When starting out a business, you have to study every aspect of it. Internal aspects are the profit projections, funds needed, the concept but the external part have more or less the same importance because these are the elements that surprise and can close down your business. SWOT analysis, its a simple tool made to understand your position within the market you are entering. So my example is about restaurants in Kuwait; back to SWOT which stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats. The Strength and Weakness parts are what you provide as location, or strong accounting standards, or you got a certain hygine expert(which i doubt in Kuwait). I will be concentrating on the OT parts of SWOT in this post, The Opportunity in the Kuwaiti market is huge, 67% of the population is teenagers and thats a large market to tackle. But what about the Threat, Kuwait Ministry of Health is creating a large budget to tackle fast food restaurants in Kuwait, health campaigns all over Kuwait will be targeting young teenagers from universities to middle schools. So as you can see the Threat here is greater than the opportunity, so if your thinking of starting a restaurants you have to consider going against the government budget of millions compared to the small budget you got! Unless the restaurant you setting up is a healthy one, like Low Fat. Low Fat is a smart concept of a restaurant, he is on the starting point of the curve, and any promotional ads from any entity in Kuwait, it can be a magazine or the government awareness campaigns, he is the one with the advantage. “in simple terms, he’s ridding the wave” This idea came to mind when i passed by Holiday Inn downtown, and saw another burger joint. All burger joints in the states are losing profits, Mc Donalds is loosing profits and only investing in healthy food restaurnats like Pret in the UK. So its really a matter of time before business owners here realize the down turn in profits due to a more health conscious society. Take a look at subway, 5 years ago nobody knew about, but now everybody is like lets go to subway instead of McDonalds, the Health epidemic is growing by the day in Kuwait and is going to catch up too, another example of eternal opportunites and threats is the apartment building in Kuwait, now non Kuwaitis canot purchase there own apartments but, still Kuwaiti owners are investing millions within apartments buildings, because a law will be passed favoring non Kuwaitis to buy apartments in Kuwait. So who here has the advantage, the one waiting for the law to pass then build apartments, or the one already building and anticipating the law? and tip apartment building now are being sold quite cheaply and will explode when the law passes, just for people thinking of buying apartments!, as you can see projecting the future of a certain flow of the business is as important as the concept, the food, the people running the business.

I have posted earlier opportunities about store’s around Kuwait, this is another one. Unfortunately Kinko at the airport is closing down and want to sell the store for 40,000kd and it includes a rent of 1200kd/month. Honestly cant think of anything to be opened there except a bank or another coffee shop, maybe.

So i’ve been searching locations all over Kuwait, and when you find a good one, they request a 70,000kd clearance fee or kholoo. Honestly i do not believe in kholoo and think its a way for robbing people. I found a nice building in salmiya, the street where starbucks shaikha is located. A new building that has multiple store’s, if your interested in opening a computer or mobile phone shop, that would be a good place, anything else probably wont work. Will be posting other locations later on.

So i’ve been talking briefly about entrepreneurship, but i have missed an important point. Passion! when you have something that you really love and admire, that does not have to be a product it can be a service too, and can make money from . I have a friend who loves real estate, (don’t ask me why) he reads articles about it, took online courses. This guy can take a look at one house and know how good its infrastructure is and how much it costs. but he never thought of using his experience to open a business. After long talk that we had and a bit of mind twisting. He got convinced of opening his own real estate broker. After two years have passed, he now buys and sells land in Oman, Kuwait and thinking to enter the UAE market. Lets calculate some numbers here: he use to make 700KD working in a finance company from 8 till 3, ya3ny yearly he makes around 8400KD. Now he buys and sells land making an average commission of 3000KD per month equals to 36000KD yearly, traveling around the GCC, and doing what he really loves with passion! So now see how different is 8400 from 36000 big ones:P But…. but, “risk” is always associated with such dives, (these risks must be calculated risks that i will explain later on). He works long hours, had to go to people he never met and sell! It takes time and effort to sell your products and services, because people do not trust who you are at the beginning. But at the end its worth it. So when you have a certain kind of passion for something, believe in your self and take a step forward, take a risk and believe me life is short don’t waste time!