Are you business smart?
 

prove your philosophy of how to run a business...

tell me what you think...

You have a startup website/business, for example, a new content site that is growing, you are making $2K a month, with expense of $3.5K a month, with a small team of employees included in the expense. You are taking care of the most aspects of the site, working 16 hours a day, like SEO & marketing, content update, sponsor testing, small design work, thinking of new ideas, working with programmer, etc.. you get the picture...

You believe in your heart that once the traffic will grow, you will make, lets say $5 million a year profit within 2 years. However you have one problem, all the quality control of employees, and the daily chores listed above, would be getting to you and overwhelming you, how would you proceed with this project. Please take into account, that you have a partner and his philosophy on this project is to start hiring more people, manage them, and minimize the role of everyday operations. He simply doesn't believe that such daily chores listed above should be the owner/CEO's job, and that our job is to think of ideas, innovation and put them to work managing people because that's his current involvement and mindset on how to approach a business.

This will require getting a nice size loan (as current financial capital is small), put most of the work on the people, and test the business model. Such jobs that would have to be given to people are SEO & marketing, content update, sponsor testing, small design work, quality control of the employees themselves, and so on.

With all the above details, what would you do at this point? how would you proceed with this project, and with what decisions will you make this project become successful?

If you give me a few minutes of your thoughts, and it influences my decisions and I become successful with this project, I will come back in the future to find you and prove to you how much I appreciated your time and input.

shut it all down and climb in a dumpster

Well first of all you need to cut your losses and start making a profit if you are making 2k a month and spending 3.5k month. Train or use one of your most trusted employees to look after the other members of your team which would free you up, You should be able to call a meeting of this key member/ manager, tell him exactly what you want doing and expect him to relay it to the other employees.

Could talk to us about hosting and running the site using my SEO/Writers/webmasters for a rev share model.

and people troll my threads?

:1orglaugh

One word: automation.

correct answer is:
E. not enough information to draw any conclusions..

Do you have employees because you like the idea of having employees?
Or are they a necessity?

When I first opened.. my mother and I dispatched 12 hour shifts.. daily.. for 4 months.
No days off. 7 days per week.. 12 hour days.. at the PC.. designing, changing, growing..


Are you literally working as hard as you can to maximize profit? or are you working as hard as you want to?

I find that some personality types inflate exactly how hard they're working... and their ego pushes them to delegate too early in the business creation process...

I stopped taking the post serious after this.. why limit yourself to only $5 million a year profit after 2 years? :1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Spot, the fuck, on.

If you are losing almost double what you are making then you have bigger issues to worry about other than minions and micro management.

From reading the first few lines, but 1st guess is you are not monetizing your unique, original content. That is my first thought right out of the gate. Sounds like you are spending more time on SEO, and other bullshit magic tricks. A lot of the bullshit you read on boards, instead of trying to get that content banking.

Start there.
:2 cents:

Yeah, I chuckled at that as well.

2 years, and 5 million?

Nigga please.

Really? I am sorry that I do not fit into the less than 1% of the population who are millionaires. I will let the other 99%+ voice their opinion and MAYBE that one real millionaire will come along who values sharing opinions more than what percentage of the population he fits in.

Also, there are such things as REASONABLE goals, and there are DREAMS.. everyone of us wants to believe his business will make $100 million in 6 months or 2 billion in 3 months, whatever the dream is.. But it matters on how realistic and serious you want to reach a reasonable income that will make sense. You always shoot for the stars and hit somewhere in between is my theory.

first of all.. all the idiot surfers didn't click this thread.. because it doesn't say pics or boobs in the title ;)

So you're getting people who know wtf theyre talking about in the thread... sometimes it just hurts hearing people's opinions...

And sarcasm.. learn it ;) How many of these guys do you think became millionaires in the first two years? NOT MANY... mostly only the ones caught up in the late 90s early 2000s boomb...
Every other busienss takes a while to get there...

Well in one sentence you are losing a lot of money and can't seem to manage your employees just quite right and in the next sentence you are a multimillion dollar company within two years. You don't think that maybe lofty? I wouldn't worry about a $5 million goal right now... right now you seem to have a problem with a partner that thinks he can hire out all of the "framework" jobs on a shoestring budget, which really I don't think is going to work. When you are setting up a company, as the leader in charge, you need to put your head down and drive the company... you can't just hire that out, particularly with no money.

Keep at it, you'll figure something out.

without knowing what your product is and many other factors. a smart business person cant really give you advise

good advise:thumbsup

So first, I get a guy who says $5 million is nothing, like it's everyday hobby to make $5 million, then you come along, and say that maybe lofty... LOL

Can you please tell me what areas in your opinion cannot be hired out? please be as specific as possible. thank you.

How could I possibly give you that information? I don't know anything about you, your company, or the people that you employed... let alone the skills that everyone holds or doesn't hold.

You are asking questions that outsiders can not answer for you. These are questions that you need to answer for yourself.

What most people said is absolutely right..there's no way to make judgements based on one paragraph of information. When you're in business school learning how to make judgements and recommendations on an unfamiliar business, you get 100+ pages of information in the case study, not a paragraph. You didn't even say whether the 2K is gross or net. :2 cents:

But a few things to think about:
1. Are you and your partner even compatible? A nose-to-the-grindstone partner and a sit-back-and-let-others do it partner...usually aren't long for a partnership together.
2. In this business, you're making 2K a month, and you have employees (plural)? But your partner doesn't want to work. You don't find that a prescription for disaster?
3. You're working 16 hours a day doing "SEO & marketing, content update, sponsor testing, small design work, thinking of new ideas, working with programmer" but you have employees (plural)? WTF are they doing?

In general, if you have a huge new idea that requires a large amount of start-up capital, or you have backers with deep pockets, then maybe having partners working on raising money and the "big picture," and employees (plural) doing the rest of the work, makes sense. If you're doing what the rest of us are doing, in one form or another, it might be a good idea to either have you and your partner build the business and add employees as your profit grows...or else have your resume ready. :2 cents: