I once dated a young woman who had a dog walking business; she started by handing out brochures then one dog, then 2 dogs…. By the time I was dating her, 4 years after started business, she had 4 employees and was earning same as me as a lawyer. Years later she had a free run dog kennel, had bought 2 acres, her parents were working for her with a total of 09 employees and she no longer worked. She had a grade 10 education.
After years of hard-work staggering 09 employees, and her parents working for her.. What an achievement!!! And guess what, tomorrow when her business goes down, she can go to any large corporate business and get herself a job like "VP of dog walking at Barclays" and retire at the proper age and might even become a philanthropist!!
@@ArslanMajeedLol. Your comment drips with jealousy. You poor troll. And I do mean poor. You probably can’t afford a dog. Do you even have dogs in Pakistan or wherever you’re from?
Types of businesses listed in the video: 1. Restaurants 2. Dog walking, Cupcakes, Party Planning 3. Clothes/Boutique/ Retail Stores 4. Hotels 5. Marketplace Selling e.g. eBay, Etsy, Amazon 6. Events
Warren Buffett in one interview said. Its not about having ground breaking ideas or business nobody has ever done before. Its about doing whatever you're doing well and being consistent
It's true. Take trades, for example. Most businesses are very poorly run. Build a plumbing business with a good receptionist, fast quotations and staff who are uniformed, clean-working, cheerful, punctual and competent and who turn up in a nicely liveried van and you will never starve.
"Hobby Jobs" is what I call a lot of these. Our town is full of little boutiques: fashion, florists, 'vintage' tat, candles, fine wines etc. they open, they last about a year, maybe two, then they're replaced with more of the same. They're started because the owner thinks it would be a nice thing to do. Not a solid foundation for a business!
I’m a hobby mechanic. I’ve taught myself pretty much all about car repair/maintenance. Even full engine rebuilds. I am ready to open my own garage. Will I also last a year or two? I’m passionate about people avoiding being ripped off and having fair pricing. Is that a solid foundation for business?
@@likhwadube5937 if by fair pricing, you mean you'll be cheaper than the competition, then you've got to ask yourself truthfully if that is going to be sustainable. The trouble with passion projects, is once the pressure of having to balance the finances kicks in, it can actually take the shine off the hobby you used to enjoy.
@@likhwadube5937 Car repair is extremely expensive on modern cars as you need a lot of computerized diagnostics & programming tools with expensive subscriptions. I would strongly suggest you focus on a particular make and year range. Also, generic services (oil changes, tires, etc) have much, much higher margins than actual repair and are repeat customers. Finally, learn to turn down work and make customers pay for diagnostics work, with a high enough fee to discourage problem customers. You should also consider being mobile or specializing in a specific area (electrical diagnostics, AC repair, etc) for existing garages. How do I know all this? I restore old cars for fun but I also share a shop with a professional mechanic, so I've learned this over the last 20 or so years.
I have been running a dog walking business for about 15 years. I also do training, boarding dogs in my home. It has been very satisfying on many levels. It depends what you want. A decent living and a network with lots if connections for referrals, subcontracting etc. Not rich but comfortable and happy!
So has my father. Your customers are loyal and they rely on you. I think it's a bit like cigarettes - they need you, they're happy to pay for you and they tend to stick with you.
It all depends on ones mindset regarding personal drivers and ambition too; not everyone wants to be a billionaire in X amount of time-some folk just want enough money so that they can pay all their bills and have enough disposable income to do their hobbies and have a healthy amount of personal down time. Personally, If I had a disposable income of around £2-3K I could do anything I realistically wanted which is namely, childcare cover, martial arts, Scuba Diving, Bushcraft training, 1 holiday abroad a year.
That’s his point… a great job… just not a great business. Very difficult to sell it… *you* are what people are buying… and good on you for that… proves trust etc… but if you broke your hip and are on the bed for 6 months… your business needs to be able to support both you and the person who you employ to run it… they better be as good or better than you because your business success relies solely on them! I had a business that folders for exactly this reason. I bought in a contractor to look after my business clients while I went on a month holiday… the guy I bought in I thought was reliable… turns out… not! Cost me to train him up (had to pay him while I worked with him)… etc. people wanted me and my skills, not him and his less-skilful babysitting… so they went elsewhere. I realised… I could never sell my business so sold my clients to another person and went and got another job. Loved working for myself… but the wrong business model to retire on.
I did business in Pest Control for 15 years. I was a terrible businessman but it had very low start up costs and very high mark up. So despite the snobbery you get from people when you tell them what you do, I did it. Insects are peoples number one fear. It astonished me how much money people would pay to get rid of the things. But these days the market is flooded, every man and his dog does it now. Getting the customer is the hardest thing.
Ah, this explains why all businesses and contractors seem to suck nowadays! Sounds like they’re all fly-by-night, and inexperienced. I would gladly pay for someone experienced who knows what he’s doing and doesn’t break stuff on his way through
One of my uncle who is 72 years old has a pest control business in Romania and he is very famous and wanted by all the big famous companies. But he does it alone and works a lot. Makes pretty good money but taxes eat up 50% plus he has to pay other people that help with the papers, taxes and stuff. Doesn't want to retire because then his pension will be low.
- Avoid investing in restaurants due to their high failure rate, low revenue per employee, high capex costs, fickle customers, and high turnover taxes. - Invest in high barrier-to-entry sectors with high revenue per employee, such as accountancy. - Find a good business model that can be scaled up and replicated. - Avoid investing in dog walking, cupcake making, and party planning due to their low barriers to entry and high competition. - Consider owning the business premises to keep overheads low and find a legacy brand with little competition.
How about farming?Young people generally get degrees and work in cities.Yeah farming is hard but once you get into it,can be quite profitable as I know.
@@Polymath9000 Absolutely, you bring up a valid point about the trend of young people pursuing degrees and urban careers. However, the agriculture sector, especially farming, presents an intriguing opportunity that can be both challenging and rewarding. As you mentioned, once young individuals venture into farming and navigate its demands, it has the potential to be profitable, highlighting the significance of exploring diverse industries beyond traditional urban pathways.
If you have never been in the restaurant business, and fancy a go……Don’t. Work in restaurants 1st. Sitting in one eating nice food, isn’t even close to running it.
In Canada here. My brother is a trustee for bankruptcy, restaurants and small retailers were his best clients . Average life span of either was three years from opening to bankruptcy. Unfortunately being a small business person is not for everybody, being passionate is not enough. Only fellow I know who has made it in restaurant business bought existing business including building. He hired three or four reliable foreign workers and treats them well. His daughter is going to buy him out when he fully retires, she's an accountant. My two cents worth. Cheers
I would add this: If you want to start your first business and it needs a premises, you will need to rent from a landlord, you will have to sign a personal guarantee for the lease period. If that’s 5 years and the rent if £20k/ pa you are giving yourself a liability of £100,000 Too many new business owners end up losing their house.
I have seen this many times in my line of work - a start-up business with an uncertain future signing 10 or even 20 year leases on commercial property, then going bust after 18 months and having to negotiate tough exit deals from the lease. I strongly advise anybody taking out a commercial lease to negotiate break clauses into the lease so they have shorter cut-off points to manage the risk. And don't agree to take on a commercial property that's falling to pieces on a full repairing and insuring lease otherwise you'll potentially face massive end-of-lease repair costs too.
@@chriscousineau4537 I ran a business and nearly came a cropper. Business leases, bank account overdraft agreements, credit accounts….they all routinely have personal guarantees attached these days. I had a bank manager that tried to convince me “it’s not worth the paper it’s written on, they never pursue it” - some online research shows that to be untrue.
Having worked in retail for 15 years the biggest mistake I saw was holding onto stock for to long. I'd see stock that should of been reduced when it was relevant then being binned or sold for pennies. In my eyes to better to break even early and free up some cash than hold on hoping it'll one day sell
@keithmarlowe5569 The company I worked for ( directly for about $ 120000) Started using a contract company that then advertised " business opportunities." Where the poor person got paid F all and paid out nonstop and was not allowed to do other work to the best of my knowledge. A lot walked out .
Worried this was going to be a pure vanity online business seminar type video, but some genuinely interesting and considered (and probably hard-learnt) points in here. Worth watching.
@@VincentRE79 as an accountant, I'd say it depends on how you plan to find it. If you can manage to get sufficient funding by raising capital on new business ideas you can give them a try. However, if you are self funded and don't have much money to spare, a low risk approach will be a more realistic choice. You'll have to assess if what you know can make you enough money to cover for your initial capital and ongoing costs.
How to be successful in business: 1. If you're going to do what everyone else is doing, you have to bring more value to your customers than your competitors can, i.e., it faster, better, cheaper. 2. If you're going to do something that nobody else is doing, you have to find or create a market for it. 3. Be willing to do whatever it takes to make it. 4. Location, location, location.
I tend to trust people who give good advice freely, even as colleagues. They don't fear the competition because they know they have nothing to fear. Nice video.
Making money is not the same as keeping it there is a reason why investments aren't well taught in schools, the examples you gave are well stationed, the market crisis gave me my first millions, people shy away from hard times, I embrace them.. well at least my advisor does lol.
Investors should be cautious about their exposure and be wary of new buys, especially during inflation. Such high yields in this recession is only possible under the supervision of a professional or trusted advisor.
This is superb! Information, as a noob it gets quite difficult to handle all of this and staying informed is a major cause, how do you go about this are you a pro investor?
Not at all, having monitor edge my portfolio performance which has made a jaw dropping $473k from just the past two quarters alone, I have learned why experienced traders make enormous returns from the seemingly unknown market. I must say it's the boldest decision I've taken since recently.
The adviser I'm in touch with is Vivian Carol Gioia. You can use something else, for me her strategy works hence my result. she provides entry and exit point for the securities I focus on.
Brilliant video and advice as always, eBay got my foot in the door to being self employed in my 20s, built up to over 25,000+ feedbacks, suddenly one day my account suspended. Business shut over night. BIG lesson learned there, As you say James don't be reliant on one client/customer/selling platform for more than 10% of your income. I was 100% reliant on eBay
@@chaosflower4892LMAO! 😂😂😂😂😂😂 90% of your comment was very balanced and insightful, then the last 4 lines became incredibly unhinged 😂😂😂 I do see your point and I agree though
If a business is easy to enter, reasonably fun and seems profitable you should avoid it because thousands of other people will think the same thing. You need to find something you do better than most other people, or something unpleasant that you can tolerate. In the horticulture/ arboriculture industry there are far too many tree surgeons because it only takes a few months to train and they can make £1000s in a day. The result is most of the big trees in private gardens Britain have now been removed for 'safety' reasons (really profit) homeowners do not plant more because they think they will be expensive to maintain and now they are chasing each other to destroy large hedges and do bad landscaping. I spent years working for old men weeding and pruning, I did a long old fashioned apprenticeship. I learnt to build giant herbaceous borders from scratch with very few plants or materials, or regenerate ancient fruit orchards, it was boring and hard and took years but now I am one of the only people in the entire county that can do it properly and I charge appropriately. I would very much dispute the idea that you should aim to create a business that runs itself so you can just sit on the beach or something. Perhaps you will be happy doing that but you would just be a rent seeking parasite on society. Creating yourself a really good, well paid job you love is a more healthy aim. Good luck if you expect to find employment like that. If you just seek money you will never ever have enough of it, that should be incidental.
I like what you wrote. It sounds so much dignified than the whole bussines talk. Off course, not all we do and need can be done your way, but still it sounds just right.
That sounds like the Microbrew scene in the USA prior to the pandemic. Too many guys who loved to brew decided to make craft beer for a living and open a pub. The sector was becoming crowded and unprofitable even before the pandemic.
I love your comment. I’m contemplating starting a niche business that will be hard to research because it is so niche. It’s almost like I’ll just have to do a business plan and jump in(or not) without being able to research. But your comment encourages me because it’s something I should be good at and have a passion for. Thanks again for sharing your experience and wisdom with all of us. It is is appreciated:).
