Starting Again
Discussion
TheBogFlogger said:
Any new updates? its an enjoyable read.
Actually loads but I thought maybe it was boring.We’ve made so many mistakes it’s criminal but In summary, PAYE and nest killed my cash flow, we’ve fallen out with a few people, over serviced a few people and gone down too many dead ends.
We still don’t have a decent website, have never done any marketing (ok about 3 days worth) and our hiring process would make you cry.
We’re in our 4th office in under 2 years and since we moved it’s supercharged our business. Biggest thing to pass on - spend more on a workplace that inspires and impresses - if anyone wants a look google Avenue HQ Liverpool we have an office and a 4 person open office plus hot desks.
Our onboarding of projects wasn’t good enough, as such finishing a project with a loose spec takes forever - we have learnt hard from this and used a consultant to write the process and Asana / Harvest to monitor throughput.
So where are we? By a combination of luck, skill, blag and age (I know lots of people cos I’m ancient) we’re up to 13 senior staff, 3 freelancers and a part time genius.
We have 14 retained marketing companies and dev enquiries daily.
We’ve lost a few by not being in London, but we don’t pretend to be (yet) and most clients are in manchester. We specialise in clothing purely by client word of mouth they all share info in that sector it seems.
We were approached to do lead generation and that starts next month, we have recruited just for this role, again it was an old mate asking.
Our own ecommerce is ready to go but we are too busy, we’ve spent £££ on the app as well.
So you all want to know am I earning??? Nope only £700 but my initial investment is nearly repaid and we don’t owe any money to anyone else (just a bit of PAYE) - baffles me how so many agencies owe ££££ our two main competitors in Shopify are 1 skint and 1 in debt so hopefully we can buy them in near future.
If anyone wants to hear anything specifically about the dumb and dumber approach to starting a business ask away!
Cheers guys
DSLiverpool said:
We’ve made so many mistakes it’s criminal.
We still don’t have a decent website.
Our hiring process would make you cry.
If anyone wants to hear anything specifically about the dumb and dumber approach to starting a business ask away!
Keep going Dave.We still don’t have a decent website.
Our hiring process would make you cry.
If anyone wants to hear anything specifically about the dumb and dumber approach to starting a business ask away!
As you know from our many conversations, the above could be me.
However Dave, we're still here when a large majority of new businesses disappear well before now. Promise I'll jump on the ferry over to your impressive offices soon
Well when I was employed I didn’t enjoy it but also didn’t have that much pressure, when I had my own retail business I didn’t realise at the start it’s a treadmill and you can’t just get off once it’s running. I had 5 / 6 great years with DST problem was I ran it for 10 !!!
Imagine not being able to sell something you no longer want to do - horrendous and I was lucky.
This agency business has one main cost it’s staff, as such I don’t feel anything like the pressure, no suppliers only rent and a myriad of software bills.
So YES I’m enjoying it, we have a huge milestone
In August where we get an accreditation if it goes through we can charge more and I can get a nice wage.
Imagine not being able to sell something you no longer want to do - horrendous and I was lucky.
This agency business has one main cost it’s staff, as such I don’t feel anything like the pressure, no suppliers only rent and a myriad of software bills.
So YES I’m enjoying it, we have a huge milestone
In August where we get an accreditation if it goes through we can charge more and I can get a nice wage.
Well the entire business was a treadmill, owing suppliers and HMRC and staff means cash has to keep coming in, if a competitor or amazon target your main sales lines you have to think fast! Waking up one day and finding that great supplier you deal with and always pay etc has sold a load of kit to a generic online trader who has trashed it all over the net whilst you have £££ of it in stock and obviously going nowhere. Trusting suppliers not to do silly deals was always an issue.
Our rent is approaching £3k, thats for a 6 man office and 2 hot desks and 4 permanent desks in the open. If I commit for 3 years we can have the space in the picture for £3k for 9 months then £4k. Its a mad amount to rent but as I said before being where we are is getting us business.
|https://thumbsnap.com/uXUmRUiJ[/url]
In other news the lead generation side is a month old and we are starting to find a formula that means each lead attained doesnt cost us more than the client will pay (win) and as its ecommerce silly season we are getting some quality leads.
More things I have learnt - ecommerce management and site dev is not like banging up a wordpress site in that the client can s
t themselves daily depending on revenue, with say a hotel site the hassle process is far slower / less reactive. Also with ecommerce if we re platform from magento say then the data transfer will fk us up every time (Magento / woo etc have fields we cannot always replicate in Shopify) one client has 180k master skus (not variants) and whilst cart2cart said ok the reality was a total utter mess we are still working on and its depressing as the main site is 90% finished awaiting the data.
