I have both a traditional business and an online business and I need to drop one and concentrate on the other, I have put a list together to convince myself which way to go, what would you do?
My traditional business is an English Pub and Restaurant in a village location that I run with my gorgeous partner Eve.
We built it up from nothing using no money at all apart from a borrowed £5 note, which was part of the plan. We found a lot of adverse language around the pub sector with most people talking about the amount of British pubs closing. They were closing in their thousands, so it was not hard to find one with some potential that the owners would let you get in and start from scratch with no investment. the pub we took over was brewery owned and we had a full product tie on wet sales, Booze and soft drinks.
The brewery did not want anything to do with the food side. We got started selling beer and wine and the first weeks takings were about £200. we used the borrowed £5 note to get some rolls and ham and started selling sandwiches, sold them and ran back to the shop to reinvest and get some more, thats where it started, before long we built up a pot of money to go to the butchers and buy some steaks, found a fruit and veg supplier and we had hot meals for sale, the brewery told me the they were happy as the pub would never take £10,000 per week, we were there for about a year when we hit the magic £10,000 and rising. There was not a lot more expansion you could do with that business and we heard of a larger pub just down the road becoming available so we went for and got it, we used the £40,000 cash we had built up, to get in there and get the business up and running, we took a chance and left the previous pub which was taking £14,000 per week.
Now 3 years down the road we are taking £30,000 per week with a profit of between £5,000 and £10,000 every week, we have absolutely no life whatsoever, working 8am - 11pm 7 days a week. We are drained and feeling as though there is a better way.
We have all the problems of a traditional business, staff, costs, government costs and customers to tackle every day.
This is not a moan, because I am very proud of what we have achieved, but on the other hand, we must be doing it wrong because of the hours we have to put in.
Before I started the pub, I had an online business of sorts, and the best week, although not consistent, was $42,000 and the overheads were extremely low compared to offline. I have put a little list of pros and cons together to decide which way to go.
Traditional business
- Rent
- Business tax
- Government regulations, fire, health & Safety, EHO food checks etc
- Face to Face customers all day
- Workload
- Staff issues
- Costs of sales low, Turnover £30,000 to Make £10,000
- Pressure on personal life
- No personal life
- Bad environment for your own children in terms of time with them.
Online business
- No rent
- No business rates tax
- No government regulations
- No non stop customers all day.
- Workload maybe high, but not on feet all day.
- No staff
- Cost of sales maybe similar, not too sure yet, depend on what you sell online.
- Less pressure on personal life.
- Take the business with you if you like on holidays etc. obviously if you want to.
- Much more time with Children, especially between the both of you.
Now I have wrote it down it looks obvious, I just have to find and set up a business that provides a long term income and if possible a residual one too to make it worth while.
What do you think? Should I stay where I am with a guaranteed good income and continue having an unhappy life (The Red Pill), or go for it online (The Blue Pill)?