From what I heard, a number of long running boutique shops are owned by women who either have rich families or rich husbands who pay for the cost of maintaining these boutique shops, this is why they manage to stay in business despite typically only having one or two paying customers per day at the very most for years and years at a time.
You've just described the exact situation, and everyone knows and understands it, here in Uruguay. The Carrasco area is filled with stores that make no sense and can't make money, until you learn how and why they all exist.
You make some solid points. I have quite a few very successful friends who had years of sleepless nights and terror before they succeeded. One memorable quote on starting a business was: "If you're not scared shitless, you're doing it wrong."
I was not scared at all, but I started in my early 20's, took me 7-8 years to be profitable, that is the age to start business, when you have room for failure and learning.
I have a cafe here in Japan and I own it. I would have lost it in the first years if I had to pay rent before building up my customer base from scratch.
I know some of the businesses James owns. We took the children to Marsh Farm. Rossi Ice Creams are well loved in Essex. The advice that hit me hard was that building a business should not be building a job for yourself but building something scalable that can still make money without you if you sell it.
What you are talking about is the difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur. The business owner run a business. It might be to support them or to grow wealth through return on capital. They don't have any interest in expansion. The goal is to earn a living. An entrepreneur wants to build something. They want scaleability and growth.
You dont pay restaurant loans out of profit, you pay all costs out of turnover, the government takes money from your profit not your overheads. Sone very good points.
Its sad to see that, businesses that once sustained a healthy middle class 50-60 years ago, that were able to help people get on property ladder, that made people to go on foreign holidays, are no longer profitable. All the sectors you listed were usually run by a local family in a town/village, who then spent the majority of the profits from that business locally in that village. Internet, e-commerce, social media, gig economy, cheap chinese manufacturers, big container ships, cheap money have all led to the decline of this country.
I think it’s turnover taxes that have killed those businesses, they’re all doing decent revenues… people still use them. Then the government puts them out of business with more turnover taxes than I can remember. ( Vat and Business rates being the main 2 ) 70% of businesses don’t make money and are paying more in turnover taxes than they actually pay themselves. Government should keep turnover taxes to an absolute low and start taxing profits.
If VAT is like GST in NZ, then it is a payroll tax. Almost all tax on costs gets run against tax charged on sales. But staff and your own wages have no reclaimable GST on cost but GST on the profits that pay those wages. Business taxes are on profit, not turnover, typically 30%, so only payable if a profit is being made, minimising taxable profit is an art.
@@howardsimpson489in UK it’s totally different. VAT is value added tax and it is applied to your turnover. There is a corporation tax that is applied to your profits. You can claim it back if you purchased stock with VAT applied to it. But since the VAT for food is 0% restaurants only can claim back on their alcohol purchases.
He hit the nail on the head on number 1. my buddy has a restaurant from 1955, mexican very popular, it was left to him by his parents and he runs it, and he told me whatever you do, do not go into the restaurant business, fun fact and I have seen this being a business owner, most restaurants dont last 5 years, I would say 90% go under, its just not worth it, the profit margin is too small.
Ebay/Amazon can be great in the early stages of your business as its a no-overhead way of selling your goods. Especially if you sell items that you don't have to hold stock of. The obvious downside to it is the fees but to a small business i look at that more as "marketing spend". The good thing is it's a no win no fee as you only pay WHEN you sell not if. Key to it is however, putting something in your packages/parcels to move that customer away from buying that product again from those platforms but instead moving them to your website. You could offer a 10% off code for inputting your email address for instance to build that database and essentially that doesn't cost you anything as you're paying that in fees! Use them in the early days to grow your business/brand. Great video and very clear!
The big problem with Ebay is that many business illegally operate as "private" accounts over there, and are thus able to undercut real businesses. Amazon is a nightmare because of it's stupid "Buy box"....if you're not in the magic buy box, say goodbye to sales. Etsy fees are ridiculously high. And almost all other marketplaces have hardly any traffic and are not worth bothering with. To sell on marketplaces you have to be selling things that are both rare, collectible and in high demand, otherwise don't bother. If you sell household items then Chinese sellers will undercut you, they are happy to make a loss if it puts you out of business.
@@bretton_woods Funny you should say that regarding ebay, ive noticed a hell of a lot more lately doing exactly that, Is that actually illegal? As you're pretending to be a person when you're actually a business? And yeah there's absolutely no point buying/selling things that can just be imported/sold from China as you have no chance
@@oliverspooner2483 Yes it is illegal, because if you are a business but you pose as a "private" seller, you are depriving the customer of their legal rights (such as: being able to make a "change of mind" return within 14 days for any reason; being able to know the physical address of the business, being guaranteed to receive items that are "fit for purpose" lest they be returned, and so on). It does not matter if the goods are brand new or second hand, either. There are many many legit businesses who deal mainly in secondhand goods (Musicmagpie, Cash Converters, pawn brokers, etc). It also applies to anyone who MAKES items to sell, such as if you're selling homemade cards online, then you're a business in the eyes of the law. Unfortunately the problem has always been enforcement, which is why "Fake private" sellers are running rampant at the moment. To be clear, even if those sellers are registered to pay self-assessment tax, they are still operating illegally if they are posing as a private seller for reasons mentioned above. It really is not difficult to switch an Ebay account to a business one, so there's no excuse for these people - especially those who sell 1000's of items. Ebay are very very slow to encourage such sellers to become correctly registered, but are fast to take down any item they consider breaches their offensive material policy, for example! If HMRC ever got properly staffed and ever decided to do an audit of Ebay's marketplace then Ebay would be in deep trouble for allowing such sellers to operate for so long illegally.
Love the way he's not just providing a simple list of businesses that fail but he is also providing reasons why they fail and how he works those businesses so they don't fail.
Thanks for understanding the point, a lot think I’m making it to make no one open these businesses to stop competing with me….. like I have a chance of doing that. All businesses are hard, from my 20 plus business lines, these are the struggles I have identified in these particular ones…… and what you can do about it! Thanks for noticing!
I started a tech business about 15 years ago. We made something fairly difficult but not too impossible to start with. We had great sales and it was profitable but disappeared overnight when the technology moved on! The new things we were working on never came off. My current business is really difficult at the moment but the big boys have all made the same mistake and are heading for a fall in a year or two. Whilst we're minnows right now, we're the only ones with a fully working product. That is such a golden opportunity that hardly ever comes around but I'm sure it must happen in other industries too.
I had one big client, when I started one of my Tech businesses. They owed me money. But, they hickuped on paying me. they asked for an extension. Before you know it, they owe you 100K, and are declaring bankruptcy. Their bankruptcy, ended my business. I however, paid my bills, I just lost money.
Hadn't considered the value of a high barrier to entry before, thanks. A quote from a barrister I once worked with (technically, 'for' as he was a partner): "If I tried doing *your* job, I'd merely be bad at it. If you tried doing *my* job, you'd be breaking the law!"
When I see good videos like this I usually take out my time to appreciate the experts that make these videos possible, it is not easy to help lots of people earn money
Absolutely sensible advice. No matter how attractive the business may appear to be. The basic principle of input versus income/profit apply. If this is unpredictable - leave it alone.
Definitely agree with a lot of things here. When I was a teenager, I used to work part-time in a fast-food restaurant. I was talking to one of the managers once, and he said that there are two costs that will make you or break you in the restaurant business: food costs and labour costs. Many restaurant owners fail because they cannot keep those costs under control and still attract customers to generate enough revenue. I also have some experience working in various retail businesses, and one thing that I noticed is that nearly all retail businesses, regardless of what they are selling (shoes, groceries, vehicles), are essentially in the business of moving inventory. The better they move inventory, the better they do as businesses. However, that also means that failure to move inventory eventually imposes costs, whether that means disposing of inventory, continuing to warehouse inventory, marking down inventory to customers, or what have you. Therefore, you need to acquire inventory that you can sell quickly and preferably in quantity, and that requires experience or very good judgement.
Great advice. Years ago when I started my business I focused on getting a little bit of money from as many people as possible on the regular. What is also true is crafting a business that can be sold. Most cannot. What is ironic is that the businesses that make me the happiest when I use them (restaurants, hotels) are often money losers. But thank heaven for those who do them.
I like the phrase “riches in niches”; I’ve been developing a sheet metal brass product business in the antipodes (repeatable product, verging on scalability, high end domestic market…) and whilst it might seem quaint, it’s worked well; high barrier to entry mostly in knowledge and experience, craft skill, and can leverage means of production to others in the industry.
right, they don't care about the profit of their sellers they care about their own. but as James hinted to they can be great tools for brand awareness.
I established, and operated, a business in Hong Kong which was profitable and which lasted for 20 years, until I chose to retire, with a decent amount of cash The business provided educational services, tuition and consultation services. I now live in the Philippines where my business interests are in property, retail and hospitality - my wife and I own a coffee shop and a general store and numerous properties, which garner a decent income - if you are not prepared to work, then don't bother. I no longer work because I don't have to. I put in the effort and now I am reaping the benefits.
Solid advice. I think the most important piece of advice in the whole video is regarding customer email address database ownership. It's stupidly important to own it yourself.
One of my friends has been working in restaurants for decades and now owns a successful restaurant / pub. I wish I could say the same of his second location, or that the business could run without him. The restaurant business is very difficult for the reasons you stated, glad you noted it first in your list. Some people think they can go in with a few thousand dollars and their aunt's recipes and make it. I've heard of firefighters that blew their entire retirement savings on a bar that didnt last three months. 😢
Sometimes a pub/bar/restaurant lives or dies by whoever the personality is running it. You can have a thriving business which then gets taken over by someone dislikeable for instance and will then sink like the titanic
This was refreshing! A decent, experience-oriented, street-level bit of business advice. Some of this I've learned from experience (e.g. don't sell your time) and some I consider common sense but all of it useful. Makes a big change from hyped US-style 'get rich now' nonsense.
I’m Canada (Alberta) here, government requires an in-car examination of all new drivers before licensing all done by private licensed businesses of driver examiners suddenly after thirty years they said oh we’ll do that in house now , result hundreds of small businesses out of business overnight. If the government is your only client beware .
Rossi's ice cream (Ilford, Barkingside, and Southend in south Essex) was my favorite ice cream when I was growing up in the 1960's. It's an outstanding product - and THAT was key to its reputation that led to its long term success. As we all know, if its the very best and affordable, people will walk past the others to get to it.
If you are thinking of getting into business this is the most valuable 13 minutes you will use. A LOT of solid advice in the video and the comments, getting a good accountant makes a huge difference something I can't stress enough - no, I'm not an accountant. It will be hard enough this will make it a little easier. Good fortune people.
Solid advice. I think the trades are worth mentioning. Trade school is about a year, plus another couple of years working in the field to recognize a good tech when you see one. Live frugally while you save the money to do your own thing. With hard work and some luck you could have your own place in plumbing, automotive, diesel, etc. in under ten years.
Here in Texas, and in the United States generally, Skilled Trades are becoming an issue. I know some people in this business here, specifically in building/construction. 1. The majority of tradesmen are aging out quickly. I believe the median age is about 50 here locally, but I could not find an objective source. 2. You have as much work as you can take. One of my acquaintances (electrician) worked about 70 hours a week for 6 months, with offers for an additional 40 minimum. He has backed off to 50-60 since. 3. Lots of these skilled trades have pay (as an employee) far in excess of the average. Statistics from 2022 put electricians at about $65k/yr. My friend made more than that in that 6 month window.. 4. Progression is fairly easy. Employee to individual Sub-contractor to multi-employee business owner can happen rapidly if you have a reputation for quality work.
@@buffewo6386 You have to be willing to work a lot of OT to make money in the trades. That's where the guys get to 80 or 100 K is by working 70 hours a week which really isn't for a lot of people. Truth is the youth malign the trades I don't think your going to see a lot of young people going into them the 30K for trade school is a big barrier as well.
