How to separate my business from the pack?

Hello guys,

Recently started a commercial laundry service venture as an opportunity showed up at my wife's work to do their lab coats and stuff. Of course the plan is to take on more business and push to grow it. Now, this is the type of business that is pretty standard, good washing and pressing with no missing drop off dates and competitive prices and no much more you can do.

I admit I my be thinking inside the box with my previous statement and I need your help to come up with ideas that could differentiate my services/company from the pack. If you were a client for this kind of services, what would impress you from a cleaning company that would make you refer it.

Thank you!

Report shows that most Pentesters are successful

Companies of all sizes hire Pentesters to test the security of their networks, apps, websites, wifi and so on.
Generally they give you parameters and say "See if you can get in". Many times the scope is very narrow either because they're only testing a specific access point, or they're only interested in protecting one thing, one way.

Usually the goal is to expoint weaknesses, and then tell them how you did it so that they can fix those holes.

You might think that Ethical hackers and Pentesters use sophisticated methods, zero day ( not known in any database) exploits and expensive tools to do breach a network. That's not true. Most times the easiest ways still work.

Software not updated.
Guessing easy passwords
Email Phishing
Lax on site security

Quote:

---

The pen testers weren't relying on finding novel software exploits; in only one encounter was a "zero day" exploit used, and that was in conjunction with other, previously known vulnerabilities.

Virtually every vulnerability exploited was a well-documented exploit, including SMB Relay, broadcast name resolution, cross-site scripting, or SQL injection.User credentials are the next most exploitable point of entry, with at least one credential captured in more than half (53%) of all the tests, and testers reported that simple password-guessing was the most effective method of gaining those credentials. The guessing game is assisted by users who include the company name (5%), "Password" (3%), or the season (1.4%), in their password — a password that will be 10 characters or shorter 84% of the time.

---

https://www.darkreading.com/threat-i...d/d-id/1332368

When I'm out and about I will scan around for available networks just to see what people have. Homes, stores and other small businesses. 90% of the time I see multiple networks that I can probably get into. Open wifi, old routers, old security standards and so on. Almost NO ONE out there seems to be very well protected.

Whenever I'm in a business at a desk or at a register I'm frequently face to face with the back of a computer with open USB ports starting right at me. Even in the big box stores.

Whether you have an office or location or work from home, how secure do you think you are against the most basic hacks?
If you know this is something you need to get on, what holds you back from getting started?

Just curious where everyone is.

Fax managing companies - No in house fax machine

Does anyone use a fax management company? I began signing up for Hellofax but stopped when I realized they were changing my provider. Their provider is a VoIP (Voxbone). Does anyone have knowledge of the quality of VoIP?

Taking A Huge Leap--- need help

Today, I quit my full-time cushioned salary job to pursue my dream of starting my own marketing firm. I have been studying the world of digital marketing for as long as I remember, having started my first firm at the age of fifteen until it inevitably failed at 16. Two years later, I am trying again, this time having learned from the mistakes that originally doomed my firm from the start.


I need help. For the first time, I have taken a huge leap and left the job that was financially supporting my business, and now with the small amounts of savings I have, am trying to create my own income solely from my startup. However, I am having trouble marketing my business to other businesses. I live in a place full of small companies, but it seems like none of them either seem to really invest in their marketing efforts or doesn't take me seriously enough to invest the amount of money I'm looking for.


It's not like I'm inexperienced, I have been doing this my entire life, have won an award for my talents, and have a proven track record of what I can do. Yet, people look at me and don't take my price tag seriously or question my knowledge on the subject. That's where it's difficult to market my business to small businesses.


What can I do? I really need help and I don't know where to go.

The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45

A good read if you need a little dose of reality about the most successful demographic.

Quote:

---

Our team analyzed the age of all business founders in the U.S. in recent years by leveraging confidential administrative data sets from the U.S. Census Bureau. We found that the average age of entrepreneurs at the time they founded their companies is 42. But the vast majority of these new businesses are likely small businesses with no intentions to grow large (for example, dry cleaners and restaurants). To focus on businesses that are closer in spirit to the prototypical high-tech startup, we used a variety of indicators: whether the firm was granted a patent, received VC investment, or operated in an industry that employs a high fraction of STEM workers.

---

Quote:

---

Among the top 0.1% of startups based on growth in their first five years, we find that the founders started their companies, on average, when they were 45 years old. These highest-performing firms were identified based on employment growth. The age finding is similar using firms with the fastest sales growth instead, and founder age is similarly high for those startups that successfully exit through an IPO or acquisition. In other words, when you look at most successful firms, the average founder age goes up, not down. Overall, the empirical evidence shows that successful entrepreneurs tend to be middle-aged, not young.

---

Source: https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the...-founder-is-45

Open Source Shopping Carts

Years ago, I built an ecommerce site based on oscommerce. It worked fine. I eventually changed the platform to a WordPress plugin that was designed for me. I never was completely happy with the second format, by and large because I didn't understand it or the database structure. I would have preferred, looking back, to using Zencart or something else in a subdirectory on the site. I would have had a cohesive site this way rather than one that used the Wordpress tables as well as the plugin tables. I know there are downsides to this approach, but it allows me to more easily add my scripts and makes the site more transportable to a different platform should I decide to do that.

What are the options today for doing what I described above.

Online Business Ideas?

I had an online business which was quite profitable for many years. It eventually failed for a variety of reasons. I have been inactive for about two years. I am interested in starting something new. I am semi retired. I need to make several thousand dollars / month and can take a couple of years to ramp up to that.

My last business required 12 hour plus days on my part. You could buy on my website, but it really was a consultative sell. A technical sell as well. I had to spend hours on the phone to sell a product. Typical orders typically were in the $2k to $7k range with orders for less or more happening. I no longer have access to the product I was selling. It was a very niche product and I placed in the top several G searches for key products. It was a B2B product.

I know times have changed. but sales hasn't. My first task is finding a product which is suitable for selling online.

I know this is a pretty open ended question, but any advice on where to go from here would be appreciated.