By The Rebel School CEO, Simon Paine.
Welcome to 2023!
You used to need business plans and finance to launch a business, but you can start a business in minutes thanks to the Internet. We can build a free website, create a social media account for free and start conversations with potential customers anywhere in the world in minutes! You just need someone to show you how and that’s why our courses are so powerful. But in the meantime, how cool is that? This is the golden time!
How to start your own business without money in 2023?
We have trained 20,000 people in seven countries and the very first day of our course is designed to teach people how to start a business without any money and around one third of our learners achieve this within the first week! The most important thing is that they spend little or no money to get started. So how do we do that? We use a five step bootstrapping tool. The thing that gets people stuck when they’re starting a business as they think that everything needs to be perfect. It doesn’t! It just needs to be done.
So here’s the five step bootstrapping tool that we used to get started
Write a list of everything that you think you need to start (equipment, stock, website, marketing etc), then ask yourself these five questions:
- Can I get it for free?
- If not can I borrow it?
- If not can I barter?
- If not can I sell some things that I’ve got in my home that I don’t need anymore like books, ornaments, random gifts from uncle Colin or whatever? (this helps you create a slush fund of money that is separate from your bills account that you can use to buy things you think you need for your business)
And finally, here is the most important thing of all, can you sell your value before you create it?
What this means is you get paid in part or in full in advance for something you haven’t even made yet which means you can use your customers money to grow your business and not yours. Sounds interesting doesn’t it? Is that even possible? The very first person to make a profit at one of our courses did exactly this and made £88 on his first day.
Top tip to open a business with no money is this:
Remember it isn’t a business yet it’s just a mini-experiment. So go out there start making sales and do it without spending any money and the chances of you staying in business increase dramatically.
Why? Because it’s zero financial risk and that’s the thing that I was lots of people back. All you’re risking is a little bit of time And if it doesn’t work, so what! You have learned loads and you can take your learnings into the next mini experiment.
If you want to know more about starting a business without money or how to finance a business, read the blog.
What’s your next step?
Simon Paine
Simon started the Rebel School (formerly Pop-Up Business School) with Alan in 2011.
As well as helping start-ups realise their business dreams, he has coached, trained and facilitated senior leaders from some of the world’s most famous companies including Microsoft, British Airways, and Thomson Reuters.