- Thread starter
- #31
Hello Seth, Welcome to this forum.
First all congrats that you have the will power to continue with your businesses after five years. It’s easier said than done.
If find your questions a bit interesting because I think that only you and your wife have the answers. Nobody knows your businesses and how they are doing better than you. In theory both businesses can become fast lane. Of course you need to analyze in which one there’s market demand for it. After 5 years you can get some insights based on your sales and profit. Is there a business that is under performing? The fact that you are asking which one to sell might imply that both are not doing well.
¿Does the majority of your income come from your couple businesses?
If you are in a weak financial situation why not sell both pay some debt and try to get a job. IMO a more reliable source of income might good for you in terms of mental tranquility. You need to secure the financial part for your family. You can always start a new business latter.
I f you still want to continue in the entrepreneurial path you should analyze which of your small businesses is the one performing poorly. You might sell that one and invest what you got into the one that’s performing better. Per example you sell the backyard chicken rental and use that to expand your sharpening business. Perhaps trying to sell your own knifes, succors or other products via private labeling. Those are some ideas.
It might be more helpful to you and us to give us a bit more of information to try to help you the best we can. Remember at the end of the day this is only a forum. You are the one that’s going to make the decisions.
Thanks great input. Yes, we're considering all of the above. I went into detail today with regard to the chicken business in other posts on this thread. Jansen Sharpening is definitely a simpler business. However, our net income this year will be $10,000 (last year, $7000), and I don't see a way to grow this significantly locally without opening a store front and hiring people. Even then, a store front sharpening shop that serves an exclusively local market is definitely not fastlane, because it fails the commandment of scale. We could do a mail order service. We currently offer that on our website, but shipping makes it a bit challenging, with slim margins per item. And we haven't had the time or money to market this nationally, and we don't really have a great shop at our residence. We just pull out the sharpening equipment and set it up on the dining room table, sometimes just to sharpen a couple knives. Most of our income with this comes form sharpening onsite at the busiest farmers market in the city every Saturday during spring, summer and fall. The other farmers markets have had very small sales numbers, and aren't worth our while.
We are thinking of my wife accepting a job to do web content navigation for friends of ours who own a thriving web development company and have contracted with her in the past to do content navigation, and then perhaps using this to springboard into a web-based business in the future.
I don't even know if our businesses would be worth much for a few different reasons. I'll bet there's a thread somewhere on this forum that discusses the valuation of small mom and pop type businesses (that's kind of where we're at right now).
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum:
Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.