Random Chat, Thoughts, Posts, and/or Rants Thread

[Guest-5ty5s4]

With a local presence and a local warehouse, same day delivery would be totally achievable. And with the smaller footprint comes superior customer service.

And you can still be contactless and all that newfangled jazz.

Not to mention there is a current pushback away from mega corps. People are realizing small business got f*cked, and that’s where they want to spend their money.

Absolutely. People in my area were excited when I announced I was selling a product online (this was awhile back - I have mostly given up on that product) because it was local and I was an “American business.”

When they found out I had it manufactured in China, they didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.

 

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[Thoelt53]

Absolutely. People in my area were excited when I announced I was selling a product online (this was awhile back - I have mostly given up on that product) because it was local and I was an “American business.”

When they found out I had it manufactured in China, they didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.

If things go the way I think they will, there will be a huge anti-China sentiment in this country. American made will be huge. Think post 9/11-like nationalism. Many Americans will mentally lump most of Asia in with “China” when it comes to buying goods.

 

[BizyDad]

Benefits of a “captive” customer base (local really gives you an edge

Does it though?

It also lessens the amount of demand for your product. Do you want to sell to 1,000 people in your city or 100,000 people nationwide? If you're selling Mercedes, you might be onto something. If you're selling pencils for architects, you need to look beyond your local market.

Obviously these examples are a little tongue and cheek.

Will someone pay 5% more with your online store that's local, just because it's local? Some people will. For sure. But most won't. Most people will click the Google ad that offers your product for $0.01 less.

You still need to have some kind of value skew to really make it. Don't lose sight of that.

Yes, I am speaking from a little bit of experience. I'm not saying you can't make this idea work. I'm just saying that the fact that you're local won't be the deciding factor for most people.

If there's enough profit in your product, sure you can make it happen. But at some point in time you're going to want to branch out from your local market anyways.

Just some food for thought.

 

[Kak]

Idea in need of execution...

A cheat mask... Masks that are basically not masks. They look the part. They qualify for required virtue signaling and mandatory obedience, but are so breathable that it is like not wearing one.

I'd buy.

Edit! SCORE! Found some!

 

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[sparechange]

Idea in need of execution...

A cheat mask... Masks that are basically not masks. They look the part. They qualify for required virtue signaling and mandatory obedience, but are so breathable that it is like not wearing one.

I'd buy.

Edit! SCORE! Found some!

View attachment 36077

 

[Kak]

Admittedly, a fake valve is more believable. Maybe I need to get some N95s and drill out the back of the valve.

 

[sparechange]

Admittedly, a fake valve is more believable. Maybe I need to get some N95s and drill out the back of the valve.

Think I'll punch a few holes in mine..

Been really hating wearing one, ALL of Canada has mandated masks indoors... not sure when this will end. Two provinces afaik are in full lock down mode..

 

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[sparechange]

Fun fact, 5 people died since January to November in BC from Corona...... (under the age of 39 years old)

 

[StrikingViper69]

Anyone have ideas on making e-commerce more “local?”

The internet brings massive opportunity but it also brings massive competition.

My thought is that you could create an online storefront but do all of your marketing and advertising locally, focusing on a regional need.

For example, in my area there are a lot of shrimp boats and commercial fishermen. How about setting up a store for tools, supplies, and attire they purchase but targeting them through newspaper, yellow pages, and direct mail flyers?

The website is just where the sale happens. (This can be expanded later to target the whole state, then the country, then global)

Dumb idea? Or smart?

Use offline in addition to online marketing, and use the website as a store.

You can run online ads locally, send flyers to peoples houses, maybe put flyers on their boats. Maybe deliver directly to their boat rather than their house. Talk to a local company that does... I don't know... hull repair work / repainting, give them a pile of catalogues to give to every customer they have.

Offline businesses can be highly profitable, and it's easier to create great marketing for them.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Does it though?

It also lessens the amount of demand for your product. Do you want to sell to 1,000 people in your city or 100,000 people nationwide? If you're selling Mercedes, you might be onto something. If you're selling pencils for architects, you need to look beyond your local market.

Obviously these examples are a little tongue and cheek.

Will someone pay 5% more with your online store that's local, just because it's local? Some people will. For sure. But most won't. Most people will click the Google ad that offers your product for $0.01 less.

You still need to have some kind of value skew to really make it. Don't lose sight of that.

