Did you start-up a business?

[ooztuncer]

Well, I am wondering if any of you started up a business - a real one that required to pay tax.

 

What did you do? When/where was it (year/country/state)? Who/what inspired you? What was your initial investment (not asking an exact dollar figure)? Finally, is it still alive - if not why did you quit/sell/close?

 

Thanks,

[PL4YD34D]

i have my own company. there are two directors, myself and a friend.

i live in England so figures are different. it costs about £150 to get it all setup. but to really get you going with a premises it'd be like another 8000. so far its not going too well. its very difficult to attract customers as advertising costs soooo much, so until we have a few more customers there is no need for a premises.

we do networking and hardware and soon full Cisco installs.

 

i live in a big city (4 million people) so there are some HUGE companies already well established here. that makes it difficult to compete. im thinking of maybe just throwing in the towel and looking for a Cisco engineers position. pays ok and probably get to travel. but the opportunity to make good money from the business is there if i could afford to move in the right circles. its all about networking with the right people.

and tax is a biatch. cripples you to be honest. 19% upto £300,000 then 42% after. i dont mind hard work, but sense must prevail.

 

hope this helps

[UncleDavid218]

I didn't, but my dad has owned Humes Collision Center for 29 years. Went through 3 different buildings and is now in a 10,000 square foot shop. We work on everything from Geos to Ferraris. Used to emply 20, but now with the use of computers that's down to only 8. I am the official IT tech! I perform regular backups and make sure all the machines are running smoothly...

[cronocrash]

My father started up an ATM sales company. And I am in the process of doing what everyone and their uncle does - starting my own web design company. Except I really enjoy doing traditional arts more than web/digital art. So maybe somehow I'll get to sell my drawings/paintings... But probobly not. I love making pictures. Most likely my company will never be anything more than something to earn some scratch in my spare time but who knows?

[the_vandyl]

My father started up an ATM sales company. And I am in the process of doing what everyone and their uncle does - starting my own web design company. Except I really enjoy doing traditional arts more than web/digital art. So maybe somehow I'll get to sell my drawings/paintings... But probobly not. I love making pictures. Most likely my company will never be anything more than something to earn some scratch in my spare time but who knows?

 

yep..i do the same and feel the same..can't quit my day job

[Hawk454]

I started up an exotic car stereo shop out of high school. To get started, I headed to the local branch of the Board of Equalization for a tax ID (resellers permit) which was very cheap (around $15 USD). I ordered all the basic supplies for stereo installation from a single source supplier at factory cost (maybe $1000 total supplies). I contacted several vendors to get added as an authorized dealer. Most of the highest end manufacturers turned down my offer until I could show my volume sales reached an minimum amount. But I ended up carrying decent equipment. Next I opened a small shop with a car bay for the custom installations.

I dumped $10k into a car stereo while I went to college and entered my car in several IASCA events for local marketing reasons. I was required to enter in Pro category since I worked in the industry (after slamming ametuer class hands down) and sponsored a couple young friends from various high schools and colleges for word of mouth advertising (total cost of labor around $2500). My car had (8) twelve inch subwoofers in boxes resonating at thirty hertz with three hundred watts per speaker. I had a hell of a time supplying all that current with six car batteries and had to invest in a generator to charge the batteries in between events. I carried Orion/Precision Power/Hi-fonics amplifiers at the time with Sony/Kenwood head-units. I used Alpine USA products exclusively for all the systems that were to be used in competition as I feel they are the best. Digital crossovers with phase correction is but one of the essential options that Alpine alone carries.

 

Average sales per month were would exceed my bills so I enjoyed profits for about two years. I had a blast building many car stereos during the early 1990's.

 

Most installations would include $1000 equipment with an additional $800 in labor and $100 supplies. Multiple amplifier/subwoofer systems were very popular in southern california during that era. Most customers were interested in raw sound pressure levels so I programmed some handy applications to plot graphs using the car's acoustical resonances. Sound meters were used to benchmark cars with tone generators to help decide on box size and type of box. I love sealed box systems for the very low bass response but some people prefer the ported setup for overall efficiency.

