by Jerry Mooney
Managing your spending properly should be your number one concern in the early stages of your business. It is, of course, important to invest in marketing so you can actually start bringing in some revenue but balance is key. If you spend too much, you’ll burn through all of your cash before you start making any more and you’ll have to fold the business entirely. That’s why it’s important that you only spend what is absolutely necessary in those first few months. Here are some simple ways that you can cut your overheads and make your startup money go further.
Use Co-working Spaces
Rent on an office is one of your biggest outgoings and when you’re just starting out, you don’t really need a big office space. You won’t have too many employees at this point and you won’t need an office all day every day. But you also can’t run the business from home that well if you’ve got a couple of people working for you. Luckily, there is a good middle ground that works well for new businesses. Co-working spaces are really taking off at the moment because they allow you to rent one or two desks for a couple of days a week. That means you can rent a coworking desk when you need it and only pay for the time you use, rather than paying rent on an office that you aren’t using that much. It’ll only cost you a fraction of the price and you don’t have to deal with any other expenses like utility bills for the building etc.
Outsource IT
Having good IT support is essential for all businesses. The threat of cyber-attack is at an all time high and any data loss can be incredibly expensive for businesses. Most companies also rely heavily on computers to run day to day so you need a good IT team that can deal with online security as well as maintaining and designing software for the company. The only problem is, hiring a team of well-trained IT staff is expensive and probably outside of your budget right now. You can’t go without IT support though, so your best option is to outsource it. You’ll get access to a team of experienced IT staff but you won’t have to pay the salaries for all of them so it saves a lot of money. Not having them on-site at all times is a bit of a downside but at this point, you need to make that sacrifice.
Remote Workers
If you started the business on your own and you’re thinking about hiring some staff, take a moment to consider before you hire full-time employees. You might need a little extra help but at this stage, you could probably get by with somebody else working a few days a week. Why not try remote workers for your general admin instead. You can hire a remote worker to answer emails or phone calls and deal with paperwork etc. The benefit of using these remote workers is that you can hire them for a few hours here and there to do whatever needs doing. That means you’re not paying somebody a full salary when you don’t have enough work for them.
If you can use these methods to cut costs in other areas, you’ll have more money available to market your products and start generating more revenue.