How To Save Thousands in the 1st Year of Biz!

Friday, October 23, 2009  //  0 Comments  //  Blog, Uncategorized

TGIF! We made it! What a great Small Business Week – Loads of collaboration, prizes being donated, Retweets flying around and tons of business being drummed up! I would have to say, this week has been a great success!

We received great feedback from yesterday’s Tip sheet on “Got Less Than $500 in the Bank? MARKET Your Biz!!”, Our Retweets flew around – putting tons more entries into the prize pot!
Make sure you join us on Twitter and Retweet this post for your entry to win one of our great prizes!

So far, our Small Biz Week Prizes include:

• A $265 Small business Tax Package from Hilary McDonald Accounting
• A Virtual Office Subscription from 5050Biz
• The Couponizer coupon system
• New York Times best seller “One Year to an Organized Work Life” from the author herself Regina Leeds
• Limited edition T-shirts from RIPT Apparel
• The book 101 Media and Marketing Tips for the Sole Proprietor from Nanette Miner, a.k.a. The Training Doctor
• “How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain: using your brain style for small business success with less stress” from Eve Abbott, Organizer Extraordinaire
• .. more prizes arriving daily!!

Every time you Retweet this post you’ll receive one entry to win a prize!
Prizes were originally going to be given out today – but people who will be will be Retweeting this post will miss out! So plans have changed and all prizes will be given out on Monday!

As I said at the beginning of the week, this week’s posting would be out of our usual – with one post per day, Monday we will return to our usual scheduled posts – 1 – 2 per week. We have awesome spotlights coming up AND we have a new feature – Ask the expert – where you can submit a question to one of our experts (Legal, Financial, HR etc.) and receive an answer! But for now, without further ado – here is today’s post!

SAVING MONEY IN YOUR FIRST YEAR OF BIZ! (Download Here!)