I cannot tell you, its uncountable now, the number of friends, family and coworkers who've told me they are planning or dreaming or actually are opening their own restaurant. WHAT is it where everyone and their cousin is convinced they should open a restaurant? It really is one of THE most difficult businesses you can start and run, never mind making money, its a very very difficult exhausting business AND almost none of them make worthwhile money and MOST will fail. Yet, 99% of everyone on earth seems sure that IF they opened a business of their own - they'd really love to open a restaurant!
*That's because 100% of people on the planet can associate pleasant notions with eating and enjoying food, VS how many people can relate with recapping a truck tire, or desquirreling a house's attic*
One small thing to consider regarding clothes shops: if you wanna get into the field, having a bespoke production line and some sort of backing from the manufacturer (i.e. investment wise through custom designs and inventory/storage help regarding the first months of revenue loss till you get your foot into the local market door) can help a lot.
This is why I am a big believer in selling services (like translation, copywriting) and things I could do from a laptop instead of dealing with all the headache of having a physical store, inventory, etc.
These skills will be replaced by AI soon. Having a physical store will train you on customer retention, inventory management, invaluable skills for growth
@@RalphNgOfficialI think there is a lot to gain with translating legal documents and contracts. Because who would trow a contract in de a translation app and just sign it with potential translation errors of misinterpretations. But you do need to understanding of international law to interprete and explain legal terms.
Pimping has worked out really well for me. Great margins, consistent clientele, predictable revenue. The key is an online Harvard Business School MBA, it helped to get it to the serious and professional level.
My friend designs and installs commercial kitchens. He said time and again he’s watched restaurants fail started by people who took their life savings thinking they had a better restaurant idea and ended up broke.
Clothing I couldn't agree more James! I lost around £10k and still sleep with over 2k t shirts under my bed 😫... BUT all the lessons learnt on that failure has my new business steam rolling! B2B and B2C. Finally things are looking up. Thank you for the great video/Info
@@JP-gy3sr that's it mate people told me I'd fail but at least I think on my death bed, "at least I gave that a try". As my own mum said "I'll never make it in life" probably reason why my second venture gaining some traction 🙌. All the best on your venture buddy
"I started a business and all I got was 2000 T-shirts" Now, put that on the shirts and people will pay an arm and leg to get one of them! Give each one a number 2000 to 1 and have a count-down. :-)
You were born to be a business man. You have a good understanding of the nuances of business that I would imagine can only be obtained through experience. Subbed!
I am no businessman, I found this fascinating but exhausting to think of all the balls being juggled at the same time, and the downsides of them being dropped. I do however admire people who can do business like this. Instead, I had a nice career as an engineer and some of what I did quite closely matched the advice given. High barrier to entry, a degree and lots of engineering experience. Almost no competition partly due to the barriers but also no one else wanted to do the stuff I did. Expand on what I could do and get my own list of customers. It kept me continuously employed until retirement. Love being retired.
@williamrae9954 good managers? They are running their own business! Most run by managers fail have seen it over and over. A professional wants a business gets a franchise puts in a manager ! Fail
Money is one barrier but not a great one. Skill is another. Anything that's not easy to replicate that people want. Brand is one of the most valuable---if you build one. Also, nothing wrong with a 'good' business if it supports the family and you into old-age.
Having an exit plan on entry is the key when going into business. Every business has a natural lifecycle and none will last forever as a perpetual source of income in a rapidly changing world.
I own a restaurant and a takeaway. The thing you must remember is that you are trying to sell people something they can do themselves for 10% of the price (or even less). Simply put the food has to be amazing to give you a 50% chance of succeeding.
Glad to have stumbled onto your channel. Where have you been? You could have saved a lot of people a lot of money and heartache. “A little bit of money from a lot of people a lot of the time” is classic. More good info in 15 minutes than an entire college business class.
As someone who opened a hotel that has a restaurant that sold cupcakes and offered party planning and did events with a retail clothing boutique store that offered dog walking services and did it all while selling on etsy, amazon and ebay in my office, i can tell you its the most satisfying, profitable and relatively easy thing to start!
Thank you James. I enjoyed this and man-ohhh-man I totally agree with you on number 3. I used to have my own boutique store in Atlanta, GA, and the thing that drove me insane regarding it was the overwhelming amount of stock inventory that never sold. I had stuff that sold really well and then stuff that just couldn’t get moved and I hated that part. Ended up donating unsold inventory. I sew and I have since pivoted to now do niche like you said lol. Now I carved out a niche within my sewing, all from home. Now I’m sewing formal wear: Prom dresses/party dresses, birthday dresses, wedding guest dresses etc… formal wear sewing. I always loved the idea of wholesale, and recently this 2024 year I started developing a product to offer wholesale. Because I truly love everything about the wholesale idea. Thx James, Janelle
I like that you did not include sole trader businesses here. Selling one's own time to perform a function - while working from home, say - might be limited in scope and growth potential, might be low barrier to entry - but nothing to put it on the avoid list per se.
Very very wise words! I'm also into a number of businesses in unrelated industries from financial services to car rental to construction and my all-time favourite business is: quarrying! Quarrying and mineral extraction in general offers very high turnover per employee.
"I hope you like this video..." Understatement of the year! I'm loving it! Thanks for sharing what must be decades of business experience and squeezing it all into this single video. I definitely have a better idea of what to expect as I contemplate what areas of business I should focus my attention on. Live long and [continue to] prosper! 💪🏾🤩
I would recommend studying a trade, for example an electrician, and then after a few years of experience starting your own company. Do something you enjoy.
I really like this video. My advice concerns cash flow. Pick a business where your customers pay you, before you have to pay your suppliers, then you can fund the growth of your business from your cash flow.
Restaurants as hotel, capacity is key. If you are keen acquiring an hotel, here the minimum KPI to seek: - location - access to key transportation (30 to 45 mn to international airport) - 100 keys mini - 1 restaurant and one bar - EBITDA above 10% - minimum capex - unbranded hotel - not a family run hotel - UK: no listed hotel - spa (dedcent with at least 5 treatment rooms) - fitness room / studio - 5* Of course it's going to be above the usual market acquisition price but i know it will generate you serious cash. By the way, if you need support for acquisition and optimisation, i am here for you.
Great video. Here in the USA. I've run several businesses myself. Covid shut down the last. However, your advice about Amazon is spot on! Amazon does some unanswerable things as your business partner and they really don't care if you succeed or fail. You're just another seller filling their pipeline. In addition, you have to continually spend money with them to advertise in order to be successful. There is no such thing as organic growth. Whatever you do, don't ever let product run out. Net, net... total waste of time if you don't have other channels to sell your products. Cheers.
Lots can be debated about the advice you're giving, but I respect and appreciate because it's based on your own experiences and it looks like it's working for you. What I cannot appreciate is the state of your warehouse, which you proudly put in front of the camera but you shouldn't. If these are the standards / conditions you're happy with than they are very low / unacceptable. Never seen such a messy one in my last 30 years. Boxes everywhere, piled up on top of each other. Trip hazard, fire hazard... every nightmare you can think of is waiting to happen.
@@brunosmith6925 I sort of agree. It looks like corporate advice for an SME, which is neither relevant nor helpful at this smaller scale. Next will come ESG and D&I 'advice', and invitations to a multitude of irrelevant and time-wasting seminars, that SMEs just don't have time nor resource for :-) A good illustration of the inefficiency and wastefulness of corporates, from my SME perspective anyway!
The hardest businesses going forward will be those that rely on other people that don’t have the right attitude. Across the board, since c--vid I’ve experienced a severe decline across, restaurants, pubs, mechanics, solicitors, estate agents, in general effort, quality and attitude has declined. The trajectory is really bad. I know a builder who jacked his company after 13 years because of this issue. His words ‘people are delusional, they want to live like a champagne celeb life on Instagram on lemonade money’ obviously not all, but vast majority of young men are like that he said from his experience in employing them. No one wants to work hard any more, those days are gone’ Because the gov, do not give any incentives to companies that employ, no tax breaks no real aid in growing in what is an increasingly challenging economic environment I can see more and more companies struggling with labour.
So many young people have realised that although they have no chance of living the high life they can take some drugs and you imagine that you are. 15 years of hard slog, no holidays, investing all your funds and a fair bit of luck versus 15 seconds of snorting, smoking or injecting. Flashy cars on lease, Dominoes on credit card …… promising the world to your fellow druggy girlfriend. No contest really. Literally, the establishment of the last 25 years have removed any income and property ladder from them. Can you blame them for turning their backs on this un-winnable challenge?
@@AaaaandAction the opportunities available to make money now is better than ever with the rise in online opportunities, affiliates and social media. There are also more free courses online from, google, Stanford etc.. as I say, ‘attitude’ is the issue. Opportunities are in abundance.
I had to learn the hard way that the cleaning business I didnt bother getting going 8 years ago because I was too much of a snob was in fact the very best business model. I had to run the gauntlet of other business ideas to realise that the reoccurring revenue model of cleaning was amazing...better late than never , now I'm humble and grateful for the knowledge I gained from my failures
I too was worn out just watching this, some great insight for younger people who want to build a business, I just worked hard for long hours & for reasonable reward most of the time. I'm never getting rich doing it however I've a good standard of living & get a fair bit of time to travel ! . The killer for me would be the stress & worry , the finding people you can trust would be very hard too !
To my understanding this just proves how much we need an edge as investors because playing the market like everyone else just isn’t good enough. I've been quite unsure about investing in this current market and at the same time I feel it's the best time to get started on the market, what are your thoughts?
Since the crash, I've been in the red. I’m playing the long term game, so I'm not too worried but Jim Cramer mentioned there are still a lot of great opportunities, though stocks has been down a lot. I also heard news of a guy that made $250k from about $110k since the crash and I would really look to know how to go about this.
Thats true, I've been getting assisted by a FA for almost a year now, I started out with less than $200K and I'm just $19,000 short of half a million in profit.
My advisor is ‘’Catherine Morrison Evans’’ she’s highly qualified and experienced in the financial market. She has extensive knowledge of portfolio diversity and is considered an expert in the field. I recommend researching her credentials further. She has many years of experience and is a valuable resource for anyone looking to navigate the financial market
Dog Walking: Yes, low barrier to entry, yes, swapping time for money, but physiologically, it's much healthier than sitting in an office all day. There are people with life circumstances whom this will fit quite well. I suspect people's incentives are quite different - they are not looking to build the Uber of dog walking, a big motivation to why they do it is because they love dogs, not because they want to create a business empire.
Good point, from my point of view people come to my content to grow their business and scale, not build profitable jobs. If building a micro business makes you happy then that’s fine too!
My son has a dog-walking business in Brighton (now two years into it) and yes... it brings in some cash. He is passionate about dogs - so much so that 5 years ago while at university in Japan, he spent £4500 on bringing a Japanese rescue dog back to the UK! But a conversation I had with him a few days ago hinted strongly at the frustrations that James alludes to... the business is not scaleable. My son is turning potential customers away because he just does not have enough time to take on the extra assignments. The easier a "business" venture is to get into, the faster you will reach capacity. My son wants to (like everyone) improve his standard of living, be able to buy things that are currently unaffordable, and have free time to pursue personal interests - but his waking hours are filled with walking dogs and he's now at full capacity. Remember... scalability also applies in an employee/employer environment. Most people in employment are keen to advance their careers, so that they earn more money over time, and develop more skills. Show me a person who started stacking shelves in Tesco 30 years ago, and who still does it and loves it... Scalability is a life ambition - not only a business objective.
James some great advice, I run a profitable business in a high end market and my brand is becoming 'the' brand for what I sell. My problems are with my manufacturers, I am always at their mercy when trying to get stock produced and am turning business away because of long lead times, I would love to bring production in house but would need to raise capital and I'm not going to qualify for conventional lending. Any advice please?
