Start A Business When You’re Broke

I’m going to prove to you that you can start a business even if you’re broke.

You’ve likely come here because you need to start a business on a budget and you have no idea how. I’m here to snap you out of the Matrix.

The Mindset Shift

At one point in our lives, we’ve all looked at wealthy people through our TV and iPhone screens and thought to ourselves, “That could never be me. I don’t have the talent, resources, or network to make that happen.” Well, by the end of this blog, you will have the plan that you need to get out of the rut and not only start the business of your dreams with little to no money but know how to market it, scale it, and most of all, make some money to put in your bank account.

Bootstrapping Your Business

There is a common term in the business world called bootstrapping. It literally means getting oneself into or out of a situation using existing resources. That is what I’m going to teach you today—how to get into business with what you already have.

Expanding Your Mindset

Your mind may come up with a bunch of excuses as we go through this blog, but keep in mind that in order to start a business, you will need to be willing to expand your mindset and learn something new. This is all you need to get started. Now here are a few methods to start your business with little to no cash.

Methods to Start A Business

• Trade What You Have
• Collaborations
• Build an Audience
• Grants
• Crowdfunding

Example of Trading

I have a family friend who literally traded a red paper clip all the way up to a house. Don’t believe me? His name is Kyle McDonald and his story is all over Google.

Collaborations

Partner with people who have resources and offer your time and work in exchange for their capital or skills, and then you can split the equity or revenue of your business with them.

Build an Audience

You can use social media and build an audience for free in your extra time. Once you have an audience built, you can first do brand deals to make some money and then use that money to fund your business and market it to the audience that you have already built. Building an audience or customer base is half of the business journey.

Grants

Apply for government business grants. There are always really good grants out there. All you have to do is Google grants in your city, state, or country.

Crowdfunding

Why use your own money to fund your business when you can use someone else’s? You can post your product or idea on platforms like Indiegogo or Kickstarter, and people who want to see it happen can financially support it. You can incentivize investors with a future product, tokens, or other cool rewards. Oculus VR, Popsocket, and Peloton all funded their businesses this way. Sometimes it’s easier to get a bunch of people to give you a little money rather than one person to give you a lot of money.

Start A Business with Tiny Budget

Method	Description
Freelance Your Services	Offer services based on your skills; start with something that doesn’t require expensive tools.
Saving Money	Save $3 to $10 a day to accumulate funds for your business.

Freelance Your Services

Think of any skill that you’re good at. It could literally be writing or watching people’s pets. Start offering your services to anyone who may need them. After a while, word of mouth will do the marketing for you. Try to start with something that you don’t need expensive tools or equipment for. Most service-based businesses are technically free to start, but you may need to buy a few supplies.

Saving Money

Start saving $3 to $10 a day. That’s actually how I paid for my first clothing sample. At the end of the year, I had $1,200 to start my development process. Most of us have some areas where we can save a little bit of cash.

Start A Business with Small Budget

Dropshipping

You can actually start a dropshipping company for $50 to $250. Dropshipping is where you sell pre-made products and you don’t have to handle design, shipping, or fulfillment. You will need to market it and handle customer service, though.

Teaching

Create a course and sell your knowledge. You can either do one-on-one coaching with people on Google Meet or use Google Classroom for courses, and what’s really nice is that a lot of Google products are free. There are a lot of low-price programs that can help you with this, which is why I did put it under a small budget.

Validating Your Business Idea

Market Research

• Current Demand
• Competitors in Your Field

Current Demand

Are people spending money on this already? How much money are they spending, and is it a growing market? It should definitely be growing and not declining.

Competitors in Your Field

Find out who your biggest competitors are and what are they doing well. Are there any gaps they’re missing out on that you can fill in?

Validate Your Idea

Start a waitlist using Google Forms and see how many people are willing to sign up. Then share it with anyone you can think of in person and online. And if none of this is looking good, I would recommend a new idea. And if the data is looking good, then you can move to the next step.

Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Before wasting money on building the complex version of your product, create a basic version to test the market. It could be a website, a prototype, or even a free trial. And if you’re looking for a low-cost way to make your website.

Marketing Tactics on a Shoestring Budget

• Social Media Marketing
• Creative Marketing Ideas
  • Wholesale
  • Word of Mouth
  • Create Buzz

Social Media Marketing

You can create your own content or email marketing. You can write your own copy. A little tip: You can actually use Shopify Inbox for email marketing, and it’s free with your Shopify subscription.

Creative Marketing Ideas

Wholesale

Go to local businesses and offer to sell them your product or service at a discounted price if they buy in bulk. This is called wholesale. Don’t do the work or start creating until they give you a deposit. Then use the deposit to fund the creation and get them to pay you the rest on delivery.

Word of Mouth

Rely on word of mouth and give anyone who refers a customer a percent of the sales. I actually know a lot of business owners who run off word of mouth alone.

Create Buzz

Create buzz through stunts like Richard Branson did for Virgin Airlines. You don’t have to be as extravagant as him, but you can create something memorable to promote your brand. A stunt can be as simple as this.

Leverage Sales and Customer Acquisition Skills

• Build quality relationships with customers
• Provide great customer service
• Think of the LTV (lifetime value) of a customer
• Sales strategies:
  • Upselling current customers
  • Bundling products or services
  • Selling at a discount
• Utilize customer testimonials

Scaling and Growth

The first 500 times the best tactic to generate wealth is to reinvest your money back into your business. Now think of your business like a child. It needs to be fed, taken care of until it’s mature enough to handle life on its own. You want to reinvest at least 20%, but if you can invest more, do it. This is how you scale.

Creating Systems

Scaling is mostly about creating systems and finding the right team or technology to execute your services, and there are plenty of AI tools right now that will help you automate and run your business smoothly. I have a blog on how to start a business using only AI, and I have it linked down here.

Reinvesting Resources

Reinvest it into the things that are generating you the most money or the things that will save you the most time, such as sending emails, for example. You want to pay close attention to what is working in your business and what isn’t and then dial in on the things that are working and cut the things that are wasting your time.

There you go. You now know how you can start a business even if you are broke. Remember, the biggest barrier likely stopping you isn’t even money. It’s your mindset, and one of my favorite quotes is, “Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, either way, you’re right,” because we will take actions based on our beliefs. So if you doubt that you can do it, go ahead and prove yourself wrong.