Wow a lot of great comments. I am a small business owner and I know first hand how difficult it is to start and grow a business with a shoe string budget. I think some of the responses got away from the article's point that the suggestions are for low to no budget businesses.

In my opinion there are a ton of ways to train yourself, thanks to the resources across the Internet, to do many of the things that are required to get you going. The worse thing you can do is to not get started because you feel that you need all of these professionally crafted materials before you can begin.

I agree that you need to be professional, but you need to find balance. If you have a great product or a great service it will speak much louder than design...so whether your site is a wordpress template or a professionally designed site, or whether your cards are from a Vista print or a high end card shop becomes secondary. You need enough to get you going and then as you grow you refine. It also pays to tap into your network to find opportunities for exchanging services.

Thanks for the great article.

Ann-Marie