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3 Businesses & The Road to $1M in Personal Income

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Guest-5ty5s4

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Thank you!

Ya that's what I need to spend some more time doing. My partner and I want to pay for as many things as possible to reduce our taxes but at the same time need a baseline for the employees to shoot for. If we start to take more because we're profiting more it's not really fair for their bonuses. I think we'll need to set our goals for things we want to write off, then find the profit percentage we were able to accomplish last year minus those expenses, then use that percentage as a baseline. There shouldn't be any bonuses for achieving the status quo from last year. The goal is for the employees to be vested to help improve the company and benefit along with the company.

Orrr we can separate our expense items completely in a different chart of accounts on the P&L. However that would be hard using QBO sending the automatic reports showing the profit percentages of the company (it would include the expenses even if they are separated out).
I understand. That's how lots of businesses grow - by not taking profit to the owners. If you pay yourself everything, you won't have anything to invest on getting bigger.

I'm just curious what the numbers are, because you could already be above $1 million per year when you add up all of the "seller's discretionary cash flow." Even if it isn't going straight to you
 
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SPM_ENT

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I understand. That's how lots of businesses grow - by not taking profit to the owners. If you pay yourself everything, you won't have anything to invest on getting bigger.

I'm just curious what the numbers are, because you could already be above $1 million per year when you add up all of the "seller's discretionary cash flow." Even if it isn't going straight to you
Well, we did 1m at 30% profit counting our discretionary income. My partner and I each "took home" 150k. So not really close to 1m of personal income last year but I'm not too concerned with that at the moment. I started working on this company less than two years ago so we're just getting started and that money will come. I would like to take the company to 100m and believe I will be able to do so but it just takes time. I live comfortably so it's all creative enjoyment, bonus, and security for the future from here.

In addition to my "150k income," my rental did appreciate 120k with 20k down but I don't count that as income. It's long term and the market will go up and down.
 
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Guest-5ty5s4

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Well, we did 1m at 30% profit counting our discretionary income. My partner and I each "took home" 150k. So not really close to 1m of personal income last year but I'm not too concerned with that at the moment. I started working on this company less than two years ago so we're just getting started and that money will come. I would like to take the company to 100m and believe I will be able to do so but it just takes time. I live comfortably so it's all creative enjoyment, bonus, and security for the future from here.

In addition to my "150k income," my rental did appreciate 120k with 20k down but I don't count that as income. It's long term and the market will go up and down.
So you took home 100% of your profit and left none of it in the business?

(30% of $1 million = $300k, and $300k divided by the two of you is $150k)

I thought you said you kept some in the business, or maybe even had some capital expenditures. The rental appreciation helps a little.

Honestly, you should leave more profit in the business so it can grow faster.
 
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SPM_ENT

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So you took home 100% of your profit and left none of it in the business?

(30% of $1 million = $300k, and $300k divided by the two of you is $150k)

I thought you said you kept some in the business, or maybe even had some capital expenditures. The rental appreciation helps a little.

Honestly, you should leave more profit in the business so it can grow faster.

We took 100k each and left 100k in the business. Leaving money in the business to make it grow faster is a function of the goals of the company, which is up to me at this point. You're thinking makes sense when related to the title of this thread but my position has changed since last year. Also, it depends on what you do with it and additionally how much time I have to implement it. The only investments we will be making will be to hire new sales and then the additional staff it will take to support them. Hiring a new salesperson costs about 5k/month and it takes anywhere from 1- 3 months to figure out if they are going to make it or not. If not, we start the process all over again and hire someone new. There is only 1 of me to train the new salespeople at this point and it takes two weeks at a time to get them up to speed. So even if I used all 100k we kept in the business I wouldn't be able to hire (more, I wouldn't want to) hire 6 new sales guys and train them simultaneously. Growing too fast can also cause a ton of issues so I'm okay with the pace we are growing. I'll be happy with a 150% increase for this year following 400% (or so) from last year while working around 20hrs a week. Mainly, I enjoy how my life is set up now and if I'm always working what's the point of having the money anyway, my real goal is freedom and I have that most days.

