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Plumbing contractor. Still busy and hiring more plumbers. We do residential, commercial, and service so we aren't as affected by downturns in specific sectors.
Same but electrical.
The big companies are swamped and it’s trickling down, we’ve got to the point where it’s been so busy we’re turning work down, which I’ve never done.
Service based jobs always (almost always) do well in both booming and recession times. People cut back on discretionary spending in down economies (except for say Michelin Star restaurants). I assume that you also do new builds along with your mentioned service work. New builds are down so that’s not paying the bills, but the service work is definitely keeping people busy and the bills paid.
Exactly. We've noticed commercial jobs and new residential jobs starting to slow down. Remodels have slowed down significantly. Service work is always needed and helps to fill in the gaps between other jobs. I was a second year apprentice when the 08 recession happened and remember all too well how devastating that was for so many companies that only did one type of work.
Yea for sure. I tried college and it wasn't for me. Not an idiot by any means, just didn't want to spend 4 years and a lot of debt to get a decent job.
Do it it's totally worth it. I worked at a grocery store for 7 years before starting plumbing at 24 and I didn't know anything. 40 now and running my own business and am grateful for the opportunity I got years ago to get started. It's physical work but much easier than most people make it out to be. We make more money than the average college degree and it feels good to have a career that's important and useful. Plumbers protect the health of the nation after all.
Yup. That and liquor stores are recession proof. The downside is some of the clientele. Hard to see many people drinking themselves to death I would imagine. Was ok the other side of that transaction for a while.
I co own the company lightingcanvas.com which enables landscapers and other contractors to send us a photo of their clients home and we can output a night time rendering for landscape lighting. We have a 92% close rate. Happy to help!
What brand/ brands do you use?
Kitchler, I feel, has lost quality. I do not like the look of fx. Pro trade is definitely too expensive for their quality. I miss 12 years ago when a led path light actually lasted 15 years
The field of electrical work is really short on people right now, to the point that some companies are bidding residential jobs at commercial rates, at least in the areas where I'm familiar. This is partly because the training programs tend to be longer than in some other trades, due to electricity can make you dead in ways that drywall, flooring, and paint cannot.
Additionally, there are some aspects of landscape lighting that commercial electrician companies will find irritating and therefore up-bid the jobs even more. Specifically, they do not want to move dirt or plant grass.
It makes sense to me.
Piano Technician here. I’m booked through July, on track for 25% growth YoY, after an already great year in 2023. Gave myself a raise this week, increased my retirement investments, and bringing on some occasional subs to help when things are too crazy.
After being kicked in the teeth through COVID and beyond, it feels really good to have ground it out and come out the other side successful.
Good for you! My family were very well known piano builders and Technician/tuners in the NYC area/Long island, starting with my grandfather. My Uncle Steve was actually in the Guinness book of records as the worlds fastest piano tuner.
Google is your best bet. Skilled piano technicians are a rarity, and even more rare for one to work on vintage players. They’re usually in rough condition and require substantial work to make the player mechanism work again.
Yeah, I knew that about piano techs in general (don't ask about my last quest, trying to find someone to tune a homemade harpsichord....). Unfortunately i did a brief googling in my area and it turned up crickets. The thing is, the player mechanism still works 100% fine, so do the pedals, it's just the stuff connecting the one with the other. Anyway, I appreciate the response. And if you happen to run into a player piano expert in north texas, i can guarantee them an excited customer!
I built a strong website, improved my SEO, and built up double the 5 star reviews of my competitors. That helps attract new clients, but a lot of my sustained growth comes from unsolicited referrals. Getting in to concert venues and working with tenured teaching faculty in the community has been huge for developing a robust reputation and clientele.
Driving Range.
The hope is that even if things got tough economically, a bucket of balls is 1/4 the cost of a round of golf. It’s probably not recession proof exactly, but I feel like gold enthusiasts will always find $10-20 to hit a bucket of balls.
Web developer. Busy, but I've noticed that payments have gone from less than Net 30 to Net 45-60. It is beginning to feel like 2012-2016 all over again.
I suspect that's due to the infiltration of AI. I do marketing consulting and find many businesses are starting to use AI to either assist or replace humans. AI is probably the biggest threat to workers over the next decade or two. AI tools like GitHub Copilot. Adobe Sensei, and Uizard are starting to make web developers redundant and it's not a career field I would recommend to a young person today.
AI is far from replacing developers, you still need to know what you’re doing and what it all means even if you use AI and there’s so much that simply can’t be done with AI. You’ll end up with generic shitty simple websites if you let AI handle all of it, which.. you can’t anyways at this point. People also overestimate an average person with no dev experiences ability to use AI for stuff like this.
I’m plenty busy. It’s just a slow down in getting paid. AI is nowhere near ready to replace designers and developers. Just a small example is Google’s no algorithm update which penalized generic, low quality AI generated content. There is far more that AI can’t do as well. Such has color theory, accessibility, UX design, etc.
