Search results

It wasn"t anything special. Its a trucking company with a huge regional HQ, and it was like a mile and a half stretch they want worked on. Felt like the whole property was like 50 acres (I walked the whole stretch as we bid it). In this particular case, it was tree work, while replacing a fence...

Paper comics are dead, but comics in other digital forms are doing great ($500 million revenue movies, cartoons and hit video games). Maybe its time for the companies to embrace digital comics, instead of doing it half-assed. Back in the day, a comic would regularly do millions of sales in...

I went to a top 20 school, and alot of the recruiters only recruit at top 20 schools. Also, there is a huge difference in pay between my school at #17, and my cousin"s school who was out of the top 50. The difference in pay was even larger in Austin, UT was like 110k, while the run of the mill...

Yeah, not when the stuff is readily available on torrent sites. I"d rather read them on my Ipad than have to sort through all my long boxes, what a pain. But it goes to show the old axiom, that changing your distribution channel (as a business) is the toughest thing to change. Its like they...

Yeah, most of the stores in my town have like 5% of their floor space devoted to comics now. One of the stores I used to go to in the late 90"s was 100% comics, is now 5%, and that was the biggest store in town. It now makes money hand over fist now that they do other media, they started a...

Those digital prices are way too high, considering once the comic is complete, other than the cost of the download, as sales volume goes up, the actual cost of the comic approaches nil. I know they want to protect the comic stores, but how many comic stores are relying on comic sales as a main...

Thanks. I can say that I think the MBA gave me good tools for being self-employed, but that"s because it was a great program. Some of these hole in the wall schools are so bad, if you were talking about going to them, you"d be better off self-educating. Although, being an ex-marine might help...

Damn forum ate my 1000 word response. In a nutshell, an acquaintance of mine in another city told me that his largest competitor in the niche does zero advertising in the niche. While he might be on a few lawns a day, the other guy is on 1,000 lawns a day, mowing lawns. The mowers get paid...

Its really screwed up, and I remember the first time I laid someone off and called the state, I was pissed off to the highest of pisstivity. You really have to check out references and stuff before you hire, a guy working for the company for one day could cost you thousands. The one thing that...

The problem is like someone else said, in some states, your unemployment stays high no matter how soon your laid off employee gets work. Last time I called, I would get nicked $300 a month for two years for each employee laid off, even if he picked up work the next day. States are so overbudget...

That sounds pretty terrible. Why not just copy Marvel, and have them jump into Onslaught, come out in an alternate reality where they come out more diverse, younger, and more extreme? Some of these comics have been out since the 40"s.

I"ve cut non-payroll expenses about 7k a month, I"ve hardly ever laid off a good worker (FT or PT) due to Winter yet. Part of it is the kindness of my heart, part of it is that we give great customer service, and its hard to do that if the workers think they"ll be laid off in a few months...

ROFL, they did the make up anouncement and the announcer read it like someone stuck a broomstick up his ass. I thought it was just me imagining things, then two of my employees called me and said that he sounded stressed and like he was on crack. He signed off certifying that he read it...

Timestamp is not the issue. What is the issue is that we were supposed to be on when they switched between certain segments, and that is what has made them crap their pants. Sadly, I think stuff like this goes on alot. They"ve told me they"ll air a make up spot here in 30 mins, and we"ll go from...

So, I"ve never done TV or radio, but I"ve known of business owners who are paranoid that the station is screwing them by not playing their spots. Lo and behold, the first radio spot didn"t get played. Ive been arguing with NPR all morning, they claim that everyone signed off on the ad as done...

We track where our calls come from, as well as our % close for each media source. And yeah, by far our close rate is much higher for repeat/referral than anything else. People that have used us know we will do the job right. NPR, since its a non-profit, has very specific rules for advertising...

Looks like I"ll be running 3 spots a week during rush on NPR @$500 a month, and I"ll be sponsoring the weather on Conservative talk during rush three times a day ($10 a spot), and then run three spots a week during Rush Limbaugh ($50 a spot). Limbaugh is the highest rated show they have. Total...

Given I have NDA"s, and from info I"ve said in this thread, I was told by a mod awhile ago to sanitize some of that stuff. If I give location, I may as well be giving my client list, and I"m not risking losing any contracts for FOH. Suffice it to say, we are in the wealthiest county in the state.

What happened is I"ve now doubled the size of my staff, and doubled up on a job worth almost 20k. The customer is a good one of ours, and they usually pay next day. I hope to get the job done by Friday, and have the check in hand by Monday. Furthermore, we"ve negotiated where we can park our...

