OPEN MY BUSINESS.

Most of the problems that cost people serious money when opening a physical venue aren't complicated. They're avoidable. The lease signed before anyone properly understood the services capacity. The fitout budget built on assumptions instead of quotes. The approval that took three times longer than expected. The contractor who disappeared with the deposit.

I've watched these things happen more times than I should have to. Intelligent, capable people — losing money on decisions that were completely preventable, because nobody told them what to look for or in what order to look for it.

Open My Business exists because the information needed to avoid most of those mistakes isn't complicated — it just needs to be in the right hands at the right moment. Before the lease is signed. Before the designer is briefed. Before the shopfitter is paid.

Nate has spent 35 years designing and opening physical venues — shops, cafes, bars and restaurants. Hundreds of real projects, with real budgets, real timelines and real consequences when the decisions were wrong.

The Open My Business guides are built directly from that experience. Not theory, not research, not a framework assembled from other people's frameworks. What actually happens when you open a physical venue. What the lease clause means in practice. What the services upgrade costs before you've served a single customer. What a properly sequenced project looks like compared to one that runs on hope and adrenaline.

The same experience. Now in a format you can use — before the expensive part begins.

There are currently four venue-specific planning guides — Open My Cafe, Open My Shop, Open My Bar and Open My Restaurant — plus a free pre-lease checklist that covers the eight critical areas to assess before committing to any site.

Each guide takes you from site confirmed through to open doors, in the right order, with the right questions at every stage. They're designed to be used — not read once and filed.

• Open My Cafe — from espresso bar placement to launch readiness
• Open My Shop — from customer flow to opening stock coordination
• Open My Bar — from licensing pathway to trading readiness
• Open My Restaurant — from kitchen specification to health approvals
• Before You Sign the Lease — free pre-lease checklist, eight critical areas

A Launch Bonus Pack — Concept to Sales Programme, Build My Brand Playbook and How to Choose and Brief a Designer — is available as an add-on with any guide purchase.

Open My Business is not a consulting service, a design studio or a project management firm. The guides are practical tools you use yourself, or alongside the professionals already working on your project.

They don't replace a commercial lawyer reviewing your lease, an accountant advising on your structure, or a designer briefed on your concept. They make those conversations sharper — because you arrive knowing the right questions to ask.