MBA2191 Can You Start a Business With Zero Capital?

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You'D like to start a business but have $0, it's possible, and I'm going to show you how in today's lesson. Now, obviously this is a really strange situation. You know, most people have the ability to make or have some money, like a hundred dollars, five hundred dollars. And believe it or not, in today's online digital world, that's a lot of money to start a business. You can actually with $500. But today I'm taking up the challenge and showing you how you can start a business with $0. And before we get into the strategies and the tips, let me just share with you an example of me actually doing this. I wanted to challenge myself and see if I can start a business with absolutely no money. And I did it back in 2012. The first thing you have to decide is what are you going to offer? What's going to be your product service to your customers? If you're going to sell a product, like a physical product or a software, you often have to put up upfront cash to create this product first so that you can sell it or to buy other products. Like if you're reselling T shirts or sneakers, it's going to cost you money to get started. So that's not going to work. We're not going to sell products. We're going to sell services instead. And that's what I did. I sold business consulting and growth services. I helped people grow their business. I helped build their websites. I created their logos and their branding. That was my product. That's what I offered people. I didn't need to put up any money to create this product because I was just exchanging my time for money. So I had no overhead. But I needed a website so that I can offer these services and allow people to contact me so I can get paid. I was living in New York City at the Time. And in New York, there was a coworking space that was sponsored by wix. So I had a free office where I can go to every day with free WI fi with hot desks. And Wix offers free websites now. Ever since 2012, there's been a lot of great options when it comes to website builders, even free website builders like wix. One that I really like too is Weebly. HubSpot also has a drag and drop website builder for free. So you got plenty of options if you just Google it. But at the time, WIX was my option. I would go to work in that office for free. I would create my website for free and then offer my services on this website. I didn't have any money for marketing, so I went to free meetups all around New York, had other entrepreneurs where I would get to meet people, network and offer my services to other business owners that need new websites, that need new logos. But one day when I went to a local meetup, I actually hit the jackpot, so to speak. I found a friend of mine named Justin Beaumont that runs a company called ProseMedia where he writes articles and blog posts for his clients. And a lot of times their clients don't even have a website or blog. He doesn't do that, but I do. So I asked him, hey, can you refer me those customers? And he sure did. All without a cent out of my pocket. You might be asking, well, Omar, how did you actually charge these customers and make money? I did it the old fashioned way. I got them to find me on my website. I had a contact form that was linked to my email. We'd have a conversation over email or even a phone call. Remember phone calls? And once we've agreed to work together, I would just email them a PayPal link where they pay me for the service. Because PayPal makes it easy. You know, they can pay by credit card or just with their PayPal account. And yes, PayPal takes a huge fee. And it's not that most efficient or ideal way to do this, but hey, it's free. And the experiment was to build a business without any money upfront. So I wanted to share this story to illustrate that this is totally possible. And being a freelancer, being a consultant, having some sort of service that you can offer your customers is totally doable. Even if you are a coach, you can do calls over Google Meet for free. These are great options for you to get started with no money up front. Even if you have the money, it's a good way for you to just test the Waters and see if your product or business is what you want to actually do. If it has legs, that people actually want it, that there's potential here. So there's huge upside by offering a product or being a freelancer and offering a service. Because again, you don't need to spend money to create the product. You're just exchanging time for money. That's also the downside. It's very hard to scale this because you only have a certain amount of hours in the day and you only earn money when you do the work. Now, of course, as you start to grow and you start making money, you can reinvest. And this is where I say, when you make money, your next step should be how can you remove yourself from the equation? So let's say, for example, you were like me, you created websites and logos for companies. What I did is as soon as I started to get some clients and I had some revenue, as soon as I had enough money to hire somebody to do what I do, I did that because I wanted, as soon as possible, remove myself from the equation. Because if I am the bottleneck, if I have to work and put in the hours to get revenue and grow the business, I don't really have a business. I just created a job for myself. So basically, I would hire other freelancers to fulfill the projects I was looking for. I took a more administrative role and dealt with the clients. Obviously, I would make the difference of how much it costs for me to hire this freelancer and what I was charging my customers. So that's step one. I replace myself from the machine. Now I'm not totally out because I'm still doing admin. I'm still dealing with customers. I need to find somebody to handle that as well. And I can totally get out of this business, meaning I don't need to work to earn money. And this is when I got an admin assistant who took care of all my clients. My