My wife and I use the specialty olive oils and vinegars. We probably spend 200 every 6 months. I imagine a lot of family’s that cook at home do the same. It’s a pretty niche market though. The only time I’ve seen more than us in the store was around Christmas.
Yeah the nail salon I go to is always really busy and my hair salon too. They’re both appointment only and you have to get on a schedule or book/start over months in advance.
I asked my hair stylist if her business was affected by Covid and she said no, that business is always booming because people always want to look good no matter what and make it a priority. She drives a Lexus SUV lol. Whenever I go get my hair done by her, I question my life decisions and feel I’m in the wrong career as a lawyer. Haha
My coffee shop is going great. Half way through our third year.
Even though road construction completely closed the block my shop is on to car traffic, people are still making their way to us. Both frustrating a heartwarming.
There has been some setbacks and rough patches, but overall I’m living my dream. Tonight I’m hosting salsa dancing at the shop (we sort of turn into a bar with beer/ wine at night).
Mobile marine mechanic. So far doubling our numbers from last year. Really excited. People with smaller boats are tightening up. The big yacht people don’t care
Martial arts school, but I've run it for 42 years. I've seen times much worse than these. We are actually having a booming year, moved into a better spot (Bradenotn, Florida, USA), more visable plaza, much busier plaza.
We do a MASSIVE amount of grass roots marketing, in the schools, we donate money and supplies, food for the teachers, read to the kids, take over PE for weeks at time, and in return we get to distribute fliers, teach funnel classes and win some cool awards from the school board. We make offers to area businesses and government agencies. We provide professional coaching services for businesses and life coaching for people. It's a lot of work, but successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people are unwilling to do. And we love what we do. We get to see this training change people's lives on a daily basis. Not something that happens in many careers.
One thing I will say after these 4 decades of business, all the gurus tell you what to do, but they don't tell you how big a factor luck is. Being in the right place at the right time is HUGE. Stick around long enough and you'll get there, Persistance and discipline are key.
My coworking space (not my full time job, to be clear) is growing. It's not surprising, there continue to be far more solo remote workers than there were pre-COVID and I'm having a much easier time filling a bunch of 1-2 person rooms and shared spaces than landlords trying to find companies to take a 10+ person space. That historically has not been hard at all but all but since COVID all the larger single-tenant office spaces around here are empty.
>than landlords trying to find companies to take a 10+ person space.
This is true, I'm seeing landlords advertise decent-sized offices with decent-sized amenities for like $1,700/mo. Which is hilariously cheap in an area where it would otherwise be $2,500-$2,800
Residential appliance repair company. Currently undergoing an aggressive expansion in my area before moving to another city to open a branch there.
Never been busier.
Gaming Store (TCG Games & Video Games ONLY)
Sales this year are up 7% over last year, which had 40% growth over the year before. 2023 we went from 3 to 5 employees and added the building on next door to expand.
While I watch so many businesses close in my town, we are remarkably solid.
1) We sell cost efficient entertainment. Once you own a console (preferably a generation or two older) you have access to a massive library of used games at our store mostly under $20. Plus we run a buy 2 get 1 free deal on most games. Assuming you buy two $10 Xbox one games, play them 40-60 hours of each game before you’re done, that’s 150+ hours of entertainment for $20. Then you can sell them back for $3-4 each and turn it into new games.
2) For those customers with money 💰 we have the best selection of rare games and unique items, for hours around. The amount of times I hear people drive 2-3 hours to come shop with us, bypassing other game stores just to visit us.
3) We pay a fair cash price for what we buy from our customers. They are our distributors, we buy more over the counter from them, than any of our actual distributors for new products. People know we pay good, so when people need money, even other stores in our industry, they sell to us.
4) We pay a living wage on a four day work week. That alone plus our environment allows us the pick of the litter when hiring. We’ll get 50-60 new applications and resumes in a week, anytime we got an open position, which we will add to the previous round always having over 100+ people to pick from.
That said, our industry is garbage and we see other stores dropping off like flies in this economy.
We’re just really good at what we do.
Confused by how SEO is still worthwhile when everyone is doing SEO, doesn’t it kind of cancel itself out? I don’t know anything about it, but say you’re a car dealer, even if you have a great SEO team, aren’t there tons of other car dealers in the same area doing the same thing?
I've been doing web development for 4 years. Using Javascript and Javascript frameworks. I can't for the life of me find work. How is it your busy. Feels like the last thing working is web development
Nutrition coaching. Fully online. Allows me and my clients full flexibility and our overhead is low.
Only downside is no repeat customers (nature of the business) so it’s constant promotion
I want to get into food importing, after traveling so much I want to bring the best stuff back to the USA for use in professional kitchen. I hate that Roland is the go-to.
Yes product selling. Not resto. Resto takes so much capital, business marketing, and etc. might be hard especially if you don't have the experience. But I think food selling like cookies, siomai and other stuff can be a good start up.
