Great example of this.

My friend approaches me: I am having a baby. Strollers are so expensive. I did some research and they only cost 1/4 of what they sell them for at the store.

I want to have some made and sell them for a reasonable price.

Me: ok....
1. You'll have to have dies made for all the plastic injection. Those can be 2k - 20k depending on all the design details, material flow, etc.

2. The suppliers that will give you the price you referred to, have min orders. So you'll have to fork over the money before they make.
3. You'll have to ship them here by boat, which takes 45 days after 60 days of production, after 30 days of tooling in which you are out of cash and waiting, plus paying 10-15% in total freight.

4. You need to pay a forwarder as well. And duties, and tariffs.
5. When it gets here you'll need to truck it from port.

6. Because of the min order requirement, you will have to rent a warehouse or room or something to store the pallets of strollers coming in. B/C they are pallets, you'll need a truck bay and pallet jack.
7. Now that they are finally here, anyone that will sell them needs a 100% markup on them, you are maxed out a 1/2 retail.

8. All of this assuming you picked a reputable overseas vendor, didn't get cheated, and the quality was actually what you pictured in your head.
But other than that??

Yeah, its a great idea! They are way overpriced!
So to answer @girdley tweet, what is not usually known?

For most (not all)
* product design & development has high upfront costs
* acquisition and storage cost is high
* supplier terms can be crushing to an upstart (MOQ and Credit)

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More from @joshuamschultz

19 Jan
Understanding how you yourself view your business in fundamental in how you approach grow it, solving problems, and making decisions.

If you haven't figured out how you view it, take some time to do this.

Here is how I view small business ...
1. I view it as a giant process consisting of 3 main machines.

Thinking in terms of machines leads me to these perspectives:

a. they take inputs, do something, have outputs

b. you can tweak the output through changing inputs and what the machine does (or how it does it)
c. when there is a problem, my job is to figure out what went wrong, and fix or replace that component. The fix or replace decision is a crucial insight.

d. machines can be documented, improved, and rebuilt. I love the myth of Theseus Ship for this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_T…
Read 12 tweets
18 Jan
On making money and keeping customers.

Here is something from the inside playbook no one shares, and we aren't supposed to talk about.

If you are fresh out of B-School, this will seem like poor business. If you have a few years... you'll get it.

Margins, Favors, and Lies...
Most customers, the ones I enjoy dealing with, you do straight up business, all the time, and build trust.

However, there is a customer level of corporate size and machinery, that when you get to, they no longer have a desire to relate with you, they want to own you.
Business needs to be transacted differently here.

One of my mentors used to say "when you can make money, make it".

I thought this was bad business, unethical, and not as good as being straight and even with pricing and quotes.

... then I got some experience.
Read 12 tweets
18 Jan
If you keep collecting ideas to put together the perfect implementation, I was there too.

Time to start and release some crappy implementations - they have turned out to be my best... over time!

Documenting your business can be the core of your small business to iterate on!
BTW.... I've been wanting to start releases videos for a LONG TIME!

This is my crappy iteration. Shot of iphone, no special mic.

I have 4 condensers, Elgato lights, and a Sony A6300... but to get started, I just hit record. I'll adjust something each recording session until 👌🏼
Slightly longer version on Youtube.

No "lower thirds", horrible tags, didn't make a custom cover.

Why did I even bother!?

Because iterating on what I did here today will be much easier (and faster) than researching, buying all youtube extras, and planning the perfect environ
Read 4 tweets
11 Jan
A list of questions and checks to help you see if you should automate a process or not.

I've had a lot of people asking for this.

This is just what I use.

1st half are open-ended questions for exploration
2nd half are rankings for prioritization.

Hope this helps you!
1. Do I understand what I am automating?

Often times we think we are automating a process, but instead, we may be automating a destructive pattern.

Do it manually for a few weeks.

Dont perpetuate bad actions.

Go through the learning as a person, automate what you learned.
Example:

If you are filtering people for hire, and you automate right off the bat, you may automate based on the wrong criteria.

Its better to filter manually, do some calls, have some interviews, and adjust the process a bit until you are automating the right thing.
Read 13 tweets
10 Jan
Much of lean thinking today calls buffers "waste"

"Look at the growth potential, we need to sink all funds into it."

Buffers arent waste, they're small payments to ensure long term survival

It takes your company from outperforming THIS year, to out performing across ALL years
Buffers allow flexibility when you need it most.

They give you optionality, and the resources to capitalize when real, step-wise opportunity presents itself.
Buffers give your operational flexibility to allow your processes to "breathe" under

tough,
high activity,
strained, or
above-average times.
Read 8 tweets
8 Jan
FYI: As anyone who has worked with me can attest to,

I am extremely slow to automate!

For someone that can code, build, talks about it a lot, is a natural systems thinker, and has used it quite a bit...

... I am very slow to automate something.
Automation is a tool, not the end.

The end is to scale effective operations.

Automating the wrong thing is like flying cross country and being a few degrees off... you'll end up 100's of miles from your destination.
I love to get in and do things manually.

I like to understand the nuance.

I like to see what helps and hurts.

In short, I like to know exactly what I am about to automate.

Sometimes I decide certain parts shouldn't be automated. Other times I move to augmentation.
Read 4 tweets

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