Grassroots Ways To Fund Your Business

FUND YOUR BUSINESS WITH MULTIPLE STREAMS OF INCOME

By LM Preston, Author of Building Your Empowered Steps and Homeschooling While Shaping Amazing Learners www.EmpoweredSteps.com

I have started many businesses in my lifetime. I know the process to get the work side up and running, but finding ways to fund larger scoped business ideas caused for creativity and the art of selling the idea before it was fully developed.

Pitching your business is a skill that works best when thought out. Giving your business and idea a ‘catch phrase’ will allow you to use that catch phrase for every facet of your business platform. It also helps when finding and recruiting funding sources for your business.

There were several ways I have funded new businesses and observed friends fund their business with much success, here are some below.

Family and friends investing in each other’s businesses. This is the way many families help each other achieve their business goals. Investing in each other first. It is a first stop option for many small businesses. My family used to have a family relief and business fund where all of my grandmother’s sisters and brothers would pay $500 every quarter into and the family member in need would get the loan or payout, then pay back into it the next quarter so that another family member would get the loan or payout.

Grants, State Funded Programs or utilize credit lines if you are sure your business could benefit from these options.

I personally, seek businesses with the least amount of capital needed upfront. I consistently reinvest in my business and when needed have investors that are willing to step in after I pitch a viable expansion idea. However, when publishing books, games, or selling specialized products, crowd funding can pay off in a major way by allowing you to find investors.

All businesses require initial capital of some sort, think of ways to create a business with multiple streams of income and sells potential.

My business Empowered Steps has a focus on coaching. I started with mentorship coaching, then expanded to include coaching parents, college students, career candidates, publishing, course creation and now recently added a financial investment and trading aspect to my coaching. All facets of the business fits nicely under the business focus and allows growth with the least amount of capital needed for startup or expansion.

Be creative in funding your business, and you will be shocked at the amount of resources you have acquired to get you off to the best start possible.

By LM Preston, www.EmpoweredSteps.com

A BUSINESS IN ANY ECONOMIC SEASON

Businesses that are fluid last through the many changes in the Economy and lifestyles of their customer by being flexible and reinventing themselves when needed.

When I was younger my mother told me, she wanted to be a Mortician – because she would always have work. However, after working in a funeral home for a year, she realized that it wasn’t something she would want to do for her emotional well being.

Even so, that was one business, that no matter what, people would always needed.

EVALUATE YOUR ENVIRONMENT FOR NEEDS

The first step is to observe and research needs of customers that aren’t necessarily based on an economic abundance, but something that people will get done or a service they would need regardless of the financial state of the country.

Some to consider are:

Car Services, plumbing, electrical services, home care services, micro-businesses, moving company, handyman business, nursing home, midwife, doula for births or deaths and other business services with very little overhead cost.

TIME IS MONEY

Sometimes as business owners you find you may be giving away a lot of your services and products for free in order to lure customers in. Find ways to avoid having to downplay your products and services, but draw in and retain your customers.

MAKE YOUR BUSINESS VIRTUAL

If your business is an in-person business, find ways to capitalize off of your knowledge by writing a book on the area of your business, creating a course on your business form or doing a subscription box service. As long as you can mail someone your product, communicate with them online, on the phone, or in person – you can create a virtual compliment to your businesses.

EXPAND IN WAYS THAT DON’T COST MUCH BUT COMPLIMENT

When you are building your business, troubleshoot and brainstorm how many ways you can offer the same services. Then list the compliments to your business services. After you know numerous ways you can branch your business into other areas, research the price of expansion.

SCALING UP AND DOWN

Have a plan to scale your business to what your customer base needs. Hiring consultants, or contract workers for specific task can provide quality as well as allow an easy scale back or scale up for certain surges in your business.

By: LM Preston author of Building Your Empowered Steps and Homeschooling While Raising Amazing Learners, www.EmpoweredSteps.com

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MANAGE A BUSINESS AND HOMESCHOOLING IN CRISIS

MANAGE A BUSINESS AND HOMESCHOOLING IN CRISIS

by LM Preston

Business owners have a survivor nature. They are adventurous, take risk and think outside the box more so than most anyone. An entrepreneur knows about risk. However, knowing how to plan for challenges and crisis isn’t always a priority until it is too late.