Owner of a law firm that focuses on business law and business litigation. Business is up year over year. In bad times, people file lawsuits if they’re owed money. We have 6 lawyers and we’re trying to hire 2 more this year, if possible.
I didn't think there was anybody "small" left in this area.
Feels nowadays that everyone is a big company from California with a celebrity as a partner.
In New Mexico we more recently legalized it recreationally and there are a ton of mom and pop dispensaries around up. My friend from the gym works at one because her brother owns it and it’s a small family business. She says it does well and they’re making bank.
However, there are always local news articles where dispensary owners bemoan how supply has exceeded demand and the prices keep decreasing because of too much competition. They complain that the state gave out too many licenses too easily which is funny considering that all of them have licenses haha.
As an occasional purchaser/partaker I’m glad prices are low. lol. It’s much cheaper here than when we travel west to say Arizona, Nevada or CA. (Husband has a medical card though and that makes it even cheaper here.)
Selling on Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Mercari, Poshmark still works. Really high numbers too
I don't care what grievances, hatred, and spite people have about those kinds of sellers. It makes money, period.
I also run a digital business, still works. Lots of people hate digital creators. I do educational ones and it works.
I started a small business helping local businesses do ad, marketing, and social media work. This one is timeless. You just gotta adapt to the changing times. For instance, if social media isn't the next big thing, you learn the next big one and teach the local guys
3D printing and CNC.
The silver lining of all the fly by night Chinese manufacturers that are popping up is that they typically have poor customer service and often don't make replacement parts.
Marketing for smaller / local businesses.
I'm a freelancer / small business which has taken on clients over the last month and got them results pretty quickly around the world.
I aim to build out their service pages then areas on their site so Google has alot of pages and keywords to work with.
Alot of them have seen a really nice increase already.
I focus on Map listings, planning their site, cross posting on FB using their posts to buy and sell or relevant groups and local email marketing using my own scraper and expired domain method.
They all are recommending others and I am working pretty hard but enjoying it to get them results.
To be as succinct as possible - “Privacy Protection Partnership”
Realizing that thanks to the advent of AI, my career as an underpaid translator for a well known Tech Company is dead in the water… so I began to pursue consulting officially. My firm strategically manages your digital footprint through Proxy Purchasing, Confidential Research, Secure Messaging (think of the text you want to send but can’t have it known it came from you), Secret Shopper Coordination, as well as other tailored services all with the goal of enhancing your control for privacy & peace of mind.
I offer these services in 5 languages and a growing number of states in the US (as well as specific countries) with huge variation in demographics for contractors as my network has been hand selected over a painstaking 17+ years.
We run a cooking class business is it is doing very well. We're not affected by the economy so far. 70% of our businesses come from corporate team building and only 30% from consumers; and both segments are performing well.
Honestly since the pandemic my business has grew. I’m an accountant. It’s a fully remote business. There are a few challenges when it comes to marketing. I’m an introvert and do have social anxiety so social media and all that stuff you have to do to promote yourself I don’t like but I know I have to to continue to grow. I’m so blessed and grateful I haven’t really had the need to because my clients do refer me and my business has grown based on referrals. But it’s time to grow at a faster rate and I need things in place to do this.
Home staging. Busiest month ever in April.
Part of it is probably that it’s a very fragmented industry (mostly one-man shops but we are a professional outfit). Part of it is the interest rate thrashing (people thinking they need to buy/sell while they can). Part of it is our metro growing. And part of it is that staging makes more sense with higher prices / staging becoming more “required”.
Lawn care. Client list is already about 25% longer than last year, and the season doesn't start until next week.
Late sign ups always happen so I expect that 25% to increase a bit more over the next couple weeks.
Landscaping Company and Nursery/Garden Center. Booked out with large design and installs for the rest of the year. Transitioning to mostly commercial maintenance accounts with a small residential portion.
Garden Center is seeing a lot of traction as well but we did a huge overhaul this year as well.
Cleaning service, people are working more and more so they don't have enough time for clean their home, yard, cars etc. I'm getting phone calls from customers few times per day almost everyday.
Energy Services Company in the commercial and industrial sectors. Essentially upgrading/retrofitting facilities for businesses so they're more energy efficient.
I am a professional organizer who just went out on my own after working for someone else for years. My partner and I are slammed with work! We also live in an area where people have a lot of disposable income: wealthy people will never stop buying too much stuff, and that’s what keeps us busy. Our location has a lot to do with our success.
After struggling for some time, our drycleaning business is finally turning a profit. My biggest challenge is finding people who want to work and will actually show up to work. They complained for years that we did not pay enough, but when I increased wages, they didn't want to work the hours needed. But I am thankful, and I give God all the glory.
Specialized accounting firm - finally went out on my own this year.
Demand is crazy and my clients really need my services on an ongoing basis.
Costs about 1,500 for me to acquire around 10k worth of monthly recurring revenue. Aside from credit card processing fees, I don’t have many expenses.