@@RogueReplicant I don't think you have much business acumen. Hiring people is not generally a solution for many business types - and besides... employees are generally full of sh1t and if you can avoid hiring people, that's the better choice. (I speak from 33 years' experience in running my own companies). BTW - no company on the planet started out life saying "guess what... I'm starting a business and I want to employ lots of people." The opposite is true... where a machine can do the job of a person, companies opt for the machine. (Again - I speak from experience). Not saying that SOME employees are valuable - those that prove they ADD VALUE to the company will find and keep secure jobs, but such people are rare. Most employees don't give a hoot for their employer. Back to dog walking. My son is branching out into dog training and behaviour schooling. This past month, he ran two training sessions attracting 20 dog owners, and charged £20 for the 2-hour sessions. In the time it takes him to walk a dog for £20, he netted £400 - so scaling is possible by branching into scalable activities. And guess what? He needed NO sh1tty employees to conduct the training session. So... I don't think there's "anything wrong with him" - there would be if he took advice from a buffoon like you, however.
A very insightful business video - so much better than most of the nonsense you hear about these things. Particularly liked the points on using resellers such as amazon and etsy where you lose the customer contact so are really not building your own business.
Don’t start a restaurant business unless you can buy an established one out right.. and same with the rest hotels, events etc so the only thing I’m missing is money… silly me 😅
As a portfolio manager, I always preach that the best way to idiot-proof your investments (businesses included) is to diversify. The theory being that its a lot harder to put you out of business if you havent got all of your eggs in one basket. To that end, it seems you've done a wonderful job of it with the variety of businesses you own and operate.
Really good content, I could listen to your advice for hours, thanks for the insight. Always better to learn from other people’s mistakes, especially in business!!
Im an arborist. Before I only did removals and forest clearing. But as you say. To get a lot of money once from a new customer every day is extremely hard.
um i work in similar field as yours, cutting down trees, other landscaping. I would say this field is one of the most profitable, people don't like doing such jobs, they are hard, difficult, dangerous and people pay a lot of money to get them done. Also a lot of people own houses, want jobs done but can't even do themselfes as they are older, so they are paying as much as needed, competition is small, because of high entry costs of tools and because a lot of tools are difficult/dangerous to use
@@entorid6902 Hi. 🖐🙂 Love my work. I am moving now to an other location. Been here for many years. But I think there is big local differences. In the area here there are many young people who want to start with a excavator and a tractor and loging. So it's more competition and I have to travel longer for more expert jobs. In the area I am moving to there are more arborists but many more people and much more jobs related to municipal parks and streets. So much better chance of getting more reliable incomme. I am in Norway. Where do jo work?🙂
Tbh, I agree with a lot of this video however, they used to tell me the same thing about being a Photographer/Videographer here in Australia... That the market was too saturated and it would be too difficult to do... I started my business in 2016 and is now one of the most award winning, successful and leading businesses here in Perth. One of the main points James said was to do things DIFFERENTLY and make it work for you which was always my mentality going in. I'm glad I took the plunge.
Congrats! I agree. Some people are quick to point out how every business idea is bad and will never work...unless it's 100% online, 100% scalable, 100% sellable, has no product, no inventory, no facility, no startup costs, no competition, doesn't require anything of you, won't get your hands dirty, is recession-proof, immediately successful, makes money on a purely automated system 24/7/365, and brings in billions. That narrows it down to, well...nothing.
LOL. I've done just about all of them in one way or another - dog walking, mobile bartender, Etsy/Ebay seller, retail clothing, food truck. Now i work part time for someone else and all the headaches are gone and I make the same as I did with any of the others. Bottom line is that I never figured out that I am a terrible businessman.
I live in a town where there's a significant amount of retail that opens & closes within x3 years, in certain locations.... what do they all have in common? They're all tenants. The wealthiest & most successful business people in the town own the properties. Either their own, or everyone else's.
As an American 🇺🇸 watching your perspective especially over in the UK, your tips are pretty much universal over here as well. Great clip…. - New Subscriber 😉👍
Some more possible problem businesses might be photography, house cleaning.and lawn mowing if they are on a small scale. These don't really require separate buildings but the barriers to competition are very low and anyone with even a small amount of money can be your competitor.
Freelance photographer is a great business, while it might have very low capital barriers to entry, it’s got an extremely high skill barrier to entry. This low capital barrier to entry and endless unskilled (not professional standard) new ‘competitors’ works to the existing photographer’s advantage. Customers are insanely reluctant to change photographers because the market is flooded with new substandard photographers and it’s very difficult to find good photographers who can deliver outstanding images on time, every time. It has great client retention (decades), and fantastic cashflow because you’re so integral to driving people’s businesses. Because customers don’t change photographers it’s very difficult for new entrants to get a foothold in the industry, most go broke before they can even fully develop the skills to even do the job properly. The jump from amateur skill level to professional skill level is huge and shouldn’t be underestimated.
@@kiwimike2330 When I retired I considered (briefly) taking my photography to the business level. I'm friends with many of the local pros, and even shot back up a few times. I used to do small weddings, I found that for some couples, "Hey Uncle Albert has a big camera, he can take pictures for free." These days cameras are outstanding and for many potential clients, "good enough is cheap enough." As you said, getting the experience to provide the service needed takes time. I found that in retirement, I wasn't eager to take on the new full-time job as a businessman. Where I live, there are a great number of outstanding, well-established photogs. Realistically, I didn't feel I would be able to compete with them. End result: my hobby stayed a hobby. My free time is now consumed by volunteerism and at 75 I am now a published author, which I do for the creative fun vs paying the rent.
I live in a rural area with limited job opportunities, and so many people want to create their own business. We have an overabundance of "boutiques", which must be entirely supported by the few dozen wealthy retirees the town has, because they seem to do relatively well. Restaurants, on the other hand, flip over monthly, and I've seen some that were literally open just a week before closing. I've been told it had something to do with business loans or bankruptcy or something, like, the last one I saw, I was told they did it to get a Cadillac. You really hit the nail on the head talking about businesses anyone can do: our tiny town is saturated with "customization" business - people using a Cricut/Cameo to cut vinyl and apply to tumblers, doing a horrible job and not understanding why they can't sell anything. I've seen a lot "party/wedding planner" businesses started by someone with no experience, so when you called them vanity jobs, that struck a chord.
I share the same thoughts. Look for a business that has lots of repeat business all year round. It would be great to find something that isn’t easy for others to copy easily.
I’m glad I could just check all the boxes here. What I’d add on top is a added value concentration. Compare these two a styro foam wholesaler and a diamond trader. The other factor for me is a liqudity or you can call it cash flow speed. What’s better? If you can do a $1M deal with 50% profit once a year or $10k with 25% profit every week? Where you can expand faster?
Styrofoam wholesaler, obviously. Diamonds are a fickle market and discretionary spending is the first to go when times are rough. There's also the fact that more and more ppl refuse to buy / wear diamonds as a statement - meaning they refuse to be complicit to the human suffering and ecological harm that is so much built in the natural diamonds extraction. A styrofoam wholesaler on the other hand will always have business and will always deal with a product that's necessary and not impacted by trends. Should it come to a point where styrofoam needs to be replaced, then all the wholesaler has to do is offer the newly launched replacement.
Thanks so much. Have you checked my podcasts? Https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/james-sinclairs-business-broadcast-podcast/id1495894637 Even more for free !!
Concise advice, presented simply in a digestable format. I'm looking at going freelance / self employed as a designer (after many years being an employee) and making the transition. While not the same as the buisnesses in the video, some of the advice and information can be applied to it. It's also a interesting snapshot of these types of busiensses, which we all see on a dialy basis. Certainly the 'I can do that!' type jobs.
Very good advice, a bit of a theme is not being too small when the real efficiency and profits come at a scale that is a step beyond what an inexperienced and under capitalized newcomer can/will do.
Bravo.. Friggin awesome video.. taken me 25 years to slowly learn all this and I’m still learning.. We have a saying at work.. we Stay away from the sexy businesses.. period..
I once dated a young woman who had a dog walking business; she started by handing out brochures then one dog, then 2 dogs….
By the time I was dating her, 4 years after started business, she had 4 employees and was earning same as me as a lawyer. Years later she had a free run dog kennel, had bought 2 acres, her parents were working for her with a total of 09 employees and she no longer worked. She had a grade 10 education.
I work as a dog walker and my boss just can’t seem to find competent people willing to work. Everyone just disappears these days
09 employees is what I call fully staffed
After years of hard-work staggering 09 employees, and her parents working for her.. What an achievement!!! And guess what, tomorrow when her business goes down, she can go to any large corporate business and get herself a job like "VP of dog walking at Barclays" and retire at the proper age and might even become a philanthropist!!
@@ArslanMajeedLol. Your comment drips with jealousy. You poor troll. And I do mean poor. You probably can’t afford a dog. Do you even have dogs in Pakistan or wherever you’re from?
@@is2jzge 09 is obviously a typo for 90. However, every business has its unicorns. She's a unicorn.
1) Restaurants
2) Dog Walking / Cupcake Making / Party Planning (low barrier to entry)
3) Clothes Shop (boutique retail)
4) Hotels
5) Online Marketplace selling (amazon / ebay / etsy )
6) Events
Types of businesses listed in the video:
1. Restaurants
2. Dog walking, Cupcakes, Party Planning
3. Clothes/Boutique/ Retail Stores
4. Hotels
5. Marketplace Selling e.g. eBay, Etsy, Amazon
6. Events
So in summary, the "servicing" and "entertainment" sectors are the industries to avoid. Better find a SKILLED profession.
Another key takeaway is owning the customer data
@@trivadpt Learn to repair something and you have a good future.
@@llothar68 teach me then.
@@trivadpt 10years learning by doing. If you think you can learn it online it's not a skill
Warren Buffett in one interview said. Its not about having ground breaking ideas or business nobody has ever done before. Its about doing whatever you're doing well and being consistent
It's true. Take trades, for example. Most businesses are very poorly run. Build a plumbing business with a good receptionist, fast quotations and staff who are uniformed, clean-working, cheerful, punctual and competent and who turn up in a nicely liveried van and you will never starve.
"Hobby Jobs" is what I call a lot of these. Our town is full of little boutiques: fashion, florists, 'vintage' tat, candles, fine wines etc. they open, they last about a year, maybe two, then they're replaced with more of the same. They're started because the owner thinks it would be a nice thing to do. Not a solid foundation for a business!
Exactly. This is unfortunately very true.
I’m a hobby mechanic. I’ve taught myself pretty much all about car repair/maintenance. Even full engine rebuilds. I am ready to open my own garage. Will I also last a year or two? I’m passionate about people avoiding being ripped off and having fair pricing. Is that a solid foundation for business?
@@likhwadube5937 if by fair pricing, you mean you'll be cheaper than the competition, then you've got to ask yourself truthfully if that is going to be sustainable.
The trouble with passion projects, is once the pressure of having to balance the finances kicks in, it can actually take the shine off the hobby you used to enjoy.
@@likhwadube5937 Car repair is extremely expensive on modern cars as you need a lot of computerized diagnostics & programming tools with expensive subscriptions. I would strongly suggest you focus on a particular make and year range. Also, generic services (oil changes, tires, etc) have much, much higher margins than actual repair and are repeat customers. Finally, learn to turn down work and make customers pay for diagnostics work, with a high enough fee to discourage problem customers. You should also consider being mobile or specializing in a specific area (electrical diagnostics, AC repair, etc) for existing garages.
How do I know all this? I restore old cars for fun but I also share a shop with a professional mechanic, so I've learned this over the last 20 or so years.
@@likhwadube5937no
I have been running a dog walking business for about 15 years. I also do training, boarding dogs in my home. It has been very satisfying on many levels. It depends what you want. A decent living and a network with lots if connections for referrals, subcontracting etc. Not rich but comfortable and happy!
So has my father. Your customers are loyal and they rely on you. I think it's a bit like cigarettes - they need you, they're happy to pay for you and they tend to stick with you.
It all depends on ones mindset regarding personal drivers and ambition too; not everyone wants to be a billionaire in X amount of time-some folk just want enough money so that they can pay all their bills and have enough disposable income to do their hobbies and have a healthy amount of personal down time.
