So in today’s video, we are going to talk about “ how to start your own business with no money “ and are going to cover these main topics:
- The mindset of an entrepreneur
- Side hustle
- Friends and family money
- Business loans or grants
- Angel investors
- Bonus – 3 online business ideas to start today with little to no money
The mindset of an entrepreneur
The first thing you have to do to start a business is to have the right mindset. Most entrepreneurs are very positive, and good at figuring things out, so make sure you have the right attitude when you start.
If you’re constantly complaining, and saying things like “ I don’t have enough money “ or “ this is going to be very tough maybe I should not even start “ then maybe you shouldn’t.
I suggest you change your mindset, and try to get used to seeing the positive in things, and trying to focus your energy on how to solve problems and issues instead of just wasting energy on doubt, criticism and negative thinking.
Here’s a few examples of how you can switch your mindset to be more positive and hopefully get you in the right direction:
The first obstacle to face when you start a new business and don’t have money, is how can I even start?
So, instead of thinking about how much you need money for this and that and that you don’t have it, try and focus on what can you do right now, for free, or for very little.
For example, you can invest your time, when I started out with my media company, I didn’t have much money to invest in a team of writers or anything like that, so I basically invested my own time and did the work myself.
I spent hours and hours writing content and publishing as much as I can in the first few years to get the ball going. Once I started to make some money, I invested it back into the business and eventually started to grow slowly, but surely.
Another good example, is to ask your friends and family if they can help. A lot of young people today want to start a YouTube channel and turn it into an income or a big business ( which is totally doable, but that’s a topic for another video ).
So, instead of complaining about how you don’t have money for fancy gear, a camera, lighting etc, you can spend energy on asking your friends and family if they have an old camera they can borrow you, or you can even just use your iPhone like i’m doing right now.
Good lighting is for free, I use the sun right now, and it looks pretty good. So you can literally start with nothing, and just hit record and see where it takes you.
These are just two examples, and there are many more, but I just wanted to show you that it’s all in your head. If you get into your head that you don’t have money, and it’s too hard, it will actually be this way and you will probably fail or won’t even start.
However, if you convince yourself that it’s easy, and it’s going to be awesome, and all you need to do is just ask your friends and start the ball rolling and spend more time on figuring out how you CAN do it, things will happen, for sure.
Side hustle approach
This is my favorite approach actually and the one I made when I first started my company, what it basically means is that you start your company as a side hustle to your main income source.
So for example if you have a full time job, but almost no money left at the end of the month what you can do is work on your company at evenings and weekends. When you first start, especially if it’s an online business, you don’t need 10 hours per day to get started. You can easily work from 20:00PM to 00:00 and make a lot of progress.
You can do this until you earn enough money to decide it’s time to go all in and do it full time.
It’s hard, it comes with a cost, especially if you already have a wife or girlfriend and even more difficult with kids, but it’s possible. and honestly if you’re single, you have no excuse, you should just work as much as possible.
Here’s a pro tip for you as well, get a job as an employee in a company in the same field as what you want to start a business in, this way you can earn money while learning the industry.
For example, if you want to start your own Search Engine Optimisation agency, it would be amazing to get a job as an SEO manager depending on your experience and this way you will you get paid for your living expenses but more importantly you will learn and own your skills for “ free “
Friends and family money
So similar to what we talked about before, you can ask your friends and family for free stuff that you need to get started when you have nothing. Most of the time these people will happily try and help.
You can even suggest a loan from a family member to get them to be a part of it and not just giving away free stuff. A lot of successful businesses and companies you know today, started as one person with an idea and dream and a family member who believed in him and gave him a small startup loan to get things started.
Think about it, when you start, you don’t need much, most of the time, a few thousand dollars is all you need to start and if your idea is good or has potential, it can be enough to get started and start earning.
I did it when my media company started to grow, I needed more capital to grow faster, and I turned to my family to see if they would like to invest, they did, and it helped my company grow faster while avoiding seeking capital from outside sources like banks, investors etc.
You will be surprised by your family members or even friends at how much they want to help when you actually present them with a good business opportunity, even if you think before they won’t agree, and you feel bad about asking, you have to put your ego to bed, business is about communicating with people, and it’s very rare to reach a high level all alone.
Business loans and grants
This is a very big world of loans and grants, there are so many opportunities today to get funding for a startup I would need an hour just to cover most of them.
But let’s focus on banks and grants for now. If you have a good business idea and you are looking to start a business but have no money, in today’s world, money is cheap. What I mean by that is that the banks give out loans with low interest rates.
This will not be the case forever, but in the last few years and probably going forward another couple of years, interest rates are low, you can borrow money from the bank, invest it in your business and hopefully earn enough to cover the loan and still keep a nice profit.
Make sure though to understand how banks work, you can’t just walk in the bank with nothing and ask for money, banks want to protect themselves so you need to present some assurances to make the bank feel comfortable about lending you the money.
