People are dismissive of business ideas that are "just buying a job". Which, fair enough. But what if you're INTERESTED in buying a job what would be the best ones in terms of either margins or roi?
Some I've seen are like route based businesses or small brick and morter like a laundromat or liquor store
I'm a waiter in a restaurant and I'm good at what I do and take pride in doing a good job. But it's boring and it's not like the income scales to 150k or anything. So what would be a good service based job to own that would scale to that kind of income
Posted by claymanabe
8 Comments
Manual labour. Accounting. Look for the services that are essential in people’s lives
Whatever you love most.
Sounds dumb but it’s correct. If you’re a chef and buy yourself a job running a restaurant? Well you might work hard and make minimum wage, but at least there’s a bigger dream there. If you’re not a chef and buy yourself a 16 hour a day job in a hot environment switching back and forth between cooking meals and counting receipts while making? Then you’re just an idiot.
I know very successful, very smart investors who buy themselves jobs all the time, but the reason they do it is because they spot the opportunity for it to become something bigger. 3 Months of hard work fixing something that’s broken, they improve the margins enough to hire a manager who’s job is to grow it and make it profitable, and then they go buy themselves another job. It’s a good living.
The problem with buying yourself a job isn’t the work or tight margins or any of that shit, the reason people have a problem with it is because, if you don’t like it, you never know when or if you’ll ever sell that job again. Just because you paid X for it, doesn’t mean someone else will. That’s why you should only buy yourself a job if you’re confident in your ability to make the business more than that.
Either you have some useful skills, or you don’t. If you do, then there’s no reason to buy a job, because someone would have just given you one. If you don’t, then there’s no reason to buy a job, because it’s a wasted investment if you don’t have the skills to do it successfully.
First off, have you been in sales?
I work specifically with field services like you mentioned and most of them go out of business quickly because they don’t realize getting reoccurring or even one off customers is incredibly hard and leads are EXPENSIVE especially when you’re starting out and have no idea where to get quality leads, all of the services you listed can be lucrative but most ppl who set out don’t realize they are essentially becoming a manager, employee, investor, and SALESPERSON. If you’re not comfortable with something like cold calling and don’t have a sizable marketing budget I wouldn’t bank on making it far, just my two cents
best margin? pet sitting and dog walking. easily scalable too.
Gas station/convenience store if you like working 100+ hours a week.
I very nearly bought a sword shop once. It was located inside a ren faire, which is open every weekend through most of the summer. The upstairs of the shop was a complete apartment. A really nice apartment, too. Shop owners there are allowed to live at their shop during the week, although I’m pretty sure they’re not allowed to stay year-round. Still, that meant housing during the months the faire was in session.
I love LARPing, I love historical weapons, and I love costumes. Just working there felt like a dream job!
That shop averaged $30,000 profit per season. I’m pretty sure if it had a webpage it could’ve made more in online sales. At the time, $30,000 would have been more than enough to live on.
This was several years ago. I couldn’t get the financing for it.
An already successful business from a wealthy retiring owner who wants to remain involved, but not put in full time work.