/biz/ - Business & Finance

What exactly are you designing? Buildings?

>>10749720
Yes. We're designing residential units. My friend is well grounded in the technical side of things but he isn't a business person, and neither am i. So I thought there might be some book or something useful I could read about running a business in the abstract that might help me understand what we're getting into and what needs to be done better.

>>10749698
Mate, an office space?
You're already introducing unnecessary costs without a client base. Why do you need an office space? To be on your computer and share ideas? Do that at home, over skype or zoom. Absolutely unnecessary.

I'm not going to go into the details of starting a business, as it seems you already have. I'll avoid talking about marketing or sales or branding etc. But I'll give you some tips on governance.

Identify ALL your fixed costs. Software licenses, website hosting, email, phone bills, your fucking office rent and its associated electricity / water / rates / gas / internet / phonelines, online services you pay for etc. Soon you'll see your monthly costs.

From that, set actionable, trackable targets. Set understand your cost to value ratio (how much it costs you to do a project, versus how much is pure cream). Set a target for sales, each month. A good round about start is 180% of your total costs (fixed and miscellaneous). So if for one month you've spent $1,000 on costs, you should be aiming for $1,800 in revenue for example.

Make sure you've both got your own goals and hold yourselves accountable for it. If you're less on the design side, perhaps focus on generating leads and aim for at least 5 consulting leads per month. Similarly, your partner should aim to close one lead per month - so you're both working towards shared goals.

I really don't know what helpful advice to give as you've apparently rushed into this with little to no prior thought. Good luck dude make sure you don't go broke and have the balls to walk away when the time comes.

>>10750587
Thanks. I will take that into consideration.

>>10749766
You might want to start with building codes

>>10750616
Holy shit this is your respones to this anon basically saving you from your own retardation? You guys are fucked. My advice to you is just don’t even waste your time. What are you even bringing to the equation? You seem honestly like a moron.

>>10750643
He was starting it anyway and I'm not doing anything and have time to kill. I'm not paying for anything. I know in all lilelihood it won't go anywhere but this'll probably be a good learning experience that won't come up again so I'm just going for it.