Discover How to Start Your Business Without Cash | 20 Proven Tactics

What's up, Believe Nation? I'm a little bit sick today. It's been a really rough week, but this is the last video I need to make for the week, so I'm going to bring everything I have to this final video as we talk about the 7 ways to get started in your business with zero cash. So one of the most common questions that I get asked on my stream, in my emails, on Twitter, on YouTube is, how do we get started? I don't have any money. I don't have an investor. You need money to make money. You don't. I'm going to show you how to do it in 7 different ways, how you can make money and start a business without any startup capital. Here we go. Okay, so way number 1 is start a service. I think entrepreneurs should always start a service over a product whenever possible, because it does a couple things. One, when you're starting a service, you don't need to invest into any gear, you don't need products, you don't need a location. You can go to your clients, right? You're investing your time, your energy, your hustle, but you're not investing your dollars. So it's a great way to get started and test something out before investing money into it. And as you start making money, then you can put it back in. So start with a service. The other thing that it does with the service is that it gets you close to your customers. When you're selling a product, you're not as close to your customer, but when you're doing a service and you're meeting with them, whether it's every week or every month or every quarter, whatever it is, you're getting close to them. You're getting to understand them. So you're getting their money, which is great. You get cash flow coming in without spending anything, and you're getting close to them so you can understand their needs. And when you're ready to then make the jump and sell product, you have a ready base already there so you can get that attachment to them. And when you're ready to go bigger, you already have that base to build from. Number 2 is use a print-on-demand service. So if you are going to any kind of product, make sure that it's a limited production run and that you're not outlaying tons of cash. This is a big mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs will make when they're first getting started. If you want to make caps, I'm going to make caps. I want to be in the cap-making business. Great. I got this sick design that's going to take off. Awesome. If you want to make real margin off of baseball hats, you need to order tons, right? You need to have 10,000. You need to order 5,000, 10,000. The challenge is, one, that costs a lot of money, right? You're going to have to take out a big loan or take a mortgage on your house or sell everything you have, you know, to get the startup capital to be able to make that initial purchase. But the problem is you don't know if that's going to sell or not. And it happens to so many people. They go for the bulk order because they get the biggest price breaks and they figure, if I can sell all 10,000 of these, I'm going to make it rich. Great. And then you sell 3 because maybe your design sucked, because maybe people didn't like it enough. And so I would much rather you use a print-on-demand service where you are selling one hat at a time, and they're being printed one hat at a time, and being shipped one hat at a time. And there's services that allow you to do this for a huge range of products, whatever you're trying to get out there and sell. And why it's great is you're not spending any money. The downside is you're not making as much money, right? Where if you buy 10,000 caps, you might be making a 90% margin. Where if you're selling one cap at a time, you may be making 5% or 10%. You're not making as much. But what it allows you to do is test. What I would love to see you do is if you're going into caps or t-shirts, whatever you're trying to make, test your concept, see if it works, see if people want to buy it or not. Right? And if you're selling these caps and you're selling hundreds and hundreds of caps, then you say, you know what, forget this print-on-demand service. I'm going to take the money that I made from this and I'm going to make my own order. Now it's worth it. It's not risky because you already have a ready audience. You know it's gonna keep selling. So use the print-on-demand service to start, to test it, to build up an audience, and then when you're ready, make the jump. 'Cause what I don't want you to do is take out a big mortgage and then get stuck with 9,992 caps sitting in your mama's basement 'cause you couldn't sell them and you took your shot and now you're in debt for the rest of your life. Don't do that. Use a print-on-demand service. Number 3 is barter and borrow. Listen, as an entrepreneur, it's never about the resources you have. It's always about how resourceful you can be. And so think about what you can barter. Think about what you can trade. Think about what you're really good at and what you need help with. And maybe you could trade what you're really good at with somebody else because they need help with that. You know, if you're a lawyer trying to get started but you need a website, trade some legal services to a website designer. They'll build you a website, you