How much does it cost to start a business?

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Hello and good evening. I'm Katie McManus and hello. Rest and relax, Boston. I love your username. Good evening. I want to talk tonight about how much it costs to start a business and just a little housekeeping. So I'm going live, obviously to Instagram that I'm looking at over here on my phone. And then of course to Facebook, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter and. Hi, Omar, welcome. Good afternoon. I don't know, you must be way later than. Or way earlier than I am. Let's see. Okay, so Instagram is getting all settled, so I want to tell a little story. Okay. So when I first started Gart, it's been a long day, people. I've been working since 7 o' clock this morning. Oh, Andrew Bennett. Hello, my friend. Oh, no. Katie, you're going live at the same time as Chris Hennessy. Oh, no. Oh, well, you know what, I. I will understand if you want to go and watch his show here. He's amazing. I'm gonna be going live only for a little bit, so I know he goes live for a whole hour. I forgot that he goes live at 8. Anyway. Oh, it's Arizona. Okay. Yeah, yeah. There's a time difference or something or different. Oh, no, wait, wait. I'm getting confused. It's been a long day, like I said. Anyway, I asked a bunch of new business owners what kinds of questions they have about getting started in their business. One of the questions that I got from a bunch of people had to do around with how much money do I need to get started? Andrew, I'm here with you. Yes. I win. No, just kidding. And hi, Jay, Welcome. You know, wave to you. So how much money does it cost? How much money does it cost to start a business? And I think there's this belief, and I. I had this as well. There's this belief that to start a business you have to be like already wealthy. Okay. Because that's what we see happen. Right? We feel like the Elon Musk's of the world, you know, being able to start their empires because they have their parents money, they have family wealth, and the rest of us don't have that. I wanted to share the story about when I got trained as a coach. So back in 2018, I got trained as a coach, went through the Coactive Training Institute's program, I got certified through them, made a ton of friends through the training. Right. You know, you have a bunch of coaches, people who love personal development. Of course we were going to become friends forever. And so what happened was, like, the school doesn't teach anything about building a business. You know, they have a little Q and A at the end of each training, and that's it. And the advice that's given in Those Q&As is very, very basic because they're not wanting to advise on how you can start a business because they're trying to train you on how to be a coach. It's just not their job, right? So what happened with, you know, us, and I'm sure with every single class of coaches, is we were kind of left to our own devices. Like, we didn't know how to start businesses, so we just kind of floundered together, right? So I organized a bunch of my friends. We'd have these group calls once a week just to kind of brainstorm what we could do. It was really sad. It was so, so sad. I mean, if you were one of my friends who was on this call, like, I. It was sad, right? We would basically just, like, commiserate and talk about, like, the different online programs that we bought that we weren't doing. You know, like, here's this PDF freebie that I downloaded from so and so. It was pathetic. And I remember being on that call and speaking with these friends who I cared about so deeply and thinking, oh, my God, like, I'm so jealous of the fact that they're married. I'm so jealous of them having a spouse who, if they decide to go in on this full time, will be able to at least float them, you know, like, take care of the expenses of the household for a little bit of time. Because I was on my own and I was really bad with money up until my own personal financial meltdown of 2019. And see, Larby. Hello, Katie. Okay, cool. Anyway, so. And. Hi, Gazelle. Welcome. And so I found myself just stewing in resentment over the fact that these friends who I cared very deeply for, you know, had the gall to be married and, like, have support, right? Because I didn't have it. And I also didn't have that same safety net, right? So I had to figure out a way to start a business with no money, right? And that's the position of a lot of my clients. A lot of my clients, you know, they either, you know, are working a job that does not pay enough and that's why they want to start a business, or they're working a job that pays well. But it's sucking the soul out of their bodies and they need to do something different. Right? And so the ultimate struggle here is, you know, like, how do you get started so that you can start making enough that you can breathe if you're in that first category, right. If you're not making enough money, like, how do you start making enough? And if you're in that second category and you make a lot of money in your business or, I'm sorry, in your job, how do you start a business that will start, like supplanting some of that income while also respecting your time? Right? Because if you're working a job that pays you well, chances are you're working 40 to 50 hours a week. Right? And. Hi, Heather, Welcome. So. So when I got started, I wasted a ton of money on different courses that never worked for me, right? They were all just like digital courses and it was all one size fits all and they did not fit me. My ADHD brain would get like 4, 40 minutes in and like I would have tuned out 5 minutes into this video and I get to the end and be like, oh my God, Like, I don't know where the useful bit of that video was. Like, what was the useful information there? Like, I tuned out when he