The Groundwork Starts Now - Part 2

Are you a self starter ?

Are you able to take the initiative and develop your ideas, on an independent level ? You will have to be self motivated and capable of acting decisively when necessary.

Relationship pressure

Handled correctly, a business venture can bring definite advantages to family relationships, but only if everyone is offering their support, its crucial that you have family backing, emotionally and through a more hands on approach. Will you have the backing you need ?

Financial insecurity

Starting your own business does involve financial risk, and even though that risk can be reduced considerably through proper research, its not all plain sailing, especially in the early stages. It’s a big jump going from paid employment, to being the boss of a sandwich bar, will you be able to handle that transition ?

Do you have a positive outlook ?

Its inevitable that you will encounter setbacks from time to time, can you bounce back ? or do you give up at the first sign of trouble ? You must have a positive outlook on life, to counteract the little knocks, if you haven’t got one, then get it ! Its not a hard skill to develop.

Do you like working with food ?

If you don’t have a genuine interest in the products you are selling, you are going to have a miserable business life, how will you maintain enthusiasm when you don’t really have any interest ? You might get by at first, but you will eventually grow to resent the business, hardly a great state of affairs.

Do you genuinely enjoy meeting people ?

The vast majority of your customers will be polite, friendly and pleasant people. Its only fair that you and your staff present a smiling warm personality in return, even if the grins do become a little fixed towards the end of a long day.

Putting customers at ease goes a long way to keeping them as long term customers, being moody is a guaranteed way to lose them.

Occasionally you will come across the dour unpleasant individual, and you will have to deal with it. You can’t afford to be unpleasant or aggressive in return, it presents a bad image to the other customers and your staff, it will also ruin your day.

A sandwich shop is a public facing business, if you don’t enjoy meeting or dealing with people one on one, you will struggle to keep your customers.

What are your managerial skills like ?

How will you cope with unexpected problems, or when something goes wrong ? Throw a tantrum ? Start screaming at anybody and everything ? Throw a wobbly, start panicking and run around in a confused manner ?

Some people do, and quite honestly I don’t know how their hearts handle it. Stress and pressure are a fact of life in the business world and you will encounter your fair share of it. You have to handle the stress and pressures of unexpected events in a calm manner. At first this can be difficult, but once you accept that few situations are likely to be catastrophic, it gets easier.

Staff phoning in sick, suppliers running short on stock, unexpected sales reps popping round, even the odd power failure. Sooner or later something will happen to upset the apple cart of your daily routine, you just have to live with it, its all part and parcel of running your own business’

To truly answer the questions raised in this section, you will have to study the sandwich business in reasonable detail, then you will form a realistic picture of what it would be like to run your own shop. The best way to do this is by carrying out some serous legwork, which is explained in the next section.

Next