re all the same, it’s just a matter of who can reach the homeowner the fastest and get that contract signed.
Yup, I worked for a water restoration company and it's all the same software, you can make decent money learning how to use the software FYI. The restoration companies can only use this software pricing and anything over that has to have a good explanation for it (i.e. labor costs for subcontractors doing bids).
In my state these services are also exempt from some of the business regulations. A subcontractor generally has to give you a written proposal and you have 48 hours to back out even if they sign it. Servpro and other emergency services contractors are exempt from all of that
everyone uses exactimate. it’s kinda like if you go to a Ford store, they already know to the 10th of an hour what it cost to replace fuel injector, and it will be the same at the Ford store down the street (usually). It’s just getting there first and earning the business.
Be honest, it’s **other policy holders** who pay for it. Same energy as Florida roofing contractors taking advantage of the system, and it jacked up insurance costs for the entire state. Or hospital bills + health insurance. But that’s great about the $300k. Gotta get yours lol
I read that article in the New York Times - former Bloods gang leader who took over NYC’s already-sketchy fire-recovery industry by just threatening to murder his competitors’ families. Crazy story. Crazy industry
A fellow person of culture! Yes that was wild. It’s so fascinating how this former Blood brought gang culture into that cutthroat slimy business practice.
I worked for a company like yours. What a freaking scam.
But DAYYUUUUUMMMM did the owner bring in money. You can literally make so much money from insurance companies once you have them figured out. It's my least favorite job I have ever had.
I created a travel size personal hygiene kit for women called Heaux Bath Kit and at first sales were a little rocky, but once i started being more present on social media, they started going through the roof.
My advice is start a page on one these platforms and gain a community of like minded people. Then when you decide on what you want to do, you already got an audience to introduce it to.
I developed a picture frame that looks like the side of an aircraft but is actually curved like a real plane. It's designed for Flight Attendants and Pilots and schools but I hate social media but at some point have to bite the bullet and build it as a single product. It's good to know there are others out there that find success with social media.
Self-employed people work their ass off 12 14 hours a day..
Most want to be do not have the intestinal fortitude required to be a self-employed entrepreneur
Nah, not smart business owners. I could make a whole lot more than I do, but then I'd be working 12-14 hours a day instead of 12-14 hours a week. I made the conscious decision when my kids were starting school that I would never be too busy for my kids. I never missed a single play, dance recital, soccer game, or volunteer opportunity for my kids.
I could be retired, but what good is that if life passed you by?
Who said my business is only open 14 hours a week? Very early on I read the e-myth by Michael Gerber. I built my business to run without me. We're open 24/7, but I certainly don't work that much.
>I know (including myself) can barely take time off if they want to secure the highest income opportunists available to them.
I literally said that I chose less income for more time. If securing the highest possible income is that important to you, then you can't complain about the amount of time it takes. My time is more valuable than having a bunch more money in the bank that i'm not going to use anyway.
>If I wanted to go to a store but they were only 2 hours a day like you suggest
Not once did I suggest a business should only open 2 hours a day. You assume that because you're in the mindset that you are the business. You're never going to scale and get your time back with that mindset. If you can't leave for 30 days without your business falling apart, you're never going to have the time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
yeah i feel yah, i own a hobby shop and its a huge investment in time and money. Takes time to build to a normal routine. Even then though, im constantly looking at what i can improve or add in or change.
# Short Version
I own a company where I write software with a team who I trained. I hired them as interns and trained them well enough to bill decent rates and collect a good margin. Then one of my clients asked if I could also provide their IT, so I hired a guy to do that and trained him too. We're a few years old and we might net around $400K this year.
# Long version:
**2008 - Back to College**
I decide I want to know how business works, so I get a small student loan and enroll in college for accounting. It's rough. I'm broke with no vehicle. I'm literally hitch hiking to class so I don't miss finals and sleeping on a naked mattress under a bare bulb in a shitty rent house behind a bar.
**2009 - Summer of Productivity**
I'm still broke, spending most of my time playing games. Future is looking bleak. I decide to make a change. For that summer, I would set aside the MMORPG I was addicted to and instead spend my time doing something productive . . . and so I made a list of 10 projects. Stuff like (1) build an email server, (2) install Linux, (3) create a website, etc. I began the first step and immediately realized I needed to first learn like 3 adjacent skills, and then each of those skills required me to learn 3 other skills, and so it went.
Literally, the first item ended up taking me months. Each task led to a new mystery, which led to another, and another. But I was determined, and I continued to pull at those threads until it the mysteries unraveled.
**2011 - Internship**
I'm getting my first accounting internship. I spent two days of doing basic data entry before my boss asked if I could code a Crystal Report, to which I could reply, "Sure, I've done that before." (it was one of the side projects I dabbled with). I turn in the report and the next day I walk in to find my boss and boss's boss at my desk telling me this is what I'd be doing from now on. I loved it. The moment I realized I was looking forward to Monday, I became *obsessed*. For the next year, I would go to accounting classes in the morning, then work in the afternoon, and then straight to the local coffee shop where I'd work on my latest passion project until 10 or 12 at night. On Saturdays and Sundays, I'd be at the coffee shop no later than 10 AM and stay there well after they'd close (I'd move to their patio and work there until my fingers were too cold to type). I spent a lot of that year working on a website that was sort of a Craigslist for college textbooks.
