Why I know you can start a business with $40 and succeed
Chances are you may have read an online article or watched a Facebook video on your newsfeed that suggests you can start a business with little or no money. Perhaps you have seen a few of them and now Facebook keeps feeding you more of the same sort of content (like this blog post as well). Perhaps you already have your business idea but you’ve been told by family and friends to ‘go and do the research’. This article is the research.
Julia Trask Coaching was initially started with $0. I began without a product, just a simple clear understanding that I knew I had to bridge a gap between what I knew and what I needed to provide.
What was my gap?
I had no idea about being a business owner and very little idea about running a website let alone anything else. In fact, my experience boiled down to 3 years of sporadic blog writing online through a free hosted blog platform, Blogger. My first blog, A Written Revolution, was encouraged by my friend Bettina Rae (a fertility yogini) and had very basic design elements, some of the slightly more tricky parts of which Bettina herself so kindly put together for me for ‘aesthetic appeal’. I had learned that writing online results in some seriously interesting responses.
1. Some people will LOVE the blog posts you thought were rubbish writing but still posted in a bid to be consistent instead of constantly perfect.
2. Some people HATED with the fire of a thousand suns the blog posts you thought were written incredibly well
3. Sometimes you got everything completely perfectly correctly and people read, engaged, shared, sent you awesome letters about how you inspired them and want you to write for one of their magazines
4. Sometimes you went viral and you definitely didn’t see that coming
5. Sometimes you didn’t want to blog at all but you knew you should
All in all my blogging experience did help me but it was not education about running a business, especially since my blog created ZERO DOLLARS.
When I decided to start a business I actually started with freelance writing. I was still on the journey of learning about myself and I knew that I could write so it was simple and quite easy to get work considering I was a total newbie to the business world.
My very first website was hosted by Squarespace and it cost me $18USD. I paid this membership twice (for 2 months) before I earnt enough money for a year-long subscription.
It wasn’t too long after that, that I decided to leave freelance writing and turn to a coach. At that time I kept the website going, I kept working for a Director in London and did some ad-hoc jobs on the side and things were good but (and I stress a but) I didn’t earn enough to make it a full-time gig.
So does it really count then?
In my opinion, I think saying that you can start a business with $36USD is definitely still valid. What took me longer to succeed at was finding the right fit. At the time I was working as a teacher and doing at least 15 hour days. I worked on weekends for the business, kept the fitness up, still somehow managed a social life but I didn’t really have enough time nor a budget to get the business going.
So how could you make a $36USD investment work in 2 months?
The key to spending $18USD on a website (and paying out for it for 2 months) is that you need to:
Create a list of where your clients are
You need to offer something for free but NOT 70% of your service or product for free (would you believe a millionaire gave me that advice…hrmm),
You need to network with as many people as possible in the right places (so with people who can invest in what you are offering)
Dedicate some proper time to what you are going to do
Decide if what you are doing is a hobby or the real deal
When I first started my freelance writing business I did it because I LOVED writing but then I found myself writing technical things for people and I didn’t like it much at all. What I did love about the work though was interacting with different business owners. I loved what they shared with me and consequently, they told me what they wanted from me: A CONFIDENCE COACH THAT COULD HELP THEM IN BUSINESS.
So instead of flying blind and wondering what would work and whether I could really replace my salary or not I started listening to those that I worked with & I knew I had something that could help others. The funny thing was it turned out to be something I had voluntarily done for a decade already outside of teaching and I already had repeat customers…my Facebook was full of ‘Jules can I please have some advice, Jules can you please help me get some balance, Jules can you help me think through this thing’ and I had frequently been told that I was good at helping people but my profitable $18 business model was so damn obvious and simple I didn’t see it until the right time came.
Now, if you are thinking about starting a business, begin. Start by floating one of your ideas (not all of them), see what people think, ask some honest, confident people (or even email me) for advice. Then pay the few pennies and get started, you’ll know what to do once you start getting paying feedback! Most of all, don’t let anyone tell you that you cannot start a business without thousands of dollars, it is totally bogus. Check their qualifications (whether they’ve done it before/have a business themselves) before you listen to that advice, then go and get that business done!