Ok this is for personal reasons. I do not have a blog, and want a place to put these ideas down to see how my ideas have changed over time. I also thought that this would allow input from others. I will probably be adding to this as time goes by.
First thing you have to do is to get serious and treat whatever venture you are doing as a business. Make certain to stay as professional as possible. This means getting family support, and that your family is serious about getting this venture off the ground. If you do not take this serious, it will be hard for others to take it seriously as well. It will be VERY hard to get things rolling without the support of your family (this does not mean you take everything your uncle Ed the nay sayer has to say to heart)
Know what you want to do and why you want to do it. This may take a serious amount of time, and may change as you do research. But I like golf, so I am going to sell golf clubs will probably not be a good enough reason. The fact that you have a vast knowledge of the sport, know people that will buy clubs based on your recommendation, you have a connection to a supplier, and are able to get discounted space at several events would be better reasons. While I do not think that it ha to be something you enjoy, you better damn well be able to find a way to pick yourself up to speed BEFORE you ever decide to go into whatever venture you decide to go into.
Make certain to understand that most businesses do fail. Make certain to understand that almost all (might even be all) successful people have failed several times before becoming successful. What your job is, is to figure what you can do to eliminate as many possibilities for failure that you can. Understand that you will not be compensated fairly for what you do at the beginning. You will have find ways to be creative, and do things you don't particularly like doing. Once you become rich and famous, you will be able to find a way to avoid doing certain things. Until then, it will be you cleaning the toilets and doing the taxes.
It is my personal belief that lack of capital and trying to do too much to fast are the biggest reasons for failure. People have to live off their inventory in order to survive/. What I mean by this is, instead of buying new inventory or upgrades, they are using their sales to survive. You need to figure out a way to avoid doing this, or you will never be able to survive. This happens to people that expand too fast as well. They become so successful they fail. They are not able to keep finding suppliers, capital and other business needs to keep up with customer demand. All of the sudden, they are selling their soul. and providing a sub par supply or service.
Even though I can think of many more things, I will stop here for now.