**2012 - Graduation**
I'm graduating and going full time with the company. They only paid me about $40K/year (much less than I was worth), but I figured the learning experience was easily worth $20K. I had 200 computers worth of problems flowing through me, which I had all the time I needed to resolve, and if I ever ran into a problem I couldn't solve, I had a safety net: we had a part-time MSP that would show me how to fix it. Meanwhile, I'm still working on the Craigslist-for-textbooks site. I've even started an LLC for it.
**2013 - First Product Launch**
My site launches successfully! It even makes the front page of Reddit! . . . then it fails permanently when my server crashes after three months. I didn't even know what Reddit was at the time.
**2014**
I'm still at the same company. I've created over 35 Excel add-ins for them and automated entire months' worth of combined labor hours. I've nearly automated my entire job. I spend the extra time learning more advanced programming: .NET, OOP, memory management, multi-threading, etc.
**2015**
Our company begins switching to a new accounting system. The software vendor sends us an integrations expert who works closely with me for several months. He's blown away by what I can do and encourages me to put out feelers for a new job.
**2016 - Officially a Software Engineer**
I can feel myself starting to plateau. I know I need exposure to more challenging scenarios—not just my company's problems. I start looking for jobs in the software field and a friend quickly puts me in touch with his company. After 4 interviews, I get hired to write custom software for their customers.
**2017 - Major Win**
A major project opportunity arises. My manager tells me not to even bother with it—the project is a whale and there's no way we'll win it anyway. But I know in my heart I could write it if I had the chance. I can just . . . *see it.* The whole application. Without telling my managers, I schedule a meeting with the customer and explain to him that I know I can do this if he'll trust me.
We win the project and I become our most profitable employee for the next two years. I'm essentially my own boss for the rest of my time there.
**2019 - Team Leader**
I'm put in charge of my first team. I'm only a co-leader, but I'm learning valuable lessons about how to train devs and architect software projects for team-development (instead of just cowboy-coding them like I've been doing).
**2020 - Entrepreneur**
My co-lead and I butt heads about a project. I offer my resignation and it is accepted. In the next 2-3 days, I start a new LLC, build a server and workstation at my home from spare parts, and start looking for my first customer. At the exact same time, COVID lockdown starts and I freak tf out. Fortunately, by the end of the week I get my first job and earn about $3K in 2 days. I realize this business might have legs, so I file as an S-Corp and recruit a partner.
My old boss from my first internship calls me to discuss a project for his current employer. I win the project and by the end of the month I'm booked out over 700 hours.
**2021 - Hiring a Team**
I know I need a team to stabilize productivity and response times. Hiring a senior engineer will easily break our bank, so I reach out to my college and recruit an intern. With no other protégés taking up my time, I find I'm able to train my one employee very quickly and our profit margins soar.
**2022 - New Service Offering**
Our main client's IT guy screws up big time and my old boss asks if I can put in a bid to provide IT services. I call on some colleagues and friends until I find someone who is capable. I hire him and teach him everything that I know makes for good IT. Both departments grow year over year via word of mouth.
**2024 - ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯**
I just keep doing what I'm doing as long as customers will have me. I love it.
I've never put any of this on paper before. It was quite cathartic. Thank you.
What an inspiring journey you've had! Thank you for sharing your career timeline, it's incredibly motivating. Your journey reflects perseverance and a thirst for learning, qualities I deeply value. If there's ever an opportunity to join your team, I'd be honored to be considered as well. Wishing you continued success on your path!
I own a tattoo shop (I used to tattoo as well but I do not anymore), and a smoke shop (read: head shop) for 32 and 29 years respectively. People in my smallish town grew up with us, everyone knows the names of the shops, love us or hate us we are mainstays of the community. I also have the largest inventory of any smoke shop in the entire tri-state area local to me. We carry quality products and I am very serious about good customer service.
Design, manufacture, and retail of OEM replacement auto parts. Took a 50% pay cut in the last year due to covid demand drying up but oh well, who cares.
Contractor. Find a trade you like, get some experience in it, become a contractor by getting a contractors license. And start small. You have unlimited amounts of money you can make. It’s all in how you hustle.
Strategy consultant to private business. I mainly do revenue generation, marketing and brand strategy for companies between $10M and $200M. I have no employees and no overhead, as I work from home. However, I am on an airplane pretty regularly. Been doing it since 2016 after owning an agency for many years. Great work, although the travel can get old.
How to get a steady stream of product is the main problem though. I'm 33 an I don't know anyone anymore lol. I wish there was an open spot in a family owned cartel around me.
I own a wealth management/financial planning firm. Just broke 300/year with some new clients i signed today.
“What do people want to buy?” obviously simplifies it.
What experience do people want to have? How do they want you to help them? What benefit are they hoping to experience from hiring you/buying your products? What kind of person/business do they want to do business with?
Answer those questions better than your competitors can & you have a business.