Personally, If I had a disposable income of around £2-3K I could do anything I realistically wanted which is namely, childcare cover, martial arts, Scuba Diving, Bushcraft training, 1 holiday abroad a year.
That’s his point… a great job… just not a great business. Very difficult to sell it… *you* are what people are buying… and good on you for that… proves trust etc… but if you broke your hip and are on the bed for 6 months… your business needs to be able to support both you and the person who you employ to run it… they better be as good or better than you because your business success relies solely on them! I had a business that folders for exactly this reason. I bought in a contractor to look after my business clients while I went on a month holiday… the guy I bought in I thought was reliable… turns out… not! Cost me to train him up (had to pay him while I worked with him)… etc. people wanted me and my skills, not him and his less-skilful babysitting… so they went elsewhere. I realised… I could never sell my business so sold my clients to another person and went and got another job.
Loved working for myself… but the wrong business model to retire on.
Your strategy is different. The dog walking effectively is marketing higher-value services too. That is helpful to pet owners.
Good for you! But his points are still fully valid!
I did business in Pest Control for 15 years. I was a terrible businessman but it had very low start up costs and very high mark up. So despite the snobbery you get from people when you tell them what you do, I did it. Insects are peoples number one fear. It astonished me how much money people would pay to get rid of the things. But these days the market is flooded, every man and his dog does it now. Getting the customer is the hardest thing.
Ah, this explains why all businesses and contractors seem to suck nowadays! Sounds like they’re all fly-by-night, and inexperienced. I would gladly pay for someone experienced who knows what he’s doing and doesn’t break stuff on his way through
@@Emiliapocalypse Sad but true.
Makes you wonder where the future if business in general will be when everything is saturated. It's depressing
My number one fear is clowns. Do you spray for clowns?
One of my uncle who is 72 years old has a pest control business in Romania and he is very famous and wanted by all the big famous companies. But he does it alone and works a lot. Makes pretty good money but taxes eat up 50% plus he has to pay other people that help with the papers, taxes and stuff. Doesn't want to retire because then his pension will be low.
- Avoid investing in restaurants due to their high failure rate, low revenue per employee, high capex costs, fickle customers, and high turnover taxes.
- Invest in high barrier-to-entry sectors with high revenue per employee, such as accountancy.
- Find a good business model that can be scaled up and replicated.
- Avoid investing in dog walking, cupcake making, and party planning due to their low barriers to entry and high competition.
- Consider owning the business premises to keep overheads low and find a legacy brand with little competition.
Best comment here without likes. The people don't want to here the true.
How about farming?Young people generally get degrees and work in cities.Yeah farming is hard but once you get into it,can be quite profitable as I know.
@@Polymath9000 Absolutely, you bring up a valid point about the trend of young people pursuing degrees and urban careers. However, the agriculture sector, especially farming, presents an intriguing opportunity that can be both challenging and rewarding. As you mentioned, once young individuals venture into farming and navigate its demands, it has the potential to be profitable, highlighting the significance of exploring diverse industries beyond traditional urban pathways.
@@Polymath9000 farmers are mostly struggling, living off animals' carcasses is highly karmic
What about Tourism?
If you have never been in the restaurant business, and fancy a go……Don’t. Work in restaurants 1st. Sitting in one eating nice food, isn’t even close to running it.
Gordon Ramseys Kitchen nightmares showed how many ended up in Restaurants with no prior experience.
Fct is 90%+ of people are stupid
I like that you don't just say what businesses are difficult, you also explain how to improve them to make profitable.
"Avoid all these business that I own." Keeps the competition down ;)
Love it so true
In Canada here. My brother is a trustee for bankruptcy, restaurants and small retailers were his best clients . Average life span of either was three years from opening to bankruptcy. Unfortunately being a small business person is not for everybody, being passionate is not enough. Only fellow I know who has made it in restaurant business bought existing business including building. He hired three or four reliable foreign workers and treats them well. His daughter is going to buy him out when he fully retires, she's an accountant. My two cents worth. Cheers
"His daughter is going to buy him out when he fully retires" He's not gonna just give it to her? What a cheap bastard...
@@foljs5858 it’s his retirement plan , she’s gonna be just fine 👍
Maybe the daughter wants to pay???
Maybe he wants some money for retirement?
@@foljs5858You give more value to something you paid for, rather than something you received for Free.
I would add this:
If you want to start your first business and it needs a premises, you will need to rent from a landlord, you will have to sign a personal guarantee for the lease period.
If that’s 5 years and the rent if £20k/ pa you are giving yourself a liability of £100,000
Too many new business owners end up losing their house.
I have seen this many times in my line of work - a start-up business with an uncertain future signing 10 or even 20 year leases on commercial property, then going bust after 18 months and having to negotiate tough exit deals from the lease. I strongly advise anybody taking out a commercial lease to negotiate break clauses into the lease so they have shorter cut-off points to manage the risk. And don't agree to take on a commercial property that's falling to pieces on a full repairing and insuring lease otherwise you'll potentially face massive end-of-lease repair costs too.
@@chriscousineau4537 I ran a business and nearly came a cropper.
Business leases, bank account overdraft agreements, credit accounts….they all routinely have personal guarantees attached these days.
I had a bank manager that tried to convince me “it’s not worth the paper it’s written on, they never pursue it” - some online research shows that to be untrue.
Even with a limited liability company?
Having worked in retail for 15 years the biggest mistake I saw was holding onto stock for to long. I'd see stock that should of been reduced when it was relevant then being binned or sold for pennies. In my eyes to better to break even early and free up some cash than hold on hoping it'll one day sell
Stock when ordered wrong, can kill a company. You make a good observation.
We would only buy basic stock that would go within 4 weeks. Anything special or odd we would get only when we had the customer.
Your first loss is your best loss.... I was in Fruit n Veg for 20 years
Yep, the phrase we used was "No sentimental attachment to inventory". You got to move it, move it, move it.
@keithmarlowe5569 The company I worked for ( directly for about $ 120000)
Started using a contract company that then advertised " business opportunities." Where the poor person got paid F all and paid out nonstop and was not allowed to do other work to the best of my knowledge. A lot walked out .
Worried this was going to be a pure vanity online business seminar type video, but some genuinely interesting and considered (and probably hard-learnt) points in here. Worth watching.
Thanks! Glad you liked it, check out the rest of the Channel! There’s plenty more where this came from.
@@JamesSinclairEntrepreneur James do you think people starting businesses should always stick to areas that they know or experiment?
@@VincentRE79 as an accountant, I'd say it depends on how you plan to find it. If you can manage to get sufficient funding by raising capital on new business ideas you can give them a try. However, if you are self funded and don't have much money to spare, a low risk approach will be a more realistic choice.
You'll have to assess if what you know can make you enough money to cover for your initial capital and ongoing costs.
@@JamesSinclairEntrepreneurThank you too- I was wary it would be one of those “get rich quick “ videos but you do make a lot of sense.
It was excellent
How to be successful in business:
1. If you're going to do what everyone else is doing, you have to bring more value to your customers than your competitors can, i.e., it faster, better, cheaper.
2. If you're going to do something that nobody else is doing, you have to find or create a market for it.
3. Be willing to do whatever it takes to make it.
4. Location, location, location.
I tend to trust people who give good advice freely, even as colleagues. They don't fear the competition because they know they have nothing to fear. Nice video.
Making money is not the same as keeping it there is a reason why investments aren't well taught in schools, the examples you gave are well stationed, the market crisis gave me my first millions, people shy away from hard times, I embrace them.. well at least my advisor does lol.
Investors should be cautious about their exposure and be wary of new buys, especially during inflation. Such high yields in this recession is only possible under the supervision of a professional or trusted advisor.
This is superb! Information, as a noob it gets quite difficult to handle all of this and staying informed is a major cause, how do you go about this are you a pro investor?
Not at all, having monitor edge my portfolio performance which has made a jaw dropping $473k from just the past two quarters alone, I have learned why experienced traders make enormous returns from the seemingly unknown market. I must say it's the boldest decision I've taken since recently.
@@hasede-lg9hj Please pardon me, who guides you on the process of it all?
The adviser I'm in touch with is Vivian Carol Gioia. You can use something else, for me her strategy works hence my result. she provides entry and exit point for the securities I focus on.
Brilliant video and advice as always, eBay got my foot in the door to being self employed in my 20s, built up to over 25,000+ feedbacks, suddenly one day my account suspended. Business shut over night. BIG lesson learned there, As you say James don't be reliant on one client/customer/selling platform for more than 10% of your income. I was 100% reliant on eBay
I had a similar story on Etsy. Zero customer service, nobody to help, business dead overnight.
@@chaosflower4892surely the lesson learnt there was not adapting ? Maybe he should have transitioned to online as the high st became threatened
@@chaosflower4892LMAO! 😂😂😂😂😂😂 90% of your comment was very balanced and insightful, then the last 4 lines became incredibly unhinged 😂😂😂 I do see your point and I agree though
EBay can ruin someone livelihood over night , for no fair reason !
Brilliant and relevant.
If a business is easy to enter, reasonably fun and seems profitable you should avoid it because thousands of other people will think the same thing. You need to find something you do better than most other people, or something unpleasant that you can tolerate.
In the horticulture/ arboriculture industry there are far too many tree surgeons because it only takes a few months to train and they can make £1000s in a day. The result is most of the big trees in private gardens Britain have now been removed for 'safety' reasons (really profit) homeowners do not plant more because they think they will be expensive to maintain and now they are chasing each other to destroy large hedges and do bad landscaping. I spent years working for old men weeding and pruning, I did a long old fashioned apprenticeship. I learnt to build giant herbaceous borders from scratch with very few plants or materials, or regenerate ancient fruit orchards, it was boring and hard and took years but now I am one of the only people in the entire county that can do it properly and I charge appropriately.
I would very much dispute the idea that you should aim to create a business that runs itself so you can just sit on the beach or something. Perhaps you will be happy doing that but you would just be a rent seeking parasite on society. Creating yourself a really good, well paid job you love is a more healthy aim. Good luck if you expect to find employment like that. If you just seek money you will never ever have enough of it, that should be incidental.
I like what you wrote. It sounds so much dignified than the whole bussines talk. Off course, not all we do and need can be done your way, but still it sounds just right.
That sounds like the Microbrew scene in the USA prior to the pandemic. Too many guys who loved to brew decided to make craft beer for a living and open a pub. The sector was becoming crowded and unprofitable even before the pandemic.
I love your comment. I’m contemplating starting a niche business that will be hard to research because it is so niche. It’s almost like I’ll just have to do a business plan and jump in(or not) without being able to research. But your comment encourages me because it’s something I should be good at and have a passion for. Thanks again for sharing your experience and wisdom with all of us. It is is appreciated:).
From what I heard, a number of long running boutique shops are owned by women who either have rich families or rich husbands who pay for the cost of maintaining these boutique shops, this is why they manage to stay in business despite typically only having one or two paying customers per day at the very most for years and years at a time.
oooh this actually makes more sense
My dad always said this and the husband runs tax write offs against the wife's business.
See Carlsbad California. The village is full of these ego boutiques.
You've just described the exact situation, and everyone knows and understands it, here in Uruguay.
The Carrasco area is filled with stores that make no sense and can't make money, until you learn how and why they all exist.
You make some solid points. I have quite a few very successful friends who had years of sleepless nights and terror before they succeeded. One memorable quote on starting a business was: "If you're not scared shitless, you're doing it wrong."
@@keithmarlowe5569how
I was not scared at all, but I started in my early 20's, took me 7-8 years to be profitable, that is the age to start business, when you have room for failure and learning.
I have a cafe here in Japan and I own it. I would have lost it in the first years if I had to pay rent before building up my customer base from scratch.
Wow! Cool to know people are watching from Japan. What sort of cafe is it?