The plan as of now is to create the budgets for next year and then scale. I'm still determining how long it should take for a salesman to bring in 1m and then how much support operationally does that require. I know my AR collects at a rate of $1,300/hr so if we need to collect 150k in a month I will need 115hrs worked for the AR department. I'm also still working out other positions in the company as it grows so lots of planning still taking place before I step on the gas more aggressively.

I don't mind my ideas being challenged so tell me, what would you do differently?
 
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Guest-5ty5s4

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We took 100k each and left 100k in the business. Leaving money in the business to make it grow faster is a function of the goals of the company, which is up to me at this point. You're thinking makes sense when related to the title of this thread but my position has changed since last year. Also, it depends on what you do with it and additionally how much time I have to implement it. The only investments we will be making will be to hire new sales and then the additional staff it will take to support them. Hiring a new salesperson costs about 5k/month and it takes anywhere from 1- 3 months to figure out if they are going to make it or not. If not, we start the process all over again and hire someone new. There is only 1 of me to train the new salespeople at this point and it takes two weeks at a time to get them up to speed. So even if I used all 100k we kept in the business I wouldn't be able to hire (more, I wouldn't want to) hire 6 new sales guys and train them simultaneously. Growing too fast can also cause a ton of issues so I'm okay with the pace we are growing. I'll be happy with a 150% increase for this year following 400% (or so) from last year while working around 20hrs a week. Mainly, I enjoy how my life is set up now and if I'm always working what's the point of having the money anyway, my real goal is freedom and I have that most days.

The plan as of now is to create the budgets for next year and then scale. I'm still determining how long it should take for a salesman to bring in 1m and then how much support operationally does that require. I know my AR collects at a rate of $1,300/hr so if we need to collect 150k in a month I will need 115hrs worked for the AR department. I'm also still working out other positions in the company as it grows so lots of planning still taking place before I step on the gas more aggressively.

I don't mind my ideas being challenged so tell me, what would you do differently?
This makes perfect sense. Thanks for not taking it harshly. I wasn't clear on the numbers - I thought you each paid yourselves 150k and left nothing in the biz.

Since I don't know what y'all do, it's hard to say what I would do. But having money in your business bank account is important for safety and for growth. I would invest in equipment, marketing, or training like you mentioned. Or just build the balance - you never know what new opportunities may come up for the business. And there are plenty of businesses with lots of cash just sitting, ready to deploy - it's a "call option on opportunity," as Munger puts it.

Either way you are killing it man and I hope I didn't make it sound like anything else :)
 

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This makes perfect sense. Thanks for not taking it harshly. I wasn't clear on the numbers - I thought you each paid yourselves 150k and left nothing in the biz.

Since I don't know what y'all do, it's hard to say what I would do. But having money in your business bank account is important for safety and for growth. I would invest in equipment, marketing, or training like you mentioned. Or just build the balance - you never know what new opportunities may come up for the business. And there are plenty of businesses with lots of cash just sitting, ready to deploy - it's a "call option on opportunity," as Munger puts it.

Either way you are killing it man and I hope I didn't make it sound like anything else :)
Oh ya not at all, I know text can come off a million different ways so no worries, I appreciate your questions to make things more clear on here.

I agree not knowing what we do doesn't provide much of a picture, I can say that we are a service-based b2b company. I know shat's still vague and I'm a bit frustrated that I don't feel comfortable sharing more. One day I will.

Safety and growth are both very important. The "Quick Ratio" is going to be one of our company-wide goals next year. The more money we can hold the more every employee's job is secure and additionally, the more we can invest in growth. I will probably only get the employees to care about growth once I offer non-voting stock but I'm still doing my own research on how to do that.

Right on man thanks!
 

