I bought myself a "lifestyle business". Its a cleaning business that already had a number of long term clients and revenue as well as staff. I've rearranged the staff, automated the administration side of it and while i did the cleaning myself (with the existing staff) for the first 2 weeks of takeover, that now goes on without my involvement too.
I've only had it a month, i spent about £6k to buy it, i spent a further £2k buying a van and other one off supplies and my monthly profit after staff wages and other recourring expenses is around £800 a month. So if i left it at that i'd see a 100% ROI in 10 months.
However I intend to spend around £10k on advertising and marketing in the next 3-4 months to expand the business, i expect a conservative £25k a year revenue for that £10k.
Of course being a geek has helped immensely, especially with automating things like invoicing, payments, accounting and building the website, phone system, business cards, designs etc.
I urge all geeks here to think about applying your high tech skills to low tech businesses, you'll often find massive opportunity, especially if the space is typically occupied by non-tech literate people.
Also, as a side note, this is now my new strategy for my consulting too, instead of being a PHP Developer doing boring but well paid jobs like facebook apps and wordpress sites, i'm now positioning myself to be a business consultant that makes businesses money by applying technology where its severely lacking, and i already have my first client, a taxi company.
If anyone wants to ask me questions, feel free to reply here if you dont mind if being public or email me: contact@[myHNusername].com
This is a great approach. Many of the best in tech are outside of tech. You have to just think about your day-to-day activities and observe ways to improve things. That is where you usually find great opportunities.
This sounds a bit crazy, but I saw the opportunity on Gumtree, a guy wanted to sell this part of his business. I went over his historical figures, did as much due diligence as i could and considered the figures to see if it was worth it. I have kind of a rule, if i can get a 100% ROI in 1 year, its worth doing, I initially thought i'd get a 100% RIO in 8 months, i figured i'd miss something (which i did) but i thought there was enough room for a little bit of error and decided to go for it.
I've only had it a month, i spent about £6k to buy it, i spent a further £2k buying a van and other one off supplies and my monthly profit after staff wages and other recourring expenses is around £800 a month. So if i left it at that i'd see a 100% ROI in 10 months.
However I intend to spend around £10k on advertising and marketing in the next 3-4 months to expand the business, i expect a conservative £25k a year revenue for that £10k.
Of course being a geek has helped immensely, especially with automating things like invoicing, payments, accounting and building the website, phone system, business cards, designs etc.
I urge all geeks here to think about applying your high tech skills to low tech businesses, you'll often find massive opportunity, especially if the space is typically occupied by non-tech literate people.
Also, as a side note, this is now my new strategy for my consulting too, instead of being a PHP Developer doing boring but well paid jobs like facebook apps and wordpress sites, i'm now positioning myself to be a business consultant that makes businesses money by applying technology where its severely lacking, and i already have my first client, a taxi company.
If anyone wants to ask me questions, feel free to reply here if you dont mind if being public or email me: contact@[myHNusername].com