Startup Capital - How to Get Started Without a Lot of Money

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and in today's video I want to answer a question from one of my readers, Ishak, who asks, "How can I start a business without a lot of capital?" It's a great question, and what I want to remind you of is it's not so much about how many resources you have when you're starting up. It's more about how resourceful you are that will determine how successful your company will be as you grow. So if you don't have a lot of money to start up a business, that's okay. What I advise entrepreneurs to do is try to start a service-based business instead of a product-based business. So that's number one. Product-based businesses are more expensive. You have inventory, there might be a manufacturing process, you have to store your product somewhere. There's a lot more cost, and if you don't sell your product, you're stuck with all this extra inventory that you can't get rid of. Where a service-based business, the only cost really is your time. You may need some business cards, you may need a website to help you get started, but there's not a lot of other costs that are associated with it. It also allows you to get really close to your customers, learn more about the problems that they're facing, and if you then decide to launch a new product afterwards, you know the types of things that they're really going to need. So think about a service-based business instead of a product-based business to help you get started. The second thing I want you to think about is you don't necessarily have to start full-time. Can you do your business part-time to get you started so you have some momentum going and you ensure that you have some money coming in from another job that may be on a part-time basis. So it's great if you can launch full out into your business, but if you can't afford that, you can always start on a part-time basis. It's more important that you make steps every day to build your business, even if it's on a part-time basis, than to invest tons of energy for 3 months and it doesn't take off and then you shut down the business. So if you have to start part-time, that's okay. One thing I want to remind you of and what I want you to think about is, can you build your business around the customer, around the paying customer? So a lot of entrepreneurs will start a business, they think they have the greatest idea in the world and everybody's going to buy their product, and then they get out into the market and nobody wants what they're selling. The best way to build a business is to find a customer who has a problem and offer to solve it. If you can build your business around paying customers, you're much more likely to become successful. The last thing I want to talk about is I would strongly encourage you to follow your passion. A lot of entrepreneurs start a business because they think they're going to make a lot of money, but they're not really interested in whatever field they're getting into. It's almost always a recipe for failure. The most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who follow what they're really, really excited about and passionate about and can pour their heart into, and people see their enthusiasm and they want to jump on board and they want to hire them. To hire you or they want to buy your products or service. So really try to tap into what really makes you tick, what you're super excited about, and try to launch a business around that passion. So I hope that helped. If you enjoyed the video, please leave a comment below. If you have any other questions, I'm also going to check out the comments below. And also give the video a thumbs up, and we'll see you on the next episode.