Bootstrap Financing Tip #1: Find Affordable Office Space for Your Startup
One of the key principles of seed financing is to reduce start-up costs and ongoing operating expenses. You can tackle this task using a number of cost cutting strategies and techniques. Today, let’s discuss how to find affordable office space for your new business as a way to reduce your costs.
Hear Rebekah’s story…
Rebekah is a professional graphic designer and website developer. After graduating from design school, she pulled out an old wrinkled business card that had been washed in the pocket of her favorite jeans. The contact information on the card was erased, but she was able to make out enough to call me. She sat in on one of my talks to her graduating class and put my card in her pocket for safe keeping.
Rebekah was about to start her own design business and wanted to meet for a consultation. With the burden of student loan debt on him, he didn’t have much money. She was desperate to expand on her own and she knew she needed start-up financing for her new business. As a designer, her start-up costs were relatively low, compared to some businesses. Rebekah’s problem was that she didn’t have a lot of money. She didn’t own a house, not even her own apartment. As she shared an apartment with a former classmate (and her large, loud-barking dog), Rebekah desperately needed to find cheap office space.
So how did we solve Rebekah’s dilemma? He happened to have a very large plumbing company as a client at the time. The company was hit hard by the recession and had to scale back its operations to survive. As a result, the walls of its lavish 10,000-square-foot facility resonated with the absence of bodies to fill the once-occupied cubicles of its massive call center. I advised them just two months earlier to switch from their hugely expensive, but long-standing, telephone directory advertising tactics in favor of a more profitable web-based approach.
Did the ending work? Rebekah moved into a beautiful new office, with all utilities and internet included for FREE. Yes, you heard right, absolutely free. The reward was a complete redesign of the website with hosting and webmastering. Rebekah would also be responsible for the design of all marketing materials and sales literature for the plumbing company.
Find affordable office space for your business
You too can find affordable office space for your small business. Consider the following options:
- Start a business from home, if your situation allows.
- Exchange your products or services for office space (as in the case of Rebekah)
- Contact a commercial real estate agent for sublease opportunities
- Investigate a virtual office package
Find out how you can start your business TODAY, even if you have very little money, bad credit, or don’t own a home. Learn the key principles of seed financing! For more information, see The Startup Business Survival Guide.
© Kimberly Kelly 2009 – All rights reserved worldwide.
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