Everyone loves saving money but it can be a make or break factor in your first year of business if your money is not taken care of properly. Read the following tips on how to save money for things like staffing, advertising and even purchasing supplies!
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Get a Great Accountant
Save money your first year in business by keeping your finances organized. One of the most important components to staying on top of your finances is to make sure you are working with good accountant. A good accountant will make sure you are planning effectively for taxes so there are no surprises at filing time. Secondly, keep good records. This means keeping all of your receipts, business and personal together, preferably in some sort of filing system. The more you have them organized the less you will spend on bookkeeping and accounting charges.
Hilary L. McDonald, Accountant – www.HilaryMcDonald.com
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Take a Vacation
One of the often overlooked aspects of a successful business is time off to recharge the batteries. During the early years of my business I knew I needed time off, yet my wife and I were trying to conserve cash. One of the things we did was to schedule a 3 or 4 day weekend. Throw a suitcase in the trunk and pick a direction. We’d travel until some caught our interest, then we’d stop and check it out. We made sure that we had a room by 4:00 p.m., then we’d scout the area surrounding the area. For a few hundred dollars we were able to have a great time and energize ourselves. The key was not to have an itinerary. The combination of not having an itinerary and exploring new places was all that it took to refresh the mind and renew the spirit
Dale Furtwengler, Furtwengler & Associates, P.C. – http://www.furtwengler.com
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Swap It
Swap for the services you need like marketing and web development or even vacations on Zakle.com
Eric Stamos, Co-Founder – Zakle.com
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Share Expenses
Look for partners to share the cost of a booth with you at Trade Shows. I have been fortunate to have shared a table with Reiki Pet Healers at Pet Expos that I really wanted to attend. It was WELL worth it!
Lisa Illman, THE KRITTER KOMMUNITY – http://kritterkommunity.com
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Create Your Own Network
Create a Meetup.com networking group in your area of business and have prospects come to you for thought leadership! Just make sure you have content of value to offer them.
Michael Shostack, Qualified B2B Leads LLC – www.qualifiedb2bleads.com
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Go to College
I had a college intern this summer helping research and collect information for an email series I am about to launch. She was free (I fed her a lot)
Denise LaBuda – www.moneywizdom.com
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Give Your Stuff Away
Make in kind donations rather than giving cash to get sponsorship exposure
Susan Barry, Hive Marketing – www.hive-marketing.com
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Catch Up On Your Reading
Read “5 Ways To Start A Business For Under $1000”
Heather Allard, The Mogul Mom – http://www.themogulmom.com
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Get Your Office Equipment for Free
Join your local Freecycle.com chapter (free) and ask for whatever you need to set up your office or store: office furniture, office supplies (binders, in baskets), office equipment, display stands, etc
Sue Freeman
Footprint Press, Inc. – www.footprintpress.com
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Question Everything
When you are considering spending money, on anything, ask yourself if you really, truly need it at this stage of your business. Maybe your website can be a lot simpler than you realize. Maybe you don’t need business cards yet. Maybe getting office space is premature. Small business budgets are usually so thin that money shouldn’t be spent until an issue keeps coming up and can no longer be ignored.
Mark C. Webster, Websterism – http://www.websterism.com
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Check Out the Credit Union
One of the “ankle bitters” that can nibble away on a start-ups budget is banks fees. You can avoid many of these fees by turning to and using a credit union. When I first started up my own company I first visited a national bank and they wanted to have average balances or there would be a fee, there were check fees and all kinds of fees. When I went to the credit union all I had to do was to deposit $25 into a savings account to open up an account and there were no fees and on top of that I earn a little tiny interest each month from my money. I have found the credit union I use to be friendly and are more start-up friendly verse the large national banks.
Sharon Evans, Founder of Trillion Dollar Funding – www.trilliondollarfunding.com
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Become a Community Member
Give up your gym membership, and take up walking/running. Gyms are expensive, plus it’s easy to zone out at the gym. Instead, walk or run through new parts of your city. While you are out, take mental notes on new businesses in your area, or business owners you would like to contact. The only way to understand how to do business in your community is to be a member of your community!
Ansley Meredith, Owner, ENERGIZED Media Relations – www.energizedmediarelations.com
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Rack Up the Points
Use a small business rewards credit card to pay for every day purchases (including advertising) Just pay it off at the end of each month and keep the points!
Carolyn Adams, Borders + Gratehouse – www.bordersgratehouse.com
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Use Coupons
Using coupons can save you tons of money in the first year of business and beyond! A great system to use to keep your coupons organized is the Couponizer, a proven system of tools designed to help you save more money, more consistently.
Ariane Griffiths, President, Foundation Studio Marketing & Promotions – www.foundationstudio.ca
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Create Bench Marks
When you sell X amount of dollars, get a part time secretary or a new phone system, or anything else you may need.
Orit Pennington, TPGTEX Label Solutions, Inc. – www.tpgtex.com
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Be Energy Efficient
Not only is this good for the planet, but often times it saves you money! Turn off all the lights when you leave or if you aren’t in a specific room. Unplug machines from the wall over the weekend. Set the A/C or heat to reflect when you are or aren’t in the office. Use fluorescent light bulbs – they require less power and last longer. Purchase paper and toilet paper made of recycled products.
Samantha Scott, Grand Poobah, Pushing the Envelope – http://www.GetPushing.com
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Get Advice
