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birb_cromble  23hr ago (text post)   297 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread (without clever alliteration)

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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  • Remember that we're all just Internet randos. Don't bet your life savings on a hot tip from this thread.
  • Keep culture war in the culture war thread. Yes, global events may impact our personal finances, but that does not mean we have to incessantly harp on culture war aspects here. If you are going to discuss it, please stick to the practical impacts of it on an individual level.
  • Be kind. Remember that everyone here comes from different circumstances. We all have different resources available and different risk tolerances.
  • Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Better is better. Celebrate people when they take a step up and work to move their finances in the right direction. Don't flame out because they haven't followed what you consider the optimal path. Everybody has to start somewhere.
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Any business owners around here? No, minority shareholding doesn't count.

I've been wondering if doing it for the product vs doing it for the money is a useful distinction. From what I've noticed, doing it for the product leads to a wider array of outcomes, but doing it for the money has a better modal/median outcome.

Yeah, long-time business owner here. Incorporated; people working for me

I sell a service rather than a product, and loved it at first, but over time it's just become business. The reality is that customers can't tell their asses from holes in the ground and they're lucky that I have personal reasons (like integrity) to be honest. I've observed very little correlation between how good we are versus how appreciated we are. Probably my most important skill is expectation management and making sure that the client is happy regardless of the actual facts on the ground. Success can be ignored and failure overlooked, and they often are.

Originally it was all a lot more personal but as I've transitioned to serving bigger clients everything is shrouded in opaque layers of management. Corporations have their own logic and there's not much connection between winning that game and loving what I do. It's much more about organization, discipline, and persistence; as well as grit to keep moving even when big deals go down in flames for no apparent reason, which happens a lot. Things are much harder post-covid. It's like everything got tighter and meaner and less competent.

And don't get me started on the subject of insurance. Easily half my time goes to managing the ins and outs and documentation and back and forth etc. And that's before we talk about how many kinds there are and how much I'm paying.

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a soul-sucking grind but I do it for my family. Without them I'd probably be living out of a van by the ocean. I dream sometimes about the murals I'd paint on the sides.

How far away are you from being able to hire a general manager to take over the daily grind?

I run a consultancy as a sole proprietorship. It's not anywhere close to my primary source of income, but it gets me a nice pop of cash every now and then.

What do you mean doing it for the product, exactly? Like someone starting a pizza place because they love the idea of making pizza?

Yeah, more or less. Or because they love the idea of electric cars or reusable rockets, to name a more successful example.

What type of consultancy? It's something I've been off and on considering as a bit of a side gig for a while now.

I do software modernization for small companies running stuff that's 30-40 years old.

If you have any activity on the west coast of the US, would you mind establishing business with local credit unions? Their modernization is beyond horrible. I was just talking with a friend last night who lost his credit card, so he called up the bank to issue a new one and cancel any activity on his current one and they literally told him, “We can’t put a hold or freeze on your credit card because our system is down, call us back in a couple of hours.”

Jesus Christ.

Are you the one putting all my favorite restaurants on Toast point-of-sale hardware?

Not toast, but yeah, I've done some of that.

To be honest, pretty much any POS system is a POS. I swear that the people who design, code , build, and sell them have never actually worked in a restaurant. It's one of the most egregious examples of not understanding the customer I've ever seen. Aloha is particularly bad.

Ever had a membership at a gym? The sign up registration is the easiest thing in the world, but God forbid you move cities or gym location or are just looking to cancel, you can’t leave without them attempting to rip your arm off on the way out. Same with publications like the WSJ.

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