How To Start A business With No Money! | Entreprenuership | B2B Vault - The Biz To Biz Podcast | Episode 256

You are now watching the Biz to Biz Podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz Podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Charles Barkley of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we'll be discussing how to start a business with little to no money at all. Zero, actually. You know. So yeah, today's date is the 1st of July, 2024, in this sunny/rainy day in South Florida. So yeah, it is actually 2:40 PM. Got a late start today. That's a late start for shooting the podcast.

Had too many meetings scheduled that kind of ran into each other.

Yeah. So how are you doing, man?

I'm doing well. Rocky's not really digging this weather. He doesn't like the rain. He couldn't get in his walk this morning. Yesterday we got in our, our walk. We got home just in time before the sky opened up. Good for you. So Good for you. Didn't work out for most of the Panthers fans though. I think they got pretty wet at the beach yesterday for the parade.

They won the Stanley Cup, so what more? You can't have the cake and eat it too, Annie Mae.

I guess. Okay, congratulations. Congrats to them.

Go Panthers!

We're also entering, uh, NBA free agency. How's that looking for for what, the Bucks? I don't know, the Bucks, anybody. There's a lot of top players available in the, uh, market. Klay Thompson's been kind of quiet up in Milwaukee with that.

Giannis is playing out in Greece right now for the—

getting ready for the Olympics, uh, probably.

I would assume so.

Okay.

Yeah, um, Dame is chilling with his kids from what I, you know, you can see online. But, uh, I guess, man, you know, I don't know. I don't know what the Bucks can really afford to do in a, in, in free agency. They got a lot of money tied up with the Green Freak and Dame. That's a lot, you know, it's two big superstars, right? So I don't, I don't know if they're—

LeBron said he's gonna restructure his contract so they can win whatever, let's win a championship.

I mean, I'm so like, when I straightened my life up, right, my dad was working for, uh, the Milwaukee County and, uh It's a government job, right?

Yeah.

And, uh, I made some bad choices and, you know, whatever, right? And he got me a job there for the county. Well, I had to go learn, I had to go get some certifications and whatnot. I had to go prove myself first, right?

Right.

I had to go get my driver's license. I'm like 26 years old at this time. So I had to go get my driver's license, boy, like I said, anyway, long story short, you know, I get like LeBron James doing whatever he can to get his son in the league. Right. I get it. But also at the same time, if he's trash, bro, you're just tarnishing your, like, why would you wanna? Do that to your legacy.

Do you think that the players are going to come after his son?

And they're going to be bullying the shit out of his little ass the way they're coming after, uh, Caitlin Clark too. I would assume— I mean, listen, when you're a rookie in any sports, like when I was a freshman playing on varsity football, right, the hazing was real. You know what I'm saying? Like, it wasn't a walk in the park. Like, I get it. You was getting treated on the regular, right? You know what I'm saying? Like, you was just getting treated. And so, I mean, at the end, yeah, I don't know. I, I, uh, I love my kids, you know what I mean? And I would do anything for them, so I, I totally get it, right? Right. So I wish him luck, man. You know what I'm saying?

I hope it's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting.

It was for me. It's just like, so like, I don't know, like 2 months ago I was, I was reading something or somebody wanted to blog one of the, you know, the YouTube channels that talk about basketball all the time. We're talking about how LeBron James and JJ Redick Allen Kopelman had this grand scheme for him to come and be the head coach and look at what happened. He's the head coach.

Yeah, because they were like doing a podcast.

Yeah, they've been doing a podcast for— they launched it earlier this year, whatever. So the fact that somebody called it, right, from who had nothing to do with like in the NBA, just this regular, I forget which podcast it was.

Nope. Rocky, come here. No, don't be doing all that.

I forget whatever podcast it was. And so like, but yeah, so they had literally had said like how JJ Redick is gonna be the next coach and he's gonna be the one to help LeBron James get his son on the team.

I was a little shocked. Now, he went 55th in the draft. There's some other guy that went in the draft like in the 20s that's averaging like 2 points a game. Another guy, I don't know why they picked him up. And there's some other guy that hadn't even played, didn't even play. And he's like, I think he's like 7 feet tall, something like that.