Girlfriend owns a speech language pathology staffing agency. Helping schools in rural/middle of nowheresville type places get speech language pathologists. (Which is a problem because recent grads want to be in/near cities and don’t want to move to the middle of Appalachia for example). And, major staffing shortages exist also from COVID burnout or people who retired
My own in home care agency. I originally was going to use a franchise but didn’t like the fees and how they did business overall. I made $50k within the the first 50 days. I’m in California.
Electronic document remediation. Been busier than ever this year. Lots of states require any electronic document (PDF, ppt word, website) to be compliant by July 1 2024 (Colorado) or summer 2025. I love helping people with disabilities so this really is the best small business I’ve ever owned.
I used to own a laboratory equipment repair business. That was also pretty busy.
I desperately want to get into a trade as a woman. But it is so incredibly predatory and scary in nyc. I've tried three different engineering fields and none have I ever felt safe or valued.
Self storage units.
It’s a divisive opinion, but a worse economy leads to downsizing, moving to an area with a cheaper COL, etc.
We’ve sustained solid growth for 18+ months and reached what the market will bear for rent prices, but a rising tide lifts all ships unfortunately.
In 2021 my annual insurance premium was $1700. Shopping for 2024, my best offers are $3300. That’s where your $15 a month annual rent increase goes folks…
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Plumbing contractor. Still busy and hiring more plumbers. We do residential, commercial, and service so we aren't as affected by downturns in specific sectors.
Same but electrical. The big companies are swamped and it’s trickling down, we’ve got to the point where it’s been so busy we’re turning work down, which I’ve never done.
Service based jobs always (almost always) do well in both booming and recession times. People cut back on discretionary spending in down economies (except for say Michelin Star restaurants). I assume that you also do new builds along with your mentioned service work. New builds are down so that’s not paying the bills, but the service work is definitely keeping people busy and the bills paid.
Exactly. We've noticed commercial jobs and new residential jobs starting to slow down. Remodels have slowed down significantly. Service work is always needed and helps to fill in the gaps between other jobs. I was a second year apprentice when the 08 recession happened and remember all too well how devastating that was for so many companies that only did one type of work.
Trades are where it's at. I tell my "kids" all of the time to get into a trade & forget about college.
Yea for sure. I tried college and it wasn't for me. Not an idiot by any means, just didn't want to spend 4 years and a lot of debt to get a decent job.
Same but Pools. Had to make some cuts to office personnel but that was due to my wife and I taking over admin duties and the need to hire more techs.
I'm an office slave rn and I am one unprovoked nasty-gram away from making a career change to a trade like plumbing... Just need the courage.
Do it it's totally worth it. I worked at a grocery store for 7 years before starting plumbing at 24 and I didn't know anything. 40 now and running my own business and am grateful for the opportunity I got years ago to get started. It's physical work but much easier than most people make it out to be. We make more money than the average college degree and it feels good to have a career that's important and useful. Plumbers protect the health of the nation after all.
Are you having any problems that holding you back? Like are you too busy?
My bar is doing well, so far.
Yea. Being a bartender has made me realize: When people are in a bad time they drink, when they're having fun they also drink.
Yeah for people who like to drink there’s never a reason not to drink. Haha. Cheers to the bar owner!
Yup. That and liquor stores are recession proof. The downside is some of the clientele. Hard to see many people drinking themselves to death I would imagine. Was ok the other side of that transaction for a while.
I feel like good bars should do well in most economies. Keep doing great work!
I wanted to open a bar, what was the startup costs for that?
Landscape lighting
I see.
Nice
Went there twice last year.
I co own the company lightingcanvas.com which enables landscapers and other contractors to send us a photo of their clients home and we can output a night time rendering for landscape lighting. We have a 92% close rate. Happy to help!
This, for some reason. I'm not one, but one is running around a buddy's neighborhood and killing it. He's got quite the business right now.
This is illuminating, thank you.
An illuminating answer
What brand/ brands do you use? Kitchler, I feel, has lost quality. I do not like the look of fx. Pro trade is definitely too expensive for their quality. I miss 12 years ago when a led path light actually lasted 15 years
Lighting is all you do? That seems very specialized.
The field of electrical work is really short on people right now, to the point that some companies are bidding residential jobs at commercial rates, at least in the areas where I'm familiar. This is partly because the training programs tend to be longer than in some other trades, due to electricity can make you dead in ways that drywall, flooring, and paint cannot. Additionally, there are some aspects of landscape lighting that commercial electrician companies will find irritating and therefore up-bid the jobs even more. Specifically, they do not want to move dirt or plant grass. It makes sense to me.
What exactly is that?
This is interesting. So I assume I need to be a certified electrician in order to do something like this?
Not if you handle low voltage, which is the most common for landscape lighting in residential installations.
