Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There is a large leap of faith that the customers would continue with a new owner. Would you buy a babysitting service? Unless you plan to grow the business and expand it to include office staff and other dog walkers, you don't really have a business to buy.
1. Dog dies, job over. Can't walk what no longer exists! Think about that, could you bring that contract into court if the dog died? Would a business expect to continue services in this situation?
Dog dying doesnt cease a contract for payment. How can you claim to run a business and not know that..
Only the signing party ceases a contract..
if you sign a 1 year lease with me to rent an apartment and your spouse dies, dog dies etc, and you have to move out, this doesnt mean I cant sue you for the balance of the year. The dog walker budgets their yearly expenses and obligations based upon that contract, and a dog dying, doesnt stop them from suing to be paid, even though performance cant be completed. just because you cant continue services, this doesnt mean you havent put out expenses like buying food, leashes and thus allowed to be compensated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by City Guy997S
2. This is not an investment with 0 labor......
yes I know, thats the point, so calculating it as if it was, (which is what you are doing) is ridiculous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by City Guy997S
3. In your bars/restaurants/hotel......did the clients have contracts with you to patronize your establishments?
Of course not, but they did have employees which ran the businesses for me thus allowing me to profit from others labor, again, which I covered here previously.
They also had tangable assets, alcohol, property, (the hotel actually did have a contract for customers, since it was a chain) etc..
its not a dog walking business where the sole source of income relied upon my labor.
There is a large leap of faith that the customers would continue with a new owner. Would you buy a babysitting service? Unless you plan to grow the business and expand it to include office staff and other dog walkers, you don't really have a business to buy.
Thats actually a fair comparison, to which of course the answer is no..
Unless of course that baby sitting service was to contract others out to do the baby sitting, thus the baby sitter wouldnt change, and I was profiting from someone elses labor.
a lot of times when we buy a business what we are doing is buying a job that hopefully pays us. the op is buying a job. how much a year does the dog walker make is the first question. how many dogs a day can she walk and what does she charge. she can't walk all day so the income is limited. does she walk 5 at a time, 2 at a time or only one. some dogs won't walk with others or don't live close enough to make it worthwhile. just because people in the neighborhood like the op and the dog walker doesn't mean the "business" is worth much of anything. I wouldn't pay more than 500 bucks.
I dont think I'd offer anything, but would extend a hand to take over the business..
Here is the thoughts
Are the customers on a contract? if not, there are no values in them, even if they continue to be customers, you need to extend labor, in exchange for payment. Its not like there is some inherant value in walking dogs.
And if they are contracted, who are they with? The sellers? The company? under what terms? What if they decide the new "buyer" isnt qualified to walk their dog or take their business elsewhere?
Ok, the website might hold some value, but that really depends on the domain name. For the most part, I doubt people paying a dog walker care if there is a website or not. Most clients are probably brought in by word of mouth or local advertising, and thus as the seller moves away, whats to come of the word of mouth?
Bingo, youre not actually "buying" anything but the hopes that the customers will continue to use you. You aren't even buying clients because there aren't any contracts. You could literally hand her a check, show up on day 1, and the clients all changed companies because they have no idea who you are. There are no assets here earning you money either, its just your time and effort. You could go on craigslist and seek out new clients easily, what if it only took her a month to build up this client base, is that worth you shelling out cash?
Dog dying doesnt cease a contract for payment. How can you claim to run a business and not know that..
Only the signing party ceases a contract..
if you sign a 1 year lease with me to rent an apartment and your spouse dies, dog dies etc, and you have to move out, this doesnt mean I cant sue you for the balance of the year. The dog walker budgets their yearly expenses and obligations based upon that contract, and a dog dying, doesnt stop them from suing to be paid, even though performance cant be completed. just because you cant continue services, this doesnt mean you havent put out expenses like buying food, leashes and thus allowed to be compensated.
yes I know, thats the point, so calculating it as if it was, (which is what you are doing) is ridiculous.
Of course not, but they did have employees which ran the businesses for me thus allowing me to profit from others labor, again, which I covered here previously.
They also had tangable assets, alcohol, property, (the hotel actually did have a contract for customers, since it was a chain) etc..
its not a dog walking business where the sole source of income relied upon my labor.
