Business Dilemmas

[Adunn]

I’m currently a furniture design student, I’ve pushed myself hard throughout school to gain as much experience as possible. As I’m entering the end of my college career my friend and I are realizing that we would like to pursue furniture design in a manner that isn’t being done by others - designing or mass production as well as one of a kind gallery pieces. We’ve been thinking about opening our own woodshop. Also, while we dabble in furniture design and fabrication, we’d like to open up our wood shop to other artists and designers to utilize. We’re realizing that starting and managing the wood shop alone is a huge task, and although we have professors that do it we are worried about tying ourselves down too early – in responsibilities as well as to the location. what advice can people supply for our unique situation, both for the business as well as our worries as far as tying ourselves down.

Thanks

[Scott Bradley]

Here are my thoughts...

1) Find a mentor that will be able to help you throughout the journey...if this mentor has done it before that would be ideal

2) Get educated...Get enough information to start taking action...and make sure to run everything by your mentor

3) Have a "Why" for doing your business and keep it in front of you everyday.

4) Have an exit strategy...Do you want to build it and sell it?...Or keep and control for cashflow?

This is what I could think of off the top of my head...What does everyone else think?