Yeah, man, all I know is that the Brewers have hidden 5 grand slams already this season and they are smoking.

And one thing I will say about the NBA, I was watching a thing about the draft and they said this year they had the most international players ever. Like, there's a bunch from France and they actually got the first guy from NBA Nigeria. Like, they set up some NBA league in Nigeria and the first guy from that league, they've had it going for about 7 years. He got drafted. One guy got drafted from Nigeria. Yeah.

I mean, from what I'm hearing, like, you know, a lot of people who play overseas come to play in the NBA and they say like, it's so soft, like you can't touch the other players.

And, you know, where in Europe?

No, in America.

Oh yeah. There's no touching here. I mean, if Michael Jordan—

you could still get a hard foul, right? You know what I'm saying? Like, so, yeah, man, I don't know. I'm, I'm baseball full steam ahead, bro. I'm not thinking about no basketball. Don't care about the who drafted who. Go Brewers, bro.

All right, go Brewers, go Marlins. So how to start a business with little to no money.

This is a, this is a— Allen's little to no money is a $25,000 loan from No, I said San Walt— I'm saying you agree though, like that's whatever.

Well, you could get the money from there. You could get it off your credit cards. It's all a risk. But if you had to start a business and you had nothing, the best thing to do is get into a service business.

So what, what is service business?

Being a virtual assistant for somebody., make building websites. I mean, sure, you need a computer, but you know, you could get, you know.

So how would you start a business with little to no money? All right, so if it was me, okay, right? And say I wanted to start— I wanted a car wash, okay? I want a car wash. And a tire shop.

Okay.

The tire shop first. The car wash is going to fund the tire shop.

All right.

All right. Well, most likely you have a hose, a garden hose at your house.

Correct. Or maybe you go wash cars at people's houses.

Or you go to their house.

Right. And wash their car.

All right, so you're gonna save up, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna be— hopefully you have gas money.

Okay, you know, right?

But if you don't, then you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to be, hey, I, I'm detailing cars, you come to my house, it'll be done in whatever amount of time. Boom, boom, boom. You charge I don't know, $25 a car because you could go get it pretty cheap nowadays. Everyone's a detailer, right? Around my way, the guy does it for like $20, you know what I mean? And they do a really good job inside too, for $20. Inside out is $25.

I need to go over there.

Yeah, that's a good deal. Um, so, you know, by me you could pay $40, maybe more, right? $50 usually. But, um, Yeah, so, you know, you, you, you're gonna have to pull your network together, right? And hopefully they support you.

Yeah. Maybe you need a bucket, some soap.

You probably got, you should have all that in your house. You got a 5-gallon bucket laying somewhere. You got a dirty rag, a t-shirt, some dish soap. I mean, vacuum cleaner, pull out the vacuum cleaner, you know, get yourself some Windex or make it. You can make it with some online products like alcohol and vinegar or some shit. Yeah. I don't know.

Whatever it is.

Um, then you're gonna take that couple of times and you're gonna go to Amazon and you're gonna buy yourself a pressure washer. That's your first investment.

Okay.

For me, that's what I would do.

You need a pressure washer to wash a car? Why not?

Go make— make it go by much faster.

That's true, I guess. And you could put like attachments on it, like a brush to do this.

Exactly.

And all that. Exactly. With the right one. Yeah, probably for $100, $150 you could get $169. Okay, there you go, right?

So you're gonna do— let's say you had to do 10 washes, right? You had to do 10 cars. On every one of them, you had to stash the money. You couldn't spend it, right? So I'm saying, you, you have your job. Hopefully, you know, This is— there's no perfect scenario, right? Like, you can't just, oh, I'm gonna go out tomorrow and I'm gonna start this pressure wash— I'm gonna start this, uh, you know, detailing business and everything's gonna go perfect as planned. That shit does not fucking happen. I'm sorry. No, it just doesn't happen. So you're gonna most likely have a full or part-time job and you're gonna wash cars when you get off of work or before you start working on the weekend. And maybe you, you know, you figure out a little, you know, a different approach. Like you defog people's wind— their headlights. Headlights, right?

Yeah, there's like some special way, like with some baking soda or something.

