If you’re starting a business and living by the mantra, “You have to spend money to make money” – you’re wrong! This mentality is killing Aussie businesses before they have a chance to grow.

People look at Boost and they see an overnight success story but nobody ever sees the hard slog behind that ‘overnight success.
 

The reality is, I worked from my house for the first two years, didn’t take a salary for three years and we didn’t take a cent out of the business for five years! We even sold our family home in year two to fund growth.

To make a business successful you have to give everything; your time, your money and sometimes it feels like your soul!

Here are my three top tips for how to set yourself up for success in those early days:

    Be patient

Many young entrepreneurs are attracted to the Branson and Zuckerberg success stories and keen to reach dizzying heights of success as fast as possible – along with all the trappings.

I have seen people who start a business with a flashy office, pay themselves a top wage and simply burn money.

We’re living in an era of ‘NOW’. Everybody wants to have everything immediately and nobody wants to wait. But these businesses are often in the four out of five businesses that fail in the first five years.

The reason is, this kind of thinking translates into how they manage their finances and how they want to run their businesses too. They want the sports car and the corner office but they’re not willing to invest in fundamentals like careful product development and good marketing

    Examine your priorities

The smartest thing you can do as a new business owner is put your wallet away.

Sit down and take a good look at your budget. When you really analyse it, you quickly start to realize how much money you simply waste on things you really don’t need.

How you feel about an ‘essential’ item right now is going to change over time. The more pressing your business needs become the more it becomes like a hungry child.

When that baby is crying for food and you have nothing to feed it, you’re going to be thinking, ‘Why did I spend $150 getting my hair done? Why did I get the expensive wine? Why did I get takeaway four nights a week for the past six months?’

Your whole priority system around spending will shift towards your business – as it should if you’re serious about making it work. Suddenly a lot of the things you’ve been spending money on will make you sit back and think, ‘Really? This is what you wanted to do with the advertising budget this week?’

    Don’t forget why you’re here

As a budding business person; keep your eyes on the prize.

When I look back I think, sure I could have taken more holidays, spent more money on clothes, driven a nicer car – all those things. But if I hadn’t sacrificed then, I wouldn’t be part of the Boost phenomenon today.

Those small decisions are the reason Boost will soon be open in 17 countries – more than any other juice bar in the world – with over $2billion in global sales since inception.

If I have one piece of advice for a new business just starting out, it’s this; put your wallet away. Your future self will thank you for it!

Get more insights and business tips in my book, The Secret of my Success, available here.