Building Your Small Business on a Budget

Being your own boss is great, but every business, even one run out of your home, has to turn a profit. The shorter the time between writing your business plan to being in the black, the better. Most of that will depend on how successful you are at landing clients or making sales. But you can help things along by keeping your expenses down.

The best place to start is with the things you don't need. Yes, the trappings of business can be cool and make you feel like you're a real business, but if you're just starting out it might be best to save the fleet of company trucks until a bit further down the road. If you can run your business out of the spare bedroom, for instance, that might make more sense than renting downtown office space. Even if you do need to get out of the house, look for cheap alternatives to high rents. When short story writer Ray Bradbury discovered he couldn't get any work done at home, he started working in his local public library.

Staying flexible in your business is a lot like staying flexible on the road. You need options that won't tie you down, and can grow with your business. If you're going to be doing business over the phone, you'll want a PBX eventually. The last thing you're going to want is telephone company technicians crawling through your home installing the thing, coming back to repair it, and then making periodic visits to install upgrades. Getting an online PBX gives you all the benefits of the real thing, without the equipment taking over a corner of your in-home office. It also means you can adjust how your calls are routed and check your call stats from the library, coffee shop, or wherever you are best able to work, even if it's not where your PBX is.

A flexible PBX also allows you to take advantage of competitive pricing that might otherwise be beyond your reach. With virtual PBX, just because you live in Chicago doesn't mean your employees need to. This means you're not limited to the local labor pool, and can seek out people who have key skills all across the country. Even if your team is spread across the continent, your phone system will route calls to everyone as if you were all in the same building, even if none of you are actually inside a building.

Finally, one of these experts should probably be an accountant, and you'll probably want them to be at least familiar with the laws of your state. A good accountant can help you keep track of exactly where your money is going, and help you keep track of data you'll need to maximize your tax savings. Money is the lifeblood of your business, and if you don't know what it's doing, you can't speak intelligently about how healthy your business actually is. It might seem a large expense at first, but as soon as you can't keep it all straight in your head, you'll need someone on top of the money before it gets away from you.

Photo credits: borman818, Lachlan Hardy.