Business Opportunities Weblog

Entrepreneurship Can Ruin Your Life

By on January 2, 2006 in Uncategorized

Scene from a coffee shop. Photo by pussnboots.

Be optimistic, but careful. Starting a new business is hard work and fraught with danger and unforeseen consequences. See this interesting article in Slate about what happened to two people who started a coffee shop and had it destroy their lives:

The failure of a small cafe is not a question of competence. It is a sad given. The logistics of a food establishment that seats between 20 and 25 people (which roughly corresponds to the definition of “cozy”) are such that the place will stay afloat—barely—as long as its owners spend all of their time on the job. There is a golden rule, long cherished by restaurateurs, for determining whether a business is viable. Rent should take up no more than 25 percent of your revenue, another 25 percent should go toward payroll, and 35 percent should go toward the product. The remaining 15 percent is what you take home. There’s an even more elegant version of that rule: Make your rent in four days to be profitable, a week to break even. If you haven’t hit the latter mark in a month, close.

via Business Pundit Rob.

Photo by pussnboots.

entrepreneurial lifestyle planning

Business Opportunities Weblog editor and publisher Dane Carlson lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, just 15 miles from Yosemite National Park. He accidentally became a professional blogger in 2001. He has added 12,208 posts to the site.

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  • http://benmarvin.blogspot.com Ben Marvin

    I’ll wait till I’m independently wealthy. Then open a coffeeshop just for fun.

  • http://addfinances.blogs.com/ Adult ADD and Money ( John MacKenzie)

    They lasted four months and complained because they had to actually work. The truth is that they didn’t even love the business, they viewed themselves as “coffee slingers”. Without the passion everything is doomed to fall apart.