> That’s like buying a minimum wage job for two hundred grand. This is literally true. If ignoring your own labor you calculate that you will make $20,000 a y

> That’s like buying a minimum wage job for two hundred grand. This is literally true. If ignoring your own labor you calculate that you will make $20,000 a year on a $200,000 investment for your business, it seems pretty awesome, until you realize you could just work minimum wage and not have to put up the $200,000 investment. I think is actually the most common mistake initially made by people who want to open a cafe or similar small retail business: treating your own labor as free and ignoring opportunity cost. For the purposes of calculating return on investment, you should imagine you are paying yourself whatever you would have to pay to have someone else to do the same work in your business.