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[Sleeves]

I was fortunate enough to be in a position to "buy out" the business that had laid me off a year and a half earlier. I invested about $10K but received a location that had been a mobile electronics business for 7 years, working displays, operational wood shop, a install bay that was decently stocked with kits/harnesses/antenna adapters, and a small amount of equipment to sell. I had to be conservative with the money and initially set up accounts with distributors using a personal credit card for a few months until I could transition some money in to the store accounts. I'm estimating that if I was trying to start a business from nothing it would have easily taken $25-30K to get a building set up to be considered a serious car shop (this is a conservative estimate and reflects the small, low-income area where my business is located). To answer the other part of you question: it was about a year before I started paying myself out. I pretty much used my store to sell of parts of my personal collection of hoarded equipment to support myself up until then.

I think a few other people mentioned latching on to another business by renting a bay and working from there in your spare time. If it isn't a conflict of interest with your current job and have a reputation that will allow you to schedule customers in your free time this would be a nice low-budget way to start up your business. I would try to get set up with a reputable local distributor (1 day shipping, no minimum order), stock your bay with some of the most popular kits & harnesses (about 30 SKUs will cover over 70% of the cars you'll run in to), and order whatever else you need so you can do the install the next day. Doing it this way you can probably easily start up for less than $5K if you have a good rep and call in any word-of-mouth advertising favors you can manage. As someone else mentioned: it can be done for even less but it's really going to depend on if you're trying to make a business out of it or test the waters as a side hobby.