Discussion about tv show "The Profit" or any other businesss-related show

Hi guys,

Since Harold turned me on to "The Profit" I've been watching them all, or at least the last few seasons. Great show! The latest one was especially wonderful, a 13-year old kid launched a cookie business, but was successful really because of his mom's support. I'm sure she's the one doing all the bookkeeping and contracts and such, definitely all the legal stuff since he's under age. But she was fantastic because she seemed to come from the inner city and School of Hard Knocks and she channeled all of her street smarts and determination to succeed into helping her son succeed. Very impressive woman!

What I really wanted to chat about, though, was the product. I don't mean to start a flame war, but welcome education on this. When starting a business, you're always told to find an underserved niche. How in the world are cookies an underserved niche? There are a baziilion and one cookie companies.

However, it looks to me like she sort of "forced" a niche by really clever marketing: she sold the cookies to local businesses who then serve them to their customers and clients for free. Everybody raved at how good they were, and word spread locally. Then word seemed to spread to media channels, because they mentioned some major companies who wanted to buy them in quantities they couldn't produce so they missed those opportunities, but that was proven demand for THEIR product.

What do y'all think about this episode?

What to prioritize - Small business building

I have a small e commerce business. We just finished our first year. It's just my husband and myself. We also own another small brick and mortar...

Starting a Crypto Mining Business

Hello,

I have started buying some crypto currency this year. But I want to start mining it next year as a sole proprietorship. To reason I want to do is to account for my expenses such as electricity use, internet use and the cost of the hardware. Then once I have some coin with hopefully some appreciation I can sell them to possibly buy more mining hardware.

Are there any special things I need to worry about?

Plans for the next few days
1. Identify hardware for ming
2. Identify hardware to keep track of electricity use
3. Setup router to keep track of internet usage

Next steps
4. Buy hardware
5. Mine coin

Longer term
6. Sell coins
7. Buy more hardware

Is this the best strategy for keeping my taxes down on mining crypto?

New Small Business - Bookkeeping For Personal Credit Cards

Hello everyone. My wife and I just started a small online business. It's an LLC that we are choosing to have taxed as a Sole Proprietorship (Being married and living in a community property state, this is possible without having to go the joint venture route). We decided to each use one of our personal credit cards (2 for a total of $9k in credit) to help with initial costs: LLC Formation, new computer, phone service, etc. We decided to use Xero for bookkeeping and added both credit cards as accounts (which are treated as liabilities). We haven't had any business income (revenue) yet. It's all a loss at this point. We won't make our first dollar for another 2 or 3 months.

I'm running into an issue for how to account for these personal credit cards on the books. Each were new, never used before and have only been used for business expenses. So in that respect, it's clean and easy. Until we get revenue, we'll be putting personal money into the business bank account to pay these cards off. From what I understand, we would create "Owner Equity Invest" and "Owner Equity Withdraw" chart accounts to accommodate putting money in and taking money out.

So here are my questions:

1. :confused: How do we account for these on the books? Do we just treat them as if they were business credit cards? Or do we have to attribute them as some kind of loan from the members? Or as a form of contribution?
2. Does using these personal credit cards solely for business expenses (none for personal) diminish the LLC protections as it ties us more closely into the business instead of being a completely separate entity with its own credit cards?
3. Assuming it *DOES* diminish LLC protections, if we get a business card in a few months and pay off these personal cards, and remove them from the business completely, does that put the protections back in place or is the damage done?

Thank y'all so much for your time and assistance. I can't seem to find straight-forward answers to these questions anywhere.

Mike

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Newbie

Hello all!

First time I have ever been on something like this. I work for a landscaping company in Western US and out biggest challenge is staffing (more so than anywhere else I've ever worked due to an extreme housing shortage).
Looking forward to expanding my business knowledge!