The Bar & The Fear.

[NajdorfDefense]

Organization is key.
The best advice I can give from a business perspective is take a whole day or at least half an afternoon [Tue after lunch? etc] and do serious medium and long-term planning for your marketing, finance, and ops/HR strategies going forward. Cover every easily identifiable contingency and some 'bad' scenarios - theft, fire, lawsuits, change in laws regarding hours, hiring and firing, ad infinitum.

Do this every week, run scenario analyses on how you would improve things, get more customers, wealthier ones, more locals, less, sell more drinks, sell more $drinks [this is all obvious to you, I know] etc. As you can guess, you can easily spend 4-8 hrs a week on all this and when things change [tourist season or reverse] you may need a whole new set of 'plans.'

That usually takes most of the sting out of fear, at least for me. And when I feel overwhelmed, I simply make the old-school 2x2 Matrix of Important to Do/Not, Do It Now/Later and prioritize accordingly.

Best of luck, sir.

Naj

[Irieguy]

My personal opinion (based on experience) is that the best way to eliminate The Fear is to fail badly once. After experiencing what it is that you are afraid of, you will find that your capacity for fear is obviated.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to use this truism to fashion any useful advice.

Irieguy

[idrinkcoors]

Adsman,

I can really relate to your post. The wife and I are opening a women's shoe store on August 15th, and I share your same fears and worries.

Like others have said, that fear is a great motivator. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and ask myself if we will make it, then I get mad at myself for having any doubts.

Something that has helped me is talking with other business owners with stores around us. All of them had the same concerns and worries when first opeing, and when they tell me how well they are doing, it really gets me exicted and more focused.

Good luck to you.

[PBAR]

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I'll get some pics up in the next few days for you all to check out.


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I am eager to see the pics.

[ahnuld]

bump, hows the first few weeks going ads?

[guids]

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bump, hows the first few weeks going ads?

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Im bettin pretty good, well, at least he is doing the right thing and probably at the bar 24/7, since he has made about 6 posts in the last month.

[adsman]

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bump, hows the first few weeks going ads?

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Im bettin pretty good, well, at least he is doing the right thing and probably at the bar 24/7, since he has made about 6 posts in the last month.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep. Actually the really tough bit is combining the rafting season with the bar. Here's a bit of a run-down on what type of bar it is and how it's going.

The valley really lacked an international style bar - all the bars here are in the tradtional alpine mould with lots of wood panaling and piano accordians. My idea for the bar was to do three things differently. An international design that could fit in any major city, top quality drinks using the best ingredients and great music. The drinks bit has been easy and we sell more cocktails than beer which is great as the mark-up is much higher.

The music has been a tough one. In the eight years I've been in the valley the music has been nothing short of diabolical. I got extremely lucky in the fact that my brother came over from Australia to help me out for the first three weeks. He was an international DJ for over ten years and had his own radio show in Australia for a while. Plus he's a sound and lighting engineer. He brought over a stack of music, purchased a bunch more while he was here, set me up a bunch of excellent play-lists and DJ'd every night for the first 3 weeks. He went back home last Saturday. He blew everyone away while he was here and we got the start that we needed. In the meantime I found a young local lad who has just recently got back from a year studying in The States. He spent a great deal of time with my brother and he played a night on Tuesday and did very well. The music is the most challenging part. Keeping it fresh, innovating and being able to give what the customers want from one night to the next is a big ask.

We are open from 8pm to 2am. The reason for this is that there are a stack of bars that are open during the day and who do the day thing quite well. We identified this period as lacking and we've managed to make it our own. At least the 10.30pm to 2am time slot. The early part of the night is quiet and we have to build that up. But things are going well. The vibe is good, the lighting works and people like it. So far this week we've had three big nights. If we can keep that up until the end of the summer season, I'll be a happy boy.

The bar is called, Liquid Club. Liquid is 'liquido' in Italian, so they have no trouble pronouncing or understanding the name which was very important. The original decor was a horrible cross between an Irish pub and an Alpine bar. Here's a few photo's to give you an idea of what we walked into.











As you can see it was pretty horrible. The Bar had been empty for five years and hadn't really worked for over ten. But it had three huge advantages. It is on the main road in the mid-point of the valley, it is isolated with no housing anywhere near it, and it is directly across the road from the main rafting base and camp ground which can hold over 800 people in high season.

Tomorrow I'll post some photo's of the renovations.

ads.

[Banditgberg]

Looking forward to seeing the renovation.

Just curious, do you own the space?

Thanks

[Fast Food Knight]

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I've been away for a bit, not that any of you lot have noticed.

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I noticed. Best of luck and I'm really looking forward to pics of the renovated version.

[Dale Dough]

Heh.. I saw the pics first, then read the post. No wonder the place ran like [censored]. Hard to imagine that people with eyes actually decided to run it like that, at one time.