PUT PRIDE ASIDE

The main issue most run into that have the ability to work at doing something they love, is to start to do something they don’t like – in order to make enough money to survive. This means, possibly doing things you originally considered out of scope of not a focus for your household or business.

There was a time when we were launching our real estate business that we needed to find money to advertise, my husband took a paper route delivering newspapers and started delivering pizzas on the slow days to put that money aside for our advertising. He fell back on those jobs throughout our marriage when we needed money fast and wanted the flexibility to make it. I also, took on babysitting other people’s kids overnight that worked night jobs to supplement. We did what we needed to do – not what we liked to do – to reach our goals.

ALL HANDS-ON DECK

If you live with others or others are invested with your business, everyone should do their part. Setting expectations for sharing the financial load of maintaining a home, a business is important. There will always -always, be a weak link. That is the case even among stars. However, identify the person, resource, or issue and mold it into the best representation of itself.

INCOME AND JUGGLING BUDGET OBLIGATIONS

Any household, business, or person, should strive to have multiple streams of income. Even if one parent decides to stay home, finding another source of income for the family that takes little effort to cultivate is important in relieving stress.

For a business owner, they need to have methods their business can create and funnel in income without it being as time or energy dependent. Some quick tips on how to do this:

-Compress resources: for example, instead of purchasing or doing a long term lease for an office space, do a Day-Office instead where you rent an office for the day or times you need it. This works well for micro-businesses.

-Don’t be the only source of income for your business: For micro-businesses it’s great that you can run everything yourself to make money, but what if you get sick? Fine other sources of income besides your time/body. For instance, I am a career re-imagination coach, education coach and writing coach – but there isn’t enough hours in the day for me to service everyone. I created online courses to support my readers, clients and students.

-Barter and Trades: If your business doesn’t have the funds or your household doesn’t, fine ways to trade your skills, time, efforts with others that will be able to do the same for you.

HOMESCHOOL DOWN TO BASICS

Now with many being forced to homeschool their kids, try to work from home, and deal with the stress of crisis, taking things bare bones can relieve stress. When homeschooling and working, own your flexibility. Have a schedule of work your kids can do independently based on their learning styles, attention span, educational gaps. Then assess how much one-on-one time you can spend with them each day. Only focus one on one time on Reading, Reading Comprehension, Writing and Building Math Skills. Make all other subjects secondary. Homeschooling is MUCH easier when you do it without state oversight by withdrawing your child from school and stating that you are officially a homeschooler. Doing so, reduces the amount of work required for your child to do and allows you to customize their education. Please see the HSLDA (Homeschool Defense) for the laws in your state: https://hslda.org/content/laws/

By LM Preston, Author of Building Your Empowered Steps and Homeschooling and WorkingWhile Raising Amazing Learners. Purchase her books Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Website: www.EmpoweredSteps.com  Blog: http://homeschoolandwork.blogspot.com/

CHALLENGES OF RUNNING A BUSINESS WITH YOUR SPOUSE

Husbands and Wives in Business Together

Being an entrepreneur, self-starting business woman, and a wife is difficult. However, when you add in the dynamics of your husband being your business partner, things can get even more challenging. My husband and I have owned several businesses together and separately. The most successful businesses were the ones we worked on building together. They were also the most challenging business to manage because there were so many dynamics to doing it successful that clashed with our personalities, areas of passions, and work methods.

WHO IS THE BOSS?

That is the major hurdle that many couples have to establish. In our case, I had the business idea, but my husband was the business front man since he had the sales experience and passion for in person and phone sales. In his mind, he was the boss. In my mind, I was the boss. This bought challenges when it came to the goals of the business, who did what, who made the decisions, and of course the power struggle.

To fix this we had to:

·       Agree on mission of business

·       Create a business plan

·       Decide on how decisions were made

·       Divide areas of management determined by the person’s strength

·       Agree on expectations – write them down, make them visible

TIME MANAGEMENT

The other area that was hard to manage was our time. Since both of us needed to work the business, work our actual full time jobs, and parent our children, we had many times when we thought the other person was cooking dinner, putting the kids to bed or picking them up from school.

