After reading through my blog, you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all of this. My hope is that it will inspire you to think past Murphy’s Law and be prepared for anything. So many horrible, unforeseen things happened with my restaurant and I don’t want that to be your experience. If I save even one person by helping them see a red flag before they sign their first contract, I will be thrilled. And it will make all my tears and embarrassment fall a little softer.

Sometimes the smallest thing can be the most inconvenient. Dr Pepper was a sponsor. Their name was on the side of the building and in the arena name and logo. So we were required to sell Dr Pepper products. I can’t tell you how many people got angry because we didn’t have Diet Coke. Even when I reminded them it was a Dr Pepper arena, they didn’t get it. Other people just said “duh”. And even though Dr Pepper expected us to comply, they didn’t take care of us. You’d think they would want to look good to the public when their name was on the building, but they did nothing to help us. We didn’t even get a good break on cost. We were supposed to use their styrofoam cups, but it got to the point where they let us run out all the time. We would order cups every week and they wouldn’t send any. Or they would send cups but no lids. So I finally started ordering plain cups from Sysco. You can’t sell fountain drinks without cups and when you ordered something from Sysco, you got it. The only problem we had with Sysco was sometimes they would send expired products. They didn’t have a very good system for rotating or return-to-vendor or something. So we had to look carefully when we checked in our orders.

Before you start a business, make sure you look at each piece and think of a backup plan if that piece doesn’t go as expected. Watch for red flags as you proceed. Make sure you have plenty of cash. Have a bailout plan. Talk to as many people as possible in as much detail as possible. Be prepared and knock ’em dead.