Starting a business with nothing. No support or financial aid

Starting a business when you have money can be hard. Starting a business when you have no financial support can seem impossible.

I am here today to tell you that it is possible, and anyone can do it. If you’re reading this you might already know who I am but if you don’t let me introduce myself. ?I am Joe Horvat. I am the CEO and founder of Scenic Support. We are an NDIS provider based between the Scenic Rim and Sunshine Coast.

I started Scenic Support with zero dollars to start and very little support. I had support from my partner and mother and my small weekly income from my job.

The idea to start my own business was always a dream of mine. I just never pursued it as I was too scared of the financial risk that I would be taking. At the end of the day, I still had bills to pay and a family to feed.

One week I was going through a low in life and felt like I needed to achieve more and follow my goals. One day that week I sat down with my partner and explained to her how I was feeling, and she told me to go for it and start my own business in the community sector. I thought this was a good idea.

Now as a man that dropped out of school at the start of year 11 and only just passed year 10 this sounded difficult. From my point of view, I had all odds against me. That didn’t stop my will to try.

Over the next few weeks, I did hours’ worth of research on how to start a business. I did LinkedIn learning, googled a lot and spoke to current business owners on how they started up.

After 2 months I was ready to go. I had my back of house business set up and I had my first employee who is my mother. She was the only person I could afford as she was helping me out for free.

So as a team we worked our butts off. My mum did the support work, and I did the back of house stuff.

The first month we made seven thousand between the both of us. This was enough motivation for us to keep going and luckily, we did because from there on we just grew and grew.

Fast forward six months, many sleepless nights and a lot of hard work, Scenic Support now have an amazing team of 9 and in the last 6 months, our income was around one hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars.

If I have any advice for young entrepreneurs, it would be to follow your dreams. It’s going to be hard; you will want to give up at times as it’s easier but at the end of the day, it is worth it. Not just financially but you will also feel so much better about life.

Thank you for reading this article. If you like it please like and comment to share the appreciation. ?

Joe Horvat