vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"Let's pretend that the author of that article is not selling anything and is trying to help you succeed in life.  I have nothing against sales, but that author is throwing out a lot of nonsense to sell his stuff and is creating a state of urgency so that people adopt this mindset.  It's clever and it obviously works. From a pure time perspective, most people won't make enough money to run their own business and be as profitable as if they worked for a company.  This is a reality that few want to acknowledge.  If you invested in yourself and your career with the same discipline and urgency as an entrepreneur, most people would be better off at a company when you consider the benefits and the fact that employees have a full 7.5% of social security paid by their employer (entrepreneurs see the full 15% while employees don't).  Why do I start here, because this author isn't telling you that the more people take his advice, the more their earnings will regress to the mean or below.  In fact, most of my entrepreneur friends have to go back to work when their reality fails after they burn through their savings. 401ks are not a perfect system, but there are more 401k millionaires now than ever before this, and people who give the author's advice are always looking to avoid doing what they need to do - save for retirement.  Most people I know sadly realize this in their 50s, when it's too late, and start trying to ""catch up.""  I don't blame the author for this, as he knows his article will appeal to younger people who don't have the wisdom to see that his advice hasn't been great for most.  The reality is that for most people 401ks will provide tax advantaged savings that you can use when you're older; taxes will eat at your earnings, so these accounts really help. Finally, look at the article again especially the part you quote.  He says inflation will carve out what you save, yet inflation is less than 2%.  Where is he getting this from?  In the past decade, we've seen numerous deflationary spirals and the market overall has come back from the fall in 2009.  Again, this isn't ""good enough"" for this author, so buy his stuff to learn how to succeed!  There have been numerous decades (50s,70s) that were much worse for investors than this past one."
If you sell through an intermediate who sets up the shop for you, odds are they collect and pay the sales tax for you. My experience is with publishing books through Amazon, where they definitely handle this for you. If you can find a retailer that will handle the tax implications, that might be a good reason to use them.  It looks like Etsy uses a different model where you yourself are responsible for the sales tax, which requires you to register with your state (looks like this is the information for New York) and pay the taxes yourself on a regular basis; see this link for a simple guide. If you're doing this, you'll need to keep track of how much tax you owe from your sales each month, quarter, or year (depending on the state laws).  You can usually be a sole proprietor, which is the easiest business structure to set up; if you want to limit your legal liability, or work with a partner, you may want to look into other forms of business structure, but for most craftspeople a sole proprietorship is fine to start out with.  If you do a sole proprietorship, you can probably file the income on a 1040 Schedule C when you do your personal taxes each year.
Unfortunately if your business does not work, then you exit cost would be just getting rid of the equipment & furniture. Just to put in perspective, some Dunkin Donut shops that I was researching in North East were clearing between 1/2 to 1 mil per year. As it is the current damage per month is 10k, if this business offsets even some of the damage it would be worth while. So the cost of keeping the pride of 91 yo dad can potentially reduce from 10k to 2-3 k. Who knows if it takes off , one day it could be a good sustainable business and might turn into a win-win situation for you and your father. I have made lot of assumption without knowing the facts like- you are located in US, you have risk appetite, bookshop is not in industrial area but some prime retail area like this : ... etc. While I am at it { giving unsolicited advise that is}.. Currently the books in the bookshop are very old books that it published by itself. Nobody is interested in reading these books. Due to his previous excitement of getting editors and publishing books, there are thousands of books that need to be kept in storerooms. They don’t move because people hardly buy any books from this bookshop. To help the old published book sales why not convert the old books to ebooks using providers like 'Blueleaf-book-scanning' and publish the books on amazon kindle,itunes & play store. The books will be available online forever and they might get exposure to tons of book enthusiast around the world. I heard at one of our client's MDS ( mass digitization system ) project , they had in-house robot scanning machine like Treventus Pardon me if none of the above gibberish applies to your situation , but hpefully SE community might have some fun reading this for kicks and giggles . Cheers and good luck. Source: I am US person in Australia, operated restaurant / bar in US , visited 100's of coffee shops, consulting for living, ...and a dreamer { :-) hard not to imagine from the short post}.
It's a great business. However, you should be aware that running your own business is a lot more work than it sounds like. Not only do you have to handle things like finances and taxes, but worse, you have to do all the marketing and sales, make deals, calm down difficult customers and suppliers, buying equipment &amp; materials, supervising helpers &amp; subcontractors, and more. If you're up for all that extra hard work, you can make great money building top-quality cabinetry.