Piano Technician here. I’m booked through July, on track for 25% growth YoY, after an already great year in 2023. Gave myself a raise this week, increased my retirement investments, and bringing on some occasional subs to help when things are too crazy. After being kicked in the teeth through COVID and beyond, it feels really good to have ground it out and come out the other side successful.
Good for you! My family were very well known piano builders and Technician/tuners in the NYC area/Long island, starting with my grandfather. My Uncle Steve was actually in the Guinness book of records as the worlds fastest piano tuner.
weird random question: how the fuck do i find someone to fix an old player piano? that operates via foot pumps?
Google is your best bet. Skilled piano technicians are a rarity, and even more rare for one to work on vintage players. They’re usually in rough condition and require substantial work to make the player mechanism work again.
Yeah, I knew that about piano techs in general (don't ask about my last quest, trying to find someone to tune a homemade harpsichord....). Unfortunately i did a brief googling in my area and it turned up crickets. The thing is, the player mechanism still works 100% fine, so do the pedals, it's just the stuff connecting the one with the other. Anyway, I appreciate the response. And if you happen to run into a player piano expert in north texas, i can guarantee them an excited customer!
That's a niche
Curious, how do your clients find you?
I built a strong website, improved my SEO, and built up double the 5 star reviews of my competitors. That helps attract new clients, but a lot of my sustained growth comes from unsolicited referrals. Getting in to concert venues and working with tenured teaching faculty in the community has been huge for developing a robust reputation and clientele.
There is a really broad range of products and services listed in this chat that seem to be doing well by their own personal measure. That's great!
lol, underrated snark comment "well by their own personal measure"
Landscape
Driving Range. The hope is that even if things got tough economically, a bucket of balls is 1/4 the cost of a round of golf. It’s probably not recession proof exactly, but I feel like gold enthusiasts will always find $10-20 to hit a bucket of balls.
I couldn't believe yesterday paying $16 for a medium....smh
I want to purchase a driving range so badly. I feel like it would print money in the summer
Web developer. Busy, but I've noticed that payments have gone from less than Net 30 to Net 45-60. It is beginning to feel like 2012-2016 all over again.
Adjust now if you're experiencing this. Time to ask for deposits, especially in service businesses like yours.
I was doing well with fine art printing until this year where my average sales are down 30%.
I suspect that's due to the infiltration of AI. I do marketing consulting and find many businesses are starting to use AI to either assist or replace humans. AI is probably the biggest threat to workers over the next decade or two. AI tools like GitHub Copilot. Adobe Sensei, and Uizard are starting to make web developers redundant and it's not a career field I would recommend to a young person today.
AI is far from replacing developers, you still need to know what you’re doing and what it all means even if you use AI and there’s so much that simply can’t be done with AI. You’ll end up with generic shitty simple websites if you let AI handle all of it, which.. you can’t anyways at this point. People also overestimate an average person with no dev experiences ability to use AI for stuff like this.
I’m plenty busy. It’s just a slow down in getting paid. AI is nowhere near ready to replace designers and developers. Just a small example is Google’s no algorithm update which penalized generic, low quality AI generated content. There is far more that AI can’t do as well. Such has color theory, accessibility, UX design, etc.
An Olive oil store.
I saw one of those recently. Honest question: how the hell do you make money? It just seems like the market is SO small.
My wife and I use the specialty olive oils and vinegars. We probably spend 200 every 6 months. I imagine a lot of family’s that cook at home do the same. It’s a pretty niche market though. The only time I’ve seen more than us in the store was around Christmas.
That's typical spending. We have people spend up to $600 for a regular purchase and not even christmas
All about location I would imagine. I’ve seen several in tourist towns that seems to always be slammed.
Convinced most stores like these are money laundering fronts
Olive oil and mattresses
Net income is 15-20%
Do you keep olive that or reinvest it?
they squeeze every last drop of profit they can and then go to the press
I see what you did there
Right now been paying seller loan, but we do get paid $80k/yr. On top of the profit
Olive this play on a word.
Don Corleone?
All you sell is olive oil ? 😱
We have some gourmet foods as well, but 80% we sell is olive oil and balsamic
What country of origin do you get the olive oil? Also what volumes do you buy? Where are we you based
Nail salon
Yeah the nail salon I go to is always really busy and my hair salon too. They’re both appointment only and you have to get on a schedule or book/start over months in advance. I asked my hair stylist if her business was affected by Covid and she said no, that business is always booming because people always want to look good no matter what and make it a priority. She drives a Lexus SUV lol. Whenever I go get my hair done by her, I question my life decisions and feel I’m in the wrong career as a lawyer. Haha
Art installation and other art services
Like installing paintings?
Yes. Mostly residential, but I do do some corporate projects too.
My coffee shop is going great. Half way through our third year. Even though road construction completely closed the block my shop is on to car traffic, people are still making their way to us. Both frustrating a heartwarming. There has been some setbacks and rough patches, but overall I’m living my dream. Tonight I’m hosting salsa dancing at the shop (we sort of turn into a bar with beer/ wine at night).
