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GET SHIT DONE FAST

How to Get Your Business Open Without Wasting Time

Creativity starts with a little touch of insanity and culminates with the highest trust on its beauty, but throughout it maintains the hands of originality and humanity.

—ANUJ SOMANY

Sixty-five thousand dollars!? It would cost that much to create the branding package for my new business? Are you kidding me!?

That was more than a quarter of my entire budget, and I hadn’t even built anything yet, let alone put a down payment on a location. We were like newborns just out of the womb with the umbilical cord still attached. We hadn’t even taken our first breath. That $65,000 proposal from the branding company was simply not an option, but I desperately needed a clear branding vision. What was I going to do?

It had taken me about seven months to finally raise $250,000 from angel investors (i.e., friends, friends of friends, former colleagues, and random angels I met in New York over a couple of years). I now had the general concept of my business mapped out from the brainstorming sessions I held and I was ready for the next step.

With the help of my architect we calculated that I would need at the barest of bare bones $180,000 to build out a small location—and this fee included calling on every favor I could. It wasn’t exactly clear what I would be spending on a space because I didn’t have a location picked out, but I was assuming I’d have a space that was smaller than five hundred square feet, and according to my architect, $180,000 was about how much it might cost. (When I look back at it now, I see that was a dangerous approach, because it’s always best to estimate costs after you find a space.)

Rich Wolf told me that I would need to put down three months’ rent on a space, plus first month’s rent in advance (standard practice for commercial spaces in NYC apparently). I knew my budget wouldn’t support a dollar more than $6,000 per month. Anything cheaper than that wouldn’t be in a good location, according to my real estate broker friend, so it meant that I would need to put down $24,000 just to get the keys to a space. Man, New York ain’t cheap!

That left me with $46,000 to do things like get my business fully branded, purchase initial food inventory, and have funds for initial staff training over a couple of weeks. This also had to include having some working capital left over—which was the important financial breathing room I needed to let the business grow into itself and gain traction without worrying about money and paying bills with revenues right off the bat. Businesses need time to ramp up.

My dad had always drilled into my head that most businesses failed if they didn’t have enough runway to properly take off. (Pops has always been a fan of a good aeronautical pun.)

To clarify what I needed, I wrote down the steps I had to take before even beginning the search for the $6,000-per-month storefront in Manhattan:

• Create overall brand design.
• Design a website.
• Finalize the menu design.
• Set up social media.

First order of business: get my business branded. Once I was branded, I would have the finalized name, logo, mission statement, color schemes, fonts, restaurant look and feel, talking points, public identity, and the general aesthetic of the restaurant created in one nice, neat package. I had figured out some of this at the brainstorming sessions but not the fully detailed brand concept.

I started calling several branding agencies and met with a few of them. I explained to them that it was my first small business, I wanted to get it right, and I had budgeted $5,000 to brand my business, which seemed like a generous amount of money.

I practically spit my soy chai tea all over my computer screen when the proposals started coming back: $65,000 from one branding firm and $15,000 from another—they ran the gamut, but they were nowhere in the range I could afford. Seriously? Just to pick some fonts and colors? Good grief! (At the time, I had no idea how important this step was for a small business that had big dreams to grow, and how much creativity and time goes into making a successful brand, but still, I didn’t have that kind of money.)

I decided to try a different route.

I called my good friend Richard, who was a branding expert, and told him that I would pay him in equity if he could help brand my business for free. He was the same friend who helped put my investor presentation together and had given my presentation at one of my fundraising dinner parties. He attended my main brainstorming session and finalized the name of my business and my logo. We had met many times to talk about my business and so he was already very familiar with what I was trying to do.

At this point, he was working at a branding firm and I knew he had been thinking of breaking off on his own. This could be a good trial run for him to see if he could brand something by himself as a freelancer. (Notice the old MB scenario.) He graciously accepted.

My friend Ian, an architect, had been working for a firm and was also at a place where he wanted to branch off and start something on his own, so he agreed to design my place for free in exchange for a piece of the pizza pie, so to speak.