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January is about to end and this month to date we have brought in slightly over 140k. My sales guys have set their goal at 2.3m for next year's revenue but I can't help but wonder if I'm limiting them to territory size (Los Angeles & San Diego). I know there are customers out there who are in need and just one phone call or an office visit would get them to start using our company. Finding a balance between taking the right amount of time to build a B2B relationship and reaching out to new clients is difficult. Most big fish target clients already have a service provider that they have been using for years so it takes time to get in there to give us a chance.

I'm considering a business coach/consultant to help me with growth to figure out this problem but if anyone has been in this situation or could recommend someone who can help that would be much appreciated!
 
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Quick update:

I spoke with one of my regular consultants about the sales territories and my next steps but once I talked it out with him we determined that I need to first, focus on hiring another AR person to help with cash flow. Our quick ratio dropped to about .30 last month, which isn't great but once I find someone that should take care of itself in about 30-60 days. The cash flow isn't too big of an issue as my partner and I have cash easily accessible to cover bills if necessary. Also when I set up the bank accounts I made sure to get plenty of credit on cards and a business line of credit so we'll be able to weather the storm.

Sales Update:
After watching some videos on youtube from Alex Hormozi (I've seen his name pop up in a few other threads lately) I decided to start reviewing my sales guy's phone calls (It's easy for them to record using Openphone). IT WAS SHOCKING how bad they were. I trained them for 2 weeks when they were hired reviewing and role-playing and thought they had things on lock. Well, months later it's quite clear that they don't #chringe. I can't believe we've had as much success as we've had with calls like that. It was a bit of a letdown when I was feeling pretty proud of what our company was representing. Anyway, we're now going to review them once a week like pro sports teams do when reviewing film. I also plan on making some calls myself and record them so they can see I how I would do it and also see that I make mistakes as well. Hopefully, this will get them to loosen up.

Vendors:
I should have done this from the beginning but I complied all of my vendor's pricing and put it on a spreadsheet to compare X vendor to Y and found that certain vendors were much more profitable for different jobs. It's embarrassing to say but I found at least 14% more profit by switching to a certain vendor for our most popular service. Now in some cases, we get what we pay for and the most expensive vendor is the most reliable but I plan on sitting down with them, to be honest, and see if they can help us at all with the pricing. I also plan on sitting down with the cheaper vendor to see if they can improve their service to be what we want in trade for using them more often.

Marketing:
After reading some of @IceCreamKid 's old threads about marketing, I'm rethinking our current messaging. Those threads are so $$ and I'm super thankful to have found them.
 

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April 2022 Update...

I've reached a point where I believe my time is best spent growing the company and training/helping salespeople and getting away from the administration side of things. Such as payroll, accounting review, and all the other little tiny projects that get in my way of bringing in more rev. My partner has been taking care of the operations, mainly working on scheduling all the jobs but moving forward we're going to hire a coordinator full-time on a salary of about 52k + bonus a year. It is my hope that this will clear him up to work at a higher level in the business and to take more of the extra things off my plate.

Cash flow has much improved with the addition of another AR girl. The amount collected per hour worked has gone down but the total amount collected per month is way up. On average it was $1,200/hr worked but now with the additional employee, it has dropped to $700/hr. I'm having the AR department meet to see what they can do to become more efficient and/or what they can do to bring the average back up. We have about 70k in our OPEX account after bills are paid. <--- Amazing and thanks to the Profit 1st model. Our goal is about 300k in the account to have around 4 months of an expenses cushion.

Sales:
My SD guy is leaving next month and I'm still looking for the right person to take his place. LA guy is going strong. I've been watching a lot of Alex Hermozi's youtube videos and find them extremely helpful. It's mostly what I already know but he has a way of making it very clear and providing the correct reminders I need. For my sales guys, I always knew I needed them to "help" the customer but couldn't quite put it into words and hold them accountable. I made some changes from the reports my sales guys work off of and made it more of a priority for them to find out if the target they are calling would actually benefit from our services. The red columns are now my sales guys' first objective to find out when first reaching out to a potential client. I have noticed that in our sales meetings when we review calls my guys have made, at times they just rush to tell the client about us. Instead, I want them to focus on learning more about the client asking questions being curious about them, and most importantly making it fun. There's nothing worse than an annoying sales call. It's my hope that having the most important items right in front of their face will force them to be more focused on the potential client rather than spouting out what they need to say.

