Tips For Running Your Small Business on a Shoestring
If you think you need to have a lot of money to get a small business up and running, think again. You don’t have to be wealthy, and you don’t have to attract investors. However, you do have to be careful and smart, including preparing for the possibility that your first efforts at entrepreneurship might not be successful. The tips below can help you get started and make it through the first difficult year even when you aren’t “rolling in cash.”
Be Resourceful
One of the biggest problems you might encounter is cash flow issues or just the need for more money to take your business to the next level. Maybe you are not eligible for a loan, and you don’t have friends or family members who have a lot of spare cash lying around. However, if you have a term life insurance policy, you may be able to sell it. You can find out more by reviewing a guide that will explain how to meet industry eligibility standards and sell your policy. You might consider other ways to be resourceful as well. For example, maybe you could bring in an intern to get valuable entrepreneurial experience if you need an assistant but can’t afford to take on an employee. Don’t hesitate to tap your network in order to brainstorm solutions or get the help you need.
Think About Solutions
From the very start of your business, you should be thinking in terms of solutions. In other words, what problem does the service or product that you are offering solve? You should continue to be solution-based beyond this as well. When problems arise, look at them as challenges. Your clients or customers will also welcome a solution-based business because it means that when they have problems with some element of what you have offered, you will prioritize fixing that problem.
Stay Simple
One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is getting too complicated too fast. In particular, you don’t have to keep expanding until you are beyond your capacity. If there was ever a store or restaurant that you loved that moved to bigger premises and closed soon after, you have seen the dangers of this approach firsthand. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have ambition or aim to expand, but slow and steady is the way to go, especially in the early days of your business and anytime that money is tight.
Act Like a Pessimist
To be clear, you should absolutely think like an optimist, but you should run your business like a pessimist. For example, whatever you think it will cost to get started, you should build in a much larger cushion. You should also try to anticipate the worst-case scenarios in any situation, including running out of money entirely. Try to think of what unexpected things could ruin the plans that you have. This shouldn’t stop you from starting and growing your company, but it should force you to be realistic, make preparations and take precautions where you can.
This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics.net.
