What business would you start if you have the chance?

I would have loved to have a little old fashioned coffee shop with all home made cakes which i would bake myself. Oh well we can all dream

Has always been a dream of mine and still hoping to turn it into a reality when I retire and that is to have my own B&B somewhere warm and sunny with access to lots of local fresh produce, to be as self sufficient as possible and offer the warmest most hospitable welcome to any visitors but without a 5* price tag. I never dreamt as a youngster that I would be in the career I am in now....but I have found my goals and aims have changed a great deal as I have got older and I am happy with my life, my family and my work but that dream motivates me and I think it is always good to have a dream, whatever it may be.

As I'm a fully qualified holistic therapist, I'd absolutely love to own and run a holistic health spa. As, sadly, I can't afford the millions needed to buy a suitable country house with grounds to set it up in, it's likely to remain a dream!

I have always wanted, just for fun, to open an online shop. I love websites, work in web media as my career, and can create and optimise sites with ease, but lack the capital to buy stock, and the idea of what to sell!

This is an interesting question! I have thought that starting up a direct competitor to Costa Coffee and the like would be good. I think coffee shops could be in line to replace all of the ailing pubs at the moment and can offer so much more to so many more people ( i.e. the types of people that may not go into pubs ). If you remember back in 60s, coffee bars were very much in vogue. I would love to run a successful coffee house, starting from scratch with my own unique name, where prices are for once reasonable and where a great selection of food is available. The surroundings would be uniquely comfortable unlike the repetitive, drab browns and reds of Costa Coffee and it would have management that cares about its customers and where repeat business would be the order of the day. Yes it is a dream but not that much of a dream considering Costa Coffee want in excess of £200,000 to take on their franchise ( so I am informed ).

Hi darry

What a lovely question! If I had the money I would buy a big warehouse type location close to my local town centre with lots of parking. I would then provide the following

- Large creche with fully trained staff - leave children and
go shopping or have a beauty treatment.
- Cafe large enough for mums with prams, buggies and babies
- Quiet coffee/relaxation area for lone mums
- Beauty spa area for treatments like facials, manicures,
massages and pedicures
- Fully stocked baby change area with nappies, wipes, nappy
cream etc.
- Breast Feeding area with rocking chairs.
- All parking spaces would be Mother & Baby size.

I have struggled with a lot of the above, struggling in cafes with my pram because tables and chairs are packed so tight, leaving wipes at home and having to use wet tissues to clean up baby - so I would like to provide these facilities for mums to make life a bit easier.

Would love to be good enough at writing to make my money from articles and blogging. If my imagination and writing skills were up to it, it'd be great to make a living from novels and screenplays too. Or drawing comics - my old primary school dream career. Or perhaps even a professional stand up comedian...

Hmm, then again becoming a porn star would have some definite benefits :)

I would love to open a jewellery shop! This has been a dream of mine for some time as I have been making my own jewellery for a couple of years now! It may be that I will look into starting a website to start off, it would be a lot cheaper and less risk that way!

I always wanted to be an accountant and to start my own business up from this, however 20 years on from this dream I find myself doing nothing like this! I would love to open an online shop...not sure what selling though! I may have to give this some thought...

I think the best kind of business particularly in hard economic times is an online business which primarily solves other people's problems particularly financial problems e.g advising people to budget within their means and how much they would need to reduce their over-expenditure.

Wow, thank you all I did not expect to have so many responses, it makes me realise that we all what and wish to do it, so the question is what stops us, I believe its the risk of failure, or not knowing enough about how to go about doing it. I also believe we all have good intentions as I have and then you start a family and it's then a question of time, my wife and I have ideas, one which we are looking into is going into the rental market by starting small first with one property, rent this and see how things progress, anyone tried this and have advice!

I would open a nursery for children aged 2-5( we can do this age group is Scotland) based on my views of education.
I would also run parent workshops, lead by inspirational leaders and develop booklets written by parents for other parents .We would sell and develop interesting toys and have researched them by using them in the nursery and finding out what the children really like.We would help schools to make the transition from nursery to school more user friendly and bridge the gap between home and school that many young children encounter.It would be a fun place and
very relaxing!Big garden and loads of outdoor playing.