1649094061190.png

Sales YTD:

Jan: $135,379 (20% Profit)
Feb: $115,87 (25% Profit)
March: $132,375 (28% Profit) <--- Negotiated with vendors for better pricing playing one off the other. However, the vendor that brought better pricing didn't bring the best service so we're going to do a blend of vendors to accomplish slightly more profit. Being too greedy will cause issues for our service.

It was nice to be able to go back and see that last year's sales also dipped in Feb. Although last year it was only a 3% dip it was still helpful to review and not be too concerned.

Marketing
Lastly, I'm still working with the marketing department to deliver a more clear message of what the clients get when they use our services. Like I mentioned above from the ice cream kid, about the dollar shave club. "For $1 a month, we send high-quality razors to your door"

Overall mostly positives, losing my SD guy was a kick in the nuts because I invested so much time in training him and wanted to expand to SF. Now I need to retrain SD before I can expand elsewhere. Its probably best that I make sure I spend enough time with each sales guy to make sure they are making enough money to keep them happy and motivated otherwise I will have to deal with more turnover.

Best wishes to everyone in Q2!
 

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Just wanted to say man, your story's inspiring. I'm 25 years old and to see you started getting the ball rolling at 26 makes me feel like I'm not too late. Keep at it!
 
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Hey everyone,

I read a thread from @FineDay and got really motivated to focus in the right direction. My recent issues have been that I want to scale and hire salespeople faster than my partner can keep up operationally including managing employees.

He was used to doing everything himself so giving up control has been hard for him. He starts "helping" the employees to make sure they're doing a good job. He doesn't want them to fail but then ends up doing all the work. He's also got some issues with having to fire people. I admit firing is hard to do especially when you work with these people every day and they're good people who just might not be up to the position. I keep enforcing that we need Allstars on our team if we want to be the best and if they're not, we need to remove them. However, I do believe I have contributed to not attracting the "Allstar" employees by being concerned about paying the wrong person too much money. I also feel more comfortable with hiring people who I know I can control by simply knowing more. With both our psychological downfalls in this area, it doesn't make for a very good combo when hiring and managing the staff to keep up with the growth I want to achieve.

For those reasons, I've decided to hire a partime/consultant COO. This person will have the experience we need and be able to help my partner create systems (previously this was up to me), evaluate employees (old and hire new), and make sure our core machine is correct so that I can expand while feeling confident the business can handle it. I bought the idea to my partner and thankfuly, he loved it. We both feel very relieved to have someone who can help him get this done. It's also nice that I don't have to be the one to tell him what to do/give him the answers and he will be more willing to hear them from a third party. Overall I'm really excited about this direction and it will free me up to focus on growth.

In the near future, I'm also going to do the same with a CFO to train my current Financial controller. They will focus on how much money we need for growth and what goals we need to hit before I start a new territory.

Overall I'm excited to not have to be the one to hold it together on all ends. I will, of course, have to evaluate the performance of the COO and CFO and hire/fire accordingly but because they are more consultant types this will be much easier than if they were full-time.

Also still very thankful for the "Profit First" accounting method. Using it has allowed us to put money aside to be able to invest in hiring these type of people. The money won't come out of or increase our normal operating expenses so it's a very easy decision to make. Not having money set aside to invest in making our product/service better would leave us stressed and stranded without being able to get help.

I'm was going to update my first post to include the monthly #'s and update each month but I don't see the "edit" button anymore.

