In early February 2023, several colleagues and I who previously worked together in the same board game store founded a board game store after we resigned collectively. It has been three years since then. This entrepreneurial experience has changed my life tremendously. Although based on my current understanding, this cannot actually be called entrepreneurship, but finding a class for myself - but it still changed my understanding of work, study and other aspects to a great extent.
The first lesson: Don’t mistake working for yourself for starting a business
Looking back, this experience was more like creating a job for yourself than building a business that can truly sustainably make money.
The reason is simple: most of the store's income essentially comes from me personally working in the store, rather than from the profits created by the business itself. If I stopped going to work entirely and just existed as a shareholder, I would have virtually no chance of generating any significant income from the store. In other words, I just changed from working for the boss to working for myself.
In the first year of business, due to the relatively favorable rental conditions provided by the landlord, the store generated a profit of about 60,000 Australian dollars. However, with the subsequent increase in rents and the weakening of the overall consumption environment, stores have almost no profits at all in the past year. The income we can earn basically comes from the hours we work in the store.
In the early stages of starting a business, there is nothing wrong with working personally and investing time to reduce costs. This is even a necessary stage for most small businesses. But the problem is that if the operator always stays at this stage, he is still essentially using his time in exchange for income.
The real question worth thinking about is: If one day I don't appear in the store at all, can this store continue to generate profits?
If the answer is no, then the business has not actually gotten rid of its dependence on the founder's personal labor. It may provide a well-paying job, but it is not yet an asset that can function independently.
Whether a business has long-term value does not depend on how many hours the boss works today, but on whether it can still create value when the boss is not present.
Therefore, for any entrepreneurial project, it is normal to rely on the founder's personal participation in the early stage of the business; but when the business gradually stabilizes, operators must start to think about how to reduce their irreplaceability in the business, how to establish processes, cultivate teams, and enable the company to continue to make profits without personal labor.
Otherwise, no matter how much time and energy you invest, what you will end up with is just a job that pays yourself a salary, rather than a career that can truly create wealth.
This is also the first lesson I learned from this entrepreneurial experience, and it is also an important reason why I finally chose to quit.
The second lesson: If you don’t want to work with people for a lifetime, don’t partner for a day
Looking back, I made a big mistake in choosing partners: I ignored the problems that I had already seen.
Before starting the business, several of us had actually worked together for a while. Everyone is not completely ignorant of each other's personalities, work styles, strengths and weaknesses. Some people lack execution ability, some people are unwilling to accept different opinions, and some people are accustomed to talking more and doing less. These problems already existed at the time, but I always felt that the situation might be different after starting a business, or that these problems would not have much impact.
Later I realized that this idea was essentially self-deception.
In the past three years, many contradictions and conflicts can ultimately be traced back to these problems that existed in the first place. What really makes me reflect is not why they are like this, but why I think these problems will disappear out of thin air.
Later I read a sentence in the "Navarre Book":
If you don't want to work with a person for a lifetime, then don't partner with him for a day.
This sentence touched me deeply.
The biggest difference between entrepreneurial partners and ordinary colleagues is that you not only share goals, but also share interests, risks and responsibilities. Many problems that can be ignored in ordinary cooperative relationships will be infinitely magnified in the entrepreneurial process. Because entrepreneurship will continue to face pressure, disagreements and profit distribution, and these are the things that most easily expose a person's true characteristics.
I gradually realized that a person's ability may be improved through learning, but it is often difficult to fundamentally change personality, values and work habits in a short period of time. Entrepreneurship will not change a person, it will only make a person's original characteristics more obvious.
Therefore, if some unacceptable problems have been discovered before the cooperation begins, the best approach is often not to expect that the other party will change in the future, but to seriously consider whether you are really suitable to be bound to this person for a long time.
Many times, startups fail not because they didn’t find the problem, but because they clearly saw the problem but chose to believe that it wouldn’t happen.
The third lesson: Choosing a bad business from the beginning
We actually made a very big mistake in choosing a business model.
To evaluate whether a business is worth doing, the ultimate thing is profit. Profit can be broken down into two parts: **Profit = Revenue In most mature real industries, profit growth relies more on the expansion of revenue scale as long-term competition will compress profit margins. However, if the cost structure is too heavy, it will compress profit margins, which will ultimately make the situation even worse when revenue is already limited.
Looking back, board game stores happen to be at a disadvantage in both of these dimensions.
Looking at the revenue side first, the magnitude and scale are very small.
From the revenue side, our growth space is limited by three aspects: customer unit price, consumption frequency and store capacity. First of all, board games are light entertainment consumption, with a unit price of about 20, and the contribution of a single consumption is limited. Secondly, according to data from the past three years, the user lifetime value (LTV) is about 50, which corresponds to less than 3 purchases, indicating that the repurchase frequency and user retention are not high. Finally, since there is only one store currently operating, the service radius and reception capacity are limited, even if the number of customers continues to grow, there is a clear upper limit on the overall revenue scale.
Looking at the profit margin, the cost structure is also biased.
