Is It Possible To Start A Business With Zero Dollars? 🤔
Can You Start A Business With No Money?
That's one of the old age questions that's asked by most people who want to start their own businesses.
But the honest answer to this question is;
Yes – It's Very Possible To Start A Business With No Money Up-Front – But It Just Depends With The Type Of Business.
Most people still believes that, you need a ton sh*t of money in order to start a business – which is not always true.
What I've realized is that, for most people, it's not necessarily lack of money – but rather, it's lack of ideas.
That's why you see some ‘wannabe entrepreneurs’ who borrows money to start a business – but they blow it all away.
Why?
Because they don't have some clear ideas or game plan in the first place.
The truth is, you can start a business with literally no capital up front – though money might give you a head-start to fuel your business i.e. if you know how to use it.
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In this modern day & age, you can essentially become a middleman i.e. connecting customers to sellers – and you can get paid a commission.
If you're a middlemen, you don't need to have your own products to sell – thus, you don't need any capital to get started.
Instead, your job is just connecting customers who need a specific product/service to a seller who's selling that product/service – and you get paid for your efforts.
Companies like Uber, AirBnB, Expedia, etc. are all billion dollar companies but they don't necessarily own the products/services.
Instead, they’re just middlemen companies which connect customers to sellers of certain products/services i.e.
Uber doesn't necessarily own the cars. Instead, they just provide a platform where drivers & customers can meet – and the company takes a certain % of the payment.
AirBnB doesn't necessarily own the houses. Instead, they just provide a platform where house owners & accommodation seekers can meet – and the company makes money just from that.
Expedia doesn't necessarily own the airlines. Instead, they just provide a platform where customers can find plane schedules – and the company makes money for providing leads to those airline companies.
Obviously, Uber, AirBnB & Expedia are incredibly big companies.
But my point is, being a middleman pays some good money & you don't necessarily have to own the products or services.
And you can become a middleman in any field i.e. as long as you agree with the product owner(s) that you're going to bring customers to him/her for an agreed fee.
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Other than becoming a middleman, you can also provide a service to clients for a certain fee (service based business).
This is also a great business model because, you don't necessarily need money in order to get started.
Instead, you just need a skill which is valuable to the marketplace e.g. graphic designing, social media marketing, plan drawing, mechanical repairs, barbering, web development, etc.
But when it comes to selling a service, it's important to acquire a valuable skill-set first – so that you can become competitive on the marketplace.
The reason being that, if your service is trash, people aren't going to pay you their hard earned monies – but rather, they'll seek the service elsewhere.
Thus, acquire a skill-set first, become competitive on the marketplace – then you'll find clients for your business.
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You can also leverage print on demand i.e. if you want to start a clothing based business with little to no capital.
In this business model, you don't necessarily need crazy inventory – because the print on demand manufacturer takes care of all that staff i.e.
The P.O.D manufacturer provides plain t-shirts/mugs/hoodies/bags/hats to you at zero up front cost.
The P.O.D manufacturer also provides printing equipment for your products i.e. ink, printing machinery, etc.
Not only that, but the manufacturer also provides after sales services to your customers i.e. shipping & customer support.
Your only job is to come up with the designs – and you can easily create these using Canva – then you upload them to your P.O.D manufacturer.
Once your designs are ready, you need to drive traffic to those designs – and when someone places an order, the P.O.D company takes care of everything.
The beauty part is that, you can charge any money for your products i.e. as long as it's reasonable.
And when you get some sales, the P.O.D manufacturer will take his/her part i.e. to compensate for cost of production & you keep the rest.
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You can also leverage the internet – with specific emphasis on content based businesses e.g. Blogging, YouTube – or even becoming a social media influencer.
The beauty part about the internet is that, you can start a business for little to no capital upfront – but the returns are just tremendous.
Internet based businesses are also easier to scale than traditional brick & mortar businesses – because the internet eliminates geographical barriers.
Starting a YouTube channel or a social media account doesn't cost any money – but what you can do with these free tools is just unbelievable.
The same goes with blogging.
You can start a free blog using some free platforms like Google Sites, Blogger, Medium, etc. – but you can monetize your content through various means like Ads, sponsorships, or even selling your own products/services.
Still on the internet issue, you can also get into the eBook publishing businesses i.e. writing eBooks for sell.
You don't necessarily need money to get started with eBooks.
Rather, all you need is your laptop & Word app – that’s it!
And you can easily sell those eBooks on platforms like Amazon & eBay – thus, allowing you to reach more people ASAP.
And more importantly, eBooks are also passive in nature i.e. you just create a single copy of the book once – and that same copy can keep selling over and over again through automated systems.
In other words, there's no marginal cost of replication i.e. compared to selling physical books.
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Wrapping Up
I hope that this has opened your mind on what's possible even without any money.
The common talk of ‘I don't have enough money to start a business' is just a limiting belief that’s holding most people back.
But if your favourite business model genuinely requires some capital (e.g. a restaurant), then you might need to do either:
(i) Start with a hustle which doesn't require a lot of capital e.g. the business models which l discussed earlier in this post. Once you get some money, you can then start investing in your ideal business which needs start-up capital.
(ii) Start small – then you grow with time.
When people see big companies like Apple, they just think that those companies just started like that from day 1.
But the truth is, Steve Jobs started hustling in a garage whilst developing his first few computers – then when he started getting some customers, he then used the money to reinvest back into the business – and now, look at how big the company is.
My point is, don't wait till you have a lot of money to get started – because you might wait your whole life without getting that amount of money.
But instead, start small – then you grow through reinvesting some of the profits back into the business.
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