From Savings to Success: Mastering Frugal Entrepreneurship (with Therese Nicklas)

00:00 - Sarah St John (Host)

Welcome to the Frugalpreneur podcast. I am your host, sarah St John. This episode is what I refer to as a showcase episode, where I feature a bootstrapped entrepreneur and they briefly share their tips, tricks, tactics, techniques and tools that help them bootstrap their business, and the successes and failures along the way. My hope is that each of these showcase episodes will provide at least one valuable takeaway that you could implement right away in your own bootstrap business journey Now on to the episode.

00:35 - Therese Nicklas (Guest)

What led me to starting my business? I've been self-employed now for over 20 years, and when I first launched my business, I was doing financial planning and asset management. A colleague had recommended to me that I look into that field, and I did Well. Along the way, I discovered that financial planning services were really underutilized At the time. They were done by insurance companies just mainly, and they were using financial planning as a tool to get people to buy more insurance. I realized that this is a great tool and it could really help people manage their money better. So over the years, I've developed a program and focused on women, because I felt that their need was the greatest, and, in particular, business owners, because managing cash flow and running a business in a cost-efficient manner seemed to be a big challenge.

01:29

The steps I took to bootstrap my business were using my own personal savings and I also took out a home equity loan just to keep the cash flow moving in the very early years. I think that was a mistake. Personally, I would do it differently if I were to do it today. I think having the home equity loan created a lot of stress for me, and I think that stress hindered my performance. So if I were to do a business again today, what I would recommend to somebody is to build up cash ahead of starting a business. Be just like a squirrel when it comes to your money. Now, one of the things that I think I did right was my overhead was pretty much there wasn't any. I didn't rent any space. I did everything from home and I believe that really helped me because I didn't have a lot of obligations.

02:24

My biggest success in bootstrapping my business was having very low overhead, not renting space, really being very careful about where I spent my money. But my biggest failure was I invested in a lot of do-it-yourself training programs that were not effective. That was a mistake. So I think if I were to do it over again, I would be even more careful as far as how to be really frugal in running my business. I'm really glad I didn't take out a business loan and I didn't overextend myself, but I'm a person who hates debt and even having a little bit of debt on a home equity line created a great deal of stress for me. I also did a lot of bartering and that helped keep costs down and it was a great way for me to practice my skills, so I would make trades with different organizations or different professionals, and that really helped as far as bootstrapping the business. Another thing that I did that I think was a good thing was I didn't pay myself right away Now, as painful as that was to not really have an income in that first year, I just reinvested everything right back into the business. Where I fell off the tracks, I believe, was investing too much into self-help material and getting caught up in some not get rich quick, but something like that. I think I would be a lot more cautious today and a lot more discerning about where I spent my money everywhere, not just keeping my costs low to begin with.

03:59

I'm going to share my if. I knew then what I wish I knew now, and that is when I first started my business. I really wish I had the opportunity to have a good mentor or coach that could guide me not only in helping me learn how to run a business efficiently, but also how to find sales, how to do all the things that you need to do to really run a business well. I learned the hard way and it was a very expensive lesson. Now, the other thing that I learned was having somebody to help you. Don't just grab at anybody. Do your homework. Make sure you have good testimonials about the work that they do and make sure you're really clear on what it is that you want from them.

04:42

But I'm telling you that if I had that person early on, it would have shortened my learning curve and my wallet would be a whole lot fatter. So if you're serious about being in business, I encourage you to be open to working with someone who can help you to investing in yourself and your business. It can pay off in dividends that I can't even describe. I'd also like to share a couple of freebies with you. One of them is on my website, wealthcoachforwomencom backslash pod. It's a little package of tools that you will find that will help you in your business journey. And the other thing is, if you have questions for me that you would like to know a little more about how I could possibly help you or what you might want to look for if you were to hire a business coach, you can find a button on my website and you can schedule a free 30 minute consultation. That's a nice strategy session where you will at least walk away with some nuggets of information that can help you get on your journey in an efficient way.

05:44 - Sarah St John (Host)

I hope you enjoyed that episode and were able to take away a valuable nugget of information that you can implement right away in your own business. If you feel your story would be valuable for the listeners of this show, please visit frugalshow forward slash guest.