Episode #3: Tips To Start A Business With No Money
I started my second business straight out of university. A wedding photography business. I had almost no money to put into it, and no business training. I had a bachelors degree in marine biology, a decent camera, and a lot of motivation to not have to go and get a ‘real’ job. From starting with one camera and a shoddy free website, over 4 years I managed to grow that business to a point where I could live very comfortably, hire people to help me with the parts I didn’t like so much, buy a home, travel, and live in such a way that I never regretted not having gone the traditional job route. So, in today’s episode of the How To Adult Show, I thought I’d walk you through my tops tips to starting your own business when, like me, you don’t have the extra cash to put into it to start with.
While starting a business may seem daunting, expensive, and out of reach, entrepreneurship can be a very viable career choice that’s rarely discussed as an option when we’re young. So, if you’re thinking you might want to start your own business, or a side hustle to supplement your work income, then this episode is for you. We’re going to talk about how it IS possible to start a business without having to make a huge capital commitment to get it started. Speaking from experience, I bootstrapped my business almost entirely, did everything myself to start with, and grew it to a very sustainable level before starting to re-invest back into the business, and today I want to walk you through how you can do this yourself.
So, coming atcha right now are 5 ways you can start your business or side hustle without having to invest a cent.
TIP #1: Choose a business model that needs almost no money to start
I know this sounds obvious, but it’s so important to get started in the right kind of business that won’t require a huge capital investment. Service based businesses are a great option that will allow you to be much more frugal than a product based business. For example, when I started my wedding photography business, my dream was to run a sea kayak touring company, BUT when I started looking at the costs of this I realized that it just wasn’t realistic at that point in my life without a lot of risk. I needed a lot of money for things like a home base, equipment and gear, insurance, and when I started looking at the numbers it just wasn’t going to happen. So, I re-asassed, put that idea on the back burner for later, and decided to launch a wedding photography business. I already had a semi decent camera, a car to get around, I could work from home, and was able to launch it with basically what I already had.
All this to say, be flexible with your business ideas, and if money is the speed bump, consider pivoting your plans and creating something that is lower cost to start with, you can always turn back to the big idea later. Like I said before, service based business are often low cost to start up. You’re trading your time, knowledge and expertise for money, all of which are almost free for you to start with. Digital product business are also very low cost to start if you know your stuff, while product based businesses on the other hand can be more expensive as you may have to front a large amount of money to develop, test, and create a product in the first place. So, consider your business options and ideas, and strategically choose something that is lower cost to get started. This doesn’t mean you can’t do other things later when you have more money to invest!
TIP #2: Look for free versions of software you need, or manual work-arounds
Look for free versions of the software or programs you need to run your business, or to do things manually wherever possible. This is likely a time when you’ll fall under the category of having more time than money, so it’s okay to use your time. Loads of ‘how to start a business’ businesses will be trying to sell you digital products that you ‘need’ to get started like accounting software, or client management software, and there are actually very few of these programs that you ‘need’ right away.
For example, if you need to create marketing materials, instead of paying $30.00 a month for an Indesign subscription, Canva is a great design software with free options where you can create all of the marketing materials you could possibly need.
To keep track of your finances you don’t need accounting software like Quickbooks. While it may be worth investing in something like this further down the road, there is nothing wrong with keeping track of your finances manually in a spreadsheet, and invoicing clients manually with a pdf that you design as a word document. Even 5 years into my photography business I still do this manually, because I like to be hands on on the accounting side of things. It was free to start with, and it ended up working better for me than anything else.
Client management software looks so appealing to start with, and make you feel so professional, but chances are you do not need them. You need to put a lot of thought into your client experience, and the back end organization of your business, but then get yourself organized and do it all manually to start with. You can create a system to remember to schedule a follow up email to a client, and you don’t need to pay hundreds of dollars a year for a software that will do it for you.
If you’re having trouble finding free programs or manual work-arounds, join some Facebook groups or industry groups related to your field or entrepreneurship in general, and ask for advice and resources there. You’ll be amazed how many solutions you can learn if you start asking people who have already done it.