got your legal services, whatever it is, right? There's people who need what you have and you need what they have. So find some way to barter. As an example, after I sold my first business, I needed a new office, I needed a new thing to do. And so I connected with a venture capital company and they had this amazing office at Yonge and King, which in Toronto was one of the most prestigious addresses you can have. Pretty much in the country, actually, in the country of Canada. I was there, and I got the space for free, and I got to incubate my next company out of there because I was able to barter with the people who owned that business. I joined them, I helped them bring in deals, at the same time I got to incubate my business out of it. And so look for people who have what you need and how you might be able to work some kind of trade. The other thing is to borrow. Before you go out and buy something, borrow from somebody. You know, you get a landscaping deal, great for your first gig. Don't go out and buy all the gear, go borrow the gear from one of your friends. It's sitting in their garage and they're not using it. When I was getting started on YouTube, I did both. I did barter and I did borrow. I had a friend of mine, Mark Drager, who's actually featured in Your One Word, was starting up this company, Fantamedia. He came in and in exchange for promotion on the channel, he filmed my video. So some of my very first videos are— has this intro like created by Fantamedia or in association with Fantamedia, whatever it is. He got a lot of exposure on my channel and in exchange he did the video production and I was, I was just the guy in front of the camera. And so that was a great exchange as I wanted to go off and do it myself. The next step before I bought a camera was I borrowed a camera from a buddy of mine. He was a bartender and he did bartending tricks and flair and he filmed a whole bunch of his events. I said, "Hey, can I borrow your camera? Would you mind? I want to make my own YouTube channel videos and see what happens." And I borrowed his camera for a day. Right, like borrow. Don't go and buy yet. Borrow, test. Always find a smaller way to get started. In almost any industry there's a smaller way to get started. Go and find that. And then pour it into your business. You look at Trenodance Salsa, yes, I have a retail location now. Yes, it costs me 6 figures in rent every year, but how the business was started was renting spots out of gyms where we would pay $25, $30, $40 an hour to rent their gym space for an hour and then fill it with students. And then we did more time, right? 2 hours, 3 hours at a time. And then multiple days, right? If you want to start a bake shop, you don't have to go and take out a 5 to 10 year lease on a bake shop. Find somebody who already has some retail location and ask if you can have a tiny part of their store. Come in for one day or come in for every day for a week, come in for every Saturday for a year. Like they take a piece of every sale that comes in or whether they like it just for the marketing because you're bringing in awareness and people to the store. There's always, guys, there's always a smaller way to get started. Borrow, barter, think smaller, think bigger at the same time, right? Big goal, crunch it down into the next immediate steps. Because what happens, what happens to a lot of you, you have this big goal and you think you have to take this huge giant step. That's my next step, I gotta open up my store, right? It's my next step, I gotta take that big order, that's my next step. And then you do nothing because you can't get the capital. And so you stay here at the bottom, having done nothing, and then years and years and years and years go by, and you see other people making tons of cash off of your idea, and you freak out and complain and say, "That was my idea! I should be the one making money off of that!" No! 'Cause you didn't take any action! 'Cause the idea alone is not enough, you gotta do the work! And so stop trying to take that big step and instead doing nothing. Small steps will lead to that big step. There is always a smaller way to get started. Go and find it and stop making excuses. Barter and borrow. Number 4 is presell, and the idea here is use services like Kickstarter or use an email list or use Facebook or whatever it is and start to presell your idea. Whatever product, whatever service, whatever you have in your mind that you think might cost you $10,000 or $50,000 or whatever it is you think it's going to cost you, make a video about it, make a webpage about it, right? You can do it yourself, it doesn't have to cost you money, or partner with people to help make that happen, and pre-sell it. So before you actually go out and write that book, or before you go out and make that t-shirt, or before you go out and launch that service, you can pre-sell it and see if people are willing to buy it and actually put money down and say, listen, if I get 100 people who will want to buy this book, I I am going to write it, and here's the topic. If I get 1,000 people who will pay for this specific ebook, then I'm going to write it, or whatever it is, whatever your product idea is, right? This new baseball hat, right? If I get 25 people to commit to the first order of my baseball