To fix this we had to:

·       Create weekly schedules

·       Assign each other or delegate task out

·       Cut time at full-time job (one of us) to part-time or hire a nanny

MAKE TIME FOR LIFE AND DATES

Sometimes the business takes over. It can cause stress to manifest in the personal relationship of the couple in business. Building a business is fun, exciting and like raising a child that you have more control over. If you aren’t careful though, it will consume everything you care about.

To fix this we had to:

·       Have standing date night – no talking business, kids, or work (we played board games, went to movies, or a day trip)

·       Take mandatory vacation (even if only for two days)

·       Do something special for each other, write notes to remind each other we love them, sneak off for breakfast.

·       Continue to work on our balancing act

By LM Preston, author of Building Your Empowered Steps and Homeschooling and Working While Raising Amazing Learners, www.EmpoweredSteps.com

HOW TO BLAST YOUR BUSINESS TO EARN RESIDUAL INCOME

Start to think beyond selling your one tangible product and consider how you can sell your product, your knowledge, your lessons learned, and any other possible companion products based on your original business focus. As a business owner, finding consumers that are interested in your work is always a challenge. However, assessing your skills and ways to express or market them, even when it may seem redundant is important. It allows you to spread your products and knowledge to a wider playing field and overtime can keep you relevant in your market even when you decide to take a bit of a break.

WRITE and PUBLISH THAT COMPANION BOOK OR PAMPHLET

When writing or publishing materials with your business name on it, do not skimp on quality. Also, consider not placing your face on the cover unless you have a large platform that sells products just with your likeness on it. This works for Oprah, but not most people. Consider getting a writing coach, hiring out the building of the pamphlet and writing of it to a professional, always get it edited by a professional editor. Make sure the graphics and artwork looks professional and is in line with other like published works. Distribution is important and spreading it beyond your personal website and presence also allows it to have a greater reach. Lastly, build it into your marketing.

VIDEO AND AUDIO EXPANSION OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Building a video platform and audio podcast can be time consuming but can pay off in major dividends and clients. Even if your business is selling jewelry, you can create videos that teach how to do what your do, train your team, share your jewelry and much more. Being versatile in your message boost all aspects of your business.

AUDIO BOOKS

Once you have created several books, podcasts and videos, re-purpose them as audio books. This opens your products to a different market and potentially new customers to all of your offerings. Creating an audio book is easier than your think, but it does require some level of financial investment beforehand.

CREATING YOUR CONTENT ROAD MAP

The above are just a few examples of how to re-purpose your product, knowledge and any companion product to build a stronger infrastructure that will support residual passive income to your business. Think bigger, and wider when you approach maturing your business to sell more than your original product. Include, selling use to your mailing list, building and marketing companion products on your site and on your video podcast, then create courses on how to build a business like yours. All these possible streams of income from one original product creates a strong content road map that is constantly feeding your business. By promoting or selling one companion aspect to your business, you are selling them all indirectly.

TAKE A LONGER LOOK AND BUILD, BRANCH OFF OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUR BUSINESS

By LM Preston, www.EmpoweredSteps.com Book: Building Your Empowered Steps and Homeschooling and Working While Raising Amazing Learners Blog: http://empoweredsteps.blogspot.com/ and Facebook Page:

Working For Someone Or For Yourself

My husband and I have always been entrepreneurs at heart. It was in our blood since we were both in grade school. When we started having kids while attending college, we both decided that we needed the stability of a full time pay check instead of the erratic and extensive but flexible hours of running a business.

Most all businesses need capital, and time to kick start. This could mean up to three years of investment without any real return. That makes selecting a business that you are passionate about even harder when that business may not return the dividends you hoped to get just to pay your bills and survive.

In our case we went for businesses that had a good infrastructure and at least moderate success, knowing we would have to work to fund the business. We chose Real Estate and worked that business for almost ten years.

HAVING A BUSINESS IS ABOUT THE HUSTLE OF THE SALE

Most people want to start a business to be their own boss. It sounds great until we as the sole source of income for our household realize that we aren’t making any money at it – initially. Pouring 50 to 60 hours of effort into something that doesn’t pay off can be a drain.

