Tips for Financing a New Business

Everyone has their own reasons for starting their own businesses. Maybe they crave the flexibility being their own bosses will bring. Maybe they want to make more money. Or perhaps it’s a combination of many different things. Whatever the reason, each business requires its own financing. Even though there are ventures you can start for very little, you’ll soon need some sort of capital to keep it going. But that shouldn’t deter you from chasing your dreams. There are actually several ways to get financing you may never have thought of.

Crowdfund

Crowdfunding has become a popular tool for entrepreneurs in the last few years. And it’s especially successful if you have a new idea no one has heard of. In these cases, you can offer incentives to customers for agreeing to pitch in for your business. And you can even have customers prepay for your products before they’re ever made. This gives you immediate early capital, and gets other people invested, both monetarily and emotionally, in your product.

Bootstrap

Bootstrapping is simply building a business from the ground up with very little capital. People do this by starting very small and investing every dime they make back into the company. In time, this should allow you to start drawing a salary, but for a while, you may not see the proceeds.

A good example of a business that people often bootstrap is online selling. They might start with listing unused items around their house on eBay. And with the money they make from that, they might move to merchandise like yard sale items, B-stock solutions, or other liquidated inventory.

Get a Side Job

Getting a short-term job on the side may be exactly what you need to fund your new venture. But you don’t necessarily have to clock in and work yourself to death. You can always do some side jobs on your own, such as mowing lawns or babysitting, just until you’ve saved enough money to get started. There are also plenty of online jobs you can do. You can offer freelance writing, web design, transcription, and many other services that don’t cost you any money upfront. Just be careful not to turn this into a full-time business itself if it’s not the course you want to take.

Refinance

Many people are overpaying for their homes, cars, and other financed belongings. And this could be costing them thousands per year in interest and fees. It could also be prolonging their loans and tying up their cash. In order to get out from under some of this debt, you can look into getting a refinance home loan. This may benefit you with some extra money, but it may also get you a much lower interest rate.

Take on a Partner

Partnering with someone else might not be ideal for your business, but it could be the help you need to get started. This partner can be a friend, family member, or business person who could stand to profit from your venture. Of course, you’ll want to be careful to set some ground rules and cover all your legal bases from the start. And one of those bases is how involved your partner will be.

For example, you might just want a silent partner who agrees to invest in your company, but has no say in how you run it. Or you might decide to let someone you trust partner with you 50/50. This could mean giving them creative control and splitting all your profits. But it will probably also mean that they invest an equal amount of capital. However, if this isn’t right for you, there are many ways to take on partners or investors that don’t necessarily involve risking your control. You just need to find the right person who is willing to see things your way.