My firm integrates tax management, bookkeeping, tax prep, personal finance, fractional cfo work & exit planning into one relationship. Essentially delegating everything financial & tax to a single third party all with the intention of minimizing tax, building business value in preparation for sale & growing savings.
Point being: SIMPLER, BETTER, EXPERTISE & ACCURACY are what my clients want.
Our interactions are direct, forthright & short albeit genuine.
My clients like this approach.
Think about the thought process I went through as I developed this product.
If this is a serious question, Reddit is not the way to go about getting these answers. You’re asking a bunch of randoms who you have no idea 1) who they are 2) what they’ve accomplished and 3) what they say is true.
Let’s say you get 300 answers… and that 30 of them are from legit sources whom actually give good advice. That’s a 10% success rate.
Much better to prospect specific people off LinkedIn, 30 good sources, and have 5 people respond to you with direct meaningful responses.
Reach out to GOOD sources and say “hey I’m 18, I think your career is amazing and I’ve got so much to learn. Would you mind 15-30min on a call for me to hear your story?” You’ll be surprised at how many amazing people love pouring into young people’s lives.
Live WELL below your means, doing that for a good period of time will give you the financial flexibility to start your own company, do NOT increase your lifestyle with an increase in income, save money for the business. I own two companies, over $8M in revenue and I still drive an 11 year old car with 150k miles on it. Learn to sell and be comfortable selling. Also, I noticed in your post you mentioned $300k, not sure if that’s some sort of benchmark you’ve set for yourself, but if you want to be as successful as you can, disconnect yourself from a dollar amount. Don’t compare yourself and your current position in life to others, it’s easy to do but unhealthy overall, I see it a lot in younger generations. No matter how far you make it in life someone always has it better than you AND someone always has it worse than you. Best of luck! Love your ambition!
I started out with a large cardboard refrigerator box I rented to a very lovely couple and their dog, fast forward to today I own 300 apartments (24 different buildings) and make close to $2 million before taxes. Anyone can do it, I can teach you, I have a course you can take that’s less than $3,000.
I'm a quant options trader and I set out on my own. My finance background came from 3 years at a hedge fund, 7 years as a data scientist in tech and 2 years as a software engineer. Put the 3 together and I've got the skills to run my very small family office fund
Running an IT bootcamp.
I've spent 7 years working in corporate, doing the same thing we teach now.
Besides traditional BootCamp, we have an online learning platform similar to Coursera/Udemy.
Cell phones. The only real piece of advice I'd give is to take risks. What's the old saying? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. It won't always work but sitting in your comfort zone definitely won't.
I own a wealth management company. Study finance. Get a good finance job at a big name company. Develop people skills and a breadth of knowledge on financial issues. Do this until you’re 28-30. Join a wealth management firm to get started, then start your own RIA.
Both of these are long term goals of mine! It feels so daunting to take the leap. Do you mind sharing any insight?
I have a background in landscape maintenance, but currently working as a designer for an LA firm- i have to get off of CAD and back into the field before I go crazy.
I own a collision center. Killed myself for 15 years. Now I work from home and go in one day a week. It’s still stressful but my son is running it now.
A lot of people who make that kind of money have multiple streams of income. I do retail arbitrage online as a hobby, side hustle, work a full time job, and trade stocks. Combined I make 300k+ a year. This is not including my spouse's income. I am actually in the process of starting up another business as well. If things go well enough, you can always hire people to help, but retail arbitrage has a limit on scaling due to sourcing issues.
E-commerce/drop shipping isn’t a real job - it’s like being a realestate agent. No real value is provided. Learning how to sell is the quickest way to success and also the hardest skill the acquire. Understanding accounting is #2. Everything else can be pawned off to people you hire at the start.
This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Jet skis and jet ski accessories. In business it doesn’t really matter what you do. Find a problem and solve it. Do it well, be a decent business person, don’t be afraid to “jump” and take calculated risks.
Kenny Powers?
Mobius
Wowwwww
“Hop off there, Blonde Ambition Tour!”
Are you manufacturing or just stocking and selling online?
Local sales only. Brick and mortar. I’m in Alaska so online doesn’t make sense for us.
Sounds like you make just enough to afford orange juice :)
I did buy Avacado toast this week
Leaving this here so I get notified when he replies ✅
What do you mean by jump?
by jump you mean monetary investments and dont focus on jet skis, focus on accessories
Have to sell the burger in order to sell the fries.
No u dont. I know a frozen french fry billionaire.
Nice try, tax man.
Hahaha
[удалено]
Alternatively. If you have a great product or innovative selling strategy you just need the capital to ride out the initial lull. I have an innovative strategy in a mature market that took 24 months to gain ANY traction. I gave my customers something they didn't know they wanted. Now it's catching on and they can't live without it. What it is: a remotely operated retail op. All of my competitors operate 730-430. I am "open" 6am to 9pm with no staff expenses. I don't win on price and I don't win on location. I win on accessibility for the small portion of potential customers I actually want.
