I'm thinking of starting my own company.

SpaceGhost

I work in home theater sales up in Canada, and the company I work for doesn't really offer installation, and most customers I deal with are extremely confused about terms, definitions and other technologies. I've been thinking of starting a company to do home theater consultation, and installation as well.

The idea would be to help out businesses and customers who want a home theater, by telling them what the best thing is to buy, what the neccesary accessories would be, and then doing an installation, along with providing support in person whenever they need it.

There isn'tt a huge amount of home theater companies in my city, which has about a million people right now, and I think it would be a fun and rewarding job, the only problem is getting customers. Any comments, or ideas?

Romero Zombie

Seems like a topic better suited for HA - starting a business is tough tough work. If you own your home, my first suggestion would be to take out a home equity line of credit to help deal with a lot of upfront costs\advertising, etc. Then find yourself an accountant who is familiar with self-employed people.

Munro

Ask a mod to move this.

It sounds like you have a good idea. Now, does your company actually offer installation or not? Is it truly unavailable from your company or is it just unpopular? If they really don't deal in it, you may be able to convince one of your higher-ups to refer customers to you once you've gotten based and running. If your company DOES offer some sort of installation they probably won't help you out but you could look for other companies which do not offer installation. Maybe you'd have to pay them to advertise in their lobby or whatever, but this would probably draw the most customers.

Hopefully you've got some money stashed away somewhere, because it'll be helpful to use as little credit as possible, just in case. Starting a business is definitely hard work, you'll need to be based out of some building, I believe you'll need to copywrite a name (I'm not familiar with canadian laws), find able workers, pay said workers, advertise, and probably insure yourself just in case you damage a system or home you're working with.

Doc

wrong forum asshole.


Sorry, always wanted to do that.

Rankenphile

how much do you actually know about running a business? Any management experience at all?

GrimmyTOA

Rankenphile wrote:

how much do you actually know about running a business? Any management experience at all?

Or lacking that, any willing and available business/management partners or mentors kicking around?

Someone willing to troubleshoot, give you direction on things like taxes and the like, and generally act as a sounding-board will be immensely useful.

Thanatos

I'll give you the same advice I give everyone who starts one of these threads:

the number one reason most businesses fail in their first five years is under-capitalizations, otherwise known as "not enough money."

CrossBuster

Plus, 90% of all new businesses fail within the first year, or something like that.

It sounds like a lot of people go into these things without having enough money to get off the ground, let alone keep it going.

Kewop Decam

Thanatos wrote:

I'll give you the same advice I give everyone who starts one of these threads:

the number one reason most businesses fail in their first five years is under-capitalizations, otherwise known as "not enough money."

Yea, you gotta have enough money to cover the first couple of years because business won't be booming in two weeks. It takes time to develop a successful business.