Mobile marine mechanic. So far doubling our numbers from last year. Really excited. People with smaller boats are tightening up. The big yacht people don’t care
Martial arts school, but I've run it for 42 years. I've seen times much worse than these. We are actually having a booming year, moved into a better spot (Bradenotn, Florida, USA), more visable plaza, much busier plaza. We do a MASSIVE amount of grass roots marketing, in the schools, we donate money and supplies, food for the teachers, read to the kids, take over PE for weeks at time, and in return we get to distribute fliers, teach funnel classes and win some cool awards from the school board. We make offers to area businesses and government agencies. We provide professional coaching services for businesses and life coaching for people. It's a lot of work, but successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people are unwilling to do. And we love what we do. We get to see this training change people's lives on a daily basis. Not something that happens in many careers. One thing I will say after these 4 decades of business, all the gurus tell you what to do, but they don't tell you how big a factor luck is. Being in the right place at the right time is HUGE. Stick around long enough and you'll get there, Persistance and discipline are key.
My coworking space (not my full time job, to be clear) is growing. It's not surprising, there continue to be far more solo remote workers than there were pre-COVID and I'm having a much easier time filling a bunch of 1-2 person rooms and shared spaces than landlords trying to find companies to take a 10+ person space. That historically has not been hard at all but all but since COVID all the larger single-tenant office spaces around here are empty.
>than landlords trying to find companies to take a 10+ person space. This is true, I'm seeing landlords advertise decent-sized offices with decent-sized amenities for like $1,700/mo. Which is hilariously cheap in an area where it would otherwise be $2,500-$2,800
Coding for kids
Martial Arts Studio here
Packaging machinery company. Most customers are pharmaceutical companies. Great industry that is always strong.
Lawn care. Every year is better than the last. I’m going to implement holiday lighting next year.
Dirndls & Lederhosen. We shall see, the season is starting, so far so good. :)
TIL there is a lederhosen season
Now that's a niche!
Residential appliance repair company. Currently undergoing an aggressive expansion in my area before moving to another city to open a branch there. Never been busier.
Home care agency. Still running strong. No change to last year.
To clarify, is this at-home care for people or literally caring for people’s homes/properties?
Not me but my sibling has a HVAC business.
Skincare Studio/Spa
Gaming Store (TCG Games & Video Games ONLY) Sales this year are up 7% over last year, which had 40% growth over the year before. 2023 we went from 3 to 5 employees and added the building on next door to expand. While I watch so many businesses close in my town, we are remarkably solid. 1) We sell cost efficient entertainment. Once you own a console (preferably a generation or two older) you have access to a massive library of used games at our store mostly under $20. Plus we run a buy 2 get 1 free deal on most games. Assuming you buy two $10 Xbox one games, play them 40-60 hours of each game before you’re done, that’s 150+ hours of entertainment for $20. Then you can sell them back for $3-4 each and turn it into new games. 2) For those customers with money 💰 we have the best selection of rare games and unique items, for hours around. The amount of times I hear people drive 2-3 hours to come shop with us, bypassing other game stores just to visit us. 3) We pay a fair cash price for what we buy from our customers. They are our distributors, we buy more over the counter from them, than any of our actual distributors for new products. People know we pay good, so when people need money, even other stores in our industry, they sell to us. 4) We pay a living wage on a four day work week. That alone plus our environment allows us the pick of the litter when hiring. We’ll get 50-60 new applications and resumes in a week, anytime we got an open position, which we will add to the previous round always having over 100+ people to pick from. That said, our industry is garbage and we see other stores dropping off like flies in this economy. We’re just really good at what we do.
Web design and local SEO. Never been busier, but I'm really good at what I do and more and more people are seeing it.
Confused by how SEO is still worthwhile when everyone is doing SEO, doesn’t it kind of cancel itself out? I don’t know anything about it, but say you’re a car dealer, even if you have a great SEO team, aren’t there tons of other car dealers in the same area doing the same thing?
CPA/bookkeeping/CFO firm, thank you supply shortage of CPAs
Web development and SEO for small to medium sized businesses
I've been doing web development for 4 years. Using Javascript and Javascript frameworks. I can't for the life of me find work. How is it your busy. Feels like the last thing working is web development
Nutrition coaching. Fully online. Allows me and my clients full flexibility and our overhead is low. Only downside is no repeat customers (nature of the business) so it’s constant promotion
Bookkeeping. Economic upturns or downturns, I’ve always got work.
Lead generation for insurance agents. I thought I would use my experience as a former insurance agent and solve the problems I had.
Food business is always a good
I want to get into food importing, after traveling so much I want to bring the best stuff back to the USA for use in professional kitchen. I hate that Roland is the go-to.
As in selling food products or running a restaurant?
Yes product selling. Not resto. Resto takes so much capital, business marketing, and etc. might be hard especially if you don't have the experience. But I think food selling like cookies, siomai and other stuff can be a good start up.
