Hi everyone! I’ve just filed my first LLC & am planning to open a vintage boutique in my city- I’m completely new to owning a legitimate business of my own. I thought this would be a great question to ask as I know I’ll be making many mistakes in my first year of business.
Please feel free to comment your favorite mistake!
Do your due diligence and market research.
Even if the market is saturated, do it anyway; don’t let the idea of competition prevent you from starting your business. Who cares if there’s millions of independent cafes/bars/toy shops/clothing brands/etc; add one more and give people another option.
BUT
If you want your business to thrive, make sure you do your research; study your intended customers and the market. Get to know your business intimately.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. The longer you hesitate, the longer it will take you to achieve your goals; why wait?
Thank you, I needed this. I was scared to take the leap for so long and now I’m just thinking of how far I would be now if I had done it sooner.
Yes! Absolutely dive in! But be smart about it too. Don’t just blow 100k on inventory and then not know how to sell it haha
That’s why you need to do your research; but depending on your business, you may not have a lot of startup costs; like, my business is a production company. I already had the majority of tools and equipment from previous work and schooling, so I had little startup costs; so it was easy to jump on in.
Some more advice: sometimes you need to just do it in order to research and understand how running a business works. So I recommend you start in an “experimental” phase. Give yourself a solid timeline to learn and try things out. Give yourself objectives you want to learn, and then a timeline of when you want to learn it by; what information/experience you want to get from it.
Thank god for this subreddit. And thank you for taking the time to give out some advice to a newbie.