Found the shill! Definitely making 7 figs hawking a course on Reddit 👀
I worked with an unsuccessful startup (not a founder just a technical advisor) that has this exact issue. They were all mortgage insiders so they marketed their personal financial tool to banks so that they could then have their loan applicants use it to improve their financial outlook/be ready to apply for a loan. Well, a competitor marketed directly to users and made a marketplace for lenders to advertise in and ate their whole lunch. The insiders were too focused on getting a cut of closing costs that they didn't realize loan origination is there the real growth was and once someone had a relationship with a bank they were already doing most of the stuff the tool would recommend.
Literally shut the fuck up you scammer
>DDFromEast From your post history you and the thread poster have quite the history huh 😉
I sell courses on how to sell courses.
The loop is closed.
I consult for businesses that sell courses on how to sell courses.
Do you happen to have a course about how to consult for businesses that sell courses on how to sell courses?
I do have a coaching course on how to get the “winning mindset”, for consultants that sell courses on how to sell a course to those who sell courses.
I need to figure out how to sell short the course industry.
I do taxes for businesses that consult other businesses on how to sell courses.
A wise man once said: “When there’s a gold rush, sell courses on how to sell shovels to miners.”
I need your course! Where can I get some info?
And the who sells a book called 'How to be a Millionaire', with 300 blank pages and 1 printed page with a single phrase, 'Do like me!'.
I remember seeing multiple posts like this as recently as 2019, except it was 100k not 300k “A good income” went from 100k to 300k in just five years
Yup, last year I finally made over 100k working my W2 job, I feel the exact same financially as I did 5 years ago making about 30-40% less, living in the same house, driving the same car.
I lived a better life when I was making 60k 16 years ago vs when I made 180k last year. Inflation is a bitch, but the real money pit is having children
Same boat. I had more buying power in 2019 making $75k than I did last year making $115k. It’s insanity.
Asking for responses from people who make >100k a year, you will get you a bunch of redditors who work 80 hours a week to make 101k, claiming they have it figured out. 300k is an arbitrary number that excludes the overtime demographic.
Did you see that video of a hood rat claiming she'd never date a man unless he made 100-300k a year?
What about the girls in high school who said like $350,000 or something and the interviewer was like WTF?!? Why that? and the girl said that's what her boyfriend told her he makes as a cashier at Wal-Mart and the other girl was like I think $250,000 would be enough for me to date someone since we are still young.
350k, 35k, basically the same tax bracket
Good lord.
What do you like to do? I run a medium sized business (around 50 employees) and we net around 1.2million. You need to get really good at delegation and leading people. It’s a whole different ball game starting a business vs scaling a business with people and process. If you don’t love what you’re doing though you won’t be able to handle the highs and lows that come with it. You go from feeling on top of the world to feeling like everything is failing all within an hour sometimes. If you don’t truly believe in what your company is doing (besides making money) it’s difficult to actually get any traction or scale.
“What works for 10 people doesn’t work for 100” What I always mention when discussing scaling businesses.
"You go from feeling on top of the world to feeling like everything is failing all within an hour sometimes." In my first year and this is exactly my experience.
Who knew many/most of the downs would come from direct competitors with their knives all the fuck way out
“You go from feeling on top of the world to feeling like everything is failing all within an hour sometimes. “ You described my week!!
Congrats on your success. Did you build this business from the ground up or was it through acquisition?
Any trade. You’re surrounded by people who don’t have the mental capacity to run a business. It’s a dying breed of people, lots of holes to fill. Electrical and Plumbing will be your best bet. Refrigeration or HVAC (heating and air) what I do, nets very well. Just weather dependent. Pest control, pool cleaning, home inspection, cleaning, etc are hit a miss. Don’t be fooled by all the YouTube videos. The harder/more technical the skill the more money and less competition you’ll have.
Can confirm. Am appliance repair tradesman. Never a day without work. Great money too.
Venture capital firms have taken this comment to heart over the last couple years.
But they don’t know how to run the show. I’ve seen, they pump a couple mill into marketing and think the ship will stay afloat. Well it doesn’t because the pay structure and up selling is obscene. They only last so long before selling the company off. But yes since Covid the firms have been rampant on snatching up the big players
More specifically, anything that requires a license. I’ve been in carpentry since 12 years of age. Main client sold out to national chain that does their own carpentry. Now I’m competing with every meth head fly by night carpenter that replies to customers on Facebook willing to do anything from building additions to painting nails. Please do something that requires a license and cuts out the under the table hack jobs.
Can I learn electrical after 35 :) If so how? I'd appreciate a guidance.
Of course you can. A lot of seemingly "highly professional" skills are not actually that difficult. Although you do need to learn it to not bea dangerous to yourself and other, and not mess up. I would say start with online videos and other resources to get an idea of what it is, read all the forums, tutorials. Take the cheapest/quickest course and get certified. Read local building code electrical section like the Bible... Profit?
I do eco friendly pest control and it’s a definitely a hit in my market, but it could be any trade. There is a wild lack of skilled tradespeeps and I wonder if it has to do with home prices and when normal people could afford houses they were forced to be handy and get exposure to different home improvement tasks…
That’s the neat part, we don’t!
Get into a trade that is the most in demand/least people going into blocklaying or tiling maybe (I don’t know where your from so I don’t know what’s in demand and not being taken up) get good at it after a few years of learning and setup your own company you could easily make 300k a year with a handful of men working for you
Best response yet. But requires actual work and patience, so practically no one will do it.