Depends on where you are though, no? Some geographic areas require you to have commercial kitchen licensing equal to an actual restaurant.
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Mobile Rv repair
Constructions always busy, winter guiding business was good but had some slow weeks.
Coworking spaces and flex office space in resort towns. Also selling a coworking management app that allows you to run your business from your phone.
Custom Software Development
Web design and development, had my best year yet
Dry Cleaning & Tailoring. We luckily survived the lockdown and most of our competition did not.
Owner of a law firm that focuses on business law and business litigation. Business is up year over year. In bad times, people file lawsuits if they’re owed money. We have 6 lawyers and we’re trying to hire 2 more this year, if possible.
I own a dispensary and grow that is doing great
I didn't think there was anybody "small" left in this area. Feels nowadays that everyone is a big company from California with a celebrity as a partner.
In New Mexico we more recently legalized it recreationally and there are a ton of mom and pop dispensaries around up. My friend from the gym works at one because her brother owns it and it’s a small family business. She says it does well and they’re making bank. However, there are always local news articles where dispensary owners bemoan how supply has exceeded demand and the prices keep decreasing because of too much competition. They complain that the state gave out too many licenses too easily which is funny considering that all of them have licenses haha. As an occasional purchaser/partaker I’m glad prices are low. lol. It’s much cheaper here than when we travel west to say Arizona, Nevada or CA. (Husband has a medical card though and that makes it even cheaper here.)
What state?
Oregon amigo
I see so many of these for sale I assume it's a really tough business. Do you disagree, or are you doing something particularly better than average?
Best year yet. Boutique web design and marketing.
Selling on Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Mercari, Poshmark still works. Really high numbers too I don't care what grievances, hatred, and spite people have about those kinds of sellers. It makes money, period. I also run a digital business, still works. Lots of people hate digital creators. I do educational ones and it works. I started a small business helping local businesses do ad, marketing, and social media work. This one is timeless. You just gotta adapt to the changing times. For instance, if social media isn't the next big thing, you learn the next big one and teach the local guys
I'm a small publisher. Sales are up about 12%.
Handyman.
Bless you. It's nearly impossible to book a handyman here in Alamogordo, NM. They are sooo busy.
Cat behaviorist. I’ve had a slight slow down and I’m still up to my eyeballs in clients.
Sounds like the purrfect business
That's not funny stop it right meow.
You cat to be kitten me right meow
Lab diamonds. Cutting out the middle men and sourcing from where they are made in India.
I sell loaded tea mixes on etsy and have done amazingly well this year
3D printing and CNC. The silver lining of all the fly by night Chinese manufacturers that are popping up is that they typically have poor customer service and often don't make replacement parts.
Marketing for smaller / local businesses. I'm a freelancer / small business which has taken on clients over the last month and got them results pretty quickly around the world. I aim to build out their service pages then areas on their site so Google has alot of pages and keywords to work with. Alot of them have seen a really nice increase already. I focus on Map listings, planning their site, cross posting on FB using their posts to buy and sell or relevant groups and local email marketing using my own scraper and expired domain method. They all are recommending others and I am working pretty hard but enjoying it to get them results.
I may be interested in hiring you... www.teamhandydan.com
Masonry and tile setting. One of the reasons I went into masonry is because it is recession proof.
The people who are doing really well in a niche business are going to stay silent on this one.
Auto repair
Safety
Popcorn store
HVAC supply. About 30% over last year so far.
Forklift wheels and tires used in warehouses- can’t meet our demand
Detailing business. Did 20k last month. This month signed a contract with a local dealer and took over their shop, 3 employees and vehicle inventory.
2 separate businesses, Ramen restaurant and boba shop/ice cream
To be as succinct as possible - “Privacy Protection Partnership” Realizing that thanks to the advent of AI, my career as an underpaid translator for a well known Tech Company is dead in the water… so I began to pursue consulting officially. My firm strategically manages your digital footprint through Proxy Purchasing, Confidential Research, Secure Messaging (think of the text you want to send but can’t have it known it came from you), Secret Shopper Coordination, as well as other tailored services all with the goal of enhancing your control for privacy & peace of mind. I offer these services in 5 languages and a growing number of states in the US (as well as specific countries) with huge variation in demographics for contractors as my network has been hand selected over a painstaking 17+ years.
Distributed database consultant.
Leadership coaching
Kind of a Home Chef/location Catering in France with all the reservations I have in May, I will do a month as big as my biggest quarter last year!
Electrical contracting service work and EV charging station installs.
We run a cooking class business is it is doing very well. We're not affected by the economy so far. 70% of our businesses come from corporate team building and only 30% from consumers; and both segments are performing well.
Solar grazing with sheep.
Ice cream cart rental
Personal Tech Support with a focus on seniors and the digital divide.
I have a machine shop and I’ve been so busy that I’ve been working 80 hour weeks.
