The number of entrepreneurs who have started successful businesses from their kitchen-table must be in the millions. More than highly expensive startup incubators.
Where else do you start?
Often, starting a new small enterprise begins at home.
Even if you don’t have a kitchen table, you’ll still have a space somewhere in the house such as a dining room table or a desk in the study.
Don’t kid yourself, starting a new enterprise is not something to be sneer at. It takes hard work, determination and guts to follow through right until the end. Someone starting a training business, for example, may spend an entire year developing the training manual and the associated presentation that goes with it.
Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out – a quote from a motivational writer. The advice is spot on — you need to chunk down all the tasks that you have to do to accomplish your startup goal and then get about doing them.
The advantage of the kitchen table startup is the low overhead. You don’t need to lay out any capital to start. Even when you have a minimal viable product, you can still operate from your kitchen table to test market demand.
Kitchen table businesses are really business idea incubators. Just think of how many businesses have begun at kitchen tables for many decades. This is the place where small businesses start and then involve into small and medium size businesses.
Often when the original founder entrepreneur retires, the business is sold on to the large corporations that then have sufficient capital to roll the business out on a regional or national scale.
Working on the kitchen table is not always the ideal place. It’s not always free of interruptions and you can only work for so many hours in the day at the kitchen table.
The kitchen table remains a symbol of free enterprise. It’s where anyone with an idea to start something can begin. As mentioned, the capital outlay is negligible – all it takes is determination and perseverance.
The kitchen table start-up might be romanticised but take a look around and you’ll see how many businesses have actually been started at a kitchen table. Here is one to check out.
If you look around at the number of smaller stores and limited line products coming home to market, especially in the coastal areas, it seems that kitchen-table start-ups are on the increase, especially in this economy.
