ocram
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- Jul 25, 2021
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Hi there,
Longtime lurker here. Sorry for the very very long post. Without going into details I find it difficult to go give advices.
(1ST BUSINESS)
To sum it up: I did a Master in Industrial Engineering (majoring in finance) but started helping out in a Catering Business of my girlfriends mum while still studying (2019). There was no business it was mostly selfemployment: No standards, no processes, no system, nothing. I started everything with some sort of microdatabase in excel to collect everything and shortly after I introduced a first low-cost CRM. There were decent sales, but nothing special. The homepage was really really needing an update. SEO was okayish but no top positions at all. So what I did after was to focus on SEO and checked the most searched terms in our region and begin to optimize it. We got more inquiries and were growing. But still the lack of anything else (standards, processes) is really getting in the way. The last months of 2019 were crazy. Huge sale numbers but the efficiency was lacking because of no standards etc. Frustrating. So early 2020 was good too. A big event that helped through usually bad early months in the year. Well shortly after you all know what happened: COVID.
Everything was cancelled, almost 0€ revenue for months. Crisis. In March I also started my thesis (or maybe not). My focus was so much on the business I told myself I’ll skip 1-2 months of thesis and work later on the thesis . There was finally so much time to work ON the business rather then IN it. We did a lot of meetings and I proposed to update the website with a shopsystem so we could have a new business opportunity. My girlfriend and her mum should focus on the receipts, wordings, basically on the stuff we are actually selling. Those were no easy times as you can imagine. Discussions over and over.
Fast forward a little bit the summer 2020 is passing, my thesis is working and I am graduating. The catering business was still on very low revenue. The website is almost finished, I bought a DSLR taught myself the basics for food photography and started taking a lot of pictures and implement them on the new website and so on…COVID is not going away and I still decided to pursue the catering instead of a corporate job as an engineer or management position. Winter is coming and the next covid wave hits us. Again sales are going down a lot. We barely get any salary. It was a really hard time…
(2ND BUSINESS)
In winter 2020 is when I met an old friend and where the second business starts to take place. This old friend is working for a bit more than a year in the care market (has a little business with 1 employee, now 2 employees). He and I got an Idea to sell a certain COVID related product online. We did a lot of meetings via discord and talked about it and line everything up. The skills we have added pretty good. He has good idea of the market and I knew everything about setting up a shop, create everything marketing and brand related, get traffic through SEO analysis and landingpages and so forth. We had almost 0 costs to start this shop. All in all maybe 200 € each. The covid-related products he already had on stock so he just „sold“ it to our new business. Everything was set up and we were just excited how it would be accepted. The first month was 266 € in sales. Remember: We did not market it at all. 0 ads. Everything was organic. We were so „proud“. The second month: 8314 €. INSANE! Still…we did not run any ads at all. Third month: 12.700€. We could not believe it. After that its balanced between 8000 to 12000 € in sales per month (which is around 2000€ salary each).
(1ST BUSINESS GOT BIG AGAIN)
In May & June the catering business started to be revived again. There is so much work just talk to customers, writing offers and all in all what it needs to get the catering system running. After it started to get going again, I was not having any more time to work on my new business or the catering business. I am mostly working Monday to Saturday (sometimes Sunday too). Either the catering or the Onlineshop (covid products) seems to me like a fast lane business. The covid related online shop is however temporary since anytime soon this pandemic is over? I don’t know. It would be possible to scale the online shop a lot with marketing effort (could kill margin too, so its a bit risky). It is also not even close to fastlane, since we are packing it ourselves since the sales volume is not high enough to have an employee to do that. Still we could be making around 2000 € per Person. But currently we are just paying like 800 € to ourselves. Rest stays in company for now.
(WHAT TO DO?)
So now I am thinking about starting an own business. There are always things bothering me in both companies I can not control. I am thinking about learning how to code. Maybe I Am delusional. I never did code (only know basic html and can read and adjust some css). So guys that’s where I need your help. Where should I focus on? Is it even a good idea to learn to code? Should I focus on the 2 running businesses? Am I given them up too early? Let me know what you think!
And of course: Thanks for taking the time!
(TLDR)
First company (not mine): catering which is running mediocre. A lot of problems since it is not „my“ business. Second business an online shop from a friend and me. Generating 10k sales organically. Temporary product since its covid related. Thinking about learning to code to pursue a new business (saas?). Need help what to do.
