What is the least painful way to get out of a tanning business?

My husband & I opened a very small tanning salon last Jan. & have found that the time involved is too much for the $ we are making in return. We took out a $25K loan to start the business and am struggling to make ends meet these last 2 months of the year. We have had the business up for sale since Sept. & have had no serious inquiries. We want out at least by June of next year with the least amt of debt possible. Any advice?

Unfortunately, you picked a really bad business venture. The best thing to do is shut it down NOW and sell off the equipment, etc. for the best price you can get.

Since it doesn't look like there will be people interested in buying the business from you, you'll end up having to do that anyway, and the only difference between now and later is the additional costs you'll be bleeding out.

So why put off the inevitable and lose even more?

CLOSE IT NOW and cut your losses as best you can by selling off everything that's possible. Unfortunately, you won't get back your total investment and it will be a painful and expensive loss, but successful people realize when something is working out, cut their losses, and figure out what they can learn from that experience.

It was before I met him, but my husband once lost $25,000 on a bad real estate investment and another $20,000 on a bad business venure, and we just lost some money that we invested in a friend's business (but they're still our friends; like you, it wasn't anything they did wrong, it was just bad timing for a market that suddenly dried up).

Fortunately, my husband learned enough from his prior business losses that he (and me too) made a lot of smarter decisions afterwards, so out lost investment to our friends really won't affect us much financially.

And that's the way you need to view this. It's a learning experience. What could you do differently next time?

Whatever you do, don't take it as a sign to not try something else again in the future.

EVERY SINGLE SUCCESSFUL PERSON has at LEAST one catastrophic failure in their past!