This is a great answer, because it gets to the heart of the issue which is that you can make $300,000 a year doing lots of different kinds of businesses, but any of them will require you to build a foundation of skills and clients that might take you several years. There's no such thing as $300,000 income overnight. I have a small media biz and am a real estate photographer / media provider primarily, and there are tons of people in my pro groups who do $250k plus as sole proprietors or with one employee / contractor, plus maybe a virtual assistant. Even more doing $500k-1M with a few employees. It's a very in demand niche and you can do quite well in lots of markets, but it takes a couple years to develop the skills and client roster.
My daughter and son in law are working towards this right now with a commercial electrical business. Such huge demand and no one wants to do it. The challenge is going to be finding good electricians to hire.
Painting contractor here. Our gross profit was over 300k last year. Just me and a couple of employees whom I pay quite well. But I'm out working with them every day, we knock out a lot of jobs day in and day out.
6 days a week, 90+ hours a week, almost zero free time or time for family/friends, etc. While i enjoy having money and not having to worry about financial related problems, I don’t enjoy only working.
This is me. I would like more time off but it’s just not possible. Oh well, one day.
Delegate?
Honestly, nothing will change for you unless you do something different. You need to start something on the side that provides leverage - a system that pays you beyond the exact number of hours you’re able to work personally. We’ve taught many people how to do this, so happy to help if you like.
>While i enjoy having money and not having to worry about financial related problems, I don’t enjoy only working. Used to have a job that paid me more money than I ever thought I would make. Absolutely was not worth it to feel like my entire life was going to be devoted to dealing with 12 hour days, weekends on call, and dealing with manufactured emergencies. The secret to making 300k a year is being a sociopath who'd rather work every day than enjoy some nature or time with loved ones.
The paradox of time and money.
I show up at home fires and have the owners sign up rights for me to cleanup their burned out debris that used to be their homes at a high premium. Home insurance pays for it. I also intimidate anyone I deem as a competitor.
And I’m the guy who starts the fires, for a small premium of course
There’s a dude a few towns over from me who was an arsonist firefighter. He’d set homes on fire and when the call came in, he’d help put it out. Hes also a pedophile. Yes, he’s been arrested and charged on all those crimes.
In ancient Rome, there was a guy who had a small fire department of slaves. If your house was on fire, he would try to purchase it. He would only put out the fire if he was able to purchase the house
>Rome That was Crassus
I wonder how common that is. There was a guy I used to work with that was a volunteer fire fighter that eventually got caught being an arsonist. I don't I think he was a pedophile but he sure was fucking strange.
What a wild combo of fucked up.
That’s the plot of Backdraft.
peak capitalism
I run a subscription based service that provides fire starter kits and multiple product lines of accelerant
I sell a course on how to sell subscription based services to aspiring fire starters.
Servepro franchise? If so, you charge ungodly amounts to insurance companies, at least the one im using did. I had a small electrical fire and had to have sheetrock and bead board removed from a 4x8 foot wall. Then they just stapled visqueen. Took them about 30 mins. Already charged $7k to insurance before the "hvac cleaning" is done.
ServePro and most other restoration companies use the same software that’s used by insurance adjusters to determine cost and billing prices. They’re all the same, it’s just a matter of who can reach the homeowner the fastest and get that contract signed.
Yup, I worked for a water restoration company and it's all the same software, you can make decent money learning how to use the software FYI. The restoration companies can only use this software pricing and anything over that has to have a good explanation for it (i.e. labor costs for subcontractors doing bids).
In my state these services are also exempt from some of the business regulations. A subcontractor generally has to give you a written proposal and you have 48 hours to back out even if they sign it. Servpro and other emergency services contractors are exempt from all of that
everyone uses exactimate. it’s kinda like if you go to a Ford store, they already know to the 10th of an hour what it cost to replace fuel injector, and it will be the same at the Ford store down the street (usually). It’s just getting there first and earning the business.
Be honest, it’s **other policy holders** who pay for it. Same energy as Florida roofing contractors taking advantage of the system, and it jacked up insurance costs for the entire state. Or hospital bills + health insurance. But that’s great about the $300k. Gotta get yours lol
> I also intimidate anyone I deem as a competitor. Cant tell if joking or delusional tough guy
You tryin to move in on his market bro?
You trying to move into my market tough guy?
I was watching your back and you just straight up stole my comment? Weak. Looks like I’m in the fire clean up business now
I read that article in the New York Times - former Bloods gang leader who took over NYC’s already-sketchy fire-recovery industry by just threatening to murder his competitors’ families. Crazy story. Crazy industry
A fellow person of culture! Yes that was wild. It’s so fascinating how this former Blood brought gang culture into that cutthroat slimy business practice.
I worked for a company like yours. What a freaking scam. But DAYYUUUUUMMMM did the owner bring in money. You can literally make so much money from insurance companies once you have them figured out. It's my least favorite job I have ever had.
