Start Your Own Small Business By Using More Ingenuity, Less Cash

For some, it is a wrenching adjustment to scale down and have to balance decisions about spending money to save time, or working longer hours to save cash and increase cash flow. Necessities, like receptionists and clerks in large offices become luxuries in small offices. If you can do it yourself , it costs nothing.

Watch Your Pennies; They're Coming Out of Your Pocket Now

Starting your own business, whether home-based, in a loft , strip mall , business incubator, or at a seriously impressive office space, requires some serious thinking about whether you are ready to accept certain realities. Very probably, if you are leaving a large well- financed corporation , organization, university or government agency, you are going to have to work harder and make do with less.

For some, it is a wrenching adjustment to scale down and have to balance decisions about spending money to save time, or working longer hours to save cash and increase cash flow. Necessities, like receptionists and clerks in large offices become luxuries in small offices. If you can do it yourself , it costs nothing. Yes, your time may be worth $100 an hour, but is anyone paying you that between 8 pm and midnight.?

As humbling at it may be, you may realize, not only can you not afford to have someone else water and fertilize the plants in your office, you can't even afford the plants. The good news is that professional business analysts like Peter Lynch who ran the Magellen Fund and studied thousands of businesses, didn't like seeing a ficus in an office.... or a mahogany desk, or good art or fine china. Lynch only felt good about start up companies on the second floors of strip centers with metal desks and linoleum flooring... or something comparable... because that made a statement the people running the company were serious about making and saving money. So, often, Lynch invested Magellan's money in their company's stocks and that cash infusion got them roaring. If you watch your pennies and forego the ficus and the palms, this could happen to you.

One always has to make tough choices to cut costs.. Here are some suggestions from experienced start up entrepreneurs:

• Keep overhead costs to a minimum. Rent a modest office.

• Keep your desks and equipment functional not "showy". ( The impression you make with showy equipment might not be what you intend... too much money spent on decor spells "inexperience" to the battle scarred.)

• Buy second hand. Do you think any good antique dealers either buy retail or shop at Office City? That's not where the bargains are or the best looking furniture either.

• Forget support staff.... call don't write... use your email...avoid paper. If you are really cheap you can go by a Kinko's every evening and copy what you need.

• Answer your own phone.. We should all learn to take calls and dispense with them in a few minutes... same principle as handling a piece of paper only once.

• Work until seven and eat a little later. You can do all your "support" chores after regular office hours. Tell people you were raised in Europe or Latin America and are accustomed to later evening hours.

• Don't skimp on business cards, letterhead stationary or phone service. They are part of your direct dealing with the public and come under the category of marketing, which should always be first rate.

• And don't forget to market. No matter how small or how thrifty you are, you can't afford not to have a budget for this. Just be sure you make the effort to learn what really works and is effective in your field before you actually spend money marketing. You have to make every dollar and every penny count. The journey to success is long and full of unexpected pot holes... you never want to run out of cash along the way.

• Remember how and where you do your work isn't as important as what you do. If working in your small business is giving you the opportunity to do interesting and useful work, that's more important and more gratifying than having either a ficus or a $5,000 copier.