MJ,
Your ten most important steps to opening a tanning salon forgot one very important step: MONEY. Make sure you have sufficient capital to invest in a tanning salon. Make sure that you have sufficient capital for startup capital expennditures (equipment, buildouts, etc.) and also working capital. Working capital should be sufficient to get you through your first year of operations and into year two. Don't quite your day job and don't let your spouce quit their job unless you can afford to do this. Don't depend on lenders to bail you out.There is a limit to how much lenders will allow you to borrow and for petes sake don't get yourself so much in debt that you are so highly leveraged that when the slow season comes you can't meet your lease or
loan payments. I hope that this helps.