"My guess is they are fishing for business for their in-house finance person. In the UK, all the estate agency chains (and many of the smaller outfits) have financial advice firms they are affiliated with, often to the extent that a desk in each branch will be for 'the finance guy' (it's usually a guy). The moment you show any sign of not quite having the finances for a place you like, they will offer you a consultation with the finance guy, who ""will be able to get you a deal"". On commission, of course. What you need to say with regards to financing is (delete as applicable) ""I am a cash buyer"" / ""I have an Agreement In Principle"". And that's it. They do not 'need' to know any more, and they are under obligation to pass your offer on to the vendor."
the now-objectionable language should have been a big red flag back then, saying this guy is epic evil, run screaming. (even if that turned out not to be true, you should't have hung around to find out.) You may have gotten lucky this time, but don't make that mistake again. Unless one of the above pans out, though... a deal is a deal. You gave your word. The powerful act here is to keep your word. Forgive me for getting ontological, but successful people say it creates success for them. And here's the thing. You have to read your contracts because you can't keep your word if you don't know what word you gave. It's a common mistake: thinking good business is trust, hope, faith, submission or giving your all. No. In business, you take the time to hammer out mutually beneficial (win-win) agreements, and you set them on paper to eliminate confusion, argument and stress in the future as memories fade and conditions change. That conflict resolution is how business partners remain friends, or at least professional colleagues."
It really depends on your demographics. Where are they located? What are their common interests? Could you use this to effectively target them with advertising? Do you get repeat business? Do you have past customers info? They're antiques: do people actually play these instruments or are they just ritzy fucks who want another dusty piece of wood in their house?   TL;DR Know your customer, find a way to reach them three different ways and let them know you still exist.
"This is very true. I just don't know how much longer I can go because in order to promote at enterprise your ""insurance"" sales have to be a certain number for a three month average and I am pretty well below because I don't believe in the products. It feels impossible to sell something a person truly doesn't need."
You say you are underwater by $10k-15k.  Does that include the 6% comission that selling will cost you?  If you are underwater and have to sell anyway, why would you want to give the bank any extra money?  A loss will be taken on the sale.  Personally i would want the bank to take as much of that loss as possible, rather than myself.  Depending on the locale the mortgage may or may not be non-recourse, ie the loan contract implies that the bank can take the house from you if you default, but if 'non-recourse' the bank has no legal way to demand more money from you. Getting the bank to cooperate on a short sale might be massively painful.  If you have $ in your savings, you might have more leverage to nego with the bank on how much money you have to give them in the event the loan is not 'non-recourse'.  Note that even if not 'non-recourse', it's not clear it would be worth the banks time and money to pursue any shortfall after a sale or if you just walk away and mail the keys to the bank. If you're not worried about your credit, the most financially beneficial action for you might be to simply stop paying the mortgage at all and bank the whole payments.  It will take the bank some time to get you out of the house and you can live cost-free during that time. You may feel a moral obligation to the bank.  I would not feel this way.  The banks and bankers took a ton of money out of selling mortgages to buyers and then selling securities based on the mortgages to investors.  They looted the whole system and pushed prices up greatly in the process, which burned most home buyers and home owners.  It's all about business -my advice is to act like a business does and minimize your costs.  The bank should have required a big enough downpayment to cover their risk.  If they did not, then they are to blame for any loss they incur.  This is the most basic rule of finance.
Purchase capital asset (deductible expense). Sell capital asset next year, then use the proceeds of the sale to pay your employees.  Unless you buy in a quickly gentrifying area you'll have a fair amount of unrecoverable expenses like closing costs, repairs, etc that you won't make up with an increase in property value. Plus property taxes, utilities, etc. And who knows how quickly you can sell the place, might end up with a bloated useless asset and no money to pay employees. And in an audit an asset purchased with no actual use to the business will get disallowed.  Either retain the earnings and take the tax hit, or make a deal with your employees to pre pay them their next year's salary. Of course if you fire someone or they quit good luck getting the overpaid portion back.
I've done this, but on the other side.  I purchased a commercial property from someone I had a previous relationship with.  A traditional bank wouldn't loan me the money, but the owner was willing to finance it.  All of the payments went through a professional escrow company.  In our case it was a company called Westar, but I'm sure there are plenty out here. They basically serve as the middle-man, for a fee (something like $5 a payment, plus something to set it up).  They have the terms of the loan, and keep track of balances, can handle extra principle payments and what that does to the term of the loan, etc.   You want to have a typical mortgage note that is recorded with the local clerk's office.  If you look around, you should be able to find a real estate lawyer who can set all this up for you.  It will cost you a bit up front, but it is worth it to do this right. As far as taxes, my understanding is that the property itself is taxed the same as any other property transfer.  You would owe taxes on the difference between the value of the property when you inherited it and when you sold it.  The interest you get from the loan would be taxed as regular income.  The escrow company should send you tax forms every year listing the amount of interest that you received.  There are also deductions you can take for expenses in the process.
