The pawnshop has been steady for the thirty years I've had it. I do some fine tuning dependent on economic conditions in my town but the cash flow has always worked out.
But thinking of selling out, I'll be 62 this year. Perhaps not the easiest business in the world to find a buyer.
Jim

Slow growth in most of businesses. Growth accelerating in print publications and exploding in educational publishing with the advent of iPads in schools. It's going to be huge.

I am in Oregon. We found recovery a lot later than most of the country. Now? Building is almost booming. A lot of other sectors are doing well - not all. My business? I am up 10% over last year just in the first 5 months. I have big expectations for 2014.

Larry

I'm selling Hosted Phone and IT solutions and our fastest growing client base are Insurance Agencies. We could be busier but currently experiencing serious growing pains as I've come in and begun to sell more than can be delivered.

I'm currently working with two Insurance clients to build additional call centers that will support over 500 individuals combined.

I work in Diagnostic Imaging (sales). Once the place to be. No more. Brutal market conditions, administrative oversight (MITA, GPO's, etc), and fewer $ to go around.

Was fun at one time. Miss those days and still 10 years until retirement. Starting to understand why guys my age buy Jiffy-Lubes.

Medical imaging. Patient numbers are down, reimbursements are down. Did I mention down. Little growth. Fortunately I have enough experience and connections that I have survived by taking less money and waiting for the rise that is expected with the aging population.

I'm in the motion pic/TV biz and we have seen a lot of changes in the last decade. The way shows and films are produced and the way they are distributed is a complete 180 from a decade ago. With social media, Netflix, Amazon and everyone else jumping into the fray, there is a lot more production but less money to produce the product (below the line at least).

Add to that so many states (and countries) having experienced manufacturing and other industries moving overseas, they have turned to film production as their new found money source. Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina have become "The New Hollywood" offering tax incentives to lure production to their state, not only hiring film crews but also pumping millions of dollars into the support services (restaurants, dry cleaners, florists, caterers, building materials, stage space, etc.).

You have to be able to change and adapt to stay viable. I have friends who used to make a very good living doing special efx makeup and prop fabrication that have lost their livelihood to CGI and visual efx houses. These in turn have moved offshore (Korea, China) along with the animation houses. It truly has become a global industry. Only one film nominated for best picture this year was shot in Hollywood. HughR can probably fill you in a little more of how much these producers "save" when filming in a state or country with tax incentives, most of the savings go right back into their pockets as a "bonus" and we are talking millions of dollars.

Of course some can only get their project "greenlighted" if they can get the budget low enough, and this usually means shooting somewhere other than So. Cal. In fact, I'll be spending some time in Atlanta helping to set up a prop house (there are a few from LA who are already there) just to pick up other forms of revenue. Change or die (that seems to be the battle cry, along with "just be lucky you have a job").

The internet has truly changed everything.

I am in the aerial mapping business. We used to get good money to fly a county or a city. Now both Google earth and Bing give away free high quality imagery right on the internet. The one thing they don't provide is any level of promised accuracy.

On a daily basis we have companies in India call us wanting us to outsource the mapping work to them. They can do it fast and cheap. We prefer to keep our own people employed. The BIG companies all outsource the jobs to be win the contract on price. They provide a final product cheaper than our cost.

We keep our little niche and keep making a profit but the internet and global have changed everything.

We design/build/install custom machinery - primarily for manufacturing. A lot of our focus is food production.

Since the big plunge (which hurt us, but we got through mostly on service work) the big difference seems to be a lot more competition. We used to bid against one or two other companies on a given job - now customers get lots of bids.

Last year was actually pretty good as far as volume of work, but marginss were down.

This year is really tough. We are quoting a lot of work and reaching out to new customers, but we don't seem to be winning many bids.

I personally tend to do the weirder, more research/analysis intensive work. That's still OK so far (it seems like we don't have a lot of direct competition for the work where the engineering is difficult). For the guys here who mosty do conveyors, machinery skids and the like - times are pretty scary.