TIP #3: Arrange trades with other beginner service professionals
You will likely have to incur some professional costs in your first year of business, but you can often arrange a trade so that you don’t actually have to shell out for all these services. For example, having great photographs is often important for many businesses to have these days, but professional photography can be really expensive. While it’s well worth hiring a pro in the long run, to start with you can likely find someone else who is starting out, and who is willing to trade their service for yours to get things done. I do not recommend contacting established business to ask for a ‘trade’ to get their services for free, instead look for people who are in a similar start up phase to you, and who will also benefit from what you have to offer. You scratch their back, and they’ll scratch yours. I traded a lot of free photo sessions when I first launched my business, AND it was a great way to practice and fine tune my own service.
Now I just have to say there IS a limit to what you should trade for, so think hard about what is important to you. While you’ll likely be able to find a good trade arrangement for things like copy writing, photography, or a lesson in beginner SEO, I wouldn’t recommend trading with another newbie for something as important as managing your books, taxes, or insurance.
TIP #4: Learn about how to run your business for free online
Learn anything and everything you can about running your business for free! Eventually you may need to dive deeper into a topic and hire a professional to help you or buy a course to teach you more detail, but when you have the time and the energy when you’re getting started use the internet and learn for free.
There are so many things you need to learn when you’re starting a business, from how to build your website, to up to date marketing techniques, to running social media pages, to managing e-commerce, you should be constantly working on learning when you run a business, but especially when you first start. The good news? It is very possible in this day and age to learn for free.
Find industry groups, networking events, online educators, Youtube channels, free download guides, and just consume information. Lots of it will be total garbage and not apply to you at all, but you can gain so many valuable ideas and tips through free resources online.
While I definitely advise re-investing back into yourself and your own learning eventually, when you’re first getting started you don’t need a fancy business coach, or MBA, or even a $300 course about podcasting, because you can take the time to find free resources and piece the information together yourself.
Eventually you will reach a point where it’s better to just invest, learn from the expert, and save yourself time, but if you’re starting with more time than money and trying to bootstrap your business or side hustle, just use free resources.
TIP #5: Apply for business grants (aka, free money to start your business!)
The best way to start your business when you have almost no money is to find free money. I’m completely serious, this is not a life hack or trick, this is what I did when I started two of my business, and it’s for real. There are SO many business grants available out there, and almost nobody uses them! To break it down into a quick mini lesson: grants are not loans. You don’t have to pay them back, and you don’t have to pay interest on them. It costs you nothing but time and work to apply for them, and it’s honest to goodness free money, that will allow you to invest in areas of your business. Usually grants do count as taxable income, but that’s all it will cost you.
I’ve received four small business specific grants from the Ontario government, and all I had to do was write a compelling business plan and proposal for how I wanted to use the money. The first grant let me start a farm while I was still a student, the second grant helped my start my photography business when I graduated, and the third and fourth grants helped me expand my photography business. All of it was free, and it didn’t take too much work to apply, although again, I had more time than money.
Start by googling grants for your area, wherever you live, or look for something like a small business and enterprise center and ask them what type of grants or funding might be available to you. One word of advice when you’re looking online. You will find legitimate grants, and also some more shady programs. If you’re looking at a grant program that encourages you to ‘hire one of their grant writers’ for a more professional proposal that is more likely to win their funding, then it might not be legitimate. You can always still go ahead, write your own proposal, and submit it, but I don’t recommend hiring one of the recommended grant writers, also that just directly goes against what we’re trying to achieve here, which is bootstrapping your own business!
Now getting grants is a whole huge topic in and of itself that I just can’t get into properly here, but to get you started I’ve created a free downloadable pdf guide to finding and applying for grants. If you’re lucky enough to be an Ontario resident listening to this then I’ve also linked three of the grants I’ve used for my business in the guide. Find the link for it at the base of this page.
Linked Resources
Download the free guide to finding and applying for grants here.
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