Start an advisory board consisting of an attorney, accountant, business coach, marketing director, etc. This way you get free professional advice on an ongoing basis.
Marian H. Gordon, Yippee Print & Marketing – www.yippeeprinting.com
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Lose the Commute
The biggest, and most costly, mistake I almost made was leasing an office when I started my PR and Marketing Communications firm. Now, I have 2 employees who work for me out of their homes, as do I, without the added cost of office rent. I think it’s the largest single cost, apart from labor or raw materials that a company can incur in many instances.
David Manzer, The Sage Closer – www.thesagecloser.com
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Educate Yourself
Free Learning – NFIB Young Entrepreneur Foundation has a free entrepreneurship curriculum for educators, but you can get it too. Go to universities for lectures. It’s just as good or better than networking events you pay for.
Kathy Korman Frey, Founder, Hot Mommas Project – http://www.HotMommasProject.org
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Negotiate
Many people know next to nothing about negotiation when they setup their first business; Learning that skill is the single greatest opportunity to save money. Slash 10% on supplier’s prices or office rent and that money goes directly to your bottom line each and every month afterwards. You don’t have to be Donald Trump to negotiate, and there is one secret few ‘insiders’ will share: Often simply making the effort to negotiate will get a discount.
Richard Kershaw, Quality Nonsense Ltd. – www.QualityNonsense.com
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Do It Yourself
Do everything you can by yourself for as long as you can, and then do it a bit longer.
This allowed us to learn the business first and focus on ancillary skills second. This trades efficiency, i.e. time which we had, for money which we did not have. There is no better way to get better at something than doing it over and over, even if you don’t want to.
Damien Casten – www.candidwines.com
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Join a Co-op
Joining a group of like-minded individuals can save you lots of money! The Mom Entrepreneur has a seasonal co-op shop where you can advertise your company for less money than if you were to advertise by yourself. By pooling your resources, you can get the same (if not bigger) bang for your buck than going it alone!
http://coopshop.themomentrepreneur.com/
Ariane Griffiths, President, Foundation Studio Marketing & Promotions – www.foundationstudio.ca
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Keep Your Eye on the Little Things
As a new business owner, an excellent way to save money is by watching the little things. I added up the little subscriptions for $10 here or $15 there to be listed with this service, etc and I spent $205 just trying to get my business’ name out there and I don’t believe there was any ‘payoff’!
Monica Barnett, President, Blueprint for Style – http://www.blueprintforstyle.com
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Be Selective
Be selective when choosing networking events to attend. A luncheon can easily cost $30-$45, but you might get away with $5-$10 to attend a happy hour. You can meet just as many people, if not more, when attending a cheaper event. (Nobody talks at a luncheon while you’re eating all that expensive food anyway!) Also, if you have attended one group’s networking functions for a few months in a row, take a couple months off to try a different group. You could make new contacts by exploring different opportunities, and you will have that “new kid on the block” cache when you eventually return to your first group!
Ansley Meredith, Owner, ENERGIZED Media Relations – www.energizedmediarelations.com
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Ask for Help
Just ask for help, many people will help you out if you plead your case.
Peter E Raymond, President + Chief Innovator, Human Condition – www.hcxdesign.com
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Carpool
Carpool to lunches, meetings, etc – you get a double benefit – save gas and network/build a relationship with the person you’re riding with
Shari L Frisinger, CornerStone Strategies LLC – www.cornerstonestrategiesllc.com
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Give an Incentive
Create an incentive for customers and prospects to post testimonials to a Facebook fan page. An example might be: “Post your favourite reason why our product is so good on our fan page (using YouTube video) and win free tickets to a sporting event provided by XYZ partner”.
Nathan McKelvey, Founder, Hidden Equity LLC – www.hiddenequity.com
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Put Down the Bottle
My first year in business I drank tap water. It won’t kill you and it’s a lot cheaper than bottled water.
Shane Fischer, Attorney at Law – www.fischer-law.com
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Volunteer Your Time
I knew that I had to build my business through networking but I didn’t have a lot of money to join associations and networking groups. My way around this was to call the group facilitators to volunteer my services of running the registration table, or any other helpful tasks that would offset my attendance fees. The majority of people took me up on my offer. I was able to find out whether or not this was a membership I wanted to pursue, AND promote my business, AND provide an extra hand when needed, all on my shoestring budget.
Lauren Milligan – www.ResuMAYDAY.com
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Go Digital
Instead of paying for my own business telephone line, I now have a GoogleVoice account which picks up my calls and creates text messages for me!
Monique Harris, Photographer – www.mportraitphotography.com
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Rent It
Don’t waste money setting up a fancy office. Either work from home or find a low-rent out-of-the-way space. If you need to impress a client, there are plenty of places to rent a conference room by the hour.
Shel Horowitz, Author, 8 books – http://www.frugalmarketing.com
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Outsource It
My biggest expense today is payroll. But when I first started I saved a ton of money by farming out work to independent contractors across the world, which I found on sites like Guru and Elance. I connected with talented people and paid by the project, and had almost zero in payroll, payroll taxes, workers comp, employee benefits, bonuses, etc.
Jay Kamhi, President, Kamhi World – www.kamhiworld.com

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I truly hope you enjoyed this series of tip sheets! I had a great time putting them together and more than anything else – meeting all of these great people who went out of their way to provide a little insight in helping you get your business started (or revitalised) on the right path!!

* All of our Retweeters will be listed on Monday along with all the winners too!!!

Have a great weekend!
Ariane