was talking about his dad negotiating, like their car payment. I don't know. Completely useless. Hi, welcome. And so I wasted all this money when really, in hindsight, looking back at what I could have spent money on, I could have started my business for $40 a month. If you are starting a business and you are trying to figure out what you need to get started, let me tell you, okay, you need a booking system where you can also accept payments. Okay. This is acuity scheduling. Acuity. I have a couple of clients who like acuity. Acuity, like the cuties, Little like Clementine's? No, Acuity. Acuity scheduling. I love them for beginners. Honestly, I've been using them. I'm just transit transitioning off of acuity right now. It's 2023. So I've been on Acuity for five plus years now and I'm just outgrowing it. It is one of the best tools for absolute beginners. It is a scheduler. So if you have people booking sales calls with you, it's a great tool for that. Let me see, Heather. Meaningful action is a whole ass skill to acquire as an entrepreneur. Yes, yes. I mean, this is, this is meaningful action. Like daring to put yourself out there and start the business and say, this is what I'm doing. With $40 worth of tools, like, you don't have to have like a whole fancy setup. That's not what we're about here. We're about you going out and getting the fucking clients. All right? And of course, like, they're nice clients. You're happy to have them, but, like, you have to go get them. Come on. But acuity is an amazing tool because you can also process your payments through that. You can manage your time. You can actually set like a regular schedule. So, like, people can't book during your nine to five. Okay. It's amazing. 25amonth. Okay, 25amonth. You can afford that. All right. And with a $25 a month subscription, like, think of what else you like, how many clients you could get. I built my business to multiple six figures on acuity. You can do. You absolutely can too. And. Hi, Javi Rahu. Someone's awake for this late. Anyway, the other thing is zoom. Zoom, $15 a month. Okay, $40 right there. Zoom you're going to use. You can actually go live through Zoom to a lot of different platforms if you're hosting, like pop up trainings or webinars. It's a great way to get people into your world and really show them, like in a low pressure setting, what it's like to work with you. It's one of the things that I recommend to all my clients and one of the skills that I actually train in the BYOB curriculum, which, if you aren't familiar with byob, build your own business is my group program. I'm actually relaunching it starting in July. The doors open on Wednesday. So if you are curious about building your own business, if you are ready to get started, if you have any questions about that program and think it might be the right fit for you, DM me because we can hop on a call, I can give you all the information that you need, and we can see if it's the right fit for you. Like I said when I got started, I wasted a ton of money on programs and resources that I never, ever used. Okay? And I'm talking thousands upon thousands of dollars that I did not have. And all the things that did not work for me in those programs, I have really kind of like designed around them in this program. Right? Because the things that didn't for me was that it was a one size fits all. BYOB is a framework that you can customize to yourself. And I walk you through how to customize it. All right? It's a. It's a combo Course of, like, digital courses. Like digital. I'm sorry, standalone videos. And then, of course, group coaching where you get to ask me any and all questions that you have. There's also a whole online platform. Heather, who's in my Instagram chat over here, actually has been setting up My Heartbeat, which is a platform platform for all of the participants that you can ask questions, questions and, you know, get connected to each other. Anyway, so let me see, Let me see. Andrew. Yes. Zoom does streaming now. It can be used instead of Streamyard or Restream. Yeah, I think, I think it always has been able to do streaming. It's kind of janky, but, like, if you're, if you're on a budget, if you need to figure out how to make some money and like, you want to go streaming onto LinkedIn, I think you can make it work through Zoom, as far as I can tell. Okay, so, Claudio, to start an effective business, it will cost roughly 12 to $24,000. Getting the tools, getting the SWOT analysis done. You have to raise capital immediately precede seed financial plans. It takes a village. Well, it depends on what business you're starting. So I'm talking about service based businesses. Let me see. Heather. I'm ditching IG and joining the cool kids in LinkedIn. Okay, I'll see you. So, yeah, like, if you're starting a business that, like, requires, like, you know, a location and, you know, stuff, you know, you can absolutely do that. But also, you do not need 12 to $24,000 to start your business. As a side hustle, I'm just gonna move my chair. Like, I feel like I can't swivel anyway. This is awkward. Anyway, you don't need that. Like, you can absolutely spend 12 to $24,000. A lot of people do. And also, like, you can get started. You can actually make to 12 the 12 to $24,000 and then reinvest it in the business so that you can do SWOT analysis, that you can do all those extreme things. I'm talking more about service based businesses. So consultants, coaching, trainers, like, you can do a lot of stuff for $40 a month. All right. And of course, like, I'm talking $40 a month. You probably also want to invest in some guidance. Right? But, like, you know, if you are trying to scrape and pinch pennies, like, there's a way to do this. There's absolutely a way to do this. I already answered that with Andrew. Javi, let's go. Yes, yes. Javi needs to be starting his