It's pretty easy. That doesn't last long, but there's a couple of different ways you can very cheaply for basically free.

Right.

Right. And then you can get good at that or something or whatever it shall, you know what I mean? Like you learn how to stencil the client's names on their tires and you spray paint, you customize people's tires. I don't know. Like there's a lot of cool shit that people are doing.

Really? Stencil, put your name on the tire?

Yeah.

That's pretty cool. Yeah. Sean, you know how to do that? No.

You've seen it?

You've seen it?

Yeah. No, Sean's in the cars, so the only reason why I seen it, because I must have liked something. I'm talking to the videographer guy right now, and he's a car boss. He's a car guy, and I must have liked one of his videos, and now my algorithm is all fucking cars. Sorry. Uh, yeah, so, uh You know, there's just a lot of different ways. Maybe you, uh, you know, you're really good at art or whatever it is, you throw something else in there, right? So now, now you got your pressure washer.

You can also figure out maybe how to sell people stuff too, like air freshener.

Well, right, you customize it. So you put some hanging lights in their car, or you, whatever it is, you know, you got to figure— you put a smoke machine on their exhaust pipe or something, I don't know, you know what I'm saying? Disco bulb in the, in the, in the dash.

Seen that in Ubers before.

Yeah, for sure.

Get in an Uber and they got disco lights going.

Now you got your pressure washer.

Yeah.

All right, okay, say it's rainy season in South Florida, washing cars kind of gets a little slow, I'm sure, right? Detailing, not so much. People want the inside of their car clean, right? Right.

Yes.

Um, what are you gonna do with that pressure washer?

Pressure wash driveways.

You're damn right. You're gonna go up and down your block. You'd be like, hey man, give me $20 and I'll pressure wash your sidewalk and your front porch. And you know, if you got a back, you know, you give me an extra $10, I'll knock that out too. Right. You know what I mean? Boom. Now you're doing that. Maybe you say, okay, I'll do the windows too. 'Cause the pressure washer is capable of doing the windows too.

Yeah, you can get the pressure washer and then—

Take your ass to the gas station, steal the damn squeegee, borrow it, I mean, you borrow the squeegee. Now you got the squeegee to clean the windows. You charging, say, I don't know, $5 a window.

You know, they got the house—

Now you making $100 a house. Maybe you got $50 extra for the driveway to power wash the driveway.

Right.

All right, you get you a—

you do that, you don't even really even need a lot of chemicals for that.

No, you don't need anything, right? Water and a squeegee and a clean—

if they got some algae, you need to put something on there.

The pressure washer is going to knock that out, right? But anyway, so, so now you got the pressure washer, you got a, a steady business, right? You know what I mean? Now it's time to start thinking about location.

Right.

Right. Okay. Like, I still want to do this car wash. I don't want to be walking up and down and pressure washing the people's sidewalks and their garage doors. I don't want to be doing this, right?

Yeah. Maybe you hire, maybe you get yourself a location.

Then you hire someone else to do that as well. But that's a whole different side of the business.

Yeah.

That's the umbrella part of it.

Right.

You know what I mean? But boom, all right, you find a location next to a gas station. The gas station had a, you know, a service area. Guy left, it's just vacant, just nothing, nothing going on. You work out with the gas station, or maybe the gas station has a big area in there.

Yeah, maybe their parking lot is big and they got—

hey, you buy yourself, you buy yourself a tent. Yeah, get you some, you know, some chairs, some advertising slowly. I mean, I'm fast-forwarding. This is like probably 2, 3 years in the making.

No, it could be months.

It could be months if you're lucky, if you're a hustler, if you're really, really— I mean, that would be someone who doesn't have a job, right? You know what I'm saying? Someone who doesn't have the job, they have the time to knock on doors. Or part-time and they have time to go knock on doors and, you know, but that's one, I mean, just off the top, right? Like that's a business. This is a hustle that I, that my man told me that also one other business that is just a great business. And this is something that I've, that I've noticed down in South Florida could probably really, really use. What?

The car wash? No. Oh, what's this other business?

You, you might have to borrow a drill, a cordless drill, all right, and some drill bits.

Okay.

