Recently, a number of women who have asked for a Career Quickstart conversation with me have mentioned, almost in passing, that they would one to start up their own business, but ‘can’t afford to do it’. Which prompted me to write a few words about how you can set up your own business, and become an entrepreneur, in an affordable way. This is Part 1.

Now there is a caveat. It does take a particular mindset to run your own business. I’ve been doing it for 15 years, and have spent a lot of the rest of my  life either advising small businesses or working in them, so I know this from firsthand experience. You need discipline, you need to be what the job adverts cal a ‘self starter’ – so you get on with things without being asked, with focus, and without anyone looking over your shoulder. It can be quite lonely, so if your job is your social life, you need to think about that. You also need to be willing to take some risks. There is no such thing as a risk free business. But there are ways to manage and reduce the risks.

One trap that many new business owners fall into is that of simply trading time for money. So it’s still a job, but you’re the one paying your wages, your national insurance your pension, your holiday pay and so forth. And a lot of small businesses owners don’t make enough to pay themselves wages.

There is also an issue of knowledge/expertise. The key lies in the word ‘business’. When you set up your own business you need to acquire a business brain. You need to get a grip on finance, marketing, selling, product acquisition (buy it or create it yourself?), customer service, relevant legal issues, and possibly: distribution and logistics, manufacturing, employment and people management.

Against this, running your own business has huge advantages like the freedom to choose what, when and with whom you work (can be a stone round your neck if you don’t control it), minimal commuting, you can fit it round your family (although you may have to work late into the evening or get up extra early) and you can often spend the entire day working in your pyjamas! There is the potential to make a lot more than you ever did as a wage-slave.

Given These Challenges, Can I Still Set Up A Business?

The short answer is, ‘yes, of course’. But let’s look at this in a bit more detail.

The first question is: why do you want to go into business? Are you in business because you have a passion about the thing you are in business to sell ( with me that’s helping people have successful and happy careers and lives)? Or are you in business because you’re passionate about business itself. I happen to be interested in business, and extremely knowledgeable about it, but I am probably not passionate about it for its own sake.

If your passion is business, you can create businesses to do anything. If your passion is – for example – knitting, and you want to sell your knit ware, then it’s going to be a knitware business, at least to start with. If you read the gurus of internet marketing, many of them will tell you to make your first business something you are passionate about. Certainly this works for some people, but it increases the risk that you will simply trade time for money, and never really make your business grow.

But Jane, I Haven’t Got The Money To Set Up My Own Business

You don’t need loads of money to set up your own business online. Bricks and mortar is a different question, however. You can set up a website for nothing more than the cost of your time, although if you can afford $10 a month, it’s worth doing so to have a genuinely independent site that is truly your own. If you run it using WordPress, the software to build it is free too. Depending on what you want to offer, you can create reports, ‘how to’ videos using your iPhone, android or other smart phone, audios/podcasts and sell all of these to your market. In fact, you don’t even need a website to do a lot of this. You need a bank account, but most of us have one of those, that you can link to paypal. Paypal don’t charge you for that – they take a percentage cut off  whatever you sell.

You can have free Facebook business pages, free Twitter, free LinkedIn (especially if you are selling business to business), free Google +, free Youtube, and free software to enable you to keep in touch with anyone who might be a little bit interested in what you are offering. The ‘free’ list is a long one – so long, that I recently watched a video of a guy who set up an online business for $25, including paying for a product created by someone else that he planned to promote in return for a commission. That’s an extreme example, but you get my point.

You can make money by selling other people’s products, and getting paid a commission for doing so. No product creation involved, and you don’t even have to pay for the products. You can become an amazon associate, and get paid a (small) commission for things you recommend. You can buy and sell on ebay. I know a couple of people who have day jobs, and have set up ebay stores. You can set up your own ‘store’ where you promote other people’s goods, and earn a commission, without ever having to touch the products you are selling. You can promote products ethically – I only EVER promote products from people I know and respect, and very often I have already bought the product myself, and liked it.

And you can do all this while still working at the day job, or to fit around the family.

You don’t even need vast amounts of technical knowledge. The less technical knowledge you have, the longer it will take to learn the skills you need, although if you have tame teenagers available this can be a real bonus. You can also hire people for incredibly small amounts of money.

An internet marketer friend of mine once surveyed his high-earning internet marketing contacts to ask them what they’d do if they were starting from scratch and needed to earn $1000 in 30 days. The top answer was selling porn! That industry is way ahead of the game in internet marketing terms. Erotica is also doing very well in the Kindle and book department – think Fifty Shades Of Grey. Other answers included creating webinars to sell for $67+, and selling one very high value product as an affiliate.

In Part 2, I’ll be talking in more detail about where and how you can get these free resources to set up your own business. Truth is, though, the first step is to get into the right mind, and I’ll be talking more about THAT in part 2, too.

Meantime, if you want to get started on the path to wealth, checkout this offering from my friend and long-standing mentor, Nicola Cairncross. (Please note, this link has changed since I first posted this article). Nicola has an abundance of experience and success in the field of wealth creation and internet marketing (i.e. having your own business online). The product she’s offering here is all about how to manage your money successfully and start creating real wealth. It’s a snip at $9.95. When you buy it, you’ll also get the chance to sign up for her Internet Marketing Bootcamp: a seriously good introduction to the whole business of building an online business.