Starting a business advice.

250,000
no salary for many years, just took out enough to pay the bills as needed

40 years old
Katrina took the dead end but high paying job away from me, thank goodness

Could be the best decision you make, but it won't be easy!

I started at 36 with prob 125k to start the business. Little over 4 years in and we run the business from home in another state. It was def. worth it now, but went through some tough times. If I had to do it all over again, I would try to buy an existing business.

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In my situation, I would have a bit of business presumably coming with me if I jumped. First year would likely be TOUGH until I got the feet under me. However, I also feel like I would know within 3 to 6 months if the venture would be worth it.

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yeah thats about the time you will get the cease and desist

Be disciplined enough to reinvest or you reach a point where growth is hard. I don’t know your ideas, but if you start doing well and get accustomed to living out of it, it is difficult to be broke again when time to expand/grow. Ours expense needed to grow are labor costs, it takes a while to grow to cover their costs. Then time to do it again. It is vicious, do well for a couple months. Then hire take a few months to grow enough to offset. Make a little cash, then repeat

Started with 100k cash in bank, got down to less than 10k before started to turn around. And that was with 2 employees and me, w me not taking a salary

Did you ever tap a line of credit?

This isn't the question you asked per se, but I started a business with $10k. Was a welding outfit of sorts. And I had about $20k in tools that I've purchased over the years. I didn't want to open a credit line with vendors to do a job. It went pretty well, but my mistake was taking a partner. I have a good paying job and had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted before I took a paycheck from the company or quit my job. Unfortunately, my partner didn't share it and it didn't work out and I learned the lesson of the downfalls of partnerships.

I still do welding on the side, but it's difficult to make the leap permanently. Going from white collar to blue collar, the hustle involved in having a steady line of work and charging enough to make what I make at my current job. Then growing it and managing employees and what not. Without making the jump, it just feels like a huge amount of risk and the reward is not quite there to offset it for me personally. Yet at least.

0.

It had to work. I'm not going to lie, I really don't know how many could endure what I did. Trust and faith in God with a few years of questioning. Hope I passed the tests I didn't know were tests at that time.

Don't neglect SBA loans. They will lend you way more money than you think buying an existing business. That can give you some runway. All of the existing business sales brokers have conditions of turnover, will show you the financials, etc. You'll end up meeting with a private bank like Mutual of Omaha to get funding approval.

There was one business that I was looking at buying that built and maintained secure file transfer software for mainframes/midrange computers. 40% of their business came from a single client. I did research and found essentially free ways to do what they were selling, and I asked what their contingency plan was, and there wasn't one (I think the asking price was 1.5mil or so.)

I’d love for the guys that have done so successfully to chime in with some more details around what they’re doing without giving away the secret sauce. Very interesting reads.