Читать книгу Finance & Grow Your New Business - Angie Mohr - Страница 15

Craig Sesco knew from the time he was six years old that he wanted to run his own business some day. His father had owned and operated an Italian bakery since before Craig was born and Craig learned to be an entrepreneur through many years of working in the bakery, doing everything from kneading dough to running the ovens to ordering from suppliers, and, eventually, bookkeeping and cash flow forecasting.

Now Craig was 27 and he felt it was time to strike out on his own. He knew that his father had started his business by doing something he loved and that he was lucky that his passion coincided with consumer tastes, but Craig wanted to pursue a different model. He wanted to determine his best chance for commercial success and build a successful business around that.

The first process that Craig went through was to determine his personal goals. He had married his long-time love, Marnie, two years ago and they had just bought a small house for themselves and their new baby. Craig knew that he didn’t want to work the crazy hours his father still put in everyday: up at 4:30 a.m. to start the stone ovens and never falling into bed before 11:00 p.m., after reconciling the day’s receipts, preparing the bank deposit, and planning for the next day’s purchases. Craig wanted to balance his work time with family time but still wanted to build and run a financially successful business that he could sell by the time he was 50.

Through his analysis, Craig also determined that he didn’t want to run a business with huge start-up costs and large inventory levels to manage. He wanted to start small and gear up slowly as he built up more internally generated revenues.

Craig started to list the types of businesses he thought he might be successful at.