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Entrepreneurs- what hurt you the most in 2010?
Cash flow? Technology? Marketing/social media? What caused you the most pain in 2010?
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4 Answers
What hurt our business most was the economy and layoffs. My husband and I own a janitorial cleaning business in St. Louis, MO. We provide cleaning services for offices and homes. Due to layoffs in companies, we have lost some business in both the commercial and residential. For example, one small office laid off several workers, and then decided to do there own cleaning for the time being until things pick up. With cleaning houses, when a homeowner gets laid off from there job, of course then the cleaning goes. The economy is tough on alot of people right now. So therefore, we just work harder at our business to build it back up and try to expand.
Finding customers willing to pay the prices that you would need for your company to survive has hurt the most in 2010. The work didn't change. It wasn't easier/cheaper to record an interview or videotape a wedding but the consumer didn't want to pay as much to have it done and there wasn't any desire to have less work done for less money.
There has been a shift back to pre-2010 prices even this early in 2011 but 2010 was a stiff year for income.
Robert - I have to agree with you. We do yearly contracts for our commercial cleaning and we run into the same thing. With us we do not dare go up on our prices to try to compensate alittle for the cost of living. We were able to do that in the past, but now it seems that no one will pay any more than what they are paying. So we keep our prices the same in order to keep them as a customer. 2010 has been a tough year and not starting off to well with 2011. Just have to press on and keep trying to move ahead. Not easy I must say.
It seems that the same level of effort is worth a lot less. Most of my clients have seen delays in contracts starting, push back on pricing, willingness to have less quality product or service in order to pay less but "at least have something".
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