From Catalyst to Company: A Journey Through Entrepreneurship (with Peter Banigo)

Welcome to the Frugalpreneur podcast. I am your host, Sarah St. John.This episode is what I refer to as a showcase episode where I feature a bootstrapped entrepreneur and they briefly share their tips, tricks, tactics, techniques and tools that help them bootstrap their business and the successes and failures along the way.My hope is that each of these showcase episodes will provide at least one valuable takeaway that you can implement with right away in your own bootstrap business journey. Now onto the episode well, let me.

Just start my own business. I would say a couple of years ago, let's go back to 2010 was when I started my first business.But before then, in 2008 when I was a student in the university, I had this internship I had to do back then. And one day during my internship, on a Monday, I got to the office and I realized like half of the staff had been laid up just like that.And looking at it, I realized it's a long time later. I think this was the first catalyst because I remember I really felt bad that day.I wasn't little, but I felt really bad because people had families and everything. And then I think, because that same year, I think two, three months later, was when I registered my first company, though I didn't use it.But yes, I think that was the catalyst that made me start my first business, my web hosting company, because I didn't want to be in a situation where I wouldn't have control over my destiny, over my activity.I didn't want to be in a situation where someone could just wake up and maybe something happens and I lose everything, my job and everything just like that. So that was the first catalyst to me starting my first business. And I think going forward I started a couple more.But what I do currently was just I always had for everything I started I tech. Using technology was my advantage over everyone else.And I kept having people ask me questions on what I was doing differently, on how I was able to do more things without working as hard as most of them.And then at a point that was in 2018, eight years after the first business, I decided to launch Target ICT, which to me I usually joke around and say it's a way to make people pay for the questions they ask me. Talking about bootstrapping, I've never really, I think apart from once, I've never taken external funding to start any business.And as such I've had to. I've started a lot, so I've had to be creative different ways.I've had businesses where we had to do SEO within the office, write different articles instead of doing adverts and it really worked for a very long time getting free people coming in, asking questions and buying from us. I use a lot of systems and automation also.If you have systems, you see that you do this thing over and over, you repeat this thing and you create a system around it.It saves too much time and that means you don't need to hire there, you have automations, you it reduces the need to hire in a lot of situations then I tend to use open source software for most. I don't really go for the popular software because most of them are just hype. So I tend to use open source alternatives to most software.I prefer software where I just pay once and I have the software.I don't really like subscriptions, I avoid subscriptions as much as possible then I think the biggest thing, especially for my current business target ICT that I did to Bootstrap was moving back to my home country because I always tell people that currently I'm in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.I used to be in Leicester in the uk and I tell people that what I pay as rent here for a year is what I pay is actually less than what I used to pay a month back there. All the money I saved now goes back into the business to promote the business, do more for the business.Talking about successes and failure, bootstrapping my business. I'll say of recent the biggest success has been I've had a podcast Teche Business podcast for the past maybe two years or thereabouts.Getting that podcast to almost a hundred episodes has been the biggest success because compared to what has been spent on editing, okay, apart from my time, but what has been spent on editing, creating and all that and the benefits I've got meeting new people, meeting a couple of clients and probably some potential clients too, helping my ads work better because a lot of times you advertise things and people go to Google what they saw to be sure it's real, to be sure it's genuine and all that. So your conversion rates from ads to get better through that. Also pitch.Being able to talk confidently in front of the camera without paying for any training has been another benefit of the podcast. Getting the podcast up to almost a hundred episodes has been the biggest success so far I can think of.

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Think my biggest mistake looking back, I had two or three commerce brands but one thing I had growing up was that we had this perception that debt was a bad thing. I didn't grow up with among business owners or anything. None of my family members were business owners.But it was recently I realized that if you have a business that's working, that has healthy cash flows and it's predictable, if I had known back then it would have made a big difference. But at least now I know that low interest debt would always push that kind of business much further than it should have been.So that's, I would say, my biggest regrets. I barely buy anything at the first offer. I always look for discounts, I always look for better offers. I ask for discounts a lot.Another thing is I don't get caught up in the hype. I talked about software earlier, so there's a lot of software.There are a lot of products out there where people tell you to use this product and they don't tell you to use that product because it's the best. No, but because they get a commission from getting you to use that product. I know there's a really popular CRM that's doing that right now.So I don't get caught up. I try to see is this actually good for me, does it really do what it promises? Because when you look at the marketing there is a lot of hype.But when you actually go into this kind of things, you see that there's nothing behind them. Then I tend to focus on profits, profit and cash flow in my business. So you want to look at things that would bring in cash flow.You want to control your costs and cost so that you're profitable because profits are what would keep you alive and sane. Then I try to keep my personal overheads low.I try not to waste money personally because every penny I don't waste, every penny I eat is something I can invest for my future holder self is something I can put into my business and grow. Grow. It's money I can double. So I try not to be spend shrift.Then I think apart from that part of keeping personal overhead low is watching our hot taxes too. Because I wonder when you make profits, everyone wants part of them.But you start a business for years, you're making lots and nobody really comes for you, nobody really helps you. So I think yeah, you have to pay taxes to keep the society running. But watch out for them. Don't let them become a burden to you or to your business.So I think that's what those are the tips and tactics I've used over time to stay sane and keep my business afloat. Some tools and resources I found useful in my journey to Google I am very curious. I search a lot for everything GitHub.It gets a lot of good software that can do a lot of things that the paid software out there does. Then YouTube. YouTube. I learned a lot from YouTube how to do so many different things like YouTube is just it's better than university right now now.Then also freelance websites help to get experts to do one or two tiny things that we can't do within the company. So advice I would give others on things they wish they knew when starting would be. I'll say spend more on what brings you money.Like I said, I optimize for profits and cash flow.I know a lot of people who started businesses after leaving big companies and they spend so much they have a lot of budget trying to keep those corporate perks, have the same kind of office they had before and try to live the life they live in the bigger company and not realizing that that bigger company had to pass through the startup phase where it didn't have all those things that you want to recreate now. So a lot of times those kind of businesses fail because you're spending money on the wrong things.I noticed this a lot of times people start businesses and they don't really have a marketing budget.I think it's really important before you start I would say let like 50% of your startup budget or even more be for marketing, for getting the word out, for letting go. That's what's going to keep the business upload. That's what's going to let people know about you.For anyone who wants to reach out to me or anything, I think I don't really use social media that much other than interrupts. I'm not really big on updating my social media, but two places you can get current information about me on my LinkedIn account Pizza Barnego.For now, I'm the only pizza barnego on LinkedIn. And then apart from that, my podcast. Your business podcast. So that's techyourbusiness podcast.com you can get the latest episode.I have a an episode on open source alternatives for most things. For your accounting, for your calendar management, for messaging.So all the subscriptions, I think the episode will be a good way to cut a lot of your subscriptions. Then apart from that, we have a new product which we're launching which is Instant setters. So it's another way to cut costs in your business.If you have a lot of calls coming in and you don't have enough calls to justify hiring a full time staff, we have instant setters which can be installed in your business to answer your calls like a woman. It is trained on your it's based on AI actually.So it's trained on your knowledge base, trained on your website, trained on your products, your pricing and everything. And it answers questions just perfectly in a really human sounding voice. That's how you can reach me.And thank you so much for having me on your show.

I hope you enjoyed that episode and were able to take away a valuable nugget of information that you can implement right away in your own business. If you feel your story would be valuable for the listeners of this show, please visit Frugal Show Guests.