1. Once the dog dies or the person moves.......the contract is over, nothing to service......You could argue that the dog walker needs to come to the owner's new house in Cleveland too! Contract states you will walk the dog, move to Cleveland and walk my dog then!.....ridiculous, huh?
2. In the apartment analogy- person dies, contract over, re-rent to someone else. Of course if the deceased has assets then you could sue the estate but that would be a longshot.......
3. Tangible assets could be "leashes, dog waste bags" in this business too! Yet, once again not a lot of value.
This business has some value (not a lot) but the absence of written contracts doesn't make it worthless.
1. Once the dog dies or the person moves.......the contract is over, nothing to service......You could argue that the dog walker needs to come to the owner's new house in Cleveland too! Contract states you will walk the dog, move to Cleveland and walk my dog then!.....ridiculous, huh?
Wrong.. The fact that the owner moves wouldnt cease a contract unless the contract stipulated that it would.
its no different than having a 2 year cell phone contract with a termination fee. If you move, outside the service area, this isnt the cell phone companies fault and thus you need to pay the fee.
The dog dying, still wouldnt cease a contract unless the contract stipulated that it would.
The dog walker would budget and anticipate revenues and the dog dying, doesnt mitigate liabilities of the dog owner, again, unless the contract states the contract is void upon the dogs death.
The dog didnt sign the dam contract, the owner did.
if I sign my daughter up for gymanstics, and pay the fee, if she dies tonigh tonight a car accident, the gymanstics place doesnt owe me a refund for her not going.
Quote:
Originally Posted by City Guy997S
2. In the apartment analogy- person dies, contract over, re-rent to someone else. Of course if the deceased has assets then you could sue the estate but that would be a longshot.......
First, the person who signed the contract didnt die in my scenario, it was a person who resided with them, but even if the person dies, you very well can sue the estate and recover losses for lost rent.
Where did you learn that liabilies are forgiven upon someones death? I've never heard such hogwash.
Quote:
Originally Posted by City Guy997S
3. Tangible assets could be "leashes, dog waste bags" in this business too! Yet, once again not a lot of value.
the dog walker would have scheduled time to walk those dogs, financed debt and other assets using the accounts receivables from the dog walking. The very same thing you argued with me a few postings ago held value, now you are claiming doesnt.. Which is it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by City Guy997S
This business has some value (not a lot) but the absence of written contracts doesn't make it worthless.
Thats not what I said.. I said if the contracts are with the seller, they would be worthless because a transfer of the business, would void those contracts because the buyer wouldnt have any, while the seller, would still be liable to walk the dogs. (edit, technically they wouldnt be void, they would be voidable).
Once again, you just cant assign contracts unless there is a clause in the contract to do so.
I've never had a need to pay for an attorney, and I hope that I never find myself in such a position. I once "lent" a boyfriend $4000 when I was 18. It was ALL the money I made working tables that summer. And as you can imagine, I never got it back.... It was a lesson learned....
I am back at home now. I helped my friend clean her house for a couple hours before the realtor came to take pictures for listing tomorrow. She sent me information for 2 clients. I've been in contact with both of them this afternoon and hoping to set up some times to meet and greet this weekend. I will be shadowing my friend throughout the coming week and she'll be making introductions. I am taking this step by step. I'm not going to project success or failure. My friend seems pretty overwhelmed just in what's going on that I'm not sure she's even going to be in a position to negotiate. I'll play along for now. I'm still not even sure I want to be committed to this and at least this is giving me an idea of what I'm willing to balance.
This is NOT a business... it's a personal service.
There are no assets to sell (even a list of people that trust your friend)
Somewhat agree but even contacts have value. I just paid $250 for a list of a competitors customers names, emails, phone numbers, etc who went out of business. In all honesty I overpaid but considering he wanted thousands up front I knew I would get a very low return rate as a stranger contacting these people trying to win their business but paid $250 knowing I'd at least get one customer and make my money back or at the very least spready my name and brand.
As far as whether this is a business or not, well yes it's a business, I imagine she has soem best practices, accounting system, contacts for insurance and bonds, so there is something there to jump start the new owners, however that said if the OP were to go start her own dogwalking business from scratch she could come up with policices and find an insurance company herself and there's really no inventory or nothing of tangible value being bought so it's a very low value business.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