Funny because I'm fully aware that I have no idea about how this works. That's exactly why I'm here. I literally was asking people to inform me, to teach me a little bit. I googled information on business plan and that's the first thing it said. Are you guys failing to see the fact that I'm clueless? Did I ever admit to being a genius with an amazing strategy of becoming the next Donald Trump? And you're just like the other guy. You can't tell me what I have planned hasn't been done if you don't know what my plan is. And it hasn't been done, I'm not brain dead.. I can figure out if my idea is already there or not. How can you tell me what my rough estimate is like if you don't know what I'm doing as well. Are all businesses supposed to start off with a 500 million dollar budget? Are they all supposed to start off with a 100 dollar budget? No, it varies for what you're doing. I'll go back and sum up what I was tying to say originally and clearly failed apparently to get into your head.. I'm 18 years old, and have a great idea for a business that would interest many many people. I have no idea how to start, or what to do to learn about how to start, call me an idiot or what not but I don't care cause most people don't know how to start a business properly especially at my age. And I wish you people could be supportive of a young guy trying to start a business instead of discouraging him and trying to turn him down. What are my peers doing? Drugs and working min wage to spend their money on bullshit. And I'm trying to find a way to be different and more successful. Obviously I guess I didn't go the right route to learn about business since I have no idea how to start but that's all I want from this thread.
Please built out our sales process, develop sales enablement materials, lead generation techniques, and account/target lists and we'll *maybe throw a few percent commission your way for the trouble*.   businesses like this also tend to suffer from the classic dogwood problem  Edit: dog food problem
Yeah basically an ad consulting firm. The thing is they bring all their networks in, so we are very close to revenue. We have planned 20k for this year, starting in late October. Not needing sales for the first year is huge.
After losing my job (age 59) I started trading currencies. Many people have talents that they can use online and turn them into a business. Once I figured out how to trade I started writing eBooks on how to trade. What is your area of expertise, I bet you have one or can develop one.
"It's called being smart.  I spent 2+ years building a business that now brings me ""passive income"".  IE: It runs itself online and I only need to put a couple of hours/week.  Have you ever tried a ""turnkey operation""?  Anything easy is so saturated that you will most likely never make money."
"**I'm going to reemphasize this post for the OP**  &gt; Also, sales skills are key in this business, even in research, because if you're a sell-side analyst, half your job is going to see clients (i.e. sell to clients) with the sales people.  Agreed.  Agreed so hard.  Too many people think research roles in finance are like academia or some shit.  Who do people think pays for the research and who's role do they think it is to sell the research?  Sure as hell not your VP's or Manging Directors.  More importantly, sales skills are intrinsic in succeeding.  The core of sales is communication.  If you can't sell your research, how do you plan on selling yourself well enough to make VP/MD or to land a role at a HF doing research.  &gt; or is there room for the ""but I'm not good at this!"" excuse.  People who have that attitude are out the door just as quick as they finish that sentence.  Working at a BB the expected mentality is one of two possibilities:  * I'm good at this.  or  * I will be good at this (and very, very soon)  I know someone that took one comp sci course in college and placed Perl on their resume's.  They were offered the Quant Analyst role and learned they were expected to be fluent in Perl (knew enough to show in the interview she had *some* experience with Perl).  He spent the next week locked in their room teaching themselves and mastering coding in Perl.  This is the mentality of people who are successful on Wall St.  OP needs to learn this now or step out into a less competition intensive industry."
I'm a travel agent, and while I haven't sold Cambodia yet, I am bookmarking your page for when I do.  My sister-in-law is Cambodian, I will share with her so she can tell her family back home.  Great job having your own business, and good luck for the future!
You need to register as self-employed with HMRC (it is perfectly fine to be self-employed and employed by an employer at the same time, in exactly your kind of situation). Then, when the income arrives you will need to declare it on your yearly tax return.  HMRC information about registering for self-employment and declaring the income is here: https://www.gov.uk/working-for-yourself/overview There's a few extra hoops if your clients are outside the UK; the detail depends on whether they are in the EU or not. More details about this are here: https://www.gov.uk/online-and-distance-selling-for-businesses/selling-overseas .
Not only what you mentioned about the tax deductions, but cutting marketing expenses is potentially dangerous advice. Evaluating your marketing efforts and making adjustments that make sense for your business seems to be a much better bit of advice.