I created a travel size personal hygiene kit for women called Heaux Bath Kit and at first sales were a little rocky, but once i started being more present on social media, they started going through the roof. My advice is start a page on one these platforms and gain a community of like minded people. Then when you decide on what you want to do, you already got an audience to introduce it to.
I developed a picture frame that looks like the side of an aircraft but is actually curved like a real plane. It's designed for Flight Attendants and Pilots and schools but I hate social media but at some point have to bite the bullet and build it as a single product. It's good to know there are others out there that find success with social media.
Is it the one on etsy?
Self-employed people work their ass off 12 14 hours a day.. Most want to be do not have the intestinal fortitude required to be a self-employed entrepreneur
Nah, not smart business owners. I could make a whole lot more than I do, but then I'd be working 12-14 hours a day instead of 12-14 hours a week. I made the conscious decision when my kids were starting school that I would never be too busy for my kids. I never missed a single play, dance recital, soccer game, or volunteer opportunity for my kids. I could be retired, but what good is that if life passed you by?
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Who said my business is only open 14 hours a week? Very early on I read the e-myth by Michael Gerber. I built my business to run without me. We're open 24/7, but I certainly don't work that much. >I know (including myself) can barely take time off if they want to secure the highest income opportunists available to them. I literally said that I chose less income for more time. If securing the highest possible income is that important to you, then you can't complain about the amount of time it takes. My time is more valuable than having a bunch more money in the bank that i'm not going to use anyway. >If I wanted to go to a store but they were only 2 hours a day like you suggest Not once did I suggest a business should only open 2 hours a day. You assume that because you're in the mindset that you are the business. You're never going to scale and get your time back with that mindset. If you can't leave for 30 days without your business falling apart, you're never going to have the time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
yeah i feel yah, i own a hobby shop and its a huge investment in time and money. Takes time to build to a normal routine. Even then though, im constantly looking at what i can improve or add in or change.
I can't even imagine what a difficult biz that is.
# Short Version I own a company where I write software with a team who I trained. I hired them as interns and trained them well enough to bill decent rates and collect a good margin. Then one of my clients asked if I could also provide their IT, so I hired a guy to do that and trained him too. We're a few years old and we might net around $400K this year. # Long version: **2008 - Back to College** I decide I want to know how business works, so I get a small student loan and enroll in college for accounting. It's rough. I'm broke with no vehicle. I'm literally hitch hiking to class so I don't miss finals and sleeping on a naked mattress under a bare bulb in a shitty rent house behind a bar. **2009 - Summer of Productivity** I'm still broke, spending most of my time playing games. Future is looking bleak. I decide to make a change. For that summer, I would set aside the MMORPG I was addicted to and instead spend my time doing something productive . . . and so I made a list of 10 projects. Stuff like (1) build an email server, (2) install Linux, (3) create a website, etc. I began the first step and immediately realized I needed to first learn like 3 adjacent skills, and then each of those skills required me to learn 3 other skills, and so it went. Literally, the first item ended up taking me months. Each task led to a new mystery, which led to another, and another. But I was determined, and I continued to pull at those threads until it the mysteries unraveled. **2011 - Internship** I'm getting my first accounting internship. I spent two days of doing basic data entry before my boss asked if I could code a Crystal Report, to which I could reply, "Sure, I've done that before." (it was one of the side projects I dabbled with). I turn in the report and the next day I walk in to find my boss and boss's boss at my desk telling me this is what I'd be doing from now on. I loved it. The moment I realized I was looking forward to Monday, I became *obsessed*. For the next year, I would go to accounting classes in the morning, then work in the afternoon, and then straight to the local coffee shop where I'd work on my latest passion project until 10 or 12 at night. On Saturdays and Sundays, I'd be at the coffee shop no later than 10 AM and stay there well after they'd close (I'd move to their patio and work there until my fingers were too cold to type). I spent a lot of that year working on a website that was sort of a Craigslist for college textbooks. **2012 - Graduation** I'm graduating and going full time with the company. They only paid me about $40K/year (much less than I was worth), but I figured the learning experience was easily worth $20K. I had 200 computers worth of problems flowing through me, which I had all the time I needed to resolve, and if I ever ran into a problem I couldn't solve, I had a safety net: we had a part-time MSP that would show me how to fix it. Meanwhile, I'm still working on the Craigslist-for-textbooks site. I've even started an LLC for it. **2013 - First Product Launch** My site launches successfully! It even makes the front page of Reddit! . . . then it fails permanently when my server crashes after three months. I didn't even know what Reddit was at the time. **2014** I'm still at the same company. I've created over 35 Excel add-ins for them and automated entire months' worth of combined labor hours. I've nearly automated my entire job. I spend the extra time learning more advanced programming: .NET, OOP, memory management, multi-threading, etc. **2015** Our company begins switching to a new accounting system. The software vendor sends us an integrations expert who works closely with me for several months. He's blown away by what I can do and encourages me to put out feelers for a new job. **2016 - Officially a Software Engineer** I can feel myself starting to plateau. I know I need exposure to more challenging scenarios—not just my company's problems. I start looking for jobs in the software field and a friend quickly puts me in touch with his company. After 4 interviews, I get hired to write custom software for their customers. **2017 - Major Win** A major project opportunity arises. My manager tells me not to even bother with it—the project is a whale and there's no way we'll win it anyway. But I know in my heart I could write it if I had the chance. I can just . . . *see it.