Any Entrepreneurs out there??
 

anyone on this forum an entrepreneur?? either successful or unsuccessful?

I'm curious to what businesses you may have started and how things worked out?

I am an independent publisher. Though I set the bar high when it came to quality, I set very modest sales goals. I consider myself successful. Several of my author friends who were traditionally published last year are now sorta stressing because of low sales figures. Well, their low sales figures are close to how I performed in the last 12 months, yet I have a lot more media coverage and special events under my belt.

My goal was not to get rich, but to get my foot in the door. In that regard I was pretty successful. Sure, I wish I had sold more novels, but so does every first time author.

I also used to have a proofreading and editing business that kept food on my table when I was in between substitute teaching gigs.

I don't know when I became enterprising, but it helps keep me busy, challenged, and rewarded.

Have once been an entrepreneur kind of - LOL my sorortiy sister and I once had a tutoring business- but it wasn't that successful I kind of did it on the side years later by myself and it helped when I was in between jobs. I am thinking of making that move to an entrepreneur eventually but on the side- first. I am not quite ready to give up my day job just yet! Hope to delve into the publishing field myself as an author one day or into the field of real estate!

I'm in the process of starting one now. Well, my old manager is starting it and I'm helping out where I can! Its a supplying company, he has connections to a factory in Main Land China, and after we're all registered, have websites set up, etc, we'll begin contacting US suppliers to hopefully manufacture some clothing items for them!

I really had no idea how much work goes into this stuff though...like Blue Angel said, do it on the side while you still have another job/income!

so your gonna be selling clothing? intersting stuff

Kind of...its more a matter of calling up a retailer, like Kmart or something, and trying to find out if we can make something..say they need brown dresses, then we could make them for them. We're like a middle man between the factory and a store, but we're not REALLY a middle man, because the factory is ours! I'm still learning a lot of this, I got involved with it to help out with the website, introduction letters, cold calling, etc, so I'm far from knowing it all yet. Our website should be up by next week, we're in the middle of taking pictures and whatnot now, I'll show a link when I get it.

yah i would like to see that. i'm going to be tinkering with a web project over the summer too. Thanks!

i'm in the process of starting up a web-business myself, though mine is much smaller in scale. i'll be selling custom greek-related decor & para. my original plan was to open it exclusively to members of my sorority until i got enough positive feedback to widen my service offerings, however a friend of mine (who is in another sorority) has expressed interest in collaborating with me to offer the same services to her organization. we're hoping to be able to expand quickly to our closest related organizations and then work outward from there.

well,

a sigma lambda beta runs greeknation.com

:)

and i want to do a greek store tooo... doh haha

I would love to start an obscene t-shirt business, lol.

i got a supplier if you got the idea ;)

so not the type of thing I want to do...
I'll post up some pictures of the kind of things i do once I've got it together... definitely more on the *unique* side

I've been researching the whole greek store thing. Its amazing how many major organizations have licensing before any store can sell their products. And its pretty expensive too, making it hard for startups to get into the industry.

I ran an online magazine. I'd consider it a modest success. It was worthwhile and engaging for a while, but I realized how little time I had to devote to it, so I sold it. I am a writer by profession so I always imagined something like that would be an absolute dream come true - but to be perfectly honest, it was just okay. There's more to me than the ability to regurgitate a press release in pretty language (which is basically what I was doing), and I wanted to give that side a chance to shine.

Right now I'm in the midst of opening a copywriting firm. I am so fond of picking apart grammatical and spelling errors that I thought I may as well make some money doing it. I'm going to be writing copy for web sites, company products, business plans, brochures, press releases, and perhaps more. This is no frills business writing, which is fine with me. I don't have to be fancy with it, but it's certainly more fulfilling than what I was doing with the magazine.

PM me when you get a chance, I'd like to speak to your supplier. If you don't mind that is!

Also, I've had several projects, some current and some in the past and the vast majority have been very successful. I've purchased two taverns (sold one for a decent profit) and I'm in the process of purchasing a third. I've done a small real estate thing that turned out pretty well and a few friends and myself are thinking of doing a little land development with a nice chunk of land we own in the midwest.

I started a charity fundraiser on a radio show for people affected by our state's budget cuts in the healthcare system, specifically people with HIV/AIDS who are using the ryanwhite act as either their primary or sole source of funding for HIV/AIDS treatment and medications. In less than 6 months it went from a radio fundraiser to a subsidary of the ADAP program.

What bothered me the most about the issue at hand was how the state could cut the funding to the people who need it the most while increasing funding to programs that promote abstinance. At the same time when the fraction of funds were dispersed to the various cities, metropolitan cities in particular, most of the mayors in each city chose to cut their healthcare budgets by at least $1,000,000. Financial records indicated the surplus funds after the budget cuts, for each city that made healthcare cuts, were mostly appropriated to construction projects that were never completed. And as if the fire was not flamed enough, the projects designated were all in areas where the wealthy lived.

That sounds like a bad situation, glad you did something about it.

also, once I get my new computer (tonight!) I will finally be able to get the first DVD done. Even if it sucks, I can sell I copies of it for like $10 a piece. It will be a collection of short works already filmed called "Experiments in Light and Color" or maybe Color and Sound. Or Light and Sound. Whichever one sounds best to me at the time I make the cover will be the title of the DVD. Hooray.

Do I need a Business Licence, or just the DBA paperwork?

hmmm everything is made by you? so its your property?

Greekopedia, one thing to keep in mind, aside from licenscing fees for all of the GLO's, is that running a Greek store can be a seasonal business. We used to have a vendor from SomethingGreek.com who came to my school to sell stuff and take orders for clothing and he told me and a couple of my sisters that he did well during the school year and in the Christmas season, however, over the summer, people tend not to buy as much sorority/fraternity stuff, and he would sometimes not even make enough to stay open and would have to let people go.

Yes, I am worried about this. We are a 4 man operation right now and I don't want to get any bigger than that. We'll see what happens.

my store is located at http://www.onegreekstore.com . We will fully launch on Aug 15th. We'll see what happens a year from now!

was this a question to me?

If so, then yes. I created all imagines, will be responsible for the editing (unless my friend does it, but still, I will credit him, and he'll get a cut if he helps me) and I will be writing the music. Well, the music is pretty much written, it just needs to be recorded. Then I guess I mail one copy to LoC for copyright. Am I missing anything?