Can You Pass Your Business Down?

Awww...no fair! lol



I already do this.



This is what I already do. I've been doing this for 16 of the past 21 years either working as an employee or for myself. The issue is being able to pass it on to my family as it only makes money when I make calls or get an occasional call in.


I do this, but it's something that must be "handled with care" in this day and age. I'd prefer to drop ship everything, if possible, but many manufacturers are beginning to have minimum order requirements again as they did before the recession. When I first started again a couple years ago there were manufacturers that had no minimum order requirement. I tried to drop ship as much as I could. Now, however, many of them have slapped a minimum order on dealers again. That means that I'd have to turn away smaller orders unless I stock products. Some of these manufacturers want a few thousand dollar order in order to receive end column pricing and pre-paid shipping to my location. That sucks!

Another danger of the "drop ship only" business model is that the supplier may choose to start doing business with end users some day and cut us completely out. I've seen it happen more than once already since I've come back to the industry I'm in. There were some suppliers that dealt directly with end users, but they'd only do so at list pricing in order not to undercut their dealers. Now some of them have cut out dealers completely, dialed up the end users (dealer customers on file) and told them that they can now buy direct, cut out the middle man and pay less! They SUCK!

I used to have the buyers name (attn: John, etc) as part of the drop ship address, but not anymore. I don't share any information that's not absolutely necessary.



I know. That's basically what I do. :-)

The problem is that my wife won't do it and I'm unsure of the value of the business because it consists almost exclusively on making outbound calls. I'm praying that my youngest son will take an interest in it, but that's a few years away.

Simple? Yes. But not easy, if done correctly in order to reduce risk while still constantly pouring new customers into the funnel.

I have customers both large and small, but the industry is unsteady and I've been reluctant to expand my business because of the difficulty and commitment involved. State requirements, commercial facility, office equipment, payroll, sales training, legal stuff, etc. I'm considering it, though. I was listening to Bob Ross' podcast recently and he makes a lot of sense. Still, it's exactly what I wanted to avoid, but it may be the only way to pull this off.

Side note: I really dislike my wife some days. Notice that I'm not smiling. Pain in the neck woman!

Also, like most, my market is extremely competitive. It's very big, very broad and there's money out there to be made, but there are also multiple companies that have much more buying power than I do. I get best pricing on most items, but some of these guys are buying in HUGE quantities. That means that although I'm very competitively priced on most items, I've had to really roll up my sleeves, get creative and sell myself in order to draw people away from the big guys. Rebuilding my "tribe", as Seth Godin calls them.

Even then, keeping them loyal is challenging because the big guys are constantly advertising in major industry related publications, have websites that are firmly entrenched at the top of Google or both.

I'm leaning toward the online marketing scenario again. I used to do pretty well as an affiliate. There's money to be made there as well, but it can be done much easier than having a regular job that no one in my family wants to do. If I'd been building lists when I was doing well a few years ago I'd have never come back to this industry in the first place. I have a helper that's helping me build the foundation. Hopefully that will start producing consistently in the near future and I'll be able to look at things a bit differently.

Anyway, thanks for your reply.

Best,

Joe