business. I think He. Well, he already is. But if anyone has any video needs, Javi is incredible. And Heather's joining us over here. You did. You made it. I'm gonna drink some water. So if anyone has any questions about how you can get started, please put it in the chat. I want to talk through a couple different things that have worked for some of my clients. Right? Because when you're getting started, like, you kind of have to, like, feel around and see what's going to work. Part of what works so well for new business owners, I see this happen all the time, is they're like, you know, you get started. I did this too. I was so guilty of this. I. You know, it's like, I need a website, I need business cards. I need all these different assets, right? And guess what happened? They all ended up in garbage at some point or other, Right? My first website was awful. I had to redo it. My second website was awful. I had to redo it. My third website was okay, but it was for a niche that I changed. Like, changed, like, three months later. Okay, you do not need to be spending money on a website right now in the beginning stages of your business. Not necessary. I made so many weird ass names for my business when I started. And every time I, like, made a new weird ass name, I went to moo.com and I got the business cards and they were gorgeous. They're really pretty and they're all completely irrelevant. And I look at them, I find them from time to time, like these little, like, boxes. And I look at them and I laugh because it's like, there's no niche. It's not clear what I do. It's my personal email. It's my cell phone number. Like, no, no, no. Like, I don't even have business cards now. I think it is such a waste of time, a waste of paper. Because I'll tell you, whenever I get a business card, I. It ends up as lint in my dryer. Like, I never remember to take it out. Let me see. I make a Canva portfolio and turn into a scrolling website. Heather. Yes. I love that idea. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. You don't need a website. You can absolutely have everything on social media. That is how you can get up and running and visible with your business. Because here's the thing. No one's going to know that your website exists anyway unless you have social media presence. Okay? It's not like you're going to create a website and people are going to magically know that it exists. Out there in the world. No, you're still going to have to show up on social media. You're still going to have to build authority and trust. So why not just have your business there to start with? Other tied to a bitly and you can measure the number of clicks. Yeah. Okay. So if anyone wants to know the back end stuff, Heather is my incredibly talented fractional coo. She is currently cleaning up the whole back end of my business. It's incredible. But, yeah, like, you can find ways to do this in that are completely affordable. You do not have to break the bank. Other things I. Oh. So like, as you're making money. As you're making money. So, like, you know, I want you to imagine you're starting a coaching business. Your first five clients, you get paid $500 a month per client. That's a really typical thing for people to get to get started with. Partially because, you know, you have to build some confidence in asking for $500 a month and partially because, you know, it's just, it's. You're a bit. You're a beginner. Like, that's kind of where you want to get started sometimes. Unless you have a lot of confidence around asking for money. But anyway, so like, if you get those first five clients, that's two. $2,500 a month that you're making extra. That's when you want to turn around and invest in a lawyer to build out contracts. You want to get your LLC set up. You want to get your bank account set up. You want to talk to an accountant and get them that all sorted. You really want to take care of other aspects of your business as you're making money. Now, the big fear that a lot of people have is like, okay, well, what if I make money and I get in trouble with irs? Like, I want you to take a deep breath. I think we all saw. Hi. Hello, Giancarlo. Hello. Okay, so I think we all saw that movie with Tim Allen and Chris. I'm sorry, Tim Allen and Christy Allen. Is that it? Like, yeah, I think they have the same last name for richer or poor. And it's about that fam, that couple in New York. And like, they get caught for tax evasion, right? And so the irs, like, this guy with a gun is like, chasing around. They have to, like, hide out in Amish country. And it's awful, right? And so, like, and it's this whole thing and someone is embezzling money under them, but he was signing all the papers. That does not happen. Okay, if you make money in your business and you have to pay taxes on it. You can figure that out later. Okay. Like you are. Have full permission here to do it imperfectly. Can it be a little bit of a headache? Absolutely. But it's not going to put you in jail. It's not going to get you in major, major trouble. Now, one thing that you can do is you can save like 30% of what you make, just that you're covered. Right. You might not even need to pay all that. Talk to your accountant. They will know better than I do. I'm not an accountant. I'm not a lawyer. I can't give you any, any advice in those areas. Kirsty Alley. Thank you, Heather. Heather's got my back at Kirsty Alley and Tim Allen. And for Richard Poor, great movie. Throw back to the. The 90s. Oh, God. But yeah, the IRS doesn't come after you like that. Okay. There's. And my accountant was made this differentiation. There's a difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. Tax evasion is when you purposely lie on your taxes to try to avoid paying taxes. Okay. Tax avoidance is when you kind of just screw it up or you don't do it right away. Right. So when you