How Start Ups Can Save Time And Money
Post published 27th April, 2014
I once spoke at the Start-Up Anglia Business Development Conference and answered questions on how start-up businesses can save time and money.
Many of these tips can be applied to businesses at any stage but here are a couple of the main points that I talked about.
Work smarter rather than harder. Don’t try to do it all by yourself
It can come as a huge shock when you start up a business to discover all the different tasks that you have to deal with to do with running a business which aren’t what you went in to business to do, and ultimately are things which will take you away from doing the things that you can earn money for.
Firstly, don’t try and do everything yourself. It’s easy to think that you don’t want to spend money on using someone else’s services but using an experienced person to do what they are good at is often a more efficient way of doing things. For example, if you charge £50 per hour and it takes you 3 hours a week to do your bookkeeping, you may find that an experienced bookkeeper could do the job in half the time and cost you less than you would charge your time out at.
Instead of employing people to carry out tasks consider outsourcing. It’s often much cheaper as you are only paying for the work that is actually being done and can give you a greater degree of flexibility.
Spend your money wisely, but don’t miss out on the essentials
Do you really need an office straight away? If you can work from home to start with do so, it’s by far the cheapest way of doing things. If you need an office presence to give a more established appearance then consider using a business address, which will be a fraction of the cost of running an office.
If you are in a job at the moment but considering starting a business you might want to become a five to niner, so called because after you finish your day job you will then spend the evening working on your business. It’s still possible to be open for business throughout the working day by using a telephone answering service to take messages for you. You can return calls when you are on a lunch break or whenever you can, giving the impression that your office is staffed throughout the day.
There are plenty of things that you can do to cut costs but always be careful to not look as though you are being cheap, as this may reflect badly on the quality of your own brand.
Just getting started? Keep watching this blog for more useful business advice for your start up business to help you get off the ground and grow your business.
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