@@JamesSinclairEntrepreneur Woodfired pizza cafe
I know some of the businesses James owns. We took the children to Marsh Farm. Rossi Ice Creams are well loved in Essex. The advice that hit me hard was that building a business should not be building a job for yourself but building something scalable that can still make money without you if you sell it.
What you are talking about is the difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur. The business owner run a business. It might be to support them or to grow wealth through return on capital. They don't have any interest in expansion. The goal is to earn a living. An entrepreneur wants to build something. They want scaleability and growth.
You dont pay restaurant loans out of profit, you pay all costs out of turnover, the government takes money from your profit not your overheads.
Sone very good points.
Its sad to see that, businesses that once sustained a healthy middle class 50-60 years ago, that were able to help people get on property ladder, that made people to go on foreign holidays, are no longer profitable. All the sectors you listed were usually run by a local family in a town/village, who then spent the majority of the profits from that business locally in that village.
Internet, e-commerce, social media, gig economy, cheap chinese manufacturers, big container ships, cheap money have all led to the decline of this country.
I think it’s turnover taxes that have killed those businesses, they’re all doing decent revenues… people still use them. Then the government puts them out of business with more turnover taxes than I can remember. ( Vat and Business rates being the main 2 ) 70% of businesses don’t make money and are paying more in turnover taxes than they actually pay themselves.
Government should keep turnover taxes to an absolute low and start taxing profits.
If VAT is like GST in NZ, then it is a payroll tax. Almost all tax on costs gets run against tax charged on sales. But staff and your own wages have no reclaimable GST on cost but GST on the profits that pay those wages. Business taxes are on profit, not turnover, typically 30%, so only payable if a profit is being made, minimising taxable profit is an art.
@@howardsimpson489in UK it’s totally different. VAT is value added tax and it is applied to your turnover. There is a corporation tax that is applied to your profits. You can claim it back if you purchased stock with VAT applied to it. But since the VAT for food is 0% restaurants only can claim back on their alcohol purchases.
He hit the nail on the head on number 1. my buddy has a restaurant from 1955, mexican very popular, it was left to him by his parents and he runs it, and he told me whatever you do, do not go into the restaurant business, fun fact and I have seen this being a business owner, most restaurants dont last 5 years, I would say 90% go under, its just not worth it, the profit margin is too small.
Das klingt nach einem 'daitschen' Kommentar. 😁✌🏾
Ebay/Amazon can be great in the early stages of your business as its a no-overhead way of selling your goods. Especially if you sell items that you don't have to hold stock of. The obvious downside to it is the fees but to a small business i look at that more as "marketing spend". The good thing is it's a no win no fee as you only pay WHEN you sell not if. Key to it is however, putting something in your packages/parcels to move that customer away from buying that product again from those platforms but instead moving them to your website. You could offer a 10% off code for inputting your email address for instance to build that database and essentially that doesn't cost you anything as you're paying that in fees! Use them in the early days to grow your business/brand.
Great video and very clear!
The big problem with Ebay is that many business illegally operate as "private" accounts over there, and are thus able to undercut real businesses. Amazon is a nightmare because of it's stupid "Buy box"....if you're not in the magic buy box, say goodbye to sales. Etsy fees are ridiculously high. And almost all other marketplaces have hardly any traffic and are not worth bothering with. To sell on marketplaces you have to be selling things that are both rare, collectible and in high demand, otherwise don't bother. If you sell household items then Chinese sellers will undercut you, they are happy to make a loss if it puts you out of business.
@@bretton_woods Funny you should say that regarding ebay, ive noticed a hell of a lot more lately doing exactly that, Is that actually illegal? As you're pretending to be a person when you're actually a business? And yeah there's absolutely no point buying/selling things that can just be imported/sold from China as you have no chance
@@oliverspooner2483 Yes it is illegal, because if you are a business but you pose as a "private" seller, you are depriving the customer of their legal rights (such as: being able to make a "change of mind" return within 14 days for any reason; being able to know the physical address of the business, being guaranteed to receive items that are "fit for purpose" lest they be returned, and so on). It does not matter if the goods are brand new or second hand, either. There are many many legit businesses who deal mainly in secondhand goods (Musicmagpie, Cash Converters, pawn brokers, etc).
It also applies to anyone who MAKES items to sell, such as if you're selling homemade cards online, then you're a business in the eyes of the law.
Unfortunately the problem has always been enforcement, which is why "Fake private" sellers are running rampant at the moment.
To be clear, even if those sellers are registered to pay self-assessment tax, they are still operating illegally if they are posing as a private seller for reasons mentioned above.
It really is not difficult to switch an Ebay account to a business one, so there's no excuse for these people - especially those who sell 1000's of items. Ebay are very very slow to encourage such sellers to become correctly registered, but are fast to take down any item they consider breaches their offensive material policy, for example!
If HMRC ever got properly staffed and ever decided to do an audit of Ebay's marketplace then Ebay would be in deep trouble for allowing such sellers to operate for so long illegally.
Love the way he's not just providing a simple list of businesses that fail but he is also providing reasons why they fail and how he works those businesses so they don't fail.
Thanks for understanding the point, a lot think I’m making it to make no one open these businesses to stop competing with me….. like I have a chance of doing that.
All businesses are hard, from my 20 plus business lines, these are the struggles I have identified in these particular ones…… and what you can do about it! Thanks for noticing!
Reminds me of how Jab Jab Right hook compares how companies failed their social media ads and how to fix it
I started a tech business about 15 years ago. We made something fairly difficult but not too impossible to start with. We had great sales and it was profitable but disappeared overnight when the technology moved on! The new things we were working on never came off.
My current business is really difficult at the moment but the big boys have all made the same mistake and are heading for a fall in a year or two. Whilst we're minnows right now, we're the only ones with a fully working product. That is such a golden opportunity that hardly ever comes around but I'm sure it must happen in other industries too.
I had one big client, when I started one of my Tech businesses. They owed me money. But, they hickuped on paying me. they asked for an extension. Before you know it, they owe you 100K, and are declaring bankruptcy. Their bankruptcy, ended my business. I however, paid my bills, I just lost money.
If you have a fully working product, the customers WILL come to you. Good luck!
For the customer to come to you, they need to know you exist. Paying influencers to advertise for you can be relatively cheap but cost effective.
Hadn't considered the value of a high barrier to entry before, thanks.
A quote from a barrister I once worked with (technically, 'for' as he was a partner):
"If I tried doing *your* job, I'd merely be bad at it. If you tried doing *my* job, you'd be breaking the law!"
For a similar thing, look at what Buffet calls it a moat. Same idea: something that someone else can't just start doing too.
When I see good videos like this I usually take out my time to appreciate the experts that make these videos possible, it is not easy to help lots of people earn money
You are right my friend, when I got introduced to him I was surprised because I felt a man of that talent should be well known and appreciated
I would blame myself if I hear about an opportunity like this and I let it waste, please I am interested how can I do business with him
Absolutely sensible advice. No matter how attractive the business may appear to be. The basic principle of input versus income/profit apply. If this is unpredictable - leave it alone.
Definitely agree with a lot of things here. When I was a teenager, I used to work part-time in a fast-food restaurant. I was talking to one of the managers once, and he said that there are two costs that will make you or break you in the restaurant business: food costs and labour costs. Many restaurant owners fail because they cannot keep those costs under control and still attract customers to generate enough revenue. I also have some experience working in various retail businesses, and one thing that I noticed is that nearly all retail businesses, regardless of what they are selling (shoes, groceries, vehicles), are essentially in the business of moving inventory. The better they move inventory, the better they do as businesses. However, that also means that failure to move inventory eventually imposes costs, whether that means disposing of inventory, continuing to warehouse inventory, marking down inventory to customers, or what have you. Therefore, you need to acquire inventory that you can sell quickly and preferably in quantity, and that requires experience or very good judgement.
Great advice. Years ago when I started my business I focused on getting a little bit of money from as many people as possible on the regular. What is also true is crafting a business that can be sold. Most cannot.
What is ironic is that the businesses that make me the happiest when I use them (restaurants, hotels) are often money losers. But thank heaven for those who do them.
I like the phrase “riches in niches”; I’ve been developing a sheet metal brass product business in the antipodes (repeatable product, verging on scalability, high end domestic market…) and whilst it might seem quaint, it’s worked well; high barrier to entry mostly in knowledge and experience, craft skill, and can leverage means of production to others in the industry.
Great points. Amazon and Etsy may have incentivised businesses during their growth period but now they're in full on rent seeking mode.
how do you mean rent seeking?
@@mrm8818extracting an unfair profit
right, they don't care about the profit of their sellers they care about their own. but as James hinted to they can be great tools for brand awareness.
I established, and operated, a business in Hong Kong which was profitable and which lasted for 20 years, until I chose to retire, with a decent amount of cash The business provided educational services, tuition and consultation services. I now live in the Philippines where my business interests are in property, retail and hospitality - my wife and I own a coffee shop and a general store and numerous properties, which garner a decent income - if you are not prepared to work, then don't bother. I no longer work because I don't have to. I put in the effort and now I am reaping the benefits.
Solid advice.
I think the most important piece of advice in the whole video is regarding customer email address database ownership.
It's stupidly important to own it yourself.
As a frequent eBay user (NEVER Amazon), I capture any address/contact info from sellers. Cutting out the middleman is what the internet is all about!
@@lorenzoboyd6889 - I didn't even know that was allowed.
I've learnt something today.
One of my friends has been working in restaurants for decades and now owns a successful restaurant / pub. I wish I could say the same of his second location, or that the business could run without him. The restaurant business is very difficult for the reasons you stated, glad you noted it first in your list. Some people think they can go in with a few thousand dollars and their aunt's recipes and make it. I've heard of firefighters that blew their entire retirement savings on a bar that didnt last three months. 😢
A buddy closed his club. It's weird. Always wanted one myself.
Sometimes a pub/bar/restaurant lives or dies by whoever the personality is running it. You can have a thriving business which then gets taken over by someone dislikeable for instance and will then sink like the titanic
This was refreshing! A decent, experience-oriented, street-level bit of business advice. Some of this I've learned from experience (e.g. don't sell your time) and some I consider common sense but all of it useful. Makes a big change from hyped US-style 'get rich now' nonsense.
The key to business success is to have government monopolize your business. Nothing like the law requiring everyone to have to use your services. 😉
Buy a Port
@@ranjithpowell6791 If you can afford a port, I'm going to assume you are already a multi-multi millionaire.
Yep
Pfizer? 😂
I’m Canada (Alberta) here, government requires an in-car examination of all new drivers before licensing all done by private licensed businesses of driver examiners suddenly after thirty years they said oh we’ll do that in house now , result hundreds of small businesses out of business overnight. If the government is your only client beware .
Rossi's ice cream (Ilford, Barkingside, and Southend in south Essex) was my favorite ice cream when I was growing up in the 1960's. It's an outstanding product - and THAT was key to its reputation that led to its long term success. As we all know, if its the very best and affordable, people will walk past the others to get to it.
If you are thinking of getting into business this is the most valuable 13 minutes you will use. A LOT of solid advice in the video and the comments, getting a good accountant makes a huge difference something I can't stress enough - no, I'm not an accountant. It will be hard enough this will make it a little easier. Good fortune people.
Nonsense. That’s what’s turbo tax is for
A good accountant that knows how your industry works. Otherwise you will spend a lot of money and receive little value.
Solid advice. I think the trades are worth mentioning. Trade school is about a year, plus another couple of years working in the field to recognize a good tech when you see one. Live frugally while you save the money to do your own thing. With hard work and some luck you could have your own place in plumbing, automotive, diesel, etc. in under ten years.
Here in Texas, and in the United States generally, Skilled Trades are becoming an issue. I know some people in this business here, specifically in building/construction.
1. The majority of tradesmen are aging out quickly. I believe the median age is about 50 here locally, but I could not find an objective source.
2. You have as much work as you can take. One of my acquaintances (electrician) worked about 70 hours a week for 6 months, with offers for an additional 40 minimum. He has backed off to 50-60 since.
