In 2010, my family and I started our first business called Brand Cigars. Learned a lot over the years on business management, dealing with partners, legal & accounting stuff, raising capital and more importantly, how to make money. It is NOT for everyone. Most people I know want to be entrepreneurs and be their own bosses, however, most lack the discipline and determination to build successful enterprises.
Starting a retail business is tough because you have to make sure you have the resources to be at the store during business hours, deal with inventory that will sell vs extra inventory that won't, order the right qty of perishable items before they go bad and all the overhead and employee issues.
We sold $26 on our first day!!! We have come a long way since then but you have to start at the very bottom when starting a business from scratch. We now have 2 cigar stores that are operating in Monroe and Newtown, Connecticut.
in 2013, I left Pitney Bowes to start Central Station Marketing. We build and manage websites for home improvement and service based companies. We built the company in May 2013 and traveled back and forth from CT to TX for 4 months before permanently moving to Texas in September 2013. So, that's the official start date.