Tips to Opening a Successful Business

Everyone has heard or seen the stats that every year about 50,000 new business get opened and that 5 years from that date only 5,000 of them are open. Everyone has a good idea or a great recipe that they feel they can create a business around, but there is so much more to it then just a great idea. I am going to give you some of the top tips you can use to make sure you are part of the 5,000 and not the other 45,000. First, the most important concept in opening a business is no secret to anyone, location. When you hear people say location, location, location, there is a reason. Certain business will work in certain areas, and vice versa. Also you need to make sure you understand the demographic of the community and area you will be opening your restaurant. For example, I live in a smaller community with about 35,000 total people. There are your typical fast food restaurants, Mcdonalds, Burger King, and Tim Hortons. When Starbucks decided it was time to move in they were extremely unsuccessful. Our community is not willing to support a high end, corporately ran, coffee shop, when 1 mile down the road there is a cheaper more community based coffee stop. Another problem a lot of the business that fail run into is bad financial planning. When opening a restaurant you better have it planned that you will be able to take a few financial hits for the first year or so. Every store will not have a line of people waiting to come in when you first open. Everything takes time these days, and you better be willing to tough out a few bad times to be able to see the good. Finally the most important aspect I feel many do not understand about opening a new business is loss of time. If you plan on opening and running a successful business you better understand that you will be loosing lots of personal time. Your life from that point on will be directed at that business. If opening a successful restaurant, you have to be willing to be open and working on the days the rest of the city is not. When holidays come around and people are off of work, you better be there, because they are looking for somewhere to go and you want to be that option. It takes a while to build a customer base, but it can all be lost very fast. It only takes one bad experience or one better experience at a different restaurant to make them not come back to yours.