Dealing With Startup Change Even a solid business plan can't stop the inevitable. How will you deal?

Imagine you are building a sandwich restaurant, are knee-deep into construction, and suddenly you realize that you have to make a big change in your business plan in order to succeed.

That's exactly where husband-and-wife team Alexandra Degiorgio and Vito Polosa found themselves in mid-2004. Their original plans to open a sandwich bar in their New York City locale were abruptly stopped as continued market research revealed that their area's demographic wouldn't likely support such a restaurant. "[Locally], the median age was about 30, income was high, and the [residents] were highly educated," says Degiorgio. "There's a lot of competition to have something unique." Degiorgio, 39, and Polosa, 33, felt changing the plan midcourse was the right decision. Their solution was to create Aroma Kitchen & Winebar, a gourmet Italian restaurant, instead.

Watching for that wind of change is incredibly important to any startup. Entrepreneurs need to understand what's happening in the market at large, says David Zahn, president of StartUpBuilder.com, a subscription-based website that connects startups with business experts. Zahn offers two acronyms to help startups research their markets: SWOT, to examine your company's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats; and PEST, to examine Political, Economic, Social and Technological issues in your market.