You’ve got a new business, you need to get it off the ground, what do you do? Do you spend money on advertising, marketing, sales? No! It’s easy to sit and think you’re doomed because you don’t have a budget. But that is not how small businesses get off the ground. The only expenditure you need to make is one that is paid for in blood, sweat and tears. There are countless examples of businesses that are now huge successes and that started with no money. Don’t waste money on flyers, direct mail campaigns and expensive advertising. Pick up the phone and talk to people. It’s horrible and it sucks, but that’s the price of not having any money to spend in the first place.

I once worked with a group of people who thought that spending nearly £14k on a glass partition for the office we were going to move into would get the investor’s juices flowing. There was a bad culture of spending money there. The company soon folded and we never did move into the new office.