Let’s Go on a Journey to Build Your Own Business

Post #1: Learn the steps to create your own business from scratch (and with very few startup costs or fees)!

Jan 24, 2025

In this Substack, I will walk you through the process of starting, operating, maintaining, scaling, and — if needed — selling or closing your own small business.

Most importantly, I want you to know that you can do it all on your own and with very few startup costs or fees.

You don’t need any fancy subscription services to do it for you.

This is called “bootstrapping”.

And I am going to make it as easy as possible for you. Why? Because I had very little help (or money) in the beginning and would have loved a mentor to guide me along the way.

I have spent many many years struggling, researching, learning, and giving up free time (which I could have spent in more enjoyable ways) to figure it out for myself.

It’s time for me to share what I know so that you may save yourself from the agony of starting from scratch.

Follow Me on This Journey

My partner (my adorable and brilliant husband) and I have built, maintained, operated, scaled, and sold or closed several (14 so far!) small businesses.

In particular….

We currently own and operate a small business which we started together over 14 years ago and which has grown consistently since its inception. This small business generated seven figures in 2023 (while others were struggling with COVID shutdowns, threats of economic recession, and the post-COVID inflation and difficult macroeconomic environment).
23 years ago (before we met), my husband started a small business — still running today — which continues to serve a variety of special purposes (I will share more as we go on this journey together — stay tuned!).
We have experimented with various small business ideas that were profitable from the first few months, but took too much effort or work… so we dissolved them and captured business “losses” to reduce our overall income tax liability.
We have coached others in our private network to set up their own small businesses. So far, everyone has been successful and is thriving!

And now it is time for me to share my knowledge with you.

What We Didn’t Learn in School

Setting up and running a small business is a lesson or a course that most of us never learned in school.

Most of us do not have entrepreneurial parents or family members who could have taught us these lessons when we were younger.

Very few of us were handed a pile of money to play with or to buy us time while we figured it out.

And there are tons of rules and regulations that are just not shared on the news or over the family dinner table.

I want you to keep your hard-earned money in your pocket.

I want to help you learn what it has taken me (us) many years to figure out.

Let’s Begin!

In this first post, all that I want you to do is to capture a mental note someplace. Something to think about for today.

Yes, it’s that easy.

But what kind of mental note?

I want you to think about what product or service you want to provide to your future customers and why you want to do so.

That’s it.

👉 What are you going to offer to the world so that you might earn money, and why do you want to do this?

For example:

I want to offer bookkeeping services to my neighbors so that I can work from home, take care of my kids, and not have to drive to an office to work on bookkeeping for people I don’t know (while paying for daycare).
I want to continue to sell my artwork online but pay less in taxes from my sales so that I can buy higher quality materials and produce higher quality artwork.
I want to create digital products and sell them online under a business name so that I can eventually sell my business and its assets to a larger competitor.
I want to set up a real business on Amazon (FBA) or eBay and sell my inventory while maintaining my privacy as a person.
I want to sell fruit, veggies, flower, or plants that I grow in my home garden at the farmers market on the weekends and have a real booth with my business name and logo.
I want to charge money for braiding my friends’ hair in my living room (rather than just doing it for free) because I enjoy doing this and my friends love how they look when I’m done.
I want to fix other people’s HVAC systems but charge my customers directly for my work rather than work for someone else who just pays me a salary for my time and effort.

There are so many reasons why you might want to start a business other than making more money or having a “side hustle”.

Leave a Tip :-)

Next Steps

Once you have your idea captured (or at least a goal to think about it today), go ahead and subscribe so that we can continue on this Journey together!

In the next post, I will help you brainstorm for new business name ideas, explain the pitfalls of choosing a name that has already been claimed by someone else, and guide you in the process of verifying your new business name ideas.