Just signed a three month contract with NPR to be on during drivetime in the am and pm rush hour, Mon, Wed and Fri, starting on 5-25. The guys think I am crazy, since we are booked for the month, butI just hired two more guys today to keep up with demand. I think I am going to go ass out on...

I"m reading an info packet from NPR right now, and yeah, no calls to action are allowed. If I got 4-5 calls today, and our close rate of 50% stood, that"d be $20k a month in sales. I"m a little leary abut $38 for a 15 second spot, going to try to get them to lower it.

Good call. I talked to a landscaping owner in another town (who fills exactly the same nitch we do) who said advertising on NPR and conservative talk shows is bringing him great results. He made a comment that $200 a week on radio is yielding him 2-3 calls a day directly from radio, and about...

We only have one client that does retention, they call it retainage, I call it "suckage." The client that used to hold 10% of our money for two years stopped doing it, but they still pay 90 days out. Without getting myself in trouble, it is a big-box retailer that is known for paying every one...

The problem is that the bigger clients have built their businesses by having their vendors finance them, and that isn"t going to change. My biggest client is notorious for this, so much that I"d say the name if they wouldn"t kick my ass, and you"d know why they pay slow. They pay so slow that...

Here"s the thing, 99.98% of my customers pay (in terms of sales-dollars), so why give up a percent that would come out of profits? Furthermore, the biggest offenders are the bigger customers, and they tend to pay whenever they want, and not care about a percent off. I just traded a pickup...

In essence, if you are the one paying late, you are making your vendors finance you versus the bank doing it. If I get products in and pay for it later, guess what? I have no initial cash outlay.

So...no billboard for me, the only ones available are in lower income areas, or the super high end ones near the corporate HQ"s running $1,500 a month. We just picked up a big commercial job and are now booked until mid-June (one month out). Its not good for a service business to say we can"t...

Last time we did door hangers was in the dead of Winter, so thats not a good time to measure things. We generated about $400 a week in that time. I"d be willing to bet that since demand goes up 7x in the Spring, Summer and Fall, that we"d generate 3k a week. I"ll order 2500 door hangers from...

I"m on google, and on the front page in most of the areas we serve (sometimes google moves you for no apparent reason). What bothers me about google is that I charged clicks and get no calls in the slow times. For instance, in the Winter, I could run a $500 a month budget, but get no calls. In...

They say that door hangers work for products that benefit the home, and I"d agree. Combine that with free estimates, and I know statisically, we sign more people than don"t sign up with us.

I"ve thought about using temp labor, but heard nightmares about temp labor coming to work high, or coming to work with knives. And, for the most part, we need skilled labor, alot of our guys have at least three to four years experience. We also move alot of equipment around, and driving manual...

We have very few contracts, and I like that the best with those entities, and I like that the best. We do all of the work for a small city that can"t rationalize doing it themselves, and had them as a customer for over ten years. Once you give good service, you tend to keep the larger entities...

Don"t get me wrong. Pre-recession numbers, we had another crew that contributed 480k in sales a year. That is the goal. Whether it sounds greedy or not, I don"t care. You have to put as much $ away as you can in the bank account in this business for the slow times, given the cyclical nature...

Once a year we send out thank you cards with magnets, and every time we invoice a new customer, we send out magnets. Most of our customers know us, but given the high amount of corporate employers in the area, it does help with that type of customer that tends to move alot. We put up door...

Billboard won"t work with the current vendor I am using. I just got a list of inventory, and its either cheap billboards in lower income areas (not our target customer), or it goes for $2k a month near where all of the corporate HQ"s are. The rate is pushed up there because the vendors (and...

Which is fine, but in the landscaping industry, people are always trying to add on adjacent product lines. I"m not saying it can"t be done, but we"d have to be very careful. A very simple idea I came up with is networking with other landscaping companies. We have deals with a few of them to...

1- In the last year, I"ve interviewed people who wanted a spot as a laborer. Five of them have been business owners as competitors. I don"t take it for granted that we are still in business, and am thankful. The common denominator has been they were doing well, the economy hit them hard, and...

Thanks for the input. Its all a numbers game. I know that if I get five calls a day, the company makes money (any one call can be for $300, or up to 100k). Sometimes, I feel like a genius, like today. Eight calls came in the first hour of business today. We"ll close 50-60% of everyone who...

I"ll look into NPS. I"d hazard its high, we have a ton of customers who have used the company for two or three decades, and most of our business comes from repeat or referral. There was a day in the last month where every customer call was a referral. And as far as pricing goes, our wealthier...

I might try the billboard idea. Also, your point is well taken on the cost of billboard vs. radio, I"m just not sure which station would hit my best demographic (hh income of 45k or more and home owner). I"ll spend a minimum of 4k on a billboard for a three month contract (including design and...