Yes, I am speaking from a little bit of experience. I'm not saying you can't make this idea work. I'm just saying that the fact that you're local won't be the deciding factor for most people.

If there's enough profit in your product, sure you can make it happen. But at some point in time you're going to want to branch out from your local market anyways.

Just some food for thought.

The edge is having customers at all.

If I go 100% online and try to rank with SEO and online ads, I’m competing with the top dogs in the whole planet.

If I focus local I’m only competing with local competitors. Right?

It just seems like going up against the top level domain in a niche is a losing strategy. The internet consolidates business into a few key winners, while local stores give many people a chance to carve out the same niche...?

It seems true for things like grocery stores and real estate brokers. There’s only one Amazon, but there are thousands of brokers and most of them are quite rich.

Let’s say you sell workwear.

You can set up the best website ever but you’re competing with sites like workwear.com and every single seller on Amazon.

The internet really does focus all of the sales for the whole globe into a handful of businesses, and this will kill you if you don’t somehow overcome Entry in CENTS

It’s actually smarter (afaik) to target specific people, areas, and groups as opposed to jumping into the sea with no edge in sight.

 

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[Kid]

Idea in need of execution...

A cheat mask... Masks that are basically not masks. They look the part. They qualify for required virtue signaling and mandatory obedience, but are so breathable that it is like not wearing one.

I'd buy.

Edit! SCORE! Found some!

View attachment 36077

It would become illegal

 

[BizyDad]

If I focus local I’m only competing with local competitors. Right?

No. Small mom and pop businesses, brick and mortar businesses still have to compete with online businesses.

That's why Amazon is growing, and main Street is dying. Your local customers don't only shop local. They have the internet.

You can keep your marketing local. You can keep your marketing old school. And that might be a good place to start to build your business.

Let's talk workwear. I have a friend in that business. Sign some government clients who prefer to keep the business in their city/state. Networking is still a big part of how she generates business. And her company really didn't care about online sales for the first 10 years she was around. But that started to change 5 years ago. Since then competition has gotten stiffer, and her margins have gotten squeezed.

Meanwhile I know a guy who started off selling just safety clothes for businesses. Goggles and vests mostly. He also started local, but he put his listings on Amazon too. In his second year he's pulled in more revenue than my friend who's been in the business for 15 years. Most of his revenue is not local. I can't speak to profit, but still.

I'm just pointing out that you're still going to be competing against all the online companies, because your customer is still going to shop around right?

I guess there's some exceptions to what I'm saying. People probably still get Christmas trees local. I guess if you're selling big bulky hard to ship items, you might be able to focus just on local and compete with local.

So depending on the specific situation you can make it work. Like most things in business, it comes down to the specific details. Hth.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

No. Small mom and pop businesses, brick and mortar businesses still have to compete with online businesses.

That's why Amazon is growing, and main Street is dying. Your local customers don't only shop local. They have the internet.

You can keep your marketing local. You can keep your marketing old school. And that might be a good place to start to build your business.

I'm just pointing out that you're still going to be competing against all the online companies, because your customer is still going to shop around right?

I guess there's some exceptions to what I'm saying. People probably still get Christmas trees local. I guess if you're selling big bulky hard to ship items, you might be able to focus just on local and compete with local.

Like my examples...

Christmas trees, real estate brokers, dental offices, grocery stores, and convenience stores (ever heard of Bucees?) are all absolutely winning in the business landscape for the reasons I have laid out^^

If the goal is to make "a few million," all of these businesses do great (...except for Christmas trees lmao), and they all focus locally.

 

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[BizyDad]

Like my examples...

Christmas trees, real estate brokers, dental offices, grocery stores, and convenience stores (ever heard of Bucees?) are all absolutely winning in the business landscape for the reasons I have laid out^^

If the goal is to make "a few million," all of these businesses do great (...except for Christmas trees lmao), and they all focus locally.

Maybe I misunderstood. I thought you were looking to sell a product online and keeping your marketing local.

Anyone have ideas on making e-commerce more “local?”

If you're doing a local service like dentistry or real estate brokerage, then yeah I think you definitely can focus local. Build a landscaping company, pressure washing, etc.

Convenience stores, gas stations, sure all focus local. But I don't know how you use a website to replace those. Still, I have a buddy that owns a convenience store at a gas station. He showed me his numbers the other day. I was stunned at how much they could pull in. And his is in a smaller town not even big enough to be called a city.

