Common Mistake #2

Over the years I have seen many business owners fail because they never thought about “How much could they POSSIBILITY net”; if the business was operating at its peak?

What is the potential of the business you want to open?

Who are your competitors?

Why would your customer choose you over your competitor?

These are a few of the basic questions to have written answers before you decide on opening a business.

More to Come—

Common Mistake—–#1

One of the most common mistakes a new business owner will make is to open a Retail Take Out business, whether it’s a Donut shop or a take out Pizza business in a location where the other businesses use the parking spots for long appointments.

Take out requires ample parking for the customer to get in and out quickly. Professional Offices, Hair Salons customers require longer parking.

Before you choose your next location, evaluate the location as to how much drive by traffic there is as well as how much parking is available for overall Customer parking and how long the average person parks.

If the Strip Mall is small and the other tenants require long parking time for their Customers, pass the location up–move on to a better location for your business.

You cannot made a good decision, not on a personal level, nor on a business level while your mind is “chattering”. Creative answers come about when your mind is quiet. I used to teach this simple mind quieting technique.Practice this every day.

Set a timer to 20 min. at the beginning. When you become experienced you’ll be able to get to your quiet place much quicker. 

Sit down in a straight chair

Close your eyes

Take several deep breathes

With your eyes closed, follow your breath as you breathe the air in and out through your nose.

As you breath in–think I AM

As you breath out–think RELAXED

Keep this up breath in–I Am

Breath out–Relaxed

If thoughts come into your mind–see the thoughts drift away–like a fluffy cloud

Don’t hang on to any thought–after a while you will think you’ve been asleep, however, you aren’t–you are in your quiet center.

If there is a particular situation you want an answer to,as to what you should do, etc you can mentally take that into your mind before you start the process. You will find many ideas you never thought of before. It’s a good idea to write down your thoughts, images afterwards. You’ll learn a lot.

ARE YOU ABLE TO JUGGLE ALL THE TASKS OF AN ORGANIZATION, EVEN IF YOU ARE 1 PERSON? You need to be able to handle all of the following things:

Long Range Planning
Organizational details
Marketing
Advertising
Financial systems
Interviewing personnel

Owning a Small Business can be an exciting, challenging, and rewarding experience, however, it is a different world than the work world you’ve known.

• Your employer downsized -your position was outsourced?
• Tired of taking orders?
• Disenchanted with making money for someone else?
• Frustrated by having your ideas ignored, or worse, having someone else   take credit for the best of them?
• Getting no satisfaction from your job?
• Feeling that your future is in someone else’s hands?

I’m sure that most of you have read in business articles that a person considering business ownership should have 6 months of savings for personal expenses before they go into business.

Faulty Thinking: The person who still thinks of him/herself as “The worker” ignores that and thinks that they can use the “profit” to pay their bills.

Realty: Every new business is a start-up. Start-up business’ are infants. Can you imagine an infant capable of supporting an adult and adult needs? You can see that would be impossible. Profit in the first year is an illusion. Any “profit” needs to be kept in the business, otherwise the business cannot grow. If the business cannot grow–the business dies.

As a business person, your thinking has to change and your viewpoint needs to look at the situation as if you were above the “tree top”, not from “ground level”. The employee needs only to look at the job and their personal life. When you are a business owner, you have “the business”. That is more than your job.

Many of the new business owners come to business ownership for the wrong reasons and they are the people that NEVER should be in business for themselves. ALL THEY KNOW IS THEIR TECHNICAL AREA AND THEY DON’T WANT TO LEARN ANYTHING MORE.