The food producers are consolidating. Pharma seems to be pushing as much as possible offshore. Other sectors vary by industry, but there isn't a lot of big capital investment in manufacturing right now.

Interesting you say this. My wife and daughter are in medical imaging. There was a bit of a scramble as Obamacare kicked in and a lot of patients changed coverage plans, but things have settled down and my wife even found a mobile imaging niche that is working very well. They are adding two more mobile rigs this year.

I am in a similar niche as your wife as I work part time as a contract employee between two offices. This was out of necessity because of a shrinking market unable to support two full time employees. THis could be why your wifes mobile business is growing as practices realize the cost savings of mobile. Its the direction of nuclear at the moment. I am encouraged however as one of my docs plans to build a PET cardiology imaging suite and this will be a huge boost.

Here in Los Angeles, mobile imaging is doing just OK. They still have the long term care facility and sub-acute clients, but reimbursements have been cut significantly by Medicare and the CA Blues. Many of the big hospital systems here are going after the out-patient imaging. The bricks and mortar imaging centers are in a death spiral. The hospitals are buying up physician practices left and right, taking the referrals away from the independent imaging centers. It's tough for an ortho, surgeon, OBGYN, etc to send patients outside the hospital system without some type of disciplinary action (-$$$).

Meh, not great. In medicine, so like everyone else said. Lots of people putting off elective things, people not paying their very high deductibles, uninsured. We keep taking pay cuts to keep from having to sell to a hospital system.

I feel like I'm 25 all over again and not the fun part of women and late parties. I can have all the work in the world right now if I'm willing to take huge responsibilities, make lots of money for my investors, and take the crumbs left on the floor.

Back to being 25, I'm thinking of getting a law degree or becoming a psychologist, I know crazy different but I have an interest in both.

My field is labor intensive and the margins keep shrinking. I read through your responses and it seems that it's universal that margins are getting tighter.

I wonder if there are any therapists on this site, I don't know much about it. Prior to getting my masters, I did a semester of clinical psych but then decided to chase money. My undergrad is also in clinical psych.

Keep on sending support to the WBDT.

I'm hurting, things are slow ,but it's not hot yet.

Funny thing Rusty...

I'm 28 and just made a call this morning to pull myself out of the interview process for a sales role at a $7B distribution company. Been there, sold millions, made about $75k for my efforts, and decided to stick with the 5 person business where I am.

I've been in both camps over the years. I have always found the smaller, more nimble organizations to be much more gratifying for me. Currently, I am working for one of the larger cloud providers in the industry. I got there through a series of acquisitions. Even though the "cloud" is where it is at, it ain't all roses. There are continual pressures on margins and they get thinner everyday.

A smaller organization may be in my future plans as I have always found them fulfilling.

I'm two years into our retail design start-up and we are the busiest we've been, with a significant amount of work coming our way. A major problem we're facing is finding the right help. Could use 2-3 "t-shaped" intermediate designers to bridge the gap between myself and the younger staff but finding good help is a challenge given our work. Good problem to have I suppose...

Business is slow to declining. Work in the Midwest has not recovered, or is leaving. I have to move to Florida to stay in my field. hear Texas and Florida are doing well.

A 3M competitor just moved their HQ to Ireland to save on taxes. As we increase taxes for Insert your politics bent here firms will move out of the country to save a buck.

My "business" is government (DoD); we've been hit very, very hard. Huge cutbacks, vital programs scrapped, forced furloughs. I'm currently working three completely different full-time positions that were at one point done by 6 people, plus the side projects that they "need" my expertise help with. And we're not looking to hire anyone. My (former) boss's position, and his boss's position (both retired) have been vacant for over 6 months now, with no hiring actions being released. It's very tight times for the DoD, but we're still kicking along doing what needs to be done. Requirements have not lessened at all, just the people needed to do the work. Our organization within DoD (a somewhat large one) lost over 1500 people last year (contractors and government) through forced attrition, and we're looking to cut another 1200 this year.