If you hop on social media, people will tell you starting a business is easy and relatively cheap to start. All the lies and selling of dreams, IMO. You know I’m keeping it 100% real with you. When I started my boutique, it was pretty low cost, mainly because I was reselling clothes out of my closet. Still, it was also a very low-tech start with a super basic starter website on bigcartel, and when reflecting on that, let’s not it was way over a decade ago I did that.
In today’s market, you need a shopping cart with CRM, Email Marketing, abandon shopping carts, pluggings, and more. Those things plus products, legal, branding, marketing, and more can cost you $5,000 to launch. I want to share several creative ways to fund your business within the next 90 to year time frame, dependent on your financial needs.
Gig Work Such as; Doordash, Uber & Instacart
Currently, I know people who bring in on average $2,000 a week doing gig work for companies. Gig companies you are considering 1099 will have to file taxes based on deductions and pay your quarterly taxes on your earnings. There is a multitude of gig jobs out there, and even from your home.
Part-Time Job
You’re probably thinking you need all the extra hours to put in your business, but what if you could save the $5,000 capital that you might need. If it were me, I would take that money to stack the business how I needed, but doing little branding awareness through social media. The main goal is helping you reach the financial aspect of funding your business, which sometimes means pausing building XYZ company. Right now, so many small businesses across the country are hiring. It’s the perfect time to get in just for a quick check.
Crowdsourcing Such as; Kickstarter and Indiegogo
I am taking you back seven years ago when everyone pushed crowdfunding websites to help launch their businesses and concepts. Today they have gotten even fancier with equity-based websites for people needing seed funding for their startups. Regardless of the route you go, I highly suggest doing a google and youtube search on learning how to crowdfund your business on those platforms successfully. Those style companies tend to be all-or-nothing style platforms, so you want to make sure you achieve your goal.
Cashing Out Retirement Account
First and foremost, I am not a licensed financial advisor, and best you speak to one regarding your personal fiscal decision. One of the many questions clients ask me; is they should cash out their retirement account to start their business. Most times, I do suggest this and its case-by-case scenario. However, if you’re already utilizing the golden rule of having a year’s worth of savings or your business income matches your job income rule, then it’s a go for me. I have had clients who only had $1,000 to others who had $40,000 in there. Each one not only made it back, but they have exceeded their business goals and creating a plan to save for retirement again.
Freelance Now For Beta Testers
Can you tell that I am all about hiring freelancers and love using Fiverr to source them? Launching your service-based business there to get beta testers and social proof is a great way to fund your business. Let’s use the example if you are an email marketing specialist, and you want to make six figures in the first year of business, but no one knows you or your services. List your services for a 1/3 of the future cost when setting up email marketing with websites, email workflows, copywriting, and much more. I would get five to ten social proofs of your skillset to use as forms of advertising when you do launch. You then can keep yourself on Fiverr or whatever freelancer website you’re utilizing to obtain leads for your business.
I have written articles on seeking grants, bootstrapping your business, creative ways to fund, friends and family loans, or even seven ways to save money for your future business. There are hundreds of ways to fund your business creatively venture it’s all about putting in the work.