So far Q2 has been good:

April: $187,704 (Largest month so far)
May: $134,421
 
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2022 Q2 Update:

April: $184,000
May: $120,000
June: $168,905

Total Q2: $474,147

Up $100k from Q1, which is good but I'll need to bring in 1,140,000 over the next two quarters to hit 2m. Possible but I will need to bring on another salesperson. I plan to hire that salesperson to start Q4. Until I bring them on I'm going to do outreach myself to start to develop the new area. After that, 2023's plan is in place and the goal is set at 5m.

Upgrades:

Added another employee for scheduling and most importantly hired the part-time COO to help/train my partner with operations. He's going to make sure we have the right people in the right places then move towards improving the process and creating a road map for who we need to hire and when as we scale in revenue.

On the mental side, this quarter was a bit overwhelming based on solving issues on the operations side which took a ton of my time in addition to interviewing and hiring the COO. On top of analysis, 1.5hrs in the gym/day, building my classic car, learning guitar, friends/family, and planning a wedding in Oct in Mexico, it's a lot for me. I tend to not take enough personal time when things like this happen which leads to burnout. Hard to do everything I want to do and I'm considering that I need to say "no" to some of the things I'm doing. When all that happens doubt creeps in and it becomes more and more about the numbers that I'm not bringing in and less about the enjoyment of what I'm building. I took a day to be by myself to watch the F1 race, have some coffee, and relax. Not "having" to do anything led me to get everything done in a few hours that I haven't had time to do in a month. I'm starting to get back on track now and hopefully have solved operational issues so that I can focus on scaling from now on while continuing to give myself enough time to do nothing to recharge. Anyway, hope that's helpful for someone else who might be going through the same thing.

Best to everyone in Q3!
 

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July was a bit slower we hit $154k in sales. Last year Aug was our biggest month so we'll see if history repeats this year.

I've been thinking that our business is too old school and I can't scale as fast as I'd like because it's such a relationship sale to get started. That's why I need the in-person salespeople. Currently, It's not something I can advertise for using ads and email but if I had an actual product that would help the clients and it integrated with our service that would be the ticket. The problem is there is so much data that we need to collect for each new job. This adds work for our clients as well as our team inputting the new jobs. My first idea had our clients inputting the data instead of just screenshotting the info for their orders like they do now, which is way more work for them and just wouldn't be adopted. I want our service to be 1 - 3 clicks to submit an order, it needs to be that simple like with Amazon or Uber. So that lead me to an integrated app for our clients. Basically, all of our clients need to get Work Authorizations from their customers to move forward with their services and these Authorizations have all the information we need. If I can develop an app like adobe sign or DocuSign and then add integration to our CRM it could automatically input data into our system and make the new job orders 1-3 additional clicks for our clients to submit.

I have no idea how to make this app but hopefully, someone has some info on where I can look? Maybe even white label something and hire someone who can add the features/integrations I need. Any help is appreciated!


Also, I got a personal office that I'm pretty excited about. I was working at home and getting distracted too often. It's only been a few days but I have a lot more focus now.

unnamed.jpg
 
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Ended Q3 Strong.

July: $157,510
Aug: $233,897
Sept: $247,339 (Largest Month To Date)

YTD: $1,450,070

On track to hit the 2022 $2,000,000 goal if not more.

Employees: 8

Updates:

I've implemented the GGOB bonus structure to incentivize the employees and show that we all win together. The more we profit the larger the employee's bonus will be. When I originally set it up our main goal was Cash Collected and profit percentage. I thought it was pretty clever in the way I laid it out but I was very wrong. Absolutely no one in the company understood it so it was back to the drawing board for me. In my experience, people understand numbers rather than percentages so I've changed the company's goal to a profit Number. For example: in Oct we want to hit $49,000 in profit. We'll have to wait and see if I get more blank stares in our monthly team meeting to know if the new idea will work. Overall though I love the idea of open book management and it keeps everyone accountable for their own department. In my past businesses, I've kept the numbers real close to the vest but this way is a big weight off my shoulders. It also makes it extremely easy to see where we need to improve and also to celebrate where we are doing well.