job was to network, meet people, close the deal, and then hand them over to my assistant, who would then coordinate the whole project to make sure that they're happy and work with all the freelancers that we work with to fulfill the service. So it's easy to get caught up in the beginning when you're making money, you got clients, you're like, wow, I have a business out my hands. I feel powerful, I feel autonomous to just keep on doing that and keep on bringing in clients and then filling up your calendar. But as soon as you can replace yourself, as soon as you're making enough money, which is not that long, right? It could be just a month or two. You got to start thinking about replacing yourself. Here's the key. You're not going to find somebody who's exactly like you or as good as you as you think. Be okay with hiring somebody that's 80 to 90% as good as you and live with that slack of 20 to 10% where it's not up to your standard. Because in order for you to scale, you gotta sacrifice at some level. You can, of course, train them and improve them over the years, but you gotta start somewhere. So you gotta sacrifice that now. I highly recommend if you're going to offer a service, be a freelancer. Build your own online presence with your website, with your social media handles and build a network that can support your business. A network of your ideal clients, creators, entrepreneurs, whoever you serve. Why? Because you don't want to go to fiverr and upwork and freelancer. It's a really busy place there. It's very easy to get lost in the crowd and not be noticed and find it hard to get work. Yeah, you'll get some work. But I highly recommend you build your own brand, your own business and start small. You don't have to be this huge agency. You could just be just you and just be a professional that knows how to write to people and communicate and deliver value. All you need in a business really is a product to sell and a way to sell it. That's it. And what I had with my $0 upfront business was a product which was a service, a skill set and a way to sell, which was my website and my email which is free, and then offering them a paypal link where they can pay, also free. This got the ball rolling and of course I refined my process and got a better website and improved my business systems and my payment gateway and all that kind of stuff. I'm really glad that I started with no money because it allowed me to test the idea out, tweak things, change things, approve things before I start scaling and start really dumping money into the company and make sure that I'm putting money where it rightfully should be and made sure I'm actually spending money on the right things.

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To wrap up today's lesson, it's totally doable to start a business with zero Capital. But at the start, you're gonna have to exchange something more valuable than money, your time. You're gonna have to put in your nights and your weekends if you have a job and sacrifice some of your downtime to get this business going. And once you start getting your first few clients and you can reinvest and outsource yourself, then it just becomes a game. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs, most successful businesses are service based businesses are agencies. One of the most popular voices in entrepreneurship online is Gary Vaynerchuk. And what does he do? He has an agency, it's called VaynerMedia. He offers services to companies on how to market on social media. Providing a service, providing some sort of expertise is nothing new. And it's been here forever. And it will continue to be here because people need to get things done. And if you could do it at a high level, people will pay you and will continue to pay you. But my advice is be patient when you build this out. Get some clients under your belt, build your reputation, get some testimonials, get some referrals. In my experience, if you run a service based business or any kind of consultancy, or any kind of coaching or advice, you got to work on your network, you got to build your network, you got to make sure that you build relationships. This has got to be a priority. You got to spend time and energy and money in building that network so that you can lean on it to grow your business. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. This podcast is free, but you can show us some love and pay us back by subscribing and following to the podcast on whatever podcast app you use. Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Radio, Spotify. By hitting follow, you tell that platform that, hey, this podcast is great and if you have a minute, leave us a rating and review. Thanks so much in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. In my experience, running any kind of service based business is hard work. It is super hard because you're working hard to get some tract. But it's so worth it to be able to help people, to be able to make an impact. And it's like instant gratification. You do something for people, they're happy, you make money. Very little upfront investment from you in terms of time or effort or money. This is like the opposite of, you know, companies that spend three years building a product and then they release it in beta. And it takes forever to even get to the marketplace. You as a service based business, as a business that starts with $0 can make money and have customers very quickly. And for most of us who are getting started, you need to get that traction. You need to get those reps in. And that's why I recommend a service based business for any new entrepreneur as their first business. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode of Free Ride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of. We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's Expired. Expired in 2012. Dang it. Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about 900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon. It feels good to save big. It feels good to geico.