Anyways, if the goal is to make a few million by focusing on local marketing, then go for it. There's plenty of companies that are doing that. Of course the principle of value skew still applies. The better your value skew the easier it is to get word of mouth.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Maybe I misunderstood. I thought you were looking to sell a product online and keeping your marketing local.

If you're doing a local service like dentistry or real estate brokerage, then yeah I think you definitely can focus local. Build a landscaping company, pressure washing, etc.

Convenience stores, gas stations, sure all focus local. But I don't know how you use a website to replace those. Still, I have a buddy that owns a convenience store at a gas station. He showed me his numbers the other day. I was stunned at how much they could pull in. And his is in a smaller town not even big enough to be called a city.

Anyways, if the goal is to make a few million by focusing on local marketing, then go for it. There's plenty of companies that are doing that. Of course the principle of value skew still applies. The better your value skew the easier it is to get word of mouth.

I understand

Everyone on this forum should check out this convenience store company, BTW.

Talk about Productocracy!! Their focus that made them so popular was "the cleanest restrooms" - now they're an empire.

About - Buc-ees

Buc-ee’s is a chain of large format travel centers known for their clean restrooms.

buc-ees.com

 

[Kid]

I'm going offline for Christmas so have it merry!

 

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[Cyberthal]

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, they say.

Or a Vitamin D per day, with some sunshine rays, in the case of COVID19. Take in the morning to avoid disrupting your sleep schedule.

Why might one wish to keep the doctor away?

To keep breathing:

They killed the sick to protect themselves.

Those heroic health care workers killed thousands of people to protect themselves from C0VlD-19. Last spring, with less known about the disease, doctors often pre-emptively put patients on ventilat…

verisoeconomica.wordpress.com

You get what you pay for. And the hospital isn't paid per recovery...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ore-C0VlD-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/

 

[socaldude]

Sometimes I go to the casino in the middle of the night and play that 88 fortunes slot machines. You know, the ones with the turtles. But anyways, saw this at the ATM. Just thought it was funny.

 

[MA81]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erAYITZRdJk

 

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[S.Y.]

Look. I am a big fan of Stoicism. My philosophy of life takes heavily from it.

@Andy Black has Blaise Brosnan. I have Seneca. And Epictetus. And Marcus Aurelius.

So much has changed since their time. But when it comes to human nature and to the fundamental, so little.

I have seen couple of threads recently that are asking advices on what to do to move forward, what to do to get unstucked.

Here is one way, from Epictetus: "Tell yourself first of all what what kind of person you want to be, and then act accordingly in all that you do."

But how? How should we go about becoming that person?

To that Epictetus will say: "Now since, it lies in the nature of every mind to give assent to what is true, and to dissent to what is false, and to suspend judgement with regard to what is uncertain, it lies it its nature likewise to be loved by desire towards what is good, and by aversion from what is bad, and to remain indifferent towards what is neither good nor bad"

In other word, for now:
- do what you know you should be doing
- stop doing what you know you shouldn't be doing
- don't worry about what you don't know for now

 

[Raoul Duke]

$600

 

[Raja]

I don't know what is causing it.

but so many people are coming to the forum just to spam the hell out of the forum or sell SH*T in their first post.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

but so many people are coming to the forum just to spam the hell out of the forum or sell SH*T in their first post.

Have no idea what you're talking about... care to share a link? Self-promoters with no post history are immediately banned and their posts removed. We also delete a good 20 registrations daily from spammers or backlinkers with ill intent. This is normal -- not unusual in the least.

 

[Raja]

Have no idea what you're talking about... care to share a link? Self-promoters with no post history are immediately banned and their posts removed. We also delete a good 20 registrations daily from spammers or backlinkers with ill intent. This is normal -- not unusual in the least.

guys like @milkdeliveryapp @WooberlyEats ,

they both have multiple accounts, one of them is @Mohamed Natheem for him I did tag mods, fox gave him a warning.

MJ I believe you should raise the entry barrier a bit.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

guys like @milkdeliveryapp @WooberlyEats ,

they both have multiple accounts, one of them is @Mohamed Natheem for him I did tag mods, fox gave him a warning.

MJ I believe you should raise the entry barrier a bit.

Thanks! These escaped my purview ... they've all been banned and removed for spam.

