How To Start Your Business with NO Funding | 3 MINUTES

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Anali, who is starting a business that sells supplies to schools. So photocopiers, toner, printers, that kind of stuff, and is worried about the financing and the resources to get the business going. And wanted my advice on what to do. So Anali, what I would suggest here is, again, this is a tough business to be able to go and raise capital for. Banks will probably not support you unless you have really good credit history, and for investors, it could be a tough slog to get that investment money coming in. I think your best option here, again, is to go after your customers and get financing through them. So it's not really a lack of resources that'll hold you back, it's lack of resourcefulness. So you don't need a lot of resources to get started, but you need a lot of resourcefulness. So what I I encourage you to do is try to get to your customers, ask them what they need, and see if you can A) get them to buy in advance. So whatever purchases they need, can they pay for it now and you deliver in 15 days or 30 days or 60 days or whatever it is. I'd also look at ways to be able to sell them on a subscription package. So if they're buying a photocopier from you or printers from you, they're going to need all the toner that goes with it. So can you sell them you know, a package where they get toner every month or every 2 weeks or whatever it is, and they pay for that in advance. So they get a slightly discounted rate, but they're paying for it in advance, and they know that they're gonna have it for the year. For a lot of businesses, it's great because they have some cost certainty, so they know how much they're gonna be spending on toner for the year. So you're giving them that cost certainty, you get money in advance where then you can use that to buy other inventory and grow your business. And it's also great for them because they get a slight discount on the price of the products that you're selling. So from your email, it sounds like you have some margins to play with, so I'd definitely explore that option to get the money you need to kind of launch your business that way. If you're really tight, I'd also look at selling the products or services that are really easy to get access to, that don't require a lot of capital injection on your behalf, so you can get access to it faster, get it into your customers' hands faster. Cheaper to kind of get set up, and then as you grow your business, you can expand into other product lines. So Nelly, I hope that helps. I know it's tough to get these types of businesses started, but sounds like there's a lot of opportunity from the email you sent me. So good luck, start implementing those ideas and let us know how it goes. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up or leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you. I make decisions on what new videos to create based on those feedback and the likes and the comments. I really appreciate it. And makes me motivated to keep making these videos for you guys. So please, please leave one of those below, and we'll see you in the next episode.