Every Business Requires Effort

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Vintage Slips 4 U .com

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Cpfsn.org

Children with Cerebral Palsy & Other Disabilities Forum

If you have the idea that there is easy money sitting somewhere, just waiting for you to claim it, you will be disappointed. No matter what business you start up, you will have to work it to succeed. Some will require a lot of work and a huge investment others will require less work and virtually no investment but no matter what the start-up costs all will require you put in the effort necessary to get the returns you want.

I’ve owned several businesses, both brick and mortar as well as online, and to give you some examples, as well as my credentials, I will talk of my experiences.

My first business was as a long haul owner operator truck driver. The cost of the truck and trailer was about $120,000.00. In order to pay that debt and make money I was on the road six weeks at a time and lived in my truck. I did this for 13 years. This was a huge investment in both time and money, but the reward was substantial. The money derived from this business allowed me to invest in real estate and one could say this was my second business. Rentals.

My third business venture was an equipment trailer sales business. Again I had to invest $36,000.00 in inventory. This again required a large investment of both time and money.

My fourth business was an excavation business, which I ran from my home. This cost me over $200,000.00 in equipment. I kept myself afloat by doing small jobs at first, which gave me the experience to bid larger jobs. The time and investment was the largest I had made to date and the returns were not so large as my previous truck driving career. However I saw this could be my ticket to riches as the business grew. Unfortunately, I became ill and had to close the business for medical reasons.

Now I was without work, I had to sell three duplexes to pay off debt. What income I had was derived from four rental properties I had left. This gave me enough to pay the bills but not enough to get ahead. With two kids and a wife to support I had to look at other options. The first was selling on eBay. This would have been my fifth business venture and my first online.

The wife and I went to estate sales and bought items as cheaply as we could. We also went to storage auctions and to business auctions where they sold old stock they were replacing. We bought these items and resold them on eBay. The amount of time it took to go to these sales, clean the items, take the pictures, write the listing, post the listing, package what sold and ship it off compared to the return on investment, ROI, was very small. Though our cash investment was lower our time went up considerably as both the wife and I were putting in eight to ten hour days. We gave it a year and moved on.

We had invested in a web site to host our pictures for the eBay sales and we decided to sell directly off the site instead of through eBay. We began by promoting the site through ads as well as link exchanges and search engines. Again the time was similar to that of eBay as we still had to purchase inventory, take pictures and post them to the site. We still had to deal with shipping and returns. But our margins were greater and on a per item basis we realized greater ROI. As we are out the cost of inventory already bought the site is still up, but it just makes enough to pay for hosting. We no longer actively market that business though it is still creating the odd sale here and there.

Again we have moved on. The wife, together with her mother, have invested some $30,000.00 plus to go into a work from home embroidery business. They are currently in the process of lining up suppliers and such before actually moving on to sales. They hope to be actually taking orders near the end of spring 2008.

Update December 08. The wife and her mother never took the business seriously. They would make casual contacts who would express an interest in having things embroidered but the wife and mother in law would never follow through. I do believe, based on the contacts they made and the amount of desire expressed by those they met at craft fairs and the like that they could have made this business profitable if given the time and devotion it deserved. They however looked upon it as a hobby and never really took the time to actively seek out sales nor even to make sales to those they knew wanted things done. I will not be renewing the business license next year.

I, however, have moved into looking at work from home businesses. Biz-ops that require very little money and very little time.. Still without putting forth at least minimal effort there would be no chance at any return at all. Even a business that is virtually free in terms of cost, requires I make the effort to get others involved in order for me to see any returns. The more effort I put in the quicker I will see the ROI. In this case “I” or investment, is Time, not money.

The point to all this is, no matter what business you decide to involve yourself with, your ability to meet your goals and be successful will be in direct relation to the amount of effort you put into the business. If you expect a business to hand you instant profits you will need to buy a business that is already showing profits. If you plan a start-up, even an online home based business, you will need to put in the effort necessary for success.

I can’t stress enough how important effort is to getting a business off the ground and to make it successful. In future articles I hope to delve further into what it will take to make our or any business a success.

Thank You

Robert Taormina

http://vintageslips4u.com

http://www.cpfsn.org

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My daughter has Cerebral Palsy. I do not say this for sympathy. I have created a site devoted to helping people with disabilities find resources they need to navigate DSHS, DDD, SSI and others including the school system. What I need from you is to let people with disabilities know of the site and get them to send me information of their local and State agencies that fulfill the needs of the disabled. I want to make this information available to all for free on my site. I just need the help of either a person with a child having cerebral palsy or any disability or a concerned person who can donate their time to help seek out this information of advocacy groups for the disabled.

I am spending what time and resources I have but I need help.

Please check out the site and if you can contribute with any information please do so. Check out the site I made for families with children who have CP Click http://www.cpfsn.org

Through having to take our daughter to therapy and doctors appointments we have come to know many parent's of children with Cerebral Palsy. In the course of our attempts to advocate for our daughter and upon hearing of the same troubles others have had doing the same we decided to use some web space and try to do something about it. We want very much to be able to provide relevant information for every locality across the country so that people seeking information do not have to spend days in search of the information they need. We would welcome any help you could give us. Any links you can supply for either .gov's or private agencies that provide for or advocate for the Disabled would be appreciated. We would like to break them down by Federal, State, County, City and Schools. Please visit www.cpfsn.org and see if there is anything you can contribute to grow the site into a useful and relevant site for people with disabilities specially those with Children who have Cerebral Palsy.

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Also if you feel you would like to contribute a recipe or a pattern or any household tips and tricks or some other useful information to be posted on this site you would be welcomed to do so. Not wanting to infringe on any copyright I must ask that these be original to you or someone you know who gives their permission or in the public domain. I will need you to at least provide a name when submitting something and I will place a disclaimer on anything submitted as not being ours but submitted by you. It would help me fill the pages of this site and make it a much more interesting experience for any who come here. Your name (or at the least your first name if you desire) would be placed with any submission so you could point to it and take credit.

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Small Business Articles Every Business Requires Effort