The Pros and Cons of Opening a Shop and Being Your Own Boss

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Becoming your own boss is a position to which many people aspire. Unemployment is rife at the moment and, without funds, it is difficult to set up your own business. Maybe you have just been made redundant, however, and you have landed a good redundancy payout.

Being made redundant is often devastating as many people have worked all their lives in one occupation only to find that there is little demand for their skills anymore so the person may have to retrain for a new job. Age is a factor when looking for another job too. Once a certain age is reached, usually about 50 years old, retraining and looking for a new job is very daunting indeed.

So, if you are reading this you probably have an interest in making your own fortunes in the world, now that jobs are thin on the ground and very insecure. How do you go about it? Read on.

Business Plan

Whether you have adequate funding to open a shop or not, a business plan is a good idea. In it’s simplest form a business plan can be a few ideas jotted down in a notebook, but if you are approaching the bank for a business loan you plan will need to be far more detailed. Begin with an overview of your vision for the business and then begin to add every detail you can think of including:

• Potential Premisses

• Rent Cost

• Business rates Cost

• Shopfitting Cost

• Stock Cost

• Systems Cost (Computers etc)

• Insurances

• Expected Income

• Accounting

• Ability To Pay Back Loan

There are many more sub-headings that will make themselves known as you begin to assemble your business plan. Often the business advisor at the bank will help and steer you in the right direction. They are aware that this is your first time in business and need a little help.

So let’s imagine that you have successfully acquired the funding for your new venture and have opened the shop. Here are the pros and cons you are likely to experience.

Pros

• No-one telling you what to do or looking over your shoulder.

• Work your own hours. Usually long but it doesn’t matter when it is for yourself.

• Pride in building your business.

• Putting your shop together by installing units, point of sale displays from GPX Group or another supplier, cash register, etc.

• Meet interesting customers.

• Taking on employees.

Cons

• Irregular income.

• Working even when you feel ill.

• Reporting to the bank as to the state of your affairs if you took out a loan.

• Managing cashflow.

• Meeting horrible customers.

• Dealing with HMRC

• Meeting staff wages.

• Covering staff illness.

• Sacking people.

Even though the cons list gets longer the more you think about it, the shorter pros list easily compensates for the negative points. Being employed by someone else often leaves people wondering if their job is secure. Having their own business removes that insecurity when they know exactly where they stand. If things are not going so well, some may consider this to be a bad thing. But knowledge is power, and being forewarned at least gives a self employed person a chance to do something about it.