Starting Your Own Business, Part 2 

The key to successfully building your own business is to do something you love. And do not fall into the trap of doing something that everyone says there is “a lot of money to be made in it”. It is actually much easier to start a business if you enjoy the work. As you may already know, spending long hours doing something you dislike will never make you a success.

As to the money necessary to start a part-time business, today is the best time ever to be doing this because virtually anything you can think of can now be done professionally from your home. This saves you the huge overhead of renting space somewhere. Also, get your families help as much as possible. Probably the biggest mistake we see people make when it comes to starting their own business is hiring help. With the associated paper work and filings for employees, i.e. taxes, withholding reporting and insurance, this is a huge expense that you cannot afford right now.

The whole point, however, is that you need to pay off your debts and starting your own business is another way of bringing more income into the household to do this. How much can you make? If you turn out to be a good business person (keep your expenses down and the cash flowing) you may only make a profit of a few hundred dollars the first year up to as much as several thousand dollars. But if you find that you really enjoy this new business and want to make it a full-time occupation, you will see your profits growing each year.

Other Ways

There are other ways to increase your income also. Some of these could almost be considered a part-time job or starting your own business but are not quite the same.

For instance, do you have an extra room in your house? Can you create an extra room? Could you get bunk beds and put all three kids in one room for awhile? If so, you now have an extra room to rent out to a college student or young worker. A lot of people find the idea of having a “stranger” living in their house disconcerting. Remember that you can set up acceptable criteria for the type of person you will rent to. A graduate student is going to be a more serious person than a college freshman. They have to be or they would not have made it all the way to graduate school. Depending on what you charge for the room and whether meals are including or kitchen privileges, you could add at least another $400 a month to your income.

We live in the land of opportunity but it is your responsibility to find those opportunities and put them to use for yourself. Instead of spending the next few hours watching TV, why not go lay down and think of all the other possibilities out there.

US Loan Guaranty Service - Good Informational Resource - Government Site

Starting Your Own Business, Part 1

We stress this option because it is what we believe in. But how are you going to find the money or the time to start your own business especially when you are short of money right now anyway? And what are you going to do? If you have excessive debts then you might want to try to resolve those or find out information on a debt payment plan. You can usually find a debt reduction or debt management service provider pretty easily. In fact ReduceDebt.net is one of the leading providers in this area.

These concerns are all tied in together and basically boil down to “do what you love and the time will be there and the money will come”. The best way to explain this is to give you some examples. And remember that a lot of these can be done by anyone from 13 years old to 90 years old. And all of them take extremely little cash to start up.

Do you love animals? If so, you could try to get a part-time job with a veterinarian. Or you could start your own part-time dog grooming business. Sit down to your handy home computer and write up a flyer about what you will do, such as a complete shampoo and blow dry. Run off some copies of your flyer (this few dollars for flyers will be your only expense) and go out walking your own dog in a different area every evening. Every time you meet someone else with their own dog, hand them a flyer. It would be easy to fit this into a tight schedule.

Do you like flying kites? You could teach a class on Saturday mornings at your local Parks and Recreation department on how to build different types of kites and how to fly them (so they actually stay up, that is). Or you could start your own business by offering these classes in your own home. Again, your main expense will be flyers to post around town. However, learning how to get on the radio for free to preach the wonderful benefits of flying a kite would bring you even more customers.

Do you like spending your weekends biking around the countryside? You can offer your own tours and advertise them through bike and outdoor life stores. Or start a newsletter for bike riders about the most beautiful or safest or most kid friendly or easiest or more strenuous rides in your region, your state or even the whole country. You get to do what you love and still make money at it.

Do you love gardening? Again, offer classes on growing a healthy diet, one class for adults and one for kids. You don’t have enough room where you live to do this? Find a country person who does and offer to grow them so many pounds of whatever in exchange for a few month’s use of some land. Live in the city with only enough room for your own small garden? Teach the city dwellers about container gardening. You could even offer a class in your own kitchen on 50 ways to cook and enjoy broccoli. Sell your leftover vegetables to your neighbors.

If woodworking is your thing, you just need to focus on the area you like best. Do you like cabinetry and can, therefore, start a custom cabinet business? Or is furniture more enjoyable to you? Or do you like repairing old houses? Or do you and your spouse like doing the arts and crafts type of thing? Or do you want to teach others how to do these things?

In other words, think about what you really love spending your time doing and turn that into a part-time occupation. We all need time to relax during the day. What better way to spend it then by doing something you love and making a little extra money at the same time? On top of that though, you may find that you really love doing this thing and you are building up clientele so that eventually you can quit the job that you do not particularly like and have your own full-time business. This is truly the best of both worlds.

