The Right Mindset When you’re just starting out in your first business, you need to have a no-frills mindset. Your first business isn’t the time to buy the new photocopier, the latest and greatest fax, or plush office furniture. No new car, no new cell phone, no huge office space. You need to focus on survival—and that means low-cost business!
Save On Equipment
Maybe, just maybe, you can’t use the fax machine at your local post office (or borrow your brother-in-law’s or kind uncle’s), and you actually have to buy your own. If you buy new fax with 100 number memory, the ability to call at selected times, and all the rest of the latest and greatest functionality, stop! Take two steps back. Now slap yourself! You’re wasting money! You’ll have to work hard in the early stages of your business to get the cash in the door—don’t throw it straight out the window! You do not need a new fax. You do not need a new photocopier. You do not need new anything.
Visit the local auctions, scour the local newspaper ads, and visit secondhand shops. Ask friends if they have an old fax machine they don’t use anymore. I guarantee that with just a little sniffing around, you’ll find a perfectly good and inexpensive fax machine. You may think this kind of frugality simply doesn’t matter in the long run. Understand that the fax machine really isn’t the point here. It’s your outlook and attitude we’re trying to get right. Save a few hundred bucks here, another hundred there, a couple of shillings over there … and before you know it, you have the mentality of a businessperson intent on keeping expenditures tight and the cash flow positive. In the end, that can be the difference between success and failure.