Has anyone started their own business? Can you say how it went good or bad, and just the overall experience, i’m sure everyones experiences won’t be the same but anyway…
Me and some friends have always planned to open a bar when we got older, but i’ve been thinking, why not try to do it now?
I’m 26 and super bored with my current job, really i’m bored with life overall and am trying to do something about it. I’m going with the ‘do something you love and you won’t ever actually work’ motto. I know it’s not that easy to just think that this will make me happy but that’s besides the point.
I just wanna hear some ideas and thoughts on the subject, I don’t think i will get too many good responses but i’ll give it a shot anyway.
No, i would get huge loans, and i know even this is not that simple at all.
I’m willing to make huge sacrifices to get it going though, I don’t have much of a life right now, so this would be my life. I would work 12+ hour days 7 days a week if i had to, and would plan for it to be just me and my 2 freinds working all the time, no hired workers at the start. If it would fail then it would be our failure, but at least we tried eh.
I’m freelancer, and I’ve started a couple of online businesses.
3 things that will need above all else is
Organization,
Thorough understanding of your business’s finances, be able to tell the difference from you net profit and your gross profit, overheads, how to fill in a tax return etc.
I’d say go for it but only if you’re a) truly ready to work hard and b) not afraid to fail. It’s a very real possibility. Find a good spot, not near too many well-established bars. Make sure the neighbourhood’s good and has people of the right age (that bar next to the retirement home suburb won’t do all that well) and get started. Good luck.
I think every guy has that dream of opening a bar some day. Good luck, I would do what you can to control inventory and stop employee theft, that’s probably going to be where you will end up losing the most money.
I have about 67 businesses in my portfolio [mostly internet, a couple brick and mortar and they are franchises]. The trick is to not get involved in them. Learn how to delegate, trust other people to a certain extent. Don’t waste your time doing things other people can. Don’t get emotionally attached. I love horror movies and ran a semi popular hd-dvd/blu ray website, but as most people in internet marketing know there’s not really any money to be made in movie websites. It was still generating about 1.1k/month and I was getting tons of free stuff, but paying someone to run it was more than that and running it myself it ended up taking up too much of my time so I just unloaded it to some random guy for a huge profit and now it looks like it’s been down for a month so who knows. You really gotta sell high and get out.
If you’re just going to open one business and run it for life then it’s different. Harder IMO. Too many ups and downs you can’t control and then you become dependent on that money to survive. I wouldn’t recommend it.
If it costs 100k to get a bar up and running you would be better off opening 20 smaller businesses with a 5k budget each. Some will fail, some will be profitable, and maybe 1 or 2 will make more money than all of the others combined by a lot. Keep some, sell others and just start over again. Highlight too is you don’t have to be stuck in one place. Since almost all my businesses are online I can work from the road or in any state. If you buy a bar you’re basically telling yourself I’m going to live here for the rest of my life and I’ll never be able to take a vacation.
Yeah i would def do a ton of research on location as i think that’s one of the most important necessities to a succesful bar/lounge/club. I would be aiming to start up up a really chill loungey type of bar but im afraid that it wouldn’t attract your avg person so that scares me some, that being said, I’m kind of surprised at how few loungey type of places Houston has, so that’s a plus.
Like i said, i wanna attract a certain type of person, that isn’t your avg loud-bar going person…i need to try and find a middle ground of having my lounge distinct from most other avg bars yet open enough as to where not ONLY a certain type of person will go either. It’s a simple concept i know, but obv this is very important as well.
I understand what you mean, but i wouldn’t expect this to be much of a problem as like i said, we would only start off with 3 or 4 partners/workers who are life long friends. We would all have a lot to lose by stealing (see: drinking) our own inventory.
Hmm, i’m not a business type of person, so opening up 10, 20, 30+ businesses is out of the question, props to you though.
I see your points, but in this instance I would fall into the one business category. I understand it’s kinda putting all your eggs in one basket, but i think that’s the risk that needs to be made when opening up a place like a bar/restaurant/club/etc. Thx for the tips tho.