im thinking of starting a buisness

[dragmav71]

so i grew up in a small town with beutiful scenery but other than the scenery and beer theres not a whole lot to do here especialy if your under 21 and its after 5 oclock pm so iv found a old truck stop and bar and ive been thinking of starting a all ages dance club in the rather large part that used to be a bar cleaning up the kitchen and offering consecions and in the part that used to be a gas station opening up a paint ball shop and using te magority of the back half of the giant back half of the parking lot for a field/paintball arena selling and renting guns paintballs n co2 and maybe some nice clothes at a decent price the thing with the town i live in is unlesss your a tourist you have to drive 2 hours just to buy decent clothes or anything else realy its a real pain i alwys growing up wished we had somthin to do or somplace to go
and with the town growing in leaps and bounds its only a mater of time before somone else thinks of this i need to find out how much its gunna cost me to lease the truckstop or watever i already know the buisness set up costs as far as the dance clubs costs and painball costs i have no idea the clothing costs does anyone with experiance in this kind of deal have any advice they can give me im lookin into geting a wholsale licence of course

[Librazoe1982]

The idea sounds great. Does this truck stop building need fixing up? How much would it cost you to get this up and ready? I am from a small town too, nothing to do, not even a bar. lol, bars are my thing anyways, but the highlight of my town is the Dutch Pantry, the Amish restaurant. If someone were to put in a clean fun, family place, I'd be extremly happy and I am sure business would boom.

[jasaunders]

It's not a great idea. It's something that pops up on this forum about once a month.
While it is true in many of these towns there is a market demand for the type of "all ages dance club" you and others suggest, the problem lies with the market you are targeting. Teenagers have very little money to spend, making these businesses very difficult to make profitable.

Additionally, like many of the others that post this idea here, you are trying to be all things to all people. You need to focus on doing one thing well first before trying to do everything. Running a paintball store and a dance club and a clothes retailer couldn't be more polar opposites, 120 degrees away from each other. They require different skill sets and different strategies.

I wish you the best of luck in getting this going, but from an initial feasibility standpoint, you really have a lot of work to do from a strategic standpoint to make this thing successful.

[jmueller427]

Alright - I wish I had this kind of support when I wanted to open a paintball place over where I grew up....


First of all, if you're going into business, you need to register in the state that you're living. It's usually quick and painless, it sometimes costs somewhere up to 100 dollars but it's worth it to be on the books.

Get information about starting a business in your state by contacting someone at your local boro or townhall building.

Secondly, if you're going to be taking on something like this, it's going to cost money (no duh). What's great about money is that it is cheap. You can get business loans in large amounts provided the right tools, and you just happen to be lucky enough to know someone who knows what tools are looked for....


a) you need to get a business plan. They can cost anywhere from a few hundred bucks to THOUSANDS. That is, if you hire someone. If you're interested in running your own show, you can try making one of your own. There are plenty of "sample" business plans available online that you can get the structure and format from so that yours doesn't look like a 3 yr. old with crayons made it.

b) You need a suit. Get yourself to Men's Warehouse and get a suit, usually somewhere around 300 dollars for a respectable one.

c) Shave and a haircut. I don't know how you wear your face or your hair, but, if you're going to be going in for a loan, it is essential to present yourself as though you were Donald Trump himself. Get yourself a new cut and smooth shave.

d) Perhaps the most important thing: MONEY! You're gonna need a few bucks for the suit and shave at least. I'd say if you had between 5 - 10 thousand dollars to your name, you could definitely get yourself started up well.

e) A Real Estate Agent that's working on the property you're looking at. Dude. There is NOTHING more important about getting yourself out there quickly when it comes to business. Even if you don't have a DOLLAR for the down payment for that property, get yourself in touch with the person that is handling the sale of the property and tell them what you're planning on doing. Sometimes real estate agents can be pretty crafty and they'll give you great tips on how to get yourself started in business and financing for the property. THAT'S AWESOME.

f) Get a REALLLLY good budgeting software like Quickbooks (industry standard).

g) Marketing - If you're thinking about marketing nationally eventually, (which everyone does...) there's a free web-based tool called the SpiderWeb Marketing System that generates free leads and also sets you up a few extra streams of income, all of which mind you are legal and can be claimed by your business (or yourself if you just wanna make a few extra bucks).

There you go. That'd be a few great tips that I didn't have when I was thinking about a paintball place. I hope it helps you and I really look forward to hearing that you ACTUALLY did this.

God bless you.

Jason Mueller

[dragmav71]

hey thanks for all your input and advise as 4 marketing to teenagers im not just trying to market to teens see i liv in utah and thers lots of mormon famlys and in my towns case tourists were big enough for a wallmart but we dont want one as the majority of buisness owners in town dont want one
and who can blame them this town they say is the next aspen or sodona and theres lots of wealthy famlys moving here we have a few hundred medium sized motels that stay filled with tourists from march to october leaving a small time when town isnt packed i dont wanna be like evryone els in town and try and sell knikknaks that u can buy anywhere i dont even want people to think of my buisness like that i just wanna give people somthing to do after the sun goes down an the eye candy disaperes we probably only have
7 thousand people that actually live here year round but sevral times a year we more than triple that easily so i have the potential clientel