3. Lots of these skilled trades have pay (as an employee) far in excess of the average. Statistics from 2022 put electricians at about $65k/yr. My friend made more than that in that 6 month window..
4. Progression is fairly easy. Employee to individual Sub-contractor to multi-employee business owner can happen rapidly if you have a reputation for quality work.
@@buffewo6386 You have to be willing to work a lot of OT to make money in the trades. That's where the guys get to 80 or 100 K is by working 70 hours a week which really isn't for a lot of people. Truth is the youth malign the trades I don't think your going to see a lot of young people going into them the 30K for trade school is a big barrier as well.
I cannot tell you, its uncountable now, the number of friends, family and coworkers who've told me they are planning or dreaming or actually are opening their own restaurant. WHAT is it where everyone and their cousin is convinced they should open a restaurant?
It really is one of THE most difficult businesses you can start and run, never mind making money, its a very very difficult exhausting business AND almost none of them make worthwhile money and MOST will fail. Yet, 99% of everyone on earth seems sure that IF they opened a business of their own - they'd really love to open a restaurant!
*That's because 100% of people on the planet can associate pleasant notions with eating and enjoying food, VS how many people can relate with recapping a truck tire, or desquirreling a house's attic*
One small thing to consider regarding clothes shops: if you wanna get into the field, having a bespoke production line and some sort of backing from the manufacturer (i.e. investment wise through custom designs and inventory/storage help regarding the first months of revenue loss till you get your foot into the local market door) can help a lot.
Could you elaborate more on this please 😊
This is why I am a big believer in selling services (like translation, copywriting) and things I could do from a laptop instead of dealing with all the headache of having a physical store, inventory, etc.
Can you help to get into that? i speak english and spanish
These skills will be replaced by AI soon. Having a physical store will train you on customer retention, inventory management, invaluable skills for growth
@@RalphNgOfficialI think there is a lot to gain with translating legal documents and contracts. Because who would trow a contract in de a translation app and just sign it with potential translation errors of misinterpretations. But you do need to understanding of international law to interprete and explain legal terms.
Pimping has worked out really well for me. Great margins, consistent clientele, predictable revenue. The key is an online Harvard Business School MBA, it helped to get it to the serious and professional level.
Pimping sounds ok, but you have to employ a lot of skilled people, who can be difficult to manage. Drug dealing is easier and equally profitable.
My friend designs and installs commercial kitchens. He said time and again he’s watched restaurants fail started by people who took their life savings thinking they had a better restaurant idea and ended up broke.
Clothing I couldn't agree more James! I lost around £10k and still sleep with over 2k t shirts under my bed 😫... BUT all the lessons learnt on that failure has my new business steam rolling! B2B and B2C. Finally things are looking up. Thank you for the great video/Info
You’ve got to fail at least one badly to make something work. At least you tried.
@@JP-gy3sr that's it mate people told me I'd fail but at least I think on my death bed, "at least I gave that a try". As my own mum said "I'll never make it in life" probably reason why my second venture gaining some traction 🙌. All the best on your venture buddy
@@LAH92 big up you bro, I wish you success in your venture inshallah
"I started a business and all I got was 2000 T-shirts"
Now, put that on the shirts and people will pay an arm and leg to get one of them!
Give each one a number 2000 to 1 and have a count-down. :-)
What changes did you incorporate to make it work?
"High barrier to entry" and "richies in niches" phrases made me subscribe without hesitation. Good content
You were born to be a business man. You have a good understanding of the nuances of business that I would imagine can only be obtained through experience. Subbed!
I am no businessman, I found this fascinating but exhausting to think of all the balls being juggled at the same time, and the downsides of them being dropped. I do however admire people who can do business like this. Instead, I had a nice career as an engineer and some of what I did quite closely matched the advice given. High barrier to entry, a degree and lots of engineering experience. Almost no competition partly due to the barriers but also no one else wanted to do the stuff I did. Expand on what I could do and get my own list of customers. It kept me continuously employed until retirement. Love being retired.
Can't compare a business on a technical degree specialism. Than anything else. But not everyone can be an engineer, because that will clog the market
@@luiscobos123 That is babbling gobblegook. What a ridiculous post.
Always think,if you can make £20 a week, but run 100 small businesses (run by good managers),your earning over £100k per year!
@@williamrae9954 100 businesses?? you must be joking. It would cost more than 20 a week just in accounting for each business.
@williamrae9954 good managers? They are running their own business! Most run by managers fail have seen it over and over. A professional wants a business gets a franchise puts in a manager ! Fail
So basically what you are saying is that in order to have a great business you need loads of money upfront. Great tip , thank you.
And that's absolutely true. So if you don't have lots of money, make a business plan and get a business loan.
Money is one barrier but not a great one. Skill is another. Anything that's not easy to replicate that people want. Brand is one of the most valuable---if you build one.
Also, nothing wrong with a 'good' business if it supports the family and you into old-age.
@@noseboop4354 Business plan regardless.
Having an exit plan on entry is the key when going into business. Every business has a natural lifecycle and none will last forever as a perpetual source of income in a rapidly changing world.
I own a restaurant and a takeaway. The thing you must remember is that you are trying to sell people something they can do themselves for 10% of the price (or even less).
Simply put the food has to be amazing to give you a 50% chance of succeeding.
Glad to have stumbled onto your channel. Where have you been? You could have saved a lot of people a lot of money and heartache.
“A little bit of money from a lot of people a lot of the time” is classic.
More good info in 15 minutes than an entire college business class.
As someone who opened a hotel that has a restaurant that sold cupcakes and offered party planning and did events with a retail clothing boutique store that offered dog walking services and did it all while selling on etsy, amazon and ebay in my office, i can tell you its the most satisfying, profitable and relatively easy thing to start!
best advice here its to get into a business that has a high entry barrier! very good short and on point video! thanks
Clever guy, he has figured out niches within business models that are usually bad
Thank you James. I enjoyed this and man-ohhh-man I totally agree with you on number 3. I used to have my own boutique store in Atlanta, GA, and the thing that drove me insane regarding it was the overwhelming amount of stock inventory that never sold. I had stuff that sold really well and then stuff that just couldn’t get moved and I hated that part. Ended up donating unsold inventory.
I sew and I have since pivoted to now do niche like you said lol. Now I carved out a niche within my sewing, all from home. Now I’m sewing formal wear: Prom dresses/party dresses, birthday dresses, wedding guest dresses etc… formal wear sewing.
I always loved the idea of wholesale, and recently this 2024 year I started developing a product to offer wholesale. Because I truly love everything about the wholesale idea.
Thx James,
Janelle
I like that you did not include sole trader businesses here. Selling one's own time to perform a function - while working from home, say - might be limited in scope and growth potential, might be low barrier to entry - but nothing to put it on the avoid list per se.
Very very wise words! I'm also into a number of businesses in unrelated industries from financial services to car rental to construction and my all-time favourite business is: quarrying! Quarrying and mineral extraction in general offers very high turnover per employee.
"I hope you like this video..." Understatement of the year! I'm loving it! Thanks for sharing what must be decades of business experience and squeezing it all into this single video. I definitely have a better idea of what to expect as I contemplate what areas of business I should focus my attention on. Live long and [continue to] prosper! 💪🏾🤩
I would recommend studying a trade, for example an electrician, and then after a few years of experience starting your own company. Do something you enjoy.
This is the first video I've seen of yours, James. Excellent work! Liked and subscribed.
This is the best, no BS business video that I have seen in the last 5 years, well done.........subscribed, thanx
I really like this video. My advice concerns cash flow. Pick a business where your customers pay you, before you have to pay your suppliers, then you can fund the growth of your business from your cash flow.
Hooker?
Brilliant , straight to the truth. No buy in, just honesty.
I know someone that spent thousands on bags and clothes for her boutique. Hardly any of it sold and she ended up giving alot of it to charity.
Restaurants as hotel, capacity is key.
If you are keen acquiring an hotel, here the minimum KPI to seek:
- location
- access to key transportation (30 to 45 mn to international airport)
- 100 keys mini
- 1 restaurant and one bar
- EBITDA above 10%
- minimum capex
- unbranded hotel
- not a family run hotel
- UK: no listed hotel
- spa (dedcent with at least 5 treatment rooms)
- fitness room / studio
- 5*
Of course it's going to be above the usual market acquisition price but i know it will generate you serious cash.
By the way, if you need support for acquisition and optimisation, i am here for you.
Great video. Here in the USA. I've run several businesses myself. Covid shut down the last. However, your advice about Amazon is spot on! Amazon does some unanswerable things as your business partner and they really don't care if you succeed or fail. You're just another seller filling their pipeline. In addition, you have to continually spend money with them to advertise in order to be successful. There is no such thing as organic growth. Whatever you do, don't ever let product run out. Net, net... total waste of time if you don't have other channels to sell your products. Cheers.
Cafe has to have a limited menu and high volume. That is the magic of chikfila.
Lots can be debated about the advice you're giving, but I respect and appreciate because it's based on your own experiences and it looks like it's working for you. What I cannot appreciate is the state of your warehouse, which you proudly put in front of the camera but you shouldn't. If these are the standards / conditions you're happy with than they are very low / unacceptable. Never seen such a messy one in my last 30 years. Boxes everywhere, piled up on top of each other. Trip hazard, fire hazard... every nightmare you can think of is waiting to happen.
Are you saying it's a warehouse to avoid? ;-)
Warehouse looks just fine to me... Are you some kind of self-appointed Health & Safety Officer - or perhaps just a little jealous?
@@brunosmith6925 I sort of agree. It looks like corporate advice for an SME, which is neither relevant nor helpful at this smaller scale. Next will come ESG and D&I 'advice', and invitations to a multitude of irrelevant and time-wasting seminars, that SMEs just don't have time nor resource for :-) A good illustration of the inefficiency and wastefulness of corporates, from my SME perspective anyway!
You are underrated with subscribers James, always good content
I think so too LOL
James, you are doing brilliant work here. I am in aw of you! The comments are an educational! in them selves!! Thank you all.
The hardest businesses going forward will be those that rely on other people that don’t have the right attitude. Across the board, since c--vid I’ve experienced a severe decline across, restaurants, pubs, mechanics, solicitors, estate agents, in general effort, quality and attitude has declined. The trajectory is really bad. I know a builder who jacked his company after 13 years because of this issue. His words ‘people are delusional, they want to live like a champagne celeb life on Instagram on lemonade money’ obviously not all, but vast majority of young men are like that he said from his experience in employing them. No one wants to work hard any more, those days are gone’ Because the gov, do not give any incentives to companies that employ, no tax breaks no real aid in growing in what is an increasingly challenging economic environment I can see more and more companies struggling with labour.
Spot on.
So many young people have realised that although they have no chance of living the high life they can take some drugs and you imagine that you are.
15 years of hard slog, no holidays, investing all your funds and a fair bit of luck versus 15 seconds of snorting, smoking or injecting.
Flashy cars on lease, Dominoes on credit card …… promising the world to your fellow druggy girlfriend.
No contest really. Literally, the establishment of the last 25 years have removed any income and property ladder from them. Can you blame them for turning their backs on this un-winnable challenge?
@@AaaaandAction the opportunities available to make money now is better than ever with the rise in online opportunities, affiliates and social media.
There are also more free courses online from, google, Stanford etc.. as I say, ‘attitude’ is the issue. Opportunities are in abundance.
I had to learn the hard way that the cleaning business I didnt bother getting going 8 years ago because I was too much of a snob was in fact the very best business model. I had to run the gauntlet of other business ideas to realise that the reoccurring revenue model of cleaning was amazing...better late than never , now I'm humble and grateful for the knowledge I gained from my failures
I too was worn out just watching this, some great insight for younger people who want to build a business, I just worked hard for long hours & for reasonable reward most of the time. I'm never getting rich doing it however I've a good standard of living & get a fair bit of time to travel ! . The killer for me would be the stress & worry , the finding people you can trust would be very hard too !