have a business, you know you have to pay taxes on the schedule. Right. If you don't pay taxes on the schedule, they're not going to hunt you down. They're going to just wait for you to catch up and they might charge you a late fee and it's not that scary. And we can all take a deep breath. And by the way, if you. At the dog park that I used to go to in Philadelphia when I lived there, one of the guys who was there, his dog played with my dog. And he was actually, he worked for the irs. And I was talking to him one day and he told me that there's this thing that's the taxpayers bill of rights. We all have it. It's. It's something that exists in this country. I didn't know exists. It existed. But I just want you to take a deep breath. If you're making money in your business, it's okay. You can figure it out afterwards. Javi, really going. Good point about making revenue before setting up the legal stuff. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, yes, you want to have an LLC eventually, but, like, here's the thing, you know, if you're. If you're a life coach and you're charging $500 a month for five clients, like, what is the liability that life coaches have? It's not that high. Right. Of course, at some point, you know, you do want to set up an llc. You do want to have contracts drawn up, and you do want to have, you know, those work together so that you're protected. But if you have an unhappy client in your first few months, you refund them. It's really not that big of a deal. Right? But the point is, don't let freaking out about all these things that you think you have to do right off the bat before you even get started. Don't let that get in the way of you going out and getting clients right now. Hi, Sharon. Because here's the thing. You can spend a whole fuck ton of time setting up QuickBooks and getting your LLC and designing a whole website and getting moo.com business cards and having someone create a logo and not get a single damn client. And my friends, that is not a business. That is a hobby. As a very expensive hobby. Okay? I want you making money and paying for these stuff that these things as you go. And if you are struggling to get clients, if you do not know how to market yourself or how to create an offer or how to get on the phone with someone and get them to sign up with you, if you are so afraid of asking for big money for the work that you do, like you get on the phone, you're about to ask, and you feel like you're in a vomit, then I want you to know that I cover all of this in the build your own business group program. And like I said, I'm relaunching it this July. I have a whole beginner class starting off. Literally, my goal for this beginning class is to. To get everyone. We're starting in July. I want to make a collective million dollars by the end of 2023. Now if now the typical, like, payback, the average payback for clients who've been in BYOB up until this point has been around $26,666. Now, on the high end, lower end, that's the average, right? If I get, I think 37, and you can check my math on this, 37 people into by would be beginner. And everyone does that average. We will make this group get to a million dollars by the end of the year. And how exciting would that be? And how incredible would that feel at the end of the year to look at your numbers and check it against all these people that you've been building together and supporting and commiserating and think, oh, holy shit, guys, we did this, we did this. We did this thing, and. And this is just the beginning. This is just the foundation of your business. Right? There's so much more to come. When you understand how to get those, like, first five clients, that is the hardest thing in the world. Right? Your next five clients are going to be a different kind of hard. Right? Because what works for you in the beginning is not going to work with for you forever. But it is so empowering to know that you can just go onto the interwebs, like, use your words, talk to people on the phone and generate income for yourself. There's nothing that will make you feel like more of a badass. Anyway. Let me see, Let me see, Heather. 15 out of 10 recommend the BYB program. Heather would know. She's been uploading all the videos and having to, like, sort through them because they weren't organized at all. So she's watched the whole thing. Thank you, Heather. Anyway, it is hot. I had to turn off the air conditioning in this room because it's so loud, but I'm sweating. If you can't see that, I'm turning red. So I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go to bed. I'm gonna make myself a cup of tea. Not in that order. I don't do tea in my bed. Anyway, want to give a shout out to Heather and Javi and let me see Andrew and Claudio and Larby and Omar. And then let me see Gian from Philadelphia who has. If you're in Philadelphia, John has the best G strength gym, not G string gym. Like, my mom always misheard me. G String. They have these small group weightlifting classes. Like, incredible. Such a great workout. I'm so, like, one of the things I miss from Philadelphia and Sharon and then Heather on this side and Jay and the Gazelle. Thank you all for joining. I hope you found this super useful. If you. If you have any questions or if you're curious about the build your own business program, then I want you to shoot me a dm. I'd be happy to hop on the phone and answer any questions you have and honestly just see if it's a fit for you. I want this to be. I mean, this. This group of people that I'm amassing. I want it to be a group of people that are a perfect fit for each other as well. So I'm so excited to talk to you. I think it's going to be so much fun. Anyway, have an amazing Monday and rest of your week, everyone, and I will see you all tomorrow. Love you so much. Katie McManus. Out. This is the awkward.