As I said I haven't gotten full buy-in from the employees but I know I'm on the right track. It's just a matter of improving the structure to make it easier to understand until I get everyone onboard.

Sales:

My longest-standing sales guy is finally breaking through and landed some medium size clients which lead to a big month. He's starting to come up with creative solutions for potential clients and it seems he could be very close to doubling his sales by the end of the year. We're b2b so the relationships do take time and sometimes it's just being there long enough for the competition to mess up.

My newest sales guy had some personal issues so due to the fires. He still hit his sales goal but it's mostly from legacy clients we've had and I will need him to bring in new clients moving towards the end of the year.

Expansion:

I'm having my marketing assistant start to do outreach in a new territory. We filmed two intro videos explaining our services and asking potential clients to take a minute to consult with us. It's more about asking for advice and not a sales pitch. My assistant is female so we're split-testing the videos to see which video gets a better response. The overall goal is to really get our online outreach/marketing locked in before we get the Application in place and scale nationwide. Also if we can expand into a new territory before even hiring a boots-on-the-ground sales rep, when they do come on they should be able to hit the ground running.

SAAS: I've identified and plan to hire a part-time CTO to manage the buildout of our own proprietary APP and CRM. Once it is built we should be able to scale nationwide at a pace that far exceeds what we're doing now.

It's taken me about 10 years of learning, and a lot of action faking but I'm finally starting to feel like I have a real FASTLANE business.

Updated my office a bit and hung some portraits for when I'm looking for inspiration. #vibing

unnamed.jpg

Best of luck to everyone in Q4.
 

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Ya, I've seen some other posts recommending not to give too much away about your business models. #3 is new so I'm even more cautious. Happy to answer questions if I can to clear things up though.

So, here's the problem. I *really* like your story and laying everything out. Well done. I even believe you.

However, without any context of the industry, service, product, R&D - anything, it's impossible to really follow what you're doing. The numbers are MEANINGLESS without having benchmarks to put them against. Maybe you're the world's best blue jean manufacturer, maybe you're the world's worst violin maker. There's absolutely no way of telling from your story.

Without that, you might as well leave out every number since it would be easier to read and a lot faster to type.
 

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i love reading your updates, really cool to read about scaling up a business with all it's ups and downs. Thank you for your efforts, looking forward to the new update
 
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July was a bit slower we hit $154k in sales. Last year Aug was our biggest month so we'll see if history repeats this year.

I want our service to be 1 - 3 clicks to submit an order, it needs to be that simple like with Amazon or Uber. So that lead me to an integrated app for our clients. Basically, all of our clients need to get Work Authorizations from their customers to move forward with their services and these Authorizations have all the information we need. If I can develop an app like adobe sign or DocuSign and then add integration to our CRM it could automatically input data into our system and make the new job orders 1-3 additional clicks for our clients to submit.

I have no idea how to make this app but hopefully, someone has some info on where I can look? Maybe even white label something and hire someone who can add the features/integrations I need. Any help is appreciated!
Anything you want can be purchased for $0.06 monthly from a VC funded tech startup. More or less true.

I made my wife promise to say "NO" whenever I start talking about needing custom development and hiring devs.

How are you fulfilling the service work? Are the sales all lead gen to outside vendors?
 

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Anything you want can be purchased for $0.06 monthly from a VC funded tech startup. More or less true.

I made my wife promise to say "NO" whenever I start talking about needing custom development and hiring devs.

How are you fulfilling the service work? Are the sales all lead gen to outside vendors?
Another member DM'd me saying he has some cost-effective solutions for what I'm looking for so I'm going to jump on a phone call with him.

However, my consideration is that I would like to own the code, it seems the company will be more valuable if it's a proprietary app/crm, no?

Having ultimate "control" is a must-have but maybe what you're saying is that I can get that even if I buy/purchase/lease it monthly.
 