And a couple peepholes. You know what a peephole is for your door, right? Go to Home Depot, borrow a couple of those, 5 of them. Just 5.

They're probably not that expensive.

It doesn't matter. You— we're talking about we ain't got no money.

All right. Yes.

Go to your neighborhood hardware store, you borrow some peepholes.

Okay.

Some drill bits that go through metal and wood. You're gonna need them both, right?

We're not condoning shoplifting.

I'm not telling, I'm saying borrow them. Okay. You can go back and pay for them.

Okay.

It's what I would do.

Okay. All right? All right.

And this works well if you live in an apartment complex.

Okay.

'Cause if you, a lot of apartment complexes, they don't come on the doors, they don't have peepholes.

Really?

No.

I don't have a peephole at my house.

Exactly, so how the hell do you just open the door, you got a robber staring with a gun to your face? No, I have— See in Milwaukee where I'm from, window. In Milwaukee, every apartment that you come with, I don't care where it is, okay, there's a, there's a peephole.

Okay. All right, I'm gonna have to go check around to see what's going on with this peephole situation, right?

So you go into your, you know, uh, apartment building. Yeah, well, obviously if you know, you knock on a couple doors and they got peepholes, you're not— you're gonna leave that place, right? Right. You're not gonna knock on that door. Okay, he said, yo, I got a pocket of these peepholes. I noticed you don't have one on your door. Give me $25, I'll install a peephole within 2 minutes. Take me 2 minutes. Boom, boom, boom. You do that a couple times, you got a peephole business. You gotta, you gotta, you have a, what's the handyman business?

Okay.

Right? Yeah. All right, so now you got this cordless drill and some peepholes, and maybe you go get some anchors and some screws, and then you start hanging TVs or closets, putting together closets for people. You know what I'm saying?

You look— listen, handyman, there is a lack of handyman period down here.

If I was 20 years younger.

Yeah.

I would absolutely quit my job.

Okay.

And start a home, not remodeling, but just handyman, all like all in one, right? Like, uh, you need somebody to install a garbage disposal, you need somebody to hang a new ballast for your light. You need a ceiling fan installed. You need a new light fixture for the outside of your house put in. You need a room paint.

You do that around here, you need a light hung up or something like that, you're spending at least $50 to $100 for the person to come there, right? That's what I'm saying.

Plus you're going to pay the labor, whatever else you got.

No, I'm just saying they're going to charge you like $50 to $100 just to come to see what's going on. No, it's like usually like hang a fan up, $75. You supply the, you know, you—

well, obviously, of course.

And they— you pay them like $75 to do it.

That seems cheap to me right now, but I don't know.

It's like around—

I wouldn't know.

It might be like around $100, but it sounds about right. But I'm just saying, that's what that— it's a great business.

The peephole thing is a great idea, bro.

I like the peephole thing.

So another— this is another— this is, this is just me because I'm from the land of The Hustlers and Have-Nots. I'll give you a good business real quick. This is my last one.

It's your last.

This is the last, like, this is a low entry, but you are going to need a little couple dollars. Okay, you're gonna go and you're gonna find out where you test for your pesticide license.

Okay.

Okay. It's— the book is going to be your most expensive expense, the, the, the highest expense, the book that you need to study and read.

Okay.

You read that, you go and get passed for your certification. Now you can go to a Home Depot and purchase the same shit that Terminex uses, right? Okay, borrow the sprayer. Yeah, go get you some chemical, right? Knock on every restaurant in your— every, like, locally owned restaurant, right? Not the franchise. Yeah, they already got business.

Some of them pay like a couple hundred bucks to get the whole place. Exactly.

And you set up a monthly retainer with them. You say, yo, I come and spray this shit every week, I clean it, whatever, whatever it is to make your— yeah, you get a situation unique.

They need some rat traps, you tell them it's extra money.

Bang, done. Yeah, that's my— that's—

control is a good—

those are my free— my, my, my, you know. Okay, well, I did my last one. I guess this is my kicker, my, my bonus, uh Buy yourself— what are the— the not 2x4s, but the— what is it, 4x8s? Like for a fence post?

Yeah, it's 4x8.