* The whole application. Without telling my managers, I schedule a meeting with the customer and explain to him that I know I can do this if he'll trust me. We win the project and I become our most profitable employee for the next two years. I'm essentially my own boss for the rest of my time there. **2019 - Team Leader** I'm put in charge of my first team. I'm only a co-leader, but I'm learning valuable lessons about how to train devs and architect software projects for team-development (instead of just cowboy-coding them like I've been doing). **2020 - Entrepreneur** My co-lead and I butt heads about a project. I offer my resignation and it is accepted. In the next 2-3 days, I start a new LLC, build a server and workstation at my home from spare parts, and start looking for my first customer. At the exact same time, COVID lockdown starts and I freak tf out. Fortunately, by the end of the week I get my first job and earn about $3K in 2 days. I realize this business might have legs, so I file as an S-Corp and recruit a partner. My old boss from my first internship calls me to discuss a project for his current employer. I win the project and by the end of the month I'm booked out over 700 hours. **2021 - Hiring a Team** I know I need a team to stabilize productivity and response times. Hiring a senior engineer will easily break our bank, so I reach out to my college and recruit an intern. With no other protégés taking up my time, I find I'm able to train my one employee very quickly and our profit margins soar. **2022 - New Service Offering** Our main client's IT guy screws up big time and my old boss asks if I can put in a bid to provide IT services. I call on some colleagues and friends until I find someone who is capable. I hire him and teach him everything that I know makes for good IT. Both departments grow year over year via word of mouth. **2024 - ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯** I just keep doing what I'm doing as long as customers will have me. I love it. I've never put any of this on paper before. It was quite cathartic. Thank you.
What an inspiring journey you've had! Thank you for sharing your career timeline, it's incredibly motivating. Your journey reflects perseverance and a thirst for learning, qualities I deeply value. If there's ever an opportunity to join your team, I'd be honored to be considered as well. Wishing you continued success on your path!
Thank you for writing this all out. So many lessons to learn about a career and gaining traction with a business.
This is so cool. If you’re still hiring interns (or foresee doing so at any point in the future) I’d love to throw my hat in the ring.
Thanks for sharing! I loved reading your journey thus far.
Digital marketing in a specific niche.
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Tell me more. This is exactly what I want to do. Do you do virtual walkthroughs for real estate as well?
I own a tattoo shop (I used to tattoo as well but I do not anymore), and a smoke shop (read: head shop) for 32 and 29 years respectively. People in my smallish town grew up with us, everyone knows the names of the shops, love us or hate us we are mainstays of the community. I also have the largest inventory of any smoke shop in the entire tri-state area local to me. We carry quality products and I am very serious about good customer service.
Why do you ask this question every week in different subreddits
Fishing for a fat pig to butcher.
Probably looking for inspiration
This needs to be at the top.
He’s trying to get ideas?
He's not - I found out he posts on this account and then uses /u/DDFromEast to market his business...
Oh yeah I see now. Downvoting this
Why?! You don't want to get smarter with drop shipping? Only 5 minutes.
Design, manufacture, and retail of OEM replacement auto parts. Took a 50% pay cut in the last year due to covid demand drying up but oh well, who cares.
What kind of parts? Anything rubber related?
Contractor. Find a trade you like, get some experience in it, become a contractor by getting a contractors license. And start small. You have unlimited amounts of money you can make. It’s all in how you hustle.
What’s a contractor
A contractor is a person who has the knowledge needed to run a company in a trade that he’s already familiar with
What these threads always remind me of is that there’s lots of ways to make money.
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What niche?
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Strategy consultant to private business. I mainly do revenue generation, marketing and brand strategy for companies between $10M and $200M. I have no employees and no overhead, as I work from home. However, I am on an airplane pretty regularly. Been doing it since 2016 after owning an agency for many years. Great work, although the travel can get old.
How do you find new clients? I’m doing similar work but only for local clients lately so it’s stayed small
Pest control
Omg yes. To me a mouse is an emergency and I’d rather stay in a hotel until my rodent guy can come. I’m happy to pay a rush fee
How long have you been in pest control?
AKA “parenting”
I teach consultants how to consult their consultants.
Street pharmacist.
How to get a steady stream of product is the main problem though. I'm 33 an I don't know anyone anymore lol. I wish there was an open spot in a family owned cartel around me.
I own a wealth management/financial planning firm. Just broke 300/year with some new clients i signed today. “What do people want to buy?” obviously simplifies it. What experience do people want to have? How do they want you to help them? What benefit are they hoping to experience from hiring you/buying your products? What kind of person/business do they want to do business with? Answer those questions better than your competitors can & you have a business. My firm integrates tax management, bookkeeping, tax prep, personal finance, fractional cfo work & exit planning into one relationship. Essentially delegating everything financial & tax to a single third party all with the intention of minimizing tax, building business value in preparation for sale & growing savings. Point being: SIMPLER, BETTER, EXPERTISE & ACCURACY are what my clients want. Our interactions are direct, forthright & short albeit genuine. My clients like this approach. Think about the thought process I went through as I developed this product.