Here’s what we did to focus on sales, but not worry so much about returns when we first started.

Work part-time to fund marketing and sales for business

Use part-time job to network and gain customers through relationship building

Use part-time job to fund household while building business

Realize that business income is based on sales and that at the base of the business, you have to sell the business offerings

Partnering with someone that can help run the business and take some of the pressure off

Partnering with someone to get vacation time    

Many people are in love with the type of business they own, but hate the aspect of selling it. If that is you, maybe other options are better.

WORKING FOR A COMPANY – THE BENEFITS OVER OWNING ONE

With having a bill from college debt, we realized that owning the business didn’t gain us what we needed most at the time-a regular paycheck, health benefits, vacation paid time off, sick leave in some cases and standard work hours.

In most cases, working a job, you can depend on the pay being the same every week and getting the deposit with no more effort than what you were expecting going in.

DECIDING ON THE BEST-CASE SCENARIO

The best case for us was working for a company that allowed us to have our business as a part-time endeavor. Having a constant stream of income, we could count on most of the time, gave us comfort and joy in building our business part-time. We partnered with others and the part time business grew to the point my husband could work it full-time. It helped for one of us to stay employed to gain health benefits and others from a well-established company.

FINDING WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

Doing your research and evaluating what your reason is for starting your business is your first stop. Then map out a business plan. Decide when you need to make money on your business and if you are willing to put in the time and effort selling your product, marketing it, and being on social media to promote it. If you aren’t interesting in the selling of your product, are you willing to pay someone to do that for you? Then you will realize what the cost and benefit is of starting your own company or working for someone else.

By LM Preston, www.empoweredsteps.com, author of Building Your Empowered Steps, Homeschooling and Working While Raising Amazing Learners, blog: http://empoweredsteps.blogspot.com/

HOW TO DECIDE ON YOUR FIRST BUSINESS

HOW TO CHOOSE A MOMPRENUER BUSINESS

By LM Preston

Wanting to start your own business is a big step for working moms. Therefore, selecting a business that will meet your needs, be flexible, calls to your passions, and makes you money is sometimes hard to find. There are so many personal factors that impact the decision and as a Momprenuer, I’ve tried many.

INVESTING IN YOUR BUSINESS OR GET PAID OUT THE DOOR

When considering starting a business that you are supporting from home or as a working parent, money and the amount to invest is usually a concern. You want a business that has as little startup cost and operating cost as possible. That’s the one way that you can ensure that it is a financial benefit for you and your family.

POPULAR TYPES OF BUSINESSES OF A MOMPRENUER

Creating a micro-business specific to your experiences and areas of interest. This is the best option for many. Take what you’ve done in your career and make it your own business. Working in freelance to provide administrative and marketing support for other small and large businesses is a great business that works around your personal schedule. Another possibility is transferring your knowledge and interest to an online course or coaching business. Online store owner can be a business where you basically sell your old stuff or buy then sale in various marketplaces such as Etsy, Mercari, Amazon, Craigslist and more. 

Starting a franchise business is a pricey, but, could be profitable business. There are small businesses such as tutoring services like Kumon and Sylvan where you can invest in the franchise for a small fee. Other choices are Cruise Planners, Fit4Mom, Chem-Dry, Jazzercise, Jan-Pro which offers services from travel, fitness, and cleaning services.

Multi-Level-Marketing is a form of business that many mothers find cheap to start up and easy to work around their family obligations. Some popular and successful ones include Usborne Books, Avon, doTERRA Essential Oils, Pampered Chef and Scentsy.

THE FINAL DECISION

Your final decision should be based on what you intend to gain by starting your business. It’s goal to include income and self-gratification. If you aren’t making money from the work you are putting in, it is a detriment to your family and goals. It is a discouraging aspect of starting a business. Do your research on the business you hope to pursue. Make sure it checks all the points that are important to your goals. Realistically, it takes at least three to five years for any business to make a profit. 

Knowing that consider what you would want to do for that amount of time just for the experience. Having your business in line with your personal areas of interest that you are passionate about makes it a success even when you aren’t making the money from it you’d like.

By LM Preston