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Another member DM'd me saying he has some cost-effective solutions for what I'm looking for so I'm going to jump on a phone call with him.

However, my consideration is that I would like to own the code, it seems the company will be more valuable if it's a proprietary app/crm, no?

Having ultimate "control" is a must-have but maybe what you're saying is that I can get that even if I buy/purchase/lease it monthly.
The reason for using existing 3rd party solutions amounts to deciding "What business are you in?"

Here's what I've seen literally dozens of time while working with entrepreneurs and onboarding service companies.
  1. Company launches, survives and seems to be on a decent growth path. After 2 - 4 years...
  2. The Founder(s) universally decide that building/owning an internal tech system of some type (almost always software) will give them a can't lose advantage. They convince themselves it's a must-have, won't cost too much and won't take too much time. All of those beliefs are wrong.
  3. Design and coding begins. The best outcome is it fails and life returns to normal. More likely, the employees are forced to use a buggy app with minimal documentation that changes whimsically every time someone has a suggestion. It makes their lives miserable. Since the company knows nothing about developing software, best practices are non-existent but no one can ever speak badly about the Founder's baby. After a long while, it eventually gets replaced with an industry standard solution.
  4. Revenues and other projects often flatline because the Founder(s) are distracted getting the new toy just right.
Surprisingly, it makes little difference whether it's developed in-house or outsourced. Same outcome.
 
G

Guest-5ty5s4

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The reason for using existing 3rd party solutions amounts to deciding "What business are you in?"

Here's what I've seen literally dozens of time while working with entrepreneurs and onboarding service companies.
  1. Company launches, survives and seems to be on a decent growth path. After 2 - 4 years...
  2. The Founder(s) universally decide that building/owning an internal tech system of some type (almost always software) will give them a can't lose advantage. They convince themselves it's a must-have, won't cost too much and won't take too much time. All of those beliefs are wrong.
  3. Design and coding begins. The best outcome is it fails and life returns to normal. More likely, the employees are forced to use a buggy app with minimal documentation that changes whimsically every time someone has a suggestion. It makes their lives miserable. Since the company knows nothing about developing software, best practices are non-existent but no one can ever speak badly about the Founder's baby. After a long while, it eventually gets replaced with an industry standard solution.
  4. Revenues and other projects often flatline because the Founder(s) are distracted getting the new toy just right.
Surprisingly, it makes little difference whether it's developed in-house or outsourced. Same outcome.
My family's business has gone through this, BUT, we are outliers because our in-house software has stood the test of time.

My no-college-degree-having, oil rig working, CEO grandpa designed the software and has two FT programmers working for him (in addition to the main workforce) and we've used it for decades now. Actually sold copies to a couple other companies recently.
 

Two Dog

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Another member DM'd me saying he has some cost-effective solutions for what I'm looking for so I'm going to jump on a phone call with him.
I told my wife she should say "No, no, no!" if I ever brought up the need for custom development.

After that actually happened about two months ago (NO!!!) :rofl:, it took two days to find a far better version of my must-have solution for $99 / month. That's because the company selling it raised $99M in total funding and knows everything imaginable about developing great software.

Feel free to DM me with some idea of what you're trying to accomplish. Can't imagine it doesn't exist in many forms.
 
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It's changed and evolved quite a bit!
Funny enough, it was much easier in Granddad's day because coding was so limited and time consuming. You didn't spend hours agonizing over which shade of green would look best. Everything amounted to "Doing this is a PITA and giant time suck" and creating something to streamline that one bottleneck. It wasn't about creating a new Sim City universe from scratch.
 
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Guest-5ty5s4

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Funny enough, it was much easier in Granddad's day because coding was so limited and time consuming. You didn't spend hours agonizing over which shade of green would look best. Everything amounted to "Doing this is a PITA and giant time suck" and creating something to streamline that one bottleneck. It wasn't about creating a new Sim City universe from scratch.
Would you believe he's never written a line of code? I didn't mean to hijack this thread, sorry OP.
 

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