How to start a small business with little money

Start with a problem, not an idea

The businesses that survive solve a problem someone is already paying to solve, badly. Look at the work you or your family already do, the complaints you hear repeatedly, and the tasks people pay to avoid.

An idea nobody has asked for needs marketing budget. A problem people already pay for needs only a better answer.

Sell it before you build it

Take a version you can deliver by hand to ten potential customers and ask them to pay. A yes tells you more than a year of planning. A no is cheap when it arrives before you have spent anything.

• ·Price it properly from day one. Discounted first customers become your hardest customers.
• ·Deliver manually at first so you learn exactly where the work is.
• ·Keep business money in a separate account and pay yourself a wage.
• ·Write down every step you repeat. Those notes become your system later.

From a job you own to a system that runs

Most small businesses are jobs with extra risk. The shift happens when the owner documents the repeatable work, trains someone into it, and buys back their own time.

That transition is where a business stops depending on you turning up, and starts being an asset you own.

The rocks under this island

Undercharging, hiring before the process exists, mixing personal and business cash, spending on branding before revenue, and refusing to close something that clearly is not working. Each one is survivable early, and expensive later.