"What do you do to put beans on the table?" was a question that was asked of me once a very long time ago. It came from a fellow who has been a friend and mentor of mine for almost 30 years now.
The question is a good one as opposed to asking, "What do you do for a living?" It brings it down to earth. Many people do many things to make a living, but people who put "beans on the table" usually do it really well because they are usually self employed folk!
I had been one of them for about 60 years and being an entrepreneur gets in one's blood whether one does the same one thing for 60 years or 6 or 60 different things over a span of 60 years. Basically the rules are the same.
Know what it is you want to do. What does it cost? Are you willing to pay the price? I do not mean dollar wise, I mean working harder, missing one of your kids little league game once in awhile, working longer hours, giving up special times that other family's might be enjoying simply because you have to do what has to be done to "put beans on the table".
Once you know what it is you want to do and then learn everything you can about it remember in the beginning you may have to be chief, cook and bottle washer. However, as soon as you can start outsourcing by contacting for payroll, legal work, accounting, office administration, security, maintenance and other tasks.
Try to use contract labor in all these fields as it will usually be cheaper and more productive than employees. They can usually do a lot of your work from their home or office as opposed to you providing them office space and all the other expenses that come with employees. Some times it is cheaper to take a good worker and pay to make them a one person c-corporation and give them 100 business cards than to employ them. This starts them on their own road to entrepreneurship.
If your business is a service that they can use, then consider asking them to barter a dollar amount of your service for a dollar amount of their services.
Make use of temp services in your business and you will avoid a tremendous amount of paper work and employee expenses. There are temp services for everything from clerical help to engineers, doctors, nurses and assembly-line supervisors. Big businesses use all these tactics and if it is good enough for their bottom line then it will work for yours.