For the sake of this video, we are talking about starting a new business, so you probably don’t need a big loan. Banks will have no problem giving you let’s say $4,000 if you are a costumer and have decent credit and maybe a paycheck.
A word of caution though, when you borrow money from the bank, you need to pay it back, so do your home work before, and make sure your business venture is solid, with a high percentage of success. Nothing is 100% in this life, but you can tell within reason if your business idea is solid, or just a shot in the dark.
Grant are a different thing. You can ask the government for a grant which is basically like the government investing in your business idea if you hit certain criteria. For example, if you happen to have medical knowledge and experience and want to start a business in this field.
There are many grants related to the medical field as it is in the government best interest to invest in people who are looking to improve the overall medical field, whether it’s in new tech to help patients or doctors or even just in research to hopefully find cures and new drugs to treat illness and similar things.
We won’t go into detail now about how to apply, but a good place to start will be to just google your business niche + grants.
Angel investors
Some people are just good at raising money. I’m not, but I know a few people who are extremely good at getting other people to give them money for their business idea.
Angel investors are usually people who already made a nice living for themselves and are now looking to grow their wealth by investing in other people and obviously taking a cut from their success.
Belive me, trying to convince an investor to invest in you is not easy, but it’s very possible. You can even get an investment with just a nice presentation and no actually business.
You might ask yourself why the angel investor will give you money just like that, well, the simple answer is that angel investors cost you a lot.
They cost you because they usually want a large piece of the pie. If you have a business idea but no money, and the angel investor hears your idea and decide it’s a good chance you will succeed, he agrees to risk his own money, in return for a high percentage of your company, high can vary, but let’s say between 20% to 50% is a good example. depending on how much money you need and how much your idea is worth in the future.
So while you get money for “ free “ if your business grows and becomes a success, it will pay off big time for the investor as he now owns a large part of your company. But there’s an old saying that I like that reads” It’s better to have 10% of a billion dollar business than to have 100% of nothing “ Keep that in mind.
Bonus – 3 business ideas you can start today with little to no money
So while we talked about how to start an online business with no money and understood that you actually have a lot of options to help you, let’s look at 3 examples of actually businesses you can start right now with little to no money:
1. Drop shipping
This is a very popular niche in recent years and it basically needs no money or very little. It just requires your time and some effort.
What you do is set up a website, which is very cheap these days, you can get a domain for as little as a couple of bucks per year, and building a simple site today is also easy with companies like Wix or WordPress or others, you will need to invest time in learning how to do these, but I can assure you, they are not complicated.
So after you have a domain and a simple website, you can look for products to sell, if it’s fashion or toys or whatever, you can search online and when you find something you think is worth selling, you can contact the manufacturer and ask if they do drop shipping. This basically means that you can sell their product on your store, and when someone buys it, you just forward the order to your supplier and they ship it directly to the costumer. and you keep the margin.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say I have a fashion online store selling hoodies. I found a good supplier of cool hoodies and he agrees to sell each item to me at $15.
I list that item on my online store for $22. And when someone orders the item on my store he pays me $22, which I then forward to my supplier at a cost of $15 and keeping the margin as profit, in this case, $7.
Now keep in mind this is a very simplified example, but that’s basically how drop shipping works, and you can start it today with little money and actually earn a lot of money if you know how to drive buyers to your site.
2. Blogging
This is a subject that is close to my heart as I started my media company 8 years ago and it actually grew from just 1 blog to what it is today.
I know a lot of people who started with a small blog just for fun, and now earning 6 figures from the same blog that just grew over time.
To start a blog you basically just need to write, a lot of content, but if you provide real value, and do it consistently, it can grow and earn you a nice living or even turn into a full company earning high revenues.
To start a blog you need to get a domain with one of the domain registries like Godaddy or name cheap, and install a CMS which is a content management system where all your articles will be written. I recommend going with Word Press as it is very easy to operate and work on.
Once you have a site running you can just start publishing content and with time, search engines like google or social media sites like facebook will drive real users to your site to read. To get better at it you can learn Search engine optimisation or social media marketing and start promoting your content yourself to get the initial traffic going.
If you provide value, people will comeback. If you sell something, they might buy, and you can grow from there. I did it, and it all started with 1 blog for fun.
3. Sell your time ( service )
If you are a lawyer for example, and you work in a firm but looking to start your own business but don’t have money to spend, you can open a simple Wix site, or invest very little in a domain with a basic hosting plan and set up a nice webpage about you and what can you do and offer people a chance to hire you.
In your spare time, you can promote the content you write, provide people with value, and some of them might remember that when they need a lawyer next time, and comeback and hire you. Once you reach enough people, you can turn that into a business and do it full time.
This is just an example and it works the same with pretty much any filed where you can sell your time. For example, SEO, Marketing, Finance advisor and many more.