<p>Before I go down this path, I first need to make sure that I have what it takes to start my own business. Searching on the internet, I found that some of these qualities are having an inner drive to succeed, being competitive, being open to new ideas, being innovative, having a strong belief in oneself, being passionate about the product etc. I believe I have all these qualities. What else do I need? What else is there to being a successful entrepreneur? What books should I read, whom should I network with, what questions should I ask, and what do I need to know? FYI, I’m a college senior who’s thinking of working with my sister on this business. She graduated from college a few years ago with a business major. I’m a social science major. Any advice from entrepreneurs out there? Thanks.</p>
<p>you need a product or service to sell.</p>
<p>yea, ours will be frozen yogurt but the problem is creating the product in the first place that can compete with the likes of Red Mango, Berry Chill, Yogurtland, etc. I admit this sounds pretty ambitious, and I’m pretty clueless about how to get started.</p>
<p>Frozen yogurt is a very seasonal product. A smoothie/yogurt store in my neighborhood almost went out of business, but addition of Vietnamese sandwiches and pho soup to their menu kept their business afloat.</p>
<p>You need some money.</p>
<p>“Frozen yogurt” is not a business, it is one possible product. If you are set up to sell one thing, you can sell other things too.</p>
<p>My H started a business, and I started one and was part of another start up. One thing I can’t stress enough is cashflow, cashflow, cashflow. It is one of the reasons why so many small business can’t compete with big business in the US. My H had a high end speciality store. He had wonderful taste, and people loved his collections. But he couldn’t compete with department store’s sales. He was very much constrained with ability to bring in more inventory than he could afford, whereas large stores had more access to credit lines. In the first few years, it’s not even breaking even, it’s losing money to gain market share before breaking even, then finally start to make money.</p>
<p>I was in the technology business. We had very good product. The problem we had was long lead time to sales. Again, it was important to have cashflow to pay for fixed costs - staff, office space, legal, equipments. </p>
<p>My ventures had happier endings - I sold my business at a good price, and the other startup I participated in is doing very now and I was given a lot of stock options (for 10 years I thought they were worthless, but I just found out it’s not the case). My H decided to close the store because it was not profitable enough for the amount of work required.</p>
<p>My H started another business where less cash was required to start up. It was 2 years before it was profitable. He was able to do it because I was taking care of family expense.</p>
<p>Starting a new business takes a lot of cash AND it’s very stressful. You need to be able not to count on a regular paycheck, for many people with family is very hard. I would do a lot of research on market demand of your product, pricing of your product (would people want to pay for your product, even if it’s the best tasting yogurt), logistic of transporting your product (the cost of it).</p>
<p>My H and I tried to have our own business after we were tired of corporate world 10 years ago. Now, I am very happy to get a paycheck deposited into my acct every two weeks. Good luck, it’s good to do it when you are young.</p>
<p>It’s not just enough to want to start a business and to have the qualities listed in your post. </p>
<p>You need a product(s), you need a market, and you need the skills to create the product and get it to market. And you need the cash to make it happen. And the cash to keep going when it doesn’t catch on right away. </p>
<p>In other words, don’t quit your day job. Or, perhaps, get a real job and use that to springboard into entrepreneurship.</p>
<p>Right now, I have a business that I want to start as an adjunct to my existing business. I know people are relatively successful with this concept in other areas. I am still doing my research on how exactly I’d make this happen – how much to get started, where’s the money coming from, and how would I manage to operate both businesses. It’ trickier than you think. The world is not beating down the doors for a better mousetrap.</p>
<p>The ability to work for 18 hours/day and still enjoy working the next day.</p>
<p>To dream about it when you do go to sleep.</p>
<p>Oldfort: you did mention you’d worked for a startup… I think your addition to my comment is wonderful.</p>
<p>Saltnpepper: as an addition to all the advice you’ve gotten: my DH has been a part of five startups (4 successful). The hardest ones (4 of the 5) are those that require an infusion of cash to start (and consequently, dealing with vulture capitalists or investors). The 5th, our current business, was started on EBay and required a total of $500 in initial cash (for product). That was MUCH less stressful. But even so, cashflow has sometimes been an issue.</p>
<p>Frozen yogurt has a huge problem: it’s seasonal. What are you going to do with your facility to get through the winter?</p>
<p>My mom used to teach Small Business management at a liberal arts college in New England. She’d advise her students to work for a year in someone else’s established business (a competitor!) to learn all the lessons on their money before investing one’s own. Perhaps, though, your window of opportunity is coming too soon for that. Could you at least try a summer job, or have your sister work in another person’s shop, to learn the issues. If a freezer breaks, better theirs than yours; you’ll see what it entails while earning a simple salary.</p>
<p>I recently heard that President Obama sat down with bank leaders to insist they begin to give more loans to small and medium start-up businesses. In particular, Bank of America made a commitment to do so. His point: we just bailed you guys out, so you’d be able to lend more to small businesses and rebuild the economy. Now do it! </p>
<p>You might try researching that and how it’s going in the new administration. (Report back here if you find encouragement!!)</p>