So being that this is the most common place that you will find yourself it makes sense to assume it is also going to be one of your larger expenses. I mean a cup of coffee is not really to cheap these days. In Australia the general price varies between $3.00 and $5.00 per cup depending on size and style. So if you work on the general accepted one drink per hour, then you would find yourself at around $9 – $15 for a 3 hour session. Which does not seem like a lot, however over a week that is $45 – $75. If you take that out to a 48wk year (assuming 4 weeks holidays) you are looking at anything up to $3600.

While this still has you sitting comfortably below the cost of an actual office. It has two other effects. The first is that you are still sitting comfortably under the cost of an actual office. The second is that you can probably still save more money here. Through anything like discount cards, vouchers, or other reward programs. Any of these can save you anything from 10 to 50% of the price you may have to pay otherwise for your coffee.

BUY X GET THE NEXT FREE

The most common form of reward card offered by coffee shops is the buy so many and get the next one free, these can range anything from buy 10 get the 11th free down to buy 5 or 6 and get the next free. Worst case, you will save about 10% getting the 11th free each time, and would mean that you get a free one every 3rd or 4th day.

ONE OFF VOUCHERS

Depending on the store sometimes they will do one off promotions. These promotions may give anything from buy one get one free, or buy another product and get a coffee free, or just a discount. Some of these will save you money and some wont, so just be careful that the offer is actually going to provide a benefit.

OTHER REWARD PROGRAMS

There are some chains that offer really good programs which can help you save a lot of money. Some of these cost money to join but often the benefits far outweigh the cost. For example one that i am a member of costs you $22 to join, but it allows you to get buy one get one free coffee, every time you go in. This alone can save you the $22 joining fee in the first week and half your coffee bill each year.

Finding the right coffee shop with the right offer can take a little bit of time but the money that you can save can add up to quite a bit. For my $22 investment, as mentioned in the last section above, I pretty much save over $1600 per year, and i just drink two cups a day.  So make sure that just like any other expenses this is one that you pay attention to and try to keep on top of.

When you remove the need for some things like staff, an office, and other overheads, it becomes a much more achievable dream to start a business. This is effectively going for the shoestring budget option, while it is not as cheap as a pair for shoelaces to get started it is the comparative cost to starting a business with all the trimmings, that for so many just are not needed.

Starting your business on a shoestring budget is something that you can often find will go almost hand in hand with having No Fixed Office. An office truly is one of those things that it can be really easy to discard from the upfront costs, especially if you are running a service business or a business that deals directly with other businesses. There is also another great domino effect that this creates especially in the beginning stages.

Not having an office, also often means that you find the need to have staff to fill that office is not as great. It is the constant game of one trying to fill the space you have and two trying to make it look like what you believe a business should look like. If you have the space in an office for 4 or 5 people to work then you are going to want to try and fill that space, to make your business look like what you have been trained to think a business should look like.

A business as you create from nothing has no specific this is what it should look like or this is what you need to have. You effectively can create a business that will achieve the same with or without an office it just depends on the scale and your point of view, change from the closed “I have to have an office and a staff and and and” point of view to the “I can do this on a shoestring and make more money in less time on my own” point of view. It is not always an easy point of view to swallow, but it is something that often gets easier with time.