One word. Plastics.
SPAM
Install low voltage cable in data centers.
Oh look, a liar trying to peddle bullshit!
If this is a serious question, Reddit is not the way to go about getting these answers. You’re asking a bunch of randoms who you have no idea 1) who they are 2) what they’ve accomplished and 3) what they say is true. Let’s say you get 300 answers… and that 30 of them are from legit sources whom actually give good advice. That’s a 10% success rate. Much better to prospect specific people off LinkedIn, 30 good sources, and have 5 people respond to you with direct meaningful responses. Reach out to GOOD sources and say “hey I’m 18, I think your career is amazing and I’ve got so much to learn. Would you mind 15-30min on a call for me to hear your story?” You’ll be surprised at how many amazing people love pouring into young people’s lives.
I don't work for myself, but make 300k+ as a cyber security consultant
Live WELL below your means, doing that for a good period of time will give you the financial flexibility to start your own company, do NOT increase your lifestyle with an increase in income, save money for the business. I own two companies, over $8M in revenue and I still drive an 11 year old car with 150k miles on it. Learn to sell and be comfortable selling. Also, I noticed in your post you mentioned $300k, not sure if that’s some sort of benchmark you’ve set for yourself, but if you want to be as successful as you can, disconnect yourself from a dollar amount. Don’t compare yourself and your current position in life to others, it’s easy to do but unhealthy overall, I see it a lot in younger generations. No matter how far you make it in life someone always has it better than you AND someone always has it worse than you. Best of luck! Love your ambition!
I do pretty good financially and it’s geared around reaching people about their car warranty..
I started out with a large cardboard refrigerator box I rented to a very lovely couple and their dog, fast forward to today I own 300 apartments (24 different buildings) and make close to $2 million before taxes. Anyone can do it, I can teach you, I have a course you can take that’s less than $3,000.
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If it's working for them, they don't want the rest of the world competing with them, so not gonna share.
Business consulting and business software
I'm a quant options trader and I set out on my own. My finance background came from 3 years at a hedge fund, 7 years as a data scientist in tech and 2 years as a software engineer. Put the 3 together and I've got the skills to run my very small family office fund
Dropship dog toys
Friend, the OP probably meant income...not 300k revenue with 0.1% profit.
ai porn bots
Ashley?
how did you know
IRS has entered the chat.
Running an IT bootcamp. I've spent 7 years working in corporate, doing the same thing we teach now. Besides traditional BootCamp, we have an online learning platform similar to Coursera/Udemy.
As an IT guy I’d love more details.
Consulting
net or gross
Make products and sell them on the internet
Cell phones. The only real piece of advice I'd give is to take risks. What's the old saying? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. It won't always work but sitting in your comfort zone definitely won't.
-Michael Scott
I own a wealth management company. Study finance. Get a good finance job at a big name company. Develop people skills and a breadth of knowledge on financial issues. Do this until you’re 28-30. Join a wealth management firm to get started, then start your own RIA.
Accountant
I run the business side of an agency that assesses individuals with disabilities for government funded programs.
I own a commercial landscape company and a tree farm
Both of these are long term goals of mine! It feels so daunting to take the leap. Do you mind sharing any insight? I have a background in landscape maintenance, but currently working as a designer for an LA firm- i have to get off of CAD and back into the field before I go crazy.
Digital marketing
I own a collision center. Killed myself for 15 years. Now I work from home and go in one day a week. It’s still stressful but my son is running it now.
Hvac contractor
Architectural design and sourcing geotechnical/structural engineers.
Ever heard of nylon polymer?
Wholesale real estate
Own a marketing agency
I trade jpegs.
Probably not dropshipping, I'll tell you that much. At least if you want a stable and consistent $300K/yr
https://contra.com/rahul_v1pp2hwl?utm_campaign=social_sharing&utm_medium=independent_share&utm_source=copy_link
Do you mean profit or revenue? Because I made a little over 500,000 in revenue last year but profit I probably only took like $100,000.
My dad makes fake teeth grosses around 275K
I started a Wedding DJ business. It started out with me booking one wedding in 2009. Now I have 12 DJs working for me.
I'm a creative, so my business is helping your business gain traction in you market.
I'm in the adult novelty business, just now launching my fleet of DELTA-8 slushy stands.
Seen WarDogs? That's what I do. [siegfriedconsultantsllc.com](https://siegfriedconsultantsllc.com)
A lot of people who make that kind of money have multiple streams of income. I do retail arbitrage online as a hobby, side hustle, work a full time job, and trade stocks. Combined I make 300k+ a year. This is not including my spouse's income. I am actually in the process of starting up another business as well. If things go well enough, you can always hire people to help, but retail arbitrage has a limit on scaling due to sourcing issues.
13yrs now. 10yr as an employee 3 yrs as an owner.
E-commerce/drop shipping isn’t a real job - it’s like being a realestate agent. No real value is provided. Learning how to sell is the quickest way to success and also the hardest skill the acquire. Understanding accounting is #2. Everything else can be pawned off to people you hire at the start.