My best friend from college, Zach (who ended up also investing in my business), had a childhood friend who was a talented interior designer. Coincidentally, she was also working for an interior design company and was ready to start branching out to start her own firm. It would be a great opportunity to add a real business to her personal portfolio, and when I offered to give her a percentage of my business in exchange, she agreed as well.

Richard and his team designed a brilliant first menu for us (go to docoolshit.org to see it). It was a twenty-page booklet that had our menu on the first and last page and the rest of it was a bunch of funny and silly images with text. It helped garner a lot of attention during our launch. He also helped us create our first website.

Other friends helped out in various ways whenever they could, and some simply did it for the fun of it and to be part of something new and exciting. It was MB all around!

In the end, we came up with lots of creative ideas together. Was it perfect? Not entirely. But it stood out, it was free, and it got me started! I knew I’d pull it all together down the road (when I had real money to spend on branding). If you don’t have friends who can help you get started, places like Crowdspring.com or 99designs.com are great for inexpensive branding. The biggest difference between these sites and hiring someone to brand your business is that these sites are generally a much cheaper option. You also get a lot more branding directions and options than if you were to go with a person, who will probably give you a maximum of three directions.

A FEW THOUGHTS ON BRANDING

Branding is tough! One of my very smart friends, Sam (the Intrigue Expert) (check out intrigueagency.com to see Sam’s work), and her son, Andrew (visit gatsbysmile.com for examples of Andrew’s work), break down branding into two parts—words and visuals:

Words

This is the language you use to tell and sell people on your business. It includes:

• Mission statement
• Pitch
• Copy within the marketing materials and press kit

Visuals

This is the part of your business that people can see and feel, and it provides the housing for your words. Visuals include:

• Website
• Social media pages
• Marketing materials
• Packaging
• Physical store

If you know how to talk about your business convincingly and your aesthetics are attractive, you’ll be much more likely to attract customers, partners, and financing if you need it.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!

After I felt good about my brand, I moved on to the next phase: finding a location. I hired a commercial real estate broker. Interesting fact: landlords for some commercial spaces oftentimes pay the broker fees, so do your research and you might be able to get one for free.

The search took a while. Any good space that came up was getting gobbled up by franchises like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts because they were proven concepts and landlords liked to know that they would have a stable tenant in place for several years. Finally, after four months, my broker managed to find me a $6,000-per-month space on the Upper East Side. It certainly wasn’t my first choice of location (I was hoping for East Village or West Village), but nothing close to those neighborhoods was available in the price range I wanted and one that I could actually win against proven concepts. The Upper East Side space fulfilled my budgetary stipulation, and it was on a main avenue, which was my other stipulation.

The main issue was that this space had previously been a nail salon. It was painted pink, had no basement, and wasn’t designed for a restaurant. This was probably why no Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts was going for it.

I would have to put in full venting (expensive ductwork to exhaust the ovens) and a hood, and dig out the entire basement to put plumbing and drains in the floor. It was a serious ordeal. I wasn’t sure if $180,000 was going to cut it.

But I decided to go ahead with it anyway. I had been searching for a while now, and I had to get moving—otherwise, who knows, it could have been another four months of searching!

Thankfully, through my neighbor, I found my general contractor to build out the space. (You should always try to use word-of-mouth recommendations, especially if you are a first-timer).

DON’T LET THE PAPERWORK BECOME QUICKSAND

Once I crossed off the branding and real estate tasks, I had to attack the paperwork needed to open the business (this includes the permit to operate and tax documents). I didn’t even know where to begin.

Sometimes the answer is incredibly simple. I called 311, the government hotline, and asked to speak with the business solutions department. I was shocked when someone picked up right away. The woman on the line said that she’d help me get everything I needed and was able to expedite the process because New York City had a new initiative to help businesses streamline the paperwork process. Nice! She said that she would help get every single department involved at the same time with my case so that there would be no delays in getting the business up and running. Well OK then! Why couldn’t all government departments act with this much empathy and goodwill?

I made damn sure to let this helpful angel of a lady know that I was grateful to have her help and told her to please come to my restaurant for some free pizza next time she was in the neighborhood.

As this part of the adventure came to a close, all my paperwork was filled out and filed, thanks to my friends and one kind stranger at the New York City business center.