Howdy,
I'm hitting a crossroads in my business, where it's either time double down and grow or stay where I'm at. I'm coming up on three years in business, was profitable last year in my second year. Currently doing a little north of half a million or so in sales a year. I'm working on securing a larger shop, which is step one, unfortunately my house burned down a few months back and I'm being told not to borrow any large amounts of money before we start/complete building our new house or it could screw with the financing process. My dads willing to buy the shop for me and rent it to me, with him eventually flipping it when I move on to a bigger shop of my own in the next few years.
One thing I'm needing help on is cash flow, everything I do on paper I show I'm making a 30-40% profit margin, but it just seems like it's money in/money out lately and I think it's because my first year I took a loss on a lot of what I did just trying to get my name out there, I dipped into deposits then, and it got me in a hole. I've since started taking way less of a deposit to avoid this happening, and I've been slowly working my way out of the hole I got into.
Any business advisors on this board who'd be willing to just chat with me? I'm in the process of building for a customer with a large presence, whose going to promote their pit for me on their social media platforms. So I feel this pressure to have a plan in place before this stuff all drops and my waiting list goes to two years again.
Any advice would be appreciated.


I'm hitting a crossroads in my business, where it's either time double down and grow or stay where I'm at. I'm coming up on three years in business, was profitable last year in my second year. Currently doing a little north of half a million or so in sales a year. I'm working on securing a larger shop, which is step one, unfortunately my house burned down a few months back and I'm being told not to borrow any large amounts of money before we start/complete building our new house or it could screw with the financing process. My dads willing to buy the shop for me and rent it to me, with him eventually flipping it when I move on to a bigger shop of my own in the next few years.
One thing I'm needing help on is cash flow, everything I do on paper I show I'm making a 30-40% profit margin, but it just seems like it's money in/money out lately and I think it's because my first year I took a loss on a lot of what I did just trying to get my name out there, I dipped into deposits then, and it got me in a hole. I've since started taking way less of a deposit to avoid this happening, and I've been slowly working my way out of the hole I got into.
Any business advisors on this board who'd be willing to just chat with me? I'm in the process of building for a customer with a large presence, whose going to promote their pit for me on their social media platforms. So I feel this pressure to have a plan in place before this stuff all drops and my waiting list goes to two years again.
Any advice would be appreciated.