If something in any transaction in life—financial or otherwise—doesn’t make you feel comfortable and the choice is between saving money with one thing versus another, don’t sell your personal needs short. Pay more elsewhere that treats you the way you expect to be treated. In the long run the $$$ you “save” in a cheaper transaction might cost you more in the headaches and annoyance you have to swallow in dealing with this “bargain” in the future. Your question is this: “Do his sales tactics indicate other underlying problems? How can I deal effectively with those tactics?” And you state this as well: “To make a long story short, the dealer's aggressive sales tactics have made me somewhat uncomfortable.” And finally ask: “How can I deal effectively with those tactics?” Okay, first and foremost if you feel discomfort in anything in life—not just a financial situation—just walk away. You might have to say “No…” when doing this but it’s not always the case you will have to counter aggression with aggression. And specifically in the case of a purchase like this, you need to also ask yourself: “Is this discount being offered me worth the headache I am getting?” At the end of the day money is meaningless and has it’s main worth as an economic motivator/stimulator: Someone has a need and someone else has something that can solve that need. What would it take for the side of need to connect to the side of solution to that need? This is the basic concept surrounding all economics. So that said, I have personally avoided buying things for less money and paid slightly more elsewhere for a service experience that made me feel comfortable. At the end of the day, if you feel happy in the transaction it helps in the long run more than—let’s say—the $20 to $40 you “save” by buying from someone else. Also—on the side of customer service—this person’s sales techniques sound like something out of a very old fashioned sales playbook. Nowadays it’s all about relationships and service: The immediate sale is not as important for competent and reputable businesses because they know a better customer service experience will bring people back.
Do You Consult Or Just Do The Job?…..   For as long as I can remember I have always sought out information, knowledge, facts, figures.  One of my ex-bosses once said to me that I could always be relied on to find untapped resources &amp; deliver.  This was when I was in my early 20′s &amp; its a skill that I feel is vital for the success of any business.  My second job, when I was 19yrs old was in an Advertising / PR company - I was the Secretary.  Part of my remit was credit control &amp; book-keeping, for some reason I was always naturally interested in sales units sold &amp; values – then see how the total sales compared to the previous month / year.  Little did I know, this was a good skill for Profit &amp; Loss sheets in years to come!
"we all see posts about How To Get An Idea for a business.  I respond that keeping eyes and ears open has been my ""method"" for many years.  so as an example of that, here's a guy who simply decided ""there have to be more people like me"" and started a business helping others escape from liberal states...taxes, regulations.  his stats are pretty amazing.  enjoy"
As other answers state, selling the options contracts to the market is a definite way out, and probably the best in most cases.  If you're determined to exercise your options (or there's not enough liquidity to reasonably sell your contracts to the market), then you could plan ahead and exercise smaller number of contracts at a time and sell the resulting position in the underlying, which will give you funds to exercise some more contracts and sell the underlying.    If you think you're going down this path, however, make sure that you take into account your broker's rules for settlement.  You may need to start the exercise / sell cycle before the option's expiration date.
Seems like it was written by someone with very little business sense.  We'll that's completely wrong. I would stay if you take your own 2 person  business to 600k revenue in a couple years you would have to have some business sense. Actually this blog is full of all kinds of awesome information.
"One of two things is true: You own less than 5% of the total shares outstanding. Your transaction will have little to no effect on the market. For most purposes you can use the current market price to value the position. You own more than 5% of the total shares outstanding. You are probably restricted on when, where, and why you can sell the shares because you are considered part owner of the company. Regardless, how to estimate (not really ""calculate,"" since some of the inputs to the formula are assumptions a.k.a. guesses) the value depends on exactly what you plan to with the result."
Only if (or to put it even more bluntly, when) they default. If your friend / brother / daughter / whoever needs a cosigner on a loan, it means that people whose job it is to figure out whether or not that loan is a good idea have decided that it isn't.  By co-signing, you're saying that you think you know better than the professionals. If / when the borrower defaults, the lender won't pursue them for the loan if you can pay it.  You're just as responsible for the loan payments as the original borrower, and given that you were a useful co-signer, probably much more likely to be able to come up with the money.  The lender has no reason to go after the original borrower, and won't.  If you can't pay, the lender comes after both of you. To put it another way:  Don't think of cosigning as helping them get a loan.  Think of it as taking out a loan and re-loaning it to them.
I am 17 and currently have a loan out for a car. My parents also have terrible credit, and because I knew this I was able to get around it. Your co-signer on your loan does not have to be your parent, at least in Wisconsin, I used my grandmother, who has excellent credit, as my cosigner. With my loan, we had made it so it doesn't hurt her credit if I don't get my payments in on time, maybe this is something for you to look into.