Recipe for Success: Make Room for "Prosperity"

Through the course of our Workshop In Business Opportunities ("WIBO") classes back in the spring of 2004, I came to realize that in order to write out our business plan (which eventually went on to win the top prize in a business plan competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Business Library), we would have to focus time and energy to it. How else would it get done? Certainly no one else was going to do it for us.

This meant evaluating how I spent my time and where I was directing my energy. This meant replacing coming home and watching TV with reading information on neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It meant exploring who my target market was and why.

It meant reading restaurant trade and industry magazines. It meant exploring different neighborhoods at various times of the day and evening over the course of many nights looking at foot traffic, exploring traffic patterns and researching transportation to and from the area.

It meant dining alone many nights and counting the number of patrons eating, counting the number of take-out and delivery orders being made. It meant picking up menus from nearby restaurants and seeing what they offered.

It meant looking for a niche , an "in", that I could fill that wasn't being served. It meant walking up and down streets looking at "FOR RENT" signs, calling brokers and owners and finding out what rents were going for. It meant introducing myself to other business owners and asking for advice.

It meant going to the library and seeking out information and additional resources available to the budding entrepreneur. It meant picking up flyers on various low-cost or free business workshops being held throughout the city. It meant looking at my calendar, taking out my cell phone and immediately signing up. And it meant actually going to the class or workshop even when I was tired and didn't want to go.

It meant attending cooking classes and workshops and seminars on taxes, accounting methods, marketing, and advertising. It meant learning how to network and believing enough in our business to put ourselves out there and tell everyone what we were doing: opening up a restaurant.

Creating the business plan meant making changes in my life. Making those changes has changed my life and continues doing so.

File this under "If you want things to change, you have to change things."