Just tag me or a mod any of this SEO/backlink clowns get to posting something. We don't get to review every post, so community assistance helps tremendously.

 

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[sparechange]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFpkvAePP7M

 

[sparechange]

Went out today on a bike ride for breakfast..

An older gentleman approached me and started chatting with me, clean, fresh clothes. We talked about the coronavirus (I love hearing viewpoints from different people) Later he mentioned he's from out of town since he just came to the hospital for a spider bite...Being a Vancouverite I already am anticipating what's coming next.

After hearing a story about how he's so far away (mission) which is like 2 hours away or something ridiculous he's also stated he's not like those other people that's a pan handler or anything like that, and he needs just a little bit of help to get home while saying he doesn't have cash to get back home whilst puffing on his e-cig/vape thing (it's a $7 train ticket)

Asked me for $20! After saying I don't have any cash on me and I'm hurting myself, he said well you got a debit card right!?!? Not sure if this is just a Vancouver thing, but whenever I'm approached by someone that's ''friendly'' it usually ends off with them asking for change or money LOL, not a bad strategy though, build quick rapport and then make a request for money. Almost got me! Maybe next time?

Does anyone else on the forum experience this or is it just me???!!?

 

[Deleted78083]

Fastlane storytime: the 18-millions € pizza!
​

This is the story of an Italian immigrant moving to France at 16 to work in a pizza restaurant. For 9 years, he performed the art of making pizza and at 25, decided to take it up a notch.

Making pizzas by hand is ineffective and does not make much money, he realized, so he bought a small food factory and transformed it into a pizza factory. He upgraded and engineered the entire supply chain almost only by himself (the guy never finished high-school....). When the factory was complete, he started testing his new factory and was soon able to make 50 000 pizzas...per day!

He subsequently contacted frozen pizza brands and supermarkets and got a contract to make pizzas for them.

Today, he is making 75 000 pizzas daily, has 18 employees and his company's revenue is about 18 million euros.

He sells his pizzas for about 0.90€ a piece, which makes...67 500€ of revenue per day lol.

Everything is controlled in the pizza-making process. Since margins are thin, each gram of tomato sauce counts. For example, he came up with a machine that pours exactly 100 grams of tomato sauce on the pizza, 4 olives, etc etc.

Fastlane lesson: If you can figure out a part of the country where there aren't any food factories for frozen food, you'd be able to produce food for supermarkets and brands in the area at a cheaper price since the delivery costs will be lower.

Eg: I did not confirm what follows so I do not know whether it is true or not. A Greek friend of mine told me that Greek olives are the cheapest in Europe, and that they are exported to Spain because the Spanish don't sell their olives in Spain. They sell them to the rest of Europe because they make more money this way.

I thought it was a rather big inefficiency.

Solution: export Greek olives to the rest of Europe for a cheaper price instead of exporting them to Spain.

I think these types of inefficiencies are golden and provide excellent fastlane opportunities.

You do not need to invent a new product. If you improve the quality of an existing product or decrease the cost of its production, you have a fastlane company.

 

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[Deleted78083]

Went out today on a bike ride for breakfast..

An older gentleman approached me and started chatting with me, clean, fresh clothes. We talked about the coronavirus (I love hearing viewpoints from different people) Later he mentioned he's from out of town since he just came to the hospital for a spider bite...Being a Vancouverite I already am anticipating what's coming next.

After hearing a story about how he's so far away (mission) which is like 2 hours away or something ridiculous he's also stated he's not like those other people that's a pan handler or anything like that, and he needs just a little bit of help to get home while saying he doesn't have cash to get back home whilst puffing on his e-cig/vape thing (it's a $7 train ticket)

Asked me for $20! After saying I don't have any cash on me and I'm hurting myself, he said well you got a debit card right!?!? Not sure if this is just a Vancouver thing, but whenever I'm approached by someone that's ''friendly'' it usually ends off with them asking for change or money LOL, not a bad strategy though, build quick rapport and then make a request for money. Almost got me! Maybe next time?

Does anyone else on the forum experience this or is it just me???!!?

In Brussels, 999/1000 people that talk to you want money, so as a result, i don't talk to anyone anymore, and then people complain that inhabitants from Brussels are rude.

No, they are not rude, they are just tired of being harassed in the streets for money they don't have.

 

[Mutant]

New U.S. Dietary Guidelines Reject Recommendation to Cut Sugar, Alcohol Intake Limit