Our retainers are at an all time high and whilst you cant keep everyone happy all the time employing a head of communications to call everyone weekly and meet monthly was a good move.
Some clients appreciate us
|https://thumbsnap.com/GisLRjCH[/url]
|https://thumbsnap.com/uXUmRUiJ[/url]In other news the lead generation side is a month old and we are starting to find a formula that means each lead attained doesnt cost us more than the client will pay (win) and as its ecommerce silly season we are getting some quality leads.
More things I have learnt - ecommerce management and site dev is not like banging up a wordpress site in that the client can s
t themselves daily depending on revenue, with say a hotel site the hassle process is far slower / less reactive. Also with ecommerce if we re platform from magento say then the data transfer will fk us up every time (Magento / woo etc have fields we cannot always replicate in Shopify) one client has 180k master skus (not variants) and whilst cart2cart said ok the reality was a total utter mess we are still working on and its depressing as the main site is 90% finished awaiting the data.Our retainers are at an all time high and whilst you cant keep everyone happy all the time employing a head of communications to call everyone weekly and meet monthly was a good move.
Some clients appreciate us
|https://thumbsnap.com/GisLRjCH[/url]
Business relationships are so important. I've learnt that in the past to my expense.So we got Shopify Plus last week, 3 month onboarding process starts now.
What this means is to the 10 agencies with it in the UK we are number 11, nearest others are Birmingham and Wakefield meaning we are best positioned for Manchester. Our work will be assessed regularly both design and code with a minimum of 6 sites of enterprise level (£2k month client subscription) required a year - however as I said they feed us the leads.
To Velstar it means the referrals from Shopify will be enterprise level builds and we should get a couple a month mainly replatforms.
We finally finished our website and did some very soft marketing which resulted in quite a few small enquiries, that’s ok but we need to refine and set a capture list of etailers to go after in 2019.
In other news our office is proving expensive as we grow, we have a few external workers but right now a regular 12 internal, this currently costs about £200 a desk with only insurance as an extra cost - the new space to cover up to 16 people is us getting the office next door but paying for the space before the people - £3200
We’re looking locally at other space but it would be a shame to move.
I’ve learnt that:
Paying £3k gets you a poor accountant
Paye is bloody hard to pay once your behind
In ecommerce your judged on performance daily. (Why are we so busy / quiet etc)
I’m too old for this at 55
Deliveroo and Uber eats will kill me.
My 13 year old windows pc will have to go.
Fast fashion is truly hard work hats off to the guys doing it - we have one (independent one man company) on £2m a month who puts his entire life into getting orders out the door - amazing.
Wonder what 2019 brings...
Oh still earning nothing but all debt paid off to myself and we’re in good shape, the business value will increase also with the Shopify plus accreditation.
What this means is to the 10 agencies with it in the UK we are number 11, nearest others are Birmingham and Wakefield meaning we are best positioned for Manchester. Our work will be assessed regularly both design and code with a minimum of 6 sites of enterprise level (£2k month client subscription) required a year - however as I said they feed us the leads.
To Velstar it means the referrals from Shopify will be enterprise level builds and we should get a couple a month mainly replatforms.
We finally finished our website and did some very soft marketing which resulted in quite a few small enquiries, that’s ok but we need to refine and set a capture list of etailers to go after in 2019.
In other news our office is proving expensive as we grow, we have a few external workers but right now a regular 12 internal, this currently costs about £200 a desk with only insurance as an extra cost - the new space to cover up to 16 people is us getting the office next door but paying for the space before the people - £3200
We’re looking locally at other space but it would be a shame to move.
I’ve learnt that:
Paying £3k gets you a poor accountant
Paye is bloody hard to pay once your behind
In ecommerce your judged on performance daily. (Why are we so busy / quiet etc)
I’m too old for this at 55
Deliveroo and Uber eats will kill me.
My 13 year old windows pc will have to go.
Fast fashion is truly hard work hats off to the guys doing it - we have one (independent one man company) on £2m a month who puts his entire life into getting orders out the door - amazing.
Wonder what 2019 brings...
Oh still earning nothing but all debt paid off to myself and we’re in good shape, the business value will increase also with the Shopify plus accreditation.
Hoofy said:
I thought I was bad with a PC that's probably about 8 years old. If you're running such a successful small business why are you wasting your time trying to use a half dead PC?
All in do is send invoices and check sites / but of amazon set up etc it’s fine / not slow at all.I will have to get another (bloody) MacBook I guess but need one with a 20” screen 🤣
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