So you want to start a business. Some pitfalls I've seen.

I wanna give a bit of background before I say this. I didn't go to college for business, the closest thing I have to a business is a functioning customer base with commissions which - actually yeah that's sort of a business so okay. But forget that, let's just forget that.

Over the years I've been recruited into several different business start up plans and they've always failed. I don't know if everyone gets a call whenever someone they even vaguely know wants to begin a start up or if I'm just special, but it happens regularly enough that a not so insignificant amount of my time over the past year has been wasted helping others work out ideas that will never work.

I can't tell you how to run a successful business, if I knew I'd have ran a start up myself and made tons.

What I can do is tell you some of the reasons I've seen business start ups fail so you don't make the same damn mistakes.

1. Not having a fucking clue how to do what you're planning.
I appreciate that you know a guy who does know the ins and outs of the thing you want to do/create (normally me somehow) and I even appreciate that you respect I know what I'm doing. But I'm not going to make your dreams come true all on my own. No one can do that. If they could, their own dreams would have come true by now.

If you want to start a business by inventing a product and marketing that product, you need to figure out how to make it, how it works, why it works, what it is supposed to do, and why people would buy it before you ever even think of trying to hire someone. Especially if you're not gonna pay them.

Because they're not gonna do it for you. At best they'll take your schematics, learn them, and improve on them. That's an actual tangible job someone can do to help you be successful.

2. Using gratitude and fondness to use your friends as unpaid interns.
I'm sorry dude but I don't care how awesome your sales pitch sounds if I'm not getting paid for my time I'm putting in almost no effort into doing it. I'll get it done if you're important to me, but as the work piles up my motivation is going to sink.

It doesn't matter how much I love you, gratitude is forgotten fast when I'm spending time I need to be making money on nothing.

By using your friends as unpaid interns not only do you get really sloppy work at a snails pace but you kill your relationship with your friends. This is a super temporary solution and that means before you even think of including your friends in your start up idea you need to know exactly what needs to be done to jumpstart this business.

Your friends want to help you, they're your friends for a damn reason. But before you rely on them you need to know how to make their time worthwhile in the near future or you will fail.

3. Not having a gameplan.

Look it's super easy to wake up and say "I'm gonna start a business."
It's another to balance your books. Find out what upkeep you're going to have, what upkeep you currently have. Figure out how much money you need to make to offset that, how much money you need to spend initially to gain products to sell, how well they're gonna sell, who your demographic is, how you're going to market yourself.

Did you know a middle class restaurant can cost $250,000 USD to start and takes over a year to even begin to make money after all costs are considered?

Did you know that most failed restaurants fail within the first year?
I wonder if those two facts are connected?

If you don't know what you're doing before you take the first step you will fail, everyone involved will fail, and you will lose your credibility in an instant.

Feel free to ask someone to help you figure this stuff out, but do it before you hire a damn person.

Also, seriously. If you can afford to start a business, you can afford to pay your friends.

I'm sorry it's just not for the poor, me included.

4. Not familiarizing yourself with the market enough.

It's really cool that you made 200,000 T shirts but were you aware that it's sweater season?
Also that character you just made them for is going to be so last season by the time anyone is buying your damn Tee.

This is a pretty extreme case but seriously, if you don't know your market you can't sell anything.

As a business you do in fact need to sell something. Whether they be your services, your merchandise, your expertise, or anything really. To make money you are going to have to convince someone to give you money.

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Okay, rant over. Was that useful and informative for anyone? No? Oh well.

 

So this is going to, uh, be an extremely "upper end of middle class white guy" thing to say, but....

Isn't all of that just... common sense?

 

Not if you gone through the American education system, which really doesn't bother to teach common sense or critical thinking these days...

 

You would think so.
But apparently not. Given I'm not exaggerating I have legitimately seen three start ups fail this very year for those exact reasons. All of which wanted me on the ground floor like I'm some kind of fucking genie.

No! Obviously I'm not or I'd be rich not scrounging for cash and spending most of my free time commission writing!

In fact, yesterday I had an "interview" with someone who legitimately didn't know what they were trying to recruit me for. I'm just not gonna count it and hope they get it together and figure things out but I basically told them that until they have a plan set up and a way to pay me I'm not involving myself.

 

Interesting, thanks.
Was looking for business themed fic's but oh well

 

As I heard (second hand) from a person who did outparcel leasing for one of Richmond's shopping malls:

"You want to start a restaurant? Pay me $100k, and then go slam your head in a door for a few minutes every day for a week. That approximates the authentic experience of starting one, except it is cheaper, hurts less, and is over faster. If you still want to continue next week, come back and we'll talk."

Even the people who manage reasonably successful ones don't want to keep them, as most change hands in 5-10 years anyway.

 

Or, put it another way, “the easiest way to make a small fortune is to invest a large fortune in a restaurant.”