One of the key principals of bootstrap financing is reducing your start up costs and ongoing operating expenses. You can tackle this task, utilizing a number of strategies and cost-cutting techniques. Today, let’s discuss finding cheap office space for your start up business, as a means of lowering your costs.
Hear Rebekah’s Story…
Rebekah is a graphic designer and professional website developer. After graduating from design school, she pulled out an old crumpled up business card that had been washed in the pocket of her favorite blue jeans. The contact information on the card was faded, but she was able to make out enough of the information to give me a call. She sat in on one of my talks to her graduating class and stuck 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 debt load from her student loans, she didn’t have much money. She was desperate to branch out on her own and knew she needed bootstrap financing for her new business. As a designer, her start up costs were relatively low, as compared to some businesses. The problem for Rebekah was that she didn’t have very much money at all. She didn’t own a home – or even her own apartment. As she shared an apartment with a former classmate (and her loudly barking big dog), Rebekah desperately needed to find cheap office space.
So how did we solve Rebekah’s dilemma? I happened to have a very large plumbing company as a client at the time. The company was hit quite hard by the recession and had to downsize it’s operations to survive. As a result, the walls of their 10,000 square foot, plush facilities were echoing from the absence of bodies to fill the, once occupied, cubicles of their massive call center. I had advised them only two months prior to change their hugely expensive, yet ancient phone book display advertising tactics, in favor of a more cost effective, web based approach.
The end result? Rebekah moved into a beautiful new office, with all utilities and internet service included for FREE. Yes, you heard right – absolutely free. The payoff was a complete website redesign with hosting and webmastering. Rebekah would also take over the design of all of the plumbing company’s marketing materials and sales literature.
Find Cheap Office Space for Your Business
You too can find affordable office space for your small business. Consider the following options:
- Start a home based business, if your situation permits.
- Barter your products or services for office space (as in Rebekah’s case)
- Contact a commercial real estate agent for sub-letting opportunities
- Investigate a virtual office package
Discover how you can start your business TODAY – even if you have very little money, poor credit or don’t own a home. Learn the key principals of bootstrap financing! For more information, check out The Start-Up Business Survival Guide.
© Kimberly Kelly 2009 – All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Permission is granted to reprint this article on the condition that it may only be reprinted in its entirety with all live links and author bio in tact.