Fred Wilson, whom many consider to be one of the most prolific venture capitalists ever, had a very interesting article on his blog recently. www.AVC.com

Basically he makes the case that this tumultuous economic state is going to provide some great opportunities for private equity firms and foreign buyers.

Companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Dell are have market caps that are now at incredibly low levels when you account for how much cash they have on hand.

Apple specifically has more than $20 billion cash and short term investments on hand. Their market cap as of today is 78 Billion. Deduct the $20 billion in cash and you have a company that’s trading at 6X cash flow. For a company that is continually gaining market share in the personal computer market, dominating the MP3 (which is actually often called iPod regardless if the audio device is one or not) player market and has just sold more than 10 million iPhone is less than a year the price seems like it’s a huge opportunity for a long term buy.

Even institutional blue chips are trading at value buy levels. Wal-Mart is trading at 10x cash flow, Comcast 6x and AT&T 4x cash flow. I know that the last thing on any American’s mind is probably about pouring money into the marketplace, but in reality things will come back to a normal level. I don’t think that these companies are at rock bottom yet. However fundamentally people will still have the same basic needs. Food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication and entertainment. We’re going to have to tighten the belt drastically, and companies selling overpriced luxuries that many Americans indulge in (Starbucks) on a daily basis are going to feel it the most. But we will carry on, the financial crisis is serious but it’s not at a point where we can’t turn things around.

We should hope that American financial institutions will look to heavily invest in these great companies who are essentially on sale at a great discount. There’s no doubt that foreign companies will want to acquire undervalued properties and gain large positions if they cannot acquire a business outright. I’d prefer private equity investors to gobble up some of the cogs in the Fortune 500. In the 80’s the Japanese were buying up anything and everything that they could. Real-estate, large equity positions in companies and other investment vehicles. When their market took a major nose dive they were trying to unload as quickly as possible. Once we’re able to recover from our own economic crisis it’s important that in the event that another country enters into a major recession we don’t have a flood of debt or equity investments hitting the market all at once

A lot of people are concerned about our seemingly worsening economy. Millions of Americans jobs are at risk and having money to pay basic bills is the number one priority. One thing is for certain, in a down economy the rich, middle class and the poor can find ways to make money. It just comes down to one basic thing; you’ve got to hustle. It’s a fact (and part of what makes this country so great) that individuals who put themselves into something 100% are far more likely to succeed than someone who doesn’t.

When it comes down to putting food on the family (as our dear President would say) you’ve got to get creative about finding new career opportunities. Maybe you have to work harder than you ever have in your life. It might mean taking on two jobs, working crazy hours or working for far less than you’re worth. Unfortunately in this economy good jobs (with or without job security) are rare and the competition is fierce. We’re a free market society and those principals certainly extend to the job market.

It is simply supply VS demand. So how do you take advantage of this? Simple, make yourself (you, your talents) a scarce resource. Now if you’re an engineer that doesn’t mean you should go on a killing spree eliminating the competition. That will only lead to a temp job doing laundry on Death Row. What you really need to do is make yourself a valuable resource who can be a great utility player.

In sports teams are always looking for great talent. However in evaluating what their best choice might be for choosing a draft pick many things are taken into consideration. It’s not just what the biggest need (player position) is at the moment, meaning what job needs to be filled.  If your team needs a starting pitcher, a catcher, a first baseman and a third baseman you better think things through before blowing your number #1 pick on the top rated pitcher.

Wouldn’t you be better off trading that #1 pick for the 6th and 12th pick hedging your bet? Now while it’s not exactly the same, the principals around this theory are. If I have the opportunity to hire an employee at one position who I think will excel wouldn’t I be even more inclined to hire an employee who I think can excel at one position and be an asset (or even excel) at another position. Maybe employee #2 can help some of my other employees in other departments with some issues (outside of their main job description) that might arise.

So what does this all mean? Simple just make yourself as useful to a company as possible. If there were skills and jobs you performed well previously in your career (even if you weren’t so crazy about them) make sure you present that to any prospective employer. To get back to the sports analogy, I’d much rather draft a player who can play first base, third base and catcher than a short-stop. That way if something happens to one of my other players I know I’ve got this “Utility Player” who can make the quick move to that position.

So how do you become a “Utility Player”? Only you know the answer to that. You know your skill set, only you know your interests and passions. What is going to make you stand out? What would make you want to hire you over someone else?

We can stick our heads in the sand and hope that the sky clears and the good times come back tomorrow. Unfortunately the truth is that we’re probably in for a bumpy ride for the next few years. So only those willing to make that true sacrifice are going to succeed in these dismal economic times.

You know what to do. Get ready to get your hands dirty, you’ve got to want it, you’ve got to work hard, you’ve got to be a player.