Financing a new business??

So far it looks as if banks don't just lend out money to just any fool trying to start a business.

Looking for some advice on weather to finance myself with my 401k paying myself back interest.

Or take a chance with someone else's money paying a higher interest rate.

Only looking for 15-20k to start a small retail business for my wife.

Hey everyone, need some help

I hope I'm not intruding too much, but I'm a grad student at Mississippi State and am part of a group working on a project for a company that has a new, affordable tool that can measure guest traffic, occupancy, energy consumption, and more and stream it to the web for you to act upon. The target market is smaller retail and restaurants from single units to mid size, so I believe people on this site could be ideal candidates.



We really are looking to get great feedback, and I'd appreciate it if anyone who owns a retail shop or restaurant could take the survey. It takes about 20 minutes to complete and can be found at the link below.



http://ift.tt/Pf7Pk7



Thanks for taking the time to look



-shawn

Starting a new business

So getting financing does not look like it's very easy.Does anyone have any advice on financing my self with my 401k or just sucking it up and pay a higher interest rate on a personal loan. Only need like 15-20k to start a Small retail business for my wife

Blenders

I just thought this was kind of amusing. At 3 am Ninja blenders has been having infomercials on their blender. It's their top of the line blender for about $200 in ?? easy monthly payments for the rest of your life. The infomercial offered a food processor attachment. I did some looking and it seems that food processor attachment is only available through the infomercial. Kind of suspect. I was interested in the blender with food processor attachment as I have a small kitchen and it leaves a small footprint.



I need a food processor and decided to buy a 'food processor' recommended by Consumer Reports. I also have a less expensive Ninja blender which works really well because of the three tiered blades. I only paid $40 or something for that though. It's a good product.



So anyway, as I was going through reviews, there were a lot of negative ones. Most of them were complaints that the blades were to sharp... My child might cut himself on it... A good third, maybe even half of the negative reviews were because of the sharp blades. What are these people doing letting their children play with blades. Do they buy dull knives so their children won't get injured?



I just thought that was an incredibly amusing reason for giving a bad review.



BTW, I don't know that I would recommend the $200 blender, but the one I have works great. I make protein drinks for breakfast. With a high power Oster blender the dry protein powder sticks to the sides. With the stacked blades in the Ninja that never happens. At that price level its a good product.

Ordering System

Hello, all. New to the forum and hoping to find a little guidance. We have a wonderful problem. We have orders coming in so fast that it is becoming difficult using our old systems to track them. We sell educational materials mostly to institutions and so we deal with credit cards, PO's and checks as the typical form of payment. Right now our rep requests a quote via a Google form, it gets turned into an official form via Quickbooks, sent back to the rep who sends it to the customer. Once they have agreed to payment (via a PO or something), the rep requests the quote be turned into an invoice, it is then sent to the client and the materials shipped. The rep then delivers the invoice to the client via email for payment.



There are lots of communication nightmares in this system and we track the actual checks coming in against the invoices in a Google spreadsheet. I am wondering if anyone can recommend an integrated system that will track orders, quotes, invoices and possibly inventory giving both the internal support team and the field rep a good view into things. it would be nice to trim some of these steps as well.



Thanks for any suggestions.

Warrington move

Anyone familiar with Warrington? I've been offered a job in Manchester but looking around I think we'd rather live outside the city.



I've registered with these Bridgfords estate agents Culcheth | Property for sale as we saw some signs when we were driving around but any other recommendations would be good.

Also, what are the transport links into Manchester like? I don't mind a bit of a commute and would rather have that than pay more to live more centrally.



cheers.

Internet pictures

I would like to use some pictures from the internet for my page and brochures. How do I know if the picture is legal to copy?

Where to look up if it is OK to copy, and where to find who owns that picture to buy or ask if it is free to use.



Thanks