Longtime lurker here. Sorry for the very very long post. Without going into details I find it difficult to go give advices.
(1ST BUSINESS)
To sum it up: I did a Master in Industrial Engineering (majoring in finance) but started helping out in a Catering Business of my girlfriends mum while still studying (2019). There was no business it was mostly selfemployment: No standards, no processes, no system, nothing. I started everything with some sort of microdatabase in excel to collect everything and shortly after I introduced a first low-cost CRM. There were decent sales, but nothing special. The homepage was really really needing an update. SEO was okayish but no top positions at all. So what I did after was to focus on SEO and checked the most searched terms in our region and begin to optimize it. We got more inquiries and were growing. But still the lack of anything else (standards, processes) is really getting in the way. The last months of 2019 were crazy. Huge sale numbers but the efficiency was lacking because of no standards etc. Frustrating. So early 2020 was good too. A big event that helped through usually bad early months in the year. Well shortly after you all know what happened: COVID.
Everything was cancelled, almost 0€ revenue for months. Crisis. In March I also started my thesis (or maybe not). My focus was so much on the business I told myself I’ll skip 1-2 months of thesis and work later on the thesis . There was finally so much time to work ON the business rather then IN it. We did a lot of meetings and I proposed to update the website with a shopsystem so we could have a new business opportunity. My girlfriend and her mum should focus on the receipts, wordings, basically on the stuff we are actually selling. Those were no easy times as you can imagine. Discussions over and over.
Fast forward a little bit the summer 2020 is passing, my thesis is working and I am graduating. The catering business was still on very low revenue. The website is almost finished, I bought a DSLR taught myself the basics for food photography and started taking a lot of pictures and implement them on the new website and so on…COVID is not going away and I still decided to pursue the catering instead of a corporate job as an engineer or management position. Winter is coming and the next covid wave hits us. Again sales are going down a lot. We barely get any salary. It was a really hard time…
(2ND BUSINESS)
In winter 2020 is when I met an old friend and where the second business starts to take place. This old friend is working for a bit more than a year in the care market (has a little business with 1 employee, now 2 employees). He and I got an Idea to sell a certain COVID related product online. We did a lot of meetings via discord and talked about it and line everything up. The skills we have added pretty good. He has good idea of the market and I knew everything about setting up a shop, create everything marketing and brand related, get traffic through SEO analysis and landingpages and so forth. We had almost 0 costs to start this shop. All in all maybe 200 € each. The covid-related products he already had on stock so he just „sold“ it to our new business. Everything was set up and we were just excited how it would be accepted. The first month was 266 € in sales. Remember: We did not market it at all. 0 ads. Everything was organic. We were so „proud“. The second month: 8314 €. INSANE! Still…we did not run any ads at all. Third month: 12.700€. We could not believe it. After that its balanced between 8000 to 12000 € in sales per month (which is around 2000€ salary each).
(1ST BUSINESS GOT BIG AGAIN)
In May & June the catering business started to be revived again. There is so much work just talk to customers, writing offers and all in all what it needs to get the catering system running. After it started to get going again, I was not having any more time to work on my new business or the catering business. I am mostly working Monday to Saturday (sometimes Sunday too). Either the catering or the Onlineshop (covid products) seems to me like a fast lane business. The covid related online shop is however temporary since anytime soon this pandemic is over? I don’t know. It would be possible to scale the online shop a lot with marketing effort (could kill margin too, so its a bit risky). It is also not even close to fastlane, since we are packing it ourselves since the sales volume is not high enough to have an employee to do that. Still we could be making around 2000 € per Person. But currently we are just paying like 800 € to ourselves. Rest stays in company for now.
(WHAT TO DO?)
So now I am thinking about starting an own business. There are always things bothering me in both companies I can not control. I am thinking about learning how to code. Maybe I Am delusional. I never did code (only know basic html and can read and adjust some css). So guys that’s where I need your help. Where should I focus on? Is it even a good idea to learn to code? Should I focus on the 2 running businesses? Am I given them up too early? Let me know what you think!
And of course: Thanks for taking the time!
(TLDR)
First company (not mine): catering which is running mediocre. A lot of problems since it is not „my“ business. Second business an online shop from a friend and me. Generating 10k sales organically. Temporary product since its covid related. Thinking about learning to code to pursue a new business (saas?). Need help what to do.
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