hat, or 1,000 people, whatever it is you need to make your numbers work, that's the whole point of Kickstarter, right? It's great because you're not giving up equity. Normally when you're going to an investor, you're giving up equity in your business. Here it's just marketing. If you don't hit the goal, you don't make the product. I mean, it sucks because you didn't make the goal, but it's great because you didn't outlay thousands of dollars on this idea that's not going to take off because you don't have an audience for it. So preselling is a great, great, fantastic, amazing way to launch your business without having to spend any money. Number 5 is use free resources. Just like I like bartering and trading and borrowing, I like free too. I like finding free ways to do stuff. And so I would always look to free, even if it's not ideal. I would look to free before paying for something, right? I want to start it, get anything up, test it. And then as I start making some money, then I invest it back into growing. So as an example, there was this, there There's this great games café that opened up in Toronto where you pay $5 or $10 to get into the location and then you play games and then they sell food and it's a coffee shop and it's a bar and they have multiple locations now. When they started, it's called Snakes and Lattes instead of Snakes and Ladders. Snakes and Lattes. Anyway, when they started, they didn't have a website. Instead of investing into a website, they just did it on Facebook. Right, did everything on Facebook. They had all the— Facebook has all of the social connections all built in already, ready to go. When you're starting, you don't need a website. Does it help you? Does it make you look more credible? Does it, you know, allow you to do more customized things? 100%. But you don't need it. Start on Facebook. Just start, get something up, get some attention, get some traction, get your first dollars in. And then once you start making some money, you can figure out, okay, hmm, where am I going to spend that? I'm going to spend that on improving my product. I'm going to spend that on business cards. I'm going to spend that on an office car. Am I going to spend it on a new website? Where am I going to spend it? When you're meeting people, you don't need an office. Having an office should never be anything you consider until you're making some money. Meet people at their location. Meet people in Starbucks. I still meet people at Starbucks. I like getting out of the office. You don't need to have an office. Stop finding ways to spend money. Anybody can spend money. Anybody can put a budget together and say, hey, I need $1 million to go and do this, and here's how we're going to spend it. Amazing. I'm sure you could find millions of ways to spend $1 million. You'll, you'll figure it out. Anybody can spend money. Not everybody can make it. And so find ways to go free, like using Facebook, like not having a business card, like not buying office equipment, any of that stuff. Go to coffee shops until you're making some money. Number 6 is turn your job into a client. Now, I've always been a big proponent of if you're going to have a job, don't look at it as just having an income source. Yes, you need to make money, that's great. You need to be learning from your job. The point of taking a job is to learn. Right, so whatever business you want to get into, whatever this new company you want to start, the ideal scenario is to find somebody who's already done that and go work for them. Find somebody who has 10 employees, some small company who's, you know, built up, is bigger than you, but not some giant where the job you're going to get is tiny and not helpful, and then go work for them to learn. Yes, get paid, but to learn. And so then how do you transition that job into a business? The two things that come to mind are: one, that company that you're working for could become your first client. It happens a lot where you need to free up some of your time, you don't want to be an employee anymore, and so you become an independent contractor. Where instead of going to work 5 days a week, you work 3 days a week, or 2 days a week, or 1 day a week. And maybe it's not from the office anymore, maybe you work from home, and you're not an employee with the benefits and with all the taxes anymore. You're an independent contractor running your own company. And so it gives you some money, it gives you your own client, and you're in business. The second way to do it is to use some of the opportunities that come through this business that you're working at for your own advantage. So you might be able to take one of the clients that you're working on, or you meet somebody at a networking event because you're going there, you're forming contacts, you're forming partnerships, right? By being in the space, you get to make connections. And you may see an opportunity for— you go to this networking event and there's this person that you meet and there's an opportunity for you to work with them, for them to be your client. And so you bring them on board and that could be your first client as well. And so either from becoming an independent contractor and splitting up your week so you're not spending full time at your job, or, or, and/or using the connections that