 

I hired an additional installer to handle basic jobs and would pay flat fee per job (1099 Consultants). Hired an agency to handle advertising in local papers since they received discounts for multiple pages/clients.

 

My goal was two or three installs per month to cover expenses and enjoy a healthy social life (yeah I partied very hard during this time). I gave up that line of work for a few reasons:

1. Car stereo alarms are ghey to install and give no satisfaction to me whatsoever.

2. Working with wires and poking fingers seemed to cause nerve damage over time.

3. I was ready to work less and get paid more.

4. Gave to many free tips to those who asked and taught all my friends everything I knew...so they started doing their own installs.

 

I joined the US Navy to work on Aviation Electronics shortly after and I am now an accountant. Heh, I would never have guessed my career path back in those days...

Cheers,

[Angry_Games]

well

 

I started my own biz waaaaay back when I was 15 in Idaho, and all I needed was a "Sole Proprietor's License" or some such nonsense...but it was enough to get biz cards and a checkbook and allow people to write checks to the biz name (it was a car detailing business)

 

 

in FL, I had my own gig again, but I just made people write checks to me personally...since I did all of the work

 

 

these days...I am yet again self employed (this is how DFI pays me...), and not only do I do work for DFI, but I also seem to be the main dude for the Idaho Steelheads (local pro hockey team), as well as any other customers around the area...and today I was offered a secondary job during the fall doing security at the ice rink during high school hockey games lol...not bad for $12+ per hour just for busting stupid high school heads open with a hockey stick

[ExtraPickles]

After 35 years of working for other people I just started working for myself at the beginning of April. Not by choice exactly as I had gotten laid off after 10+ cushy years of working from home at my last job. So far so good, I was lucky and scored a 3 month programming contract for an obscene hourly rate and have gotten a few offers in the pipeline for when the project is complete.

 

Great money but no benefits at all. Taxes are killer, healthcare costs are worse. I enjoy the travel and hotel room service and if it continues to be profitable I probably won't go back to working for Corporate America again.

 

The thought of starting over again somewhere in a cube listening to Dick Hertz in the next cube complaining in a nerdish nasal voice about his hemmorhoids on the phone all day makes me ill.

 

-pickles

[Angry_Games]

Great money but no benefits at all. Taxes are killer, healthcare costs are worse. I enjoy the travel and hotel room service and if it continues to be profitable I probably won't go back to working for Corporate America again.

 

amen brotha

 

when you kids get to be our age, all that 'extra money i could spend on beer or chicks' that you put into IRA's and 401k's and health insurance etc gets to be VERY IMPORTANT...more important really than the take-home pay

 

 

The thought of starting over again somewhere in a cube listening to Dick Hertz in the next cube complaining in a nerdish nasal voice about his hemmorhoids on the phone all day makes me ill.

 

wahahahha

 

watch my Evercool video and listen to Angry Dick Hertz and his hemmorhoidsal nasal voice narrating

[red930]

I'm a partner in a Computer Consultancy that also has a retail presence(we have an office so we take walk-in customers).

 

The company is setup as a Limited Liability Corporation so we're documented in Mississippi. Everyone works as a contractor which means I also have my own personal company for tax purposes and side ventures.

 

We rent space from one of our customers and have access to his warehouse when large shipments arrive. Our minimal overhead consists of two phone lines, internet access, power and rent. Since we run a very lean operation with low overhead, we're able to make a considerable net profit while bidding low on contracts.

 

When large projects come up, we're able to draw from a large pool of active duty and retired military personnel. Within 48 hours we can have a team of up to 20 people ready to tackle a project.

 

Hurricane Katrina put us slightly behind our projected growth curve even with the boost during the immediate recovery phase.