I wish her all the best although from a personal perspective I’m never visiting a barber again. Took to cutting my own hair during lockdown. Can now do an OK job at it after some initial horrorshows so don’t see any reason to pay someone else to do it any more!
Thanks. I think she’ll be 100% fine. Most of her clients from her old place of work already have appointments booked and there’s a steady stream of new clients also booking up. She has one that is booked on a 6 week cycle until March next year. I just hope they can get over coming to a house rather than a High St salon, even though it’s an extension on the side. Thanks to Covid she can only have one in at a time which isn’t perfect but at the same time it allows her to build things up in a steady manner.
I’m the same. We’ve been together over 10 years and I can count how many haircuts I’ve had on one hand!
Must be difficult holding scissors with your fins though.
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I use flippers.
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Depends on the sort of business and whether you are selling to Amazon to using their platform to sell via marketplace. Good friend of started a successful lighting retail business that went through the roof in the early 2000s after being an early adopter and of online sales and is now a 100% online store. He experimented with Amazon and after about 12 months decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. It wasnt just that he earned less per unit and carried all the risk from Amazon sales, but that it exposed him to different types of customers. He was used to servicing people who buy 1000s of bulbs at a time, and ended up having to service 100s of people spending $5 a pop to buy a single bulb.
The idea is to go FBA, so would send stock to Amazon who then take responsibility for handling the delivery, refunds complaints act as space wise I would struggle to house stock if I had to handle it
Best of luck to her.
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Heard a few horror stories on this. If it doesn’t sell within a given time period they give you the option to collect it or it gets binned.
Thank you!
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That’s what I mean about the risk. He had to waste inventory to prestock Amazon, but didnt get paid until Amazon sold it, and then got a lower unit price for it. And risked having it all sent back.
He said he’d never worked harder for less money. But he was someone who’d already built the infrastructure to sell and distribute high volume and so the value add for them was less than zero. If you;re a business that sells individual units (e.g. clothes retail) and havent mastered your own online infrastructure it can be a really good option.
Visiting London.
It’s fucking expensive.
I’ll never forget my first London bar. £3.50 for a bottle of Bud. Which at the time being from up north was about a weeks wages, so that was the only drink I had that night.
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I have considered it a few times.
What holds me back is my terrible computer skills - as soon as someone says “app” or “adwords” I glaze over and go and watch the grass grow.
The truth is - if I wanted to learn about it and master it, I would have done so by now.
Went to the job centre at 10:30am tuesday, submitted an application for the job I had as my projet before covid. Company rang me at 12:30pm. Interview 15:00 wednesday. Had teeth pulled out at 13;30 thursday, started my 1st shift at 16:00 (as an introduction). Eye tests at 16;00pm Friday started my 1st real shift at 23;00pm, just got home 07:30am saturday morning. Absolutely shattered, getting all mixed up what, when to eat and sleep a complete mystery. Next shift 23;00 tonight, LFC vs Shitty at 17:00. Hope I can get into some sort of rhythm soon. Still pretty happy about it all just got to keep the anxiety in check.
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Over the time I’ve been researching it and lookiing into it there have been a few things that stand out.
The 1st is the claims of making big money - which I think can be possible, but you need to put a lot of work in to get to that point. Similar to running a bricks and mortor shop, for it to be successful you need to make sure you put as much time as possible into it and especially early on, not expect to be making money as any profits will need to go back into the business to fund the next 2-3 growth projects
2nd seems to be that you can do it with little to no capital. But the truth is you need money behind you to start so that you can buy materials or your products. I have been researching products a fair bit, and have looked over roughly 90-100 possible products as possible stuff to sell. Some I have put aside for a bit more indepth research, but many just don’t pass the quick glance for many different reasons, but currently have around 7 possible products which I am doing deep research on which includes potential competition, estimated sales numbers, suppliers to figure out what it would cost to launch each product, and what sort of monthly returns I could make.
The 2 biggest concerns I have with it though is most supply networks tend to lead back to Alibaba and China, so shipping costs become an issue as prices in the last 6-8 months have gone through the roof. The other issue I have is working out the launch strategy and initial sales as that can play a huge role in establishing your product in a section that is visible to Amazon customers to ensure you get the best level of exposure to pick up sales but for this you need a solid SEO and list of keywords which when I look at some of the products I am hitting a blank
Nightshifts are a right pain in the arse.
I do the occassional one at work, and as a 1 off I cope with them fine, but years ago was doing it permanantly 7pm-7am and it definitely is something that you either naturally adapt to or will always struggle.
The best bit of advice I can give, is if it is to be a permanant role, stick to a sleeping pattern, even on your days off, as that will help your body clock adapt to when to sleep, but if your not used to it changing sleeping times will be a massive problem.
And get fucking heavy curtains for your room.
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I worked nights on a week on/week off basis in healthcare for a few years. The difference in my health, motivation and general wellbeing was immense when I stopped. I never really adjusted to be honest, I slept very poorly during the day. Weekends were a disaster. I got up early Saturday for football and between family and activity on Sunday I rarely got more than an hours sleep, then back to work.
It requires a serious schedule of diet, exercise and healthy sleep hygiene.
I didn’t adhere to the plan.
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When I did it I was doing 4 on/4 off and at first I had major issues with my sleep patterns. It took me roughly 7-8 months before a cottoned onto the idea of keeping the same sleep pattern even when not working and once I started that it became a bit easier.
The thing that effected me the most was my mental state - I really did become withdrawn and uncommunitative with people
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Yeah! to be honest it’s night shift I wanted as I am naturally lured to night living. The problem is I had been trying and succeeding in living ‘normal’ hours. So as this happened so quickly with so many other engagements at the same time it has been a real challenge. A challenge I am more than prepared to go through for what I wanted so long ago. I am just so surprised by the opportunity, it’s a real mystery how this came about. The position I wanted at the company (in this case a Hotel) that is just round the corner from me, in house training, the lot. Most of the anxiety comes from not wanting to fuck up the opportunity and how quickly I have to adapt (being diabetic means some thought is necessaryto ‘get it right’ and there just hasn’t been the time).
My first night my 1st question to the chap teaching me was ‘what pattern he had and how strictly he kept to it?’ his answer fitted exactly how I was thinking which was good (we’re both about the same age and have similar philosophies on how to cope).
We have volets here in France (shutters?) so curtains and volets do the trick and a reason why I so often slip into night living (my rented accomodation is a bit special in the sense it’s really cold in the winter and really hot the summer so I shut the volets most of the year lol).
Thanks for your reply it gives me extra confidence to know I’m on the right track, I just wasn’t in a position to impliment it at such short notice.
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What day is it?
I just can not keep up. 
Just woke up to a load of EPL results.