Yeah, I think whatever. Like it's the big boys, right? Fence poles. Get you a handsaw. You can borrow that as well.

Justin's borrowing everything.

I'm just saying, you got no money, you're trying to make some money.

Okay, all right, borrow it from a friend.

Or borrow it from a friend. Get you a handsaw.

Yeah.

Measure out whatever— coaster.

Yeah.

You know, coaster.

Yeah.

Cut you 100 coasters.

Okay.

Now you got custom wooden coasters.

Okay.

Set up shop, sell them at the local arts and crafts market. Put a design on it, whatever you want. If you're good at it, You know, boom, burn something in. What do you got?

Okay, so one of my friends did this when he was, uh, my friend's son. He was good with computers, and he basically went to like apartments where there was like older people, and he put up a sign that he would teach people how to use the, their smartphone and the computer. And he did really, really, really well. His son was making a ton of money because he would charge people like $50 an hour And he'd show people how to use their Apple phone, show them how to send the email, how to do a virus scan.

Yeah, and all that.

Just, just go around and teach people. And he would go around to all these condos near where he lived and he was still in high school and he would go around and one person would tell the next person and, you know, $50 wasn't a lot and he'd spend like an hour with them. I mean, show them how to do it. Some people would need multiple lessons, of course, you know, because they want to learn how to, you know, oh, I need a Facebook. He'd go over there, set them up a Facebook page or whatever. You just charge everybody $50 an hour.

It's a great— that's a great idea.

That is a great business. And he made, made— he made a ton of money, and he started hiring other kids to go do the same thing.

It's like tutoring for adults.

Yeah. And he just went to, to these condo places where they have a big clubhouse.

That's great.

And he even would put on a class there for them. And then people would hire— he would have a class and talk about it. Right. And then they would— people there would all hire him to go do stuff because their grandkids aren't coming over to do it. And it wasn't that expensive. And then he hired like more kids and he had like 3, 4 kids. And then he started a business fixing cell phones. So your cell phone would break and he figured out how to get the parts, like the glass.

Yeah, you can get certified through Apple.

Yeah, well, that's what he did. He got certified to be able to replace the glass.

Yep.

On, on different phones. And he told me and I was like, oh, well, how do you— how does that work? And he's like, oh, well, you— I said, there's so many phones. How do you keep all the products? He goes, well, he goes, I'm cheaper than like going to the You Fix It, You Break It store, which charges universal screens. No, no. But he says it's— he— no, he said there was a website you go to, you just order it, and then they just send it to you the next day. It's like, it's like Amazon, like almost like Amazon. So you have it the next day. So the person already paid for you and you do it and you just take the phone apart and replace the glass and put it back in. And he's— and he has a lot of customers.

Yeah, I knew somebody who was doing that who was mobile. He was literally come to your house, this woman.

Yeah, he would go to your house, pick up the phone, sit in his car, come to your work, pick up the phone. Then he takes it all home and he's got an extra room in his house and he's got it all set up. And now he's got like 2 employees.

Dope, man.

And he even has Uber go get the phone because he doesn't want— so he doesn't have to go do it anymore.

Shout out to my daughter Jaylen, man. She just got the keys to her little studio. I shouldn't say little studio, to her studio, her eyelash. She does lashes.

Nice.

So she's got a— she's doing her thing, man. I love you, JJ. Keep grinding, baby.

You got this. No, those are businesses too. Like, being— if you know how to cut hair, right, you get your license, you can cut hair.

I bought my daughter a barber, you know, grade set up, right? So she's just up to her.

So if you got some ideas about starting a business or you started a business that you want to tell us about and how that's working out, so let us know. And we maybe we gave you an inspiring entrepreneurial idea today.

Or you could just tell me I'm full of shit. You know what I mean? I love to, you know, I love— we do not— talking.

And B2B Vault, we are not endorsing any shoplifting.

So says him. Do what you gotta do, B. No, I'm just kidding, man. Be smart.

Listen, they have—

be smart and smash the subscribe button. That's the pod. Peace out.

They got signs in San Francisco that say shoplifting is limited to $900. So if you're gonna do it, do it in San Francisco or California. Peace out. Carpe diem.

Do for self or die.

Peace.