Board game stores rely much more on labor force than ordinary catering or retail industries. Under the domestic business model, store clerks not only undertake service functions, but also need to be familiar with a large number of board game rules and be able to teach customers how to play at any time. This means that every employee needs to undergo more systematic and time-consuming training than an ordinary waiter or cashier.
What’s more, this capability is difficult to replicate like standardized processes. Differences in game understanding, expression ability, and service awareness among employees will directly affect customer experience. As the size of the team increases, the difficulty of training, assessment and service quality control will increase significantly. Compared with equipment and processes, human management naturally has more uncertainties and is more prone to deviations. In Sydney, high labor costs further amplify these problems.
In addition to labor, square footage is also an issue that is difficult to avoid. Board games require a large table space to spread out the games, so the number of consumers that can be accommodated per unit area is very limited. Purely from the perspective of space utilization, board game stores are naturally weaker than many other formats. And when this low space utilization is combined with a low unit price, the revenue that can be generated per unit area is obviously limited.
Take the Internet cafe and billiard hall on the same floor as an example. Both of them have shown stronger scalability in their business models. First of all, in terms of labor costs, they have relatively low requirements on employee capabilities. They are mainly responsible for cashiering and basic maintenance work, and do not require long-term professional training. More importantly, customers can basically complete the consumption process independently after entering the venue and do not rely on employees to continue to provide teaching and services. Therefore, fewer employees are required and management is less difficult.
Secondly, in terms of square footage efficiency, Internet cafes have particularly obvious advantages. Each seat takes up less space and can accommodate more paying users per unit area, so the consumption density is much higher than that of a board game store. Although a single table in a billiards hall occupies a larger area, the unit price per customer is higher, the consumption time is longer, and the reliance on the table turnover rate is relatively low, so the overall square footage efficiency is not inferior.
Looking back, I gradually realized that the board game store was more like a small business suitable for self-employment, rather than a good business suitable for large-scale expansion. It also faces a low revenue ceiling, heavy dependence on manpower and limited square footage. When these factors are added together, even if a single store can achieve profitability, its expansion value is still relatively limited.
From a longer-term perspective, if you already have the operating capabilities to build a profitable store, then instead of investing these capabilities in a format with inherently limited scale, it is better to give priority to businesses with larger market space, higher degree of standardization, and stronger expansion efficiency. Compared with trying to overcome the limitations of the industry itself later on, entering a better track from the beginning is often a more efficient choice.
The fourth lesson: Partnership cannot replace liability
At the beginning of our business, we gathered five partners. On the surface, this was to share financial pressure and operational risks; but looking back now, I find that I had another thought at the time: I hope someone can take responsibility with me, and even help me cover the situation at critical moments.
This idea seems reasonable, but it is essentially a fluke. Since you have chosen to start a business, it means taking the initiative to accept uncertainty, rather than trying to find a more "safe" way to start a business. There is no real risk sharing in entrepreneurship itself. In the end, all problems must be faced and solved by someone.
When we work, we work as crew members on the company’s big ship. If the boat is not sailing well, you can find another boat; if the direction is wrong, you may not be responsible for it. But entrepreneurship is different. Starting a business means taking the helm personally. No matter how many people are on the team, someone has to be responsible for the end result. If everyone takes a little responsibility, that often means no one really takes responsibility.
In the past few years, I have actually discovered problems very early through operating data. Sales have continued to decline, customer activity has declined, and many trends have been reflected in the data. I insist on doing business analysis every month, and have also tried to promote some adjustments and changes. However, it has always been difficult to unify the understanding of the problem within the team. Many people prefer to attribute the reasons to external factors such as the economic environment and consumption downgrade, rather than re-examining the business model and business strategy itself.
Later I came to realize that under such a structure, I could neither push for the changes I thought were right nor truly be responsible for the results. The problem is not the partnership itself, but that responsibility and decision-making authority are not truly aligned. When a problem occurs in a company, without clear responsibility and a final decision-maker, many discussions will end up staying at the discussion stage without being transformed into action.
Withdraw
It was after thinking about this clearly that I made the decision to withdraw from the stock this month.
Although this experience cannot be said to be beautiful, the growth it brought to me is real. In order to save costs in the early days of starting my business, I developed the store’s POS system and official website from scratch. At that time, AI tools were far from as mature as they are today, and many things needed to be learned, explored, and implemented bit by bit by oneself.
After the official opening, I began to systematically record and analyze operating data. It was also during this process that I truly understood the logic behind business operations for the first time. Compared with making decisions based solely on feelings, data can expose problems earlier and help me think about problems more rationally.
More importantly, this experience completely changed the way I view myself and my work.
While running a board game store, I successively launched two new projects: a volleyball club, and FluxTime, an efficiency tool focused on time and task management. The biggest gain that entrepreneurship has brought me is not how much money I have earned, but that I have started to proactively create opportunities instead of waiting for them.
Without this experience, I would probably still be in a certain company, living a step-by-step life that can be seen all the way. It was this entrepreneurial start-up that made me realize for the first time that there is not just one preset track in life. Even if the project ultimately did not meet expectations, it still gave me something far more important than the result itself—the ability to think independently, take responsibility, and continue to create.
From this perspective, this board game store may not be considered a successful venture, but it is undoubtedly an expensive and valuable business lesson.