To my understanding this just proves how much we need an edge as investors because playing the market like everyone else just isn’t good enough. I've been quite unsure about investing in this current market and at the same time I feel it's the best time to get started on the market, what are your thoughts?
Since the crash, I've been in the red. I’m playing the long term game, so I'm not too worried but Jim Cramer mentioned there are still a lot of great opportunities, though stocks has been down a lot. I also heard news of a guy that made $250k from about $110k since the crash and I would really look to know how to go about this.
There are actually a lot of ways to make high yields in a crisis, but such trades are best done under the supervision of Financial advisor.
Thats true, I've been getting assisted by a FA for almost a year now, I started out with less than $200K and I'm just $19,000 short of half a million in profit.
That's fascinating. How can I contact your Asset-coach as my portfolio is dwindling?
My advisor is ‘’Catherine Morrison Evans’’ she’s highly qualified and experienced in the financial market. She has extensive knowledge of portfolio diversity and is considered an expert in the field. I recommend researching her credentials further. She has many years of experience and is a valuable resource for anyone looking to navigate the financial market
Dog Walking: Yes, low barrier to entry, yes, swapping time for money, but physiologically, it's much healthier than sitting in an office all day. There are people with life circumstances whom this will fit quite well. I suspect people's incentives are quite different - they are not looking to build the Uber of dog walking, a big motivation to why they do it is because they love dogs, not because they want to create a business empire.
Good point, from my point of view people come to my content to grow their business and scale, not build profitable jobs. If building a micro business makes you happy then that’s fine too!
My son has a dog-walking business in Brighton (now two years into it) and yes... it brings in some cash. He is passionate about dogs - so much so that 5 years ago while at university in Japan, he spent £4500 on bringing a Japanese rescue dog back to the UK!
But a conversation I had with him a few days ago hinted strongly at the frustrations that James alludes to... the business is not scaleable. My son is turning potential customers away because he just does not have enough time to take on the extra assignments. The easier a "business" venture is to get into, the faster you will reach capacity. My son wants to (like everyone) improve his standard of living, be able to buy things that are currently unaffordable, and have free time to pursue personal interests - but his waking hours are filled with walking dogs and he's now at full capacity.
Remember... scalability also applies in an employee/employer environment. Most people in employment are keen to advance their careers, so that they earn more money over time, and develop more skills. Show me a person who started stacking shelves in Tesco 30 years ago, and who still does it and loves it...
Scalability is a life ambition - not only a business objective.
James some great advice, I run a profitable business in a high end market and my brand is becoming 'the' brand for what I sell. My problems are with my manufacturers, I am always at their mercy when trying to get stock produced and am turning business away because of long lead times, I would love to bring production in house but would need to raise capital and I'm not going to qualify for conventional lending. Any advice please?
@@brunosmith6925So your son is unable or incapable of HIRING employees to expand his business? Something wrong with him??
@@RogueReplicant I don't think you have much business acumen. Hiring people is not generally a solution for many business types - and besides... employees are generally full of sh1t and if you can avoid hiring people, that's the better choice. (I speak from 33 years' experience in running my own companies).
BTW - no company on the planet started out life saying "guess what... I'm starting a business and I want to employ lots of people." The opposite is true... where a machine can do the job of a person, companies opt for the machine. (Again - I speak from experience).
Not saying that SOME employees are valuable - those that prove they ADD VALUE to the company will find and keep secure jobs, but such people are rare. Most employees don't give a hoot for their employer.
Back to dog walking. My son is branching out into dog training and behaviour schooling. This past month, he ran two training sessions attracting 20 dog owners, and charged £20 for the 2-hour sessions. In the time it takes him to walk a dog for £20, he netted £400 - so scaling is possible by branching into scalable activities. And guess what? He needed NO sh1tty employees to conduct the training session.
So... I don't think there's "anything wrong with him" - there would be if he took advice from a buffoon like you, however.
A very insightful business video - so much better than most of the nonsense you hear about these things. Particularly liked the points on using resellers such as amazon and etsy where you lose the customer contact so are really not building your own business.
Don’t start a restaurant business unless you can buy an established one out right.. and same with the rest hotels, events etc so the only thing I’m missing is money… silly me 😅
Wait for the next pandemic and a shutdown of your biz.
Times have changed. What worked in the past, does not need to be successful in the future.
As a portfolio manager, I always preach that the best way to idiot-proof your investments (businesses included) is to diversify. The theory being that its a lot harder to put you out of business if you havent got all of your eggs in one basket. To that end, it seems you've done a wonderful job of it with the variety of businesses you own and operate.
Really good content, I could listen to your advice for hours, thanks for the insight. Always better to learn from other people’s mistakes, especially in business!!
Im an arborist. Before I only did removals and forest clearing. But as you say. To get a lot of money once from a new customer every day is extremely hard.
um i work in similar field as yours, cutting down trees, other landscaping. I would say this field is one of the most profitable, people don't like doing such jobs, they are hard, difficult, dangerous and people pay a lot of money to get them done. Also a lot of people own houses, want jobs done but can't even do themselfes as they are older, so they are paying as much as needed, competition is small, because of high entry costs of tools and because a lot of tools are difficult/dangerous to use
@@entorid6902 Hi. 🖐🙂 Love my work. I am moving now to an other location. Been here for many years. But I think there is big local differences. In the area here there are many young people who want to start with a excavator and a tractor and loging. So it's more competition and I have to travel longer for more expert jobs.
In the area I am moving to there are more arborists but many more people and much more jobs related to municipal parks and streets. So much better chance of getting more reliable incomme. I am in Norway. Where do jo work?🙂
Pretty solid and realistic pov. Thanks and Happy New Year!
The clarity, accuracy, and conciseness of information, in this video is of insanely high quality.
Great stuff 👍
How very kind of you to say! Thanks for watching, have you just found the channel?
Tbh, I agree with a lot of this video however, they used to tell me the same thing about being a Photographer/Videographer here in Australia... That the market was too saturated and it would be too difficult to do... I started my business in 2016 and is now one of the most award winning, successful and leading businesses here in Perth. One of the main points James said was to do things DIFFERENTLY and make it work for you which was always my mentality going in. I'm glad I took the plunge.
Congrats! I agree. Some people are quick to point out how every business idea is bad and will never work...unless it's 100% online, 100% scalable, 100% sellable, has no product, no inventory, no facility, no startup costs, no competition, doesn't require anything of you, won't get your hands dirty, is recession-proof, immediately successful, makes money on a purely automated system 24/7/365, and brings in billions. That narrows it down to, well...nothing.
I think things have a better chance of succeeding in Oz than the UK, or used to at least. Too much red tape
LOL. I've done just about all of them in one way or another - dog walking, mobile bartender, Etsy/Ebay seller, retail clothing, food truck. Now i work part time for someone else and all the headaches are gone and I make the same as I did with any of the others. Bottom line is that I never figured out that I am a terrible businessman.
I live in a town where there's a significant amount of retail that opens & closes within x3 years, in certain locations.... what do they all have in common? They're all tenants. The wealthiest & most successful business people in the town own the properties. Either their own, or everyone else's.
As an American 🇺🇸 watching your perspective especially over in the UK, your tips are pretty much universal over here as well. Great clip…. - New Subscriber 😉👍
That is awesome! Loving I have a friend from across the pond!
Lots of solid common sense and clearly based on lots of experience. Excellent stuff.
Some more possible problem businesses might be photography, house cleaning.and lawn mowing if they are on a small scale. These don't really require separate buildings but the barriers to competition are very low and anyone with even a small amount of money can be your competitor.
Freelance photographer is a great business, while it might have very low capital barriers to entry, it’s got an extremely high skill barrier to entry. This low capital barrier to entry and endless unskilled (not professional standard) new ‘competitors’ works to the existing photographer’s advantage.
Customers are insanely reluctant to change photographers because the market is flooded with new substandard photographers and it’s very difficult to find good photographers who can deliver outstanding images on time, every time. It has great client retention (decades), and fantastic cashflow because you’re so integral to driving people’s businesses.
Because customers don’t change photographers it’s very difficult for new entrants to get a foothold in the industry, most go broke before they can even fully develop the skills to even do the job properly. The jump from amateur skill level to professional skill level is huge and shouldn’t be underestimated.
@@kiwimike2330 that goes for cleaning people as well. Who wants to hire someone poking around their home they don’t know?
Like with most service based buisnesses, you need to have the skill AND get to know the right people.
@@kiwimike2330 When I retired I considered (briefly) taking my photography to the business level. I'm friends with many of the local pros, and even shot back up a few times.
I used to do small weddings, I found that for some couples, "Hey Uncle Albert has a big camera, he can take pictures for free."
These days cameras are outstanding and for many potential clients, "good enough is cheap enough."
As you said, getting the experience to provide the service needed takes time. I found that in retirement, I wasn't eager to take on the new full-time job as a businessman.
Where I live, there are a great number of outstanding, well-established photogs. Realistically, I didn't feel I would be able to compete with them.
End result: my hobby stayed a hobby. My free time is now consumed by volunteerism and at 75 I am now a published author, which I do for the creative fun vs paying the rent.
I live in a rural area with limited job opportunities, and so many people want to create their own business. We have an overabundance of "boutiques", which must be entirely supported by the few dozen wealthy retirees the town has, because they seem to do relatively well. Restaurants, on the other hand, flip over monthly, and I've seen some that were literally open just a week before closing. I've been told it had something to do with business loans or bankruptcy or something, like, the last one I saw, I was told they did it to get a Cadillac. You really hit the nail on the head talking about businesses anyone can do: our tiny town is saturated with "customization" business - people using a Cricut/Cameo to cut vinyl and apply to tumblers, doing a horrible job and not understanding why they can't sell anything.
I've seen a lot "party/wedding planner" businesses started by someone with no experience, so when you called them vanity jobs, that struck a chord.
I share the same thoughts. Look for a business that has lots of repeat business all year round. It would be great to find something that isn’t easy for others to copy easily.
I’m glad I could just check all the boxes here. What I’d add on top is a added value concentration. Compare these two a styro foam wholesaler and a diamond trader. The other factor for me is a liqudity or you can call it cash flow speed. What’s better? If you can do a $1M deal with 50% profit once a year or $10k with 25% profit every week? Where you can expand faster?
Styrofoam wholesaler, obviously. Diamonds are a fickle market and discretionary spending is the first to go when times are rough. There's also the fact that more and more ppl refuse to buy / wear diamonds as a statement - meaning they refuse to be complicit to the human suffering and ecological harm that is so much built in the natural diamonds extraction.
A styrofoam wholesaler on the other hand will always have business and will always deal with a product that's necessary and not impacted by trends. Should it come to a point where styrofoam needs to be replaced, then all the wholesaler has to do is offer the newly launched replacement.
@@kaitnipvery good analysis. Agreed.
It's amazing that you're giving this content away for free. I have massive respect for you and you are so easy to listen to! thank you!
Thanks so much. Have you checked my podcasts?
Https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/james-sinclairs-business-broadcast-podcast/id1495894637
Even more for free !!
Concise advice, presented simply in a digestable format.
I'm looking at going freelance / self employed as a designer (after many years being an employee) and making the transition. While not the same as the buisnesses in the video, some of the advice and information can be applied to it.
It's also a interesting snapshot of these types of busiensses, which we all see on a dialy basis. Certainly the 'I can do that!' type jobs.
Designing what?
Be aware of that AI thing.
The entry level for a designer is not very high. Everybody can be a designer.
Very good advice, a bit of a theme is not being too small when the real efficiency and profits come at a scale that is a step beyond what an inexperienced and under capitalized newcomer can/will do.
Spot on
Yes, nobody could match prices with a Walmart on denim jeans. They must buy 10 million pairs a year. Thats an economy of scale vey hard to beat.
Bravo.. Friggin awesome video.. taken me 25 years to slowly learn all this and I’m still learning.. We have a saying at work.. we Stay away from the sexy businesses.. period..