🌿 Build LIFE sustainability into your business plan

As new retailers we expect to sacrifice our weekends and holidays, dry-clean-only clothing, and possibly our lower backs. But we do not have to sacrifice our mental health, personal relationships, or overall well-being.

When you're planning your business, you have the opportunity and obligation to carve out the boundaries that will make your business sustainable for the long term.

Your lease will run five to ten years, so it's critical that you build a "sustainable" model that will allow you to stay healthy, stay married (if you want), participate in your child's life, etc.

So how do you do this? Start with the ideal scenario. The realities of the numbers and the things outside of your control will force you to shave "ideal" down to "sustainable," so you may as well start with your best cases for all the things that make a big impact in your life -- like time and money.

When you're wrestling with the P&L projections in your business plan, it's tempting to think, "okay, I'll save on management labor, because I'll be the manager and I won't pay myself." Well there very well may come a day when you have to do the job of the manager for zero dollars, but don't START there. Start with a model that has you paying a living wage to a full-time manager. You can choose to do the job yourself. And you can choose to take no money if times are lean, but your business should be able to pay a manager...or it's not really sustainable. Building an unrealistically lean model doesn't help you plan for the long haul.

Same goes for the location. Yes, the eventual space you choose for your business might end up being 45 minutes away from your home...but that's not ideal. You and your broker should START looking for the space in a location that's convenient to your life -- near your home, your kid's school, etc. You will get calls at 2:00am that the burglar alarm is going off, and you have to go check it out. It's a lot easier to get out of bed at 2:00am when you just need to drive 5 minutes. So keep these realities of retailing in mind, and stand firm on the things that you need to keep your mental health.

Yes, you will certainly make lifestyle sacrifices when your business is open, so while you're laying the foundational plans, avoid letting the self-sacrificial "I'll do whatever it takes to get open" impulse drive you to make unsustainable choices that will have really tough consequences when the luster of the new business wears off.