you build, which is why it's so important to have a job in the industry that you want to build your business in, you're making contacts, and from there one of those become your first client. And the number 7 and final way to build a business without having to spend any cash, and it's an important one, build around a customer. So business is about providing value, and I've talked a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot about this on this channel. If you want to make money, you have to provide provide value to your clients. Having success in business is going to come from combining two things. This is how you're going to provide value, right? In this corner, in this fist, is what you love doing, right? This is your passion. This is what you love doing. And in this corner, in this fist, is what the market wants, what your clients want. Your success will come by bringing these two together, because if you love doing something but it provides no value to anybody else, you're just gonna have a hard time becoming a successful entrepreneur. And if all you're doing is chasing opportunity, but you're not interested in it, you're never gonna really be a success. You may make a few bucks, but you're never gonna really be a successful entrepreneur. So you need to combine what you love doing with what people will pay for, what the market wants, right? There's been a ton of video series that I've put up that I love doing, but you guys didn't resonate with. And that I pulled down. Some I do keep up but recognize that this is really just for me. But if I had to build my whole channel around it, it wouldn't work. There's another ones that I could easily go to, right? If I put 10 stupidest things that Steve Jobs ever said, right? 10 biggest fights with Donald Trump, right? If I started doing those kinds of videos, People would eat that up. They might be the most popular videos on my channel, right? People would love that. But the idea of putting people down and making people look stupid and just causing controversy for the sake of fighting, I don't like it at all. Like, it's not— I would never want to do that stuff. It's not part of who I am. And so I'm not making those videos even though there is a demand, because other people will do a better job at it anyway than me. I don't want to play in that game. Game. And so combining what you love with what the market wants is super important, and that's why you need to get close to potential customers and build a product or service around them. So instead of just saying, here's my idea, go buy or don't buy, be more collaborative. Think about who potential customers would be for your service or for your product and go and talk to them. Ask them what they think. Ask them what their needs are. Ask them what their problems are. Ask them what their pains are and say, "Hey, if I made this for you or if I came and did this for you, would it help? Would that be something that you would pay for? Is that enough value for you?" And if you get a yes and it's work that you would want to do, then you're in business. And if not, then you need to keep talking to people. Keep meeting people. Make a list of all the potential customers. These are the kinds of people who would buy from me and go understand them. So instead of just selling them something, instead of saying, "Here is a solution for you," it's talking to them and building a business around them. This is something I did really well in my very first business. Even, I mean, in this business, look, the top 10s, most of the videos that we make on this channel are your requests. Like, what do you guys want to hear? Who do you guys want us to make a video on? What topic do you want to hear from? We collect it, we think about it, we pick the ones that we like the most too, and then we start running with it. In my first business, the biotech software company, all of the features that we built ended up being around what our customers wanted. You know, you want this thing added to the software? Great, it's going to cost you this amount of money to do it. And then we roll that feature into the software for everybody else. Else as well. So you get some custom development, we're not out money on the development, and then we can roll it out for everybody else as well. You want it translated into Spanish? Perfect, it's going to cost this amount of money to do it, provides enough value to them. Even if that alone is at break-even, even if we're not making a profit off of that, we can roll it out to everybody else and add more value to them. And so building your business around a customer is so, so, so, so important, especially in the early days. So those are my 7 ways on how to start a business without having any cash. I'm curious, what do you guys think? What was your favorite rule? What resonated the most with you? What are you going to take from this and apply to your business immediately? Did I miss something that you want to add? Is there an 8, 9, 10 that you want to add to the list? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm going to join in the discussion. I also want to give a quick shout out to Wilfred Chan, Wilfred, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really, really means a lot to me. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.