Envisioning the Business - How to Start a Home-based Computer Repair Business - page 18

Live Lean and Hungry
so there I was, sitting at my kitchen table surrounded by ideas, checklists, and to-do charts.
I wasn't making any income, but I had some savings and credit cards to use to my advant-
age. I could have easily given up, gotten depressed, and resorted to job hunting. Instead,
I did a week's worth of research and found out that starting my own business was not as
expensive as I had imagined.
Yes, if you imagine that you'll start your business and in a month be walking into a nice
building with a retail front with several employees and a warehouse full of inventory,
you're going to have to work fast and you had better have a ton of cash to boot. I was in
a different frame of mind: get my enterprise started on my kitchen table and stay on my
kitchen table until I knew that I could afford to upgrade my work environment.
In fact, this philosophy still holds true for me today. I run my businesses without debt at-
tached to them. Basically, if I can't afford to do something, then I don't do it. This works
for me and I like the feeling of not being over my head in debt.
so as I progressed down the self-employment path, I was able to successfully begin my first
business with less than $12,000 in combined cash and credit. After a few short years I have
thirty-one employees and seemingly limitless growth potential in sight, but I continue to
subscribe to the “If I can't afford it, I can't do it” principle.
However, there are factors and costs that cannot be avoided, so of course there's risk in-
volved. If there weren't, then everyone would do it. The very thought of business owner-
ship and moving on to the start-up phase of owning a business can be described as risky
and that's great. Entrepreneurs are risk-takers and love the challenge!
It will be impossible for me to give you a cold, hard price on what it's going to cost to get
your business up and running. All of us business owners do things a little differently.
So what can you expect as you need to pay for items that are part of your startup? I'm going
to assume that you don't have an endless supply of cash on hand. If you did, you might
be reading a different topic entitled How to Buy an Island. Since you're more likely in a
scenario similar to the one I was in, let's get into the basics of what you'll need to begin,
assuming that you have a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet, and a workbench. If not, add those
to this start-up list!
A Lawyer