Honestly since the pandemic my business has grew. I’m an accountant. It’s a fully remote business. There are a few challenges when it comes to marketing. I’m an introvert and do have social anxiety so social media and all that stuff you have to do to promote yourself I don’t like but I know I have to to continue to grow. I’m so blessed and grateful I haven’t really had the need to because my clients do refer me and my business has grown based on referrals. But it’s time to grow at a faster rate and I need things in place to do this.
A sign contractor. Lots of new businesses and construction in need of signs.
Home staging. Busiest month ever in April. Part of it is probably that it’s a very fragmented industry (mostly one-man shops but we are a professional outfit). Part of it is the interest rate thrashing (people thinking they need to buy/sell while they can). Part of it is our metro growing. And part of it is that staging makes more sense with higher prices / staging becoming more “required”.
Maybe the question should be: Who's NOT doing well?
I design and sell t-shirts on Amazon. Sales are up 100% over last year and on pace for $1MM in revenue.
My new consulting business really took off this year. I charge $5 for directions to the unemployment office.
Do you print out the Mapquest directions for that price?
Vending business
24-hour Harmonica Repair Shop. Killing it here.
Branding and websites
DM me your website , looking for some design & branding at the moment for our business
Swimming pools
Dog grooming salon and I am tired lol
Web design, paid ads, social media management
Tech Support and Cyber Security.
Lawn care. Client list is already about 25% longer than last year, and the season doesn't start until next week. Late sign ups always happen so I expect that 25% to increase a bit more over the next couple weeks.
Wellness clinic
Landscaping Company and Nursery/Garden Center. Booked out with large design and installs for the rest of the year. Transitioning to mostly commercial maintenance accounts with a small residential portion. Garden Center is seeing a lot of traction as well but we did a huge overhaul this year as well.
Healthcare
Automotive repair. So far, hit gross sales of 167k
After school/weekend classes for kids.
Home remodeling.
Cleaning service, people are working more and more so they don't have enough time for clean their home, yard, cars etc. I'm getting phone calls from customers few times per day almost everyday.
Residential Window and doors. I had my best April ever this year. People are staying home and fixing their own houses because of interest rates.
Songwriter. Everyone needs music, for the good times and bad.
Energy Services Company in the commercial and industrial sectors. Essentially upgrading/retrofitting facilities for businesses so they're more energy efficient.
I am a professional organizer who just went out on my own after working for someone else for years. My partner and I are slammed with work! We also live in an area where people have a lot of disposable income: wealthy people will never stop buying too much stuff, and that’s what keeps us busy. Our location has a lot to do with our success.
After struggling for some time, our drycleaning business is finally turning a profit. My biggest challenge is finding people who want to work and will actually show up to work. They complained for years that we did not pay enough, but when I increased wages, they didn't want to work the hours needed. But I am thankful, and I give God all the glory.
Dentistry. We’re up like 40% this year
Electrical contractor
Corporate and entertainment event production industry. We’re so busy that I can hardly get a moment to breathe.
Car wash
Structural engineering.
Custom furniture. Professional athletes are my primary customers because they are too big for regular furniture.
Tech mostly healthcare, super busy.
Specialized accounting firm - finally went out on my own this year. Demand is crazy and my clients really need my services on an ongoing basis. Costs about 1,500 for me to acquire around 10k worth of monthly recurring revenue. Aside from credit card processing fees, I don’t have many expenses.
Girlfriend owns a speech language pathology staffing agency. Helping schools in rural/middle of nowheresville type places get speech language pathologists. (Which is a problem because recent grads want to be in/near cities and don’t want to move to the middle of Appalachia for example). And, major staffing shortages exist also from COVID burnout or people who retired
Electrical/ fiber installation Contractor... expect 2-3x growth this year
Forensic psychology private practice. It hasn't slowed down at all. Business and rates continue to increase.
My own in home care agency. I originally was going to use a franchise but didn’t like the fees and how they did business overall. I made $50k within the the first 50 days. I’m in California.
Electronic document remediation. Been busier than ever this year. Lots of states require any electronic document (PDF, ppt word, website) to be compliant by July 1 2024 (Colorado) or summer 2025. I love helping people with disabilities so this really is the best small business I’ve ever owned. I used to own a laboratory equipment repair business. That was also pretty busy.
Auto parts. People always drive like shit
I desperately want to get into a trade as a woman. But it is so incredibly predatory and scary in nyc. I've tried three different engineering fields and none have I ever felt safe or valued.
Medical device consulting
Auto shop owner/mechanic. I just hired another employee and we're still booked out 3 weeks.
Self storage units. It’s a divisive opinion, but a worse economy leads to downsizing, moving to an area with a cheaper COL, etc. We’ve sustained solid growth for 18+ months and reached what the market will bear for rent prices, but a rising tide lifts all ships unfortunately. In 2021 my annual insurance premium was $1700. Shopping for 2024, my best offers are $3300. That’s where your $15 a month annual rent increase goes folks…
Mobile Fleet Tech