How Do I Get Funding to Start my Business?

Note: This transcription has been generated with AI and there may be errors present. 

This is day one of our requirements. We’ve hired Jack, who’s behind the camera, say hello, Jack. And we are starting an experiment to create the YouTube channel. We’ve spoken about YouTube for years, we’ve helped other people build up channels with 10s of 1000s of subscribers, and hundreds of 1000s of views a month. But we’ve never really grasped it ourselves. We’ve never really got into internet.

Yeah, I think it’s always been something that’s been in the back of our minds, but we’ve never, we’ve never put in the time to get it over the line properly. We’ve done lots of videos, but it’s always been that kind of one, we know we should be doing it. So let’s make a video and it’ll be good to catch some stuff. That’s exactly you know, to put ourselves out there as our we’re gonna do this, and we’re gonna nail it is actually really exciting.

So the whole plan is to create a YouTube channel and give valuable content to you about starting up a business, entrepreneurship, making money doing what you love. That’s the plan. So what are we actually going to do with this experiment? Well, we’re looking at, can we build subscribers? Can we build views. So we’re going to update you each week on what we’re doing? We’re going to create a daily vlog, we’re going to create some inspirational videos for Facebook, we’re going to do a daily Instagram video, we’re going to start really create great value content for you. And putting it out there an experiment is what’s going to happen next.

Everyone’s got business ideas, but what makes the difference between someone who’s got business ideas that actually when they get on the show, they don’t do something about those ideas to get them over the line. They’ve got all that stuff. And I think the bit I’m most excited about is hashtag ask Papa. Because one of the reasons we started the bot business is because we’ve made mistakes in business, a whole bunch of mistakes, years and years between us a lot of mistakes, some of us more than others. But you don’t need to make the same mistakes that we made, you can make new mistakes, and we can learn together but through the Ask pop up, you get the benefit of our knowledge, you get the benefit of our experiences, but also leveraging the experiences of all the people that we’ve met over the last few years that we’ve helped with their businesses. By the way we work with corporate organisations, they employ 1000s of people all the way through to the the one person bang grassroots startup, right in the middle of a community somewhere. Okay, and everyone else in between a lot of experience. So with hashtag ask Papa, he can just pose a question and make a video we’re gonna answer your questions.

So the question we always get asked every pop up business school is, how do I get funding to start my business? And actually, I think that’s the wrong question you should be asking. It presupposes you need money to start a business. And most of the time we found you don’t need money to start a business. You don’t need cash. You don’t need anything to get going.

You know his thing. Maybe you’ll make a profit in year two. If you heard that expression, maybe you’ll make a profit in year two. I can’t wait two years to make a profit. I need to make a profit straightaway. So when people say how do I get funding for business? What we say to them is find other ways of starting there are ways of starting your business without spending any money.

So you can build a free website. You could use Weebly, you could use Wix, there’s many of them out there. You don’t need any money for a website. You don’t need any money for a shop. And nearly all businesses can be started for free.

Sell your value before you create. Go to a customer. Get them to pay you up front that you don’t need to borrow any money to get started. You can start your business with cash in your hand.

So I think instead of asking the question, Where can I get funding for my business? What you really need to ask is How can I get going without spending money and make cash as quickly as possible? So we’re here outside Ben’s cookies in Oxford’s covered market? And I think it’s really interesting when you look at business startups and their stories. Ben’s cookies started in 1984. Here in the market, making their own cookies, that’s slightly different to other cookies out there. And well, I couldn’t resist talking about food. I love the cookies. And now they’re all over the place. They have operations in London. I even sold them in Dubai airport when I was there working for air Arabia recently. But Ben’s cookies expanded from one small store and grew up business based On a fantastic product. And all businesses start small. They’re selling something people want, and they grow from there. What entrepreneurs the mistake entrepreneurs make is they try and jump to the big franchise model too quickly, without starting where they are.

Thanks for watching. Today has been about the first day of our experiment with YouTube. And over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be posting a whole bunch of content. And it’s not stuff that we’ve just made up in the last couple of weeks, the pop up Business School has been running for over five years, and you’ve got a whole bunch of knowledge, inspiration, and experience to share with you. You’ll get a bit of a taster of that over the next few weeks. So we’ve been hanging out for the day in Oxford. And the theme for today has been all about how do I get funding for my business?

Which I still think is the wrong question to be asking. The question is how can I start my business for free from profit rather than death? So that’s the end of day one in Oxford. We’ve got loads more coming on Monday. And yeah, let us know what you think we’ll update you with how the experiment is going.