You are not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own a piece of a business to gain your financial freedom - Naval Ravikant
But how do you start a business if you’re totally broke?
Well, today I’m going to be breaking down 3 proven businesses to start with little to no money that have the potential to make you tens of thousands of dollars a month.
I’m not going to talk about fake passive income like Drop Shipping, Amazon, FBA, or POD either. Those are usually a scam run by experienced Internet marketers.
I’m going to teach you things that require work. Nine to five have bought into this idea that starting a business is super expensive and usually very risky. And in many cases, those people are right. However, there are businesses you can start that are safe, simple, and actually profitable.
In This Article:
The Wealth Ladder
Firstly, I need you to understand these three steps to the wealth ladder.
This ladder is about building generational wealth. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. To get there, you have to figure out the right steps to take to be able to reach your end goal.
The first step is to build a low risk business that generates actual cash.
This is really about generating your first hundred thousand or million dollars a year. So these are usually services businesses that require investing a good amount of time, but actually not that much investment. And yes, for the most part, they’re not scalable to hundreds of millions of dollars, but they get that basis right that you can then use for step two. And this is the step we’re gonna focus on for these three ideas, because once you start generating revenue, you can start investing some of that into higher risk, higher return opportunities in step two.
Step two is about building products that can sell for large exits.
So you can sell the company for $30M. A great example of this is a software business.
This is Alex Becker. After getting step one right, he was able to invest that money into building a software company called Hiros that sold for $110M. So step two is about taking high risk, high reward opportunities to become generationally rich.
Step three is investing.
You don’t actually do any of the work. You just invest in a bunch of companies and hope that a couple of them go to the moon.
This is Ben Horowitz.
He invested $250,000 into Instagram at the very beginning, and he exited that for $78M. That’s 312 times return on investment. And what did he actually do to get there? Not very much.
So let’s get back to our three ideas.
Idea 1: Building An Agency
This is pretty straightforward. You are a services business and you are hired to be able to fulfill contracts. Now, the amazing thing about this is that it pretty much costs $0 to start.
In fact, most people start this by simply freelancing and building a website. So you could start a marketing agency, you could start an automation agency, you might start an AI agency. You get the flow right? There’s lots of different agencies that you could start, and you can kick start it by being your first employee and fulfilling on the needs.
Start building up a portfolio and then hire people to replace you in the job. And you simply focus on getting more customers for the agency.
Now, the most successful agencies I’ve seen have these three common traits.
Number one is that they focus in on a skill in high demand.
And if you’re able to either save a lot of money for a company, or to make a lot more money for a company, those are the kind of agencies which are must haves for these companies.
The second thing they do right, is to focus on outcomes.
So if you were, for example, a software development company, you might focus only on websites. If you’re a marketing agency, you can simply focus on TikTok ads. If you’re an automation agency, you could simply focus on using Zapier. The more focused you are on what you do and the specific outcome that you provide, the easier it’s gonna be to scale.
And the third trait that’s super important is to get recurring revenue.
So instead of having one off contracts, negotiate monthly or annual contracts with your customers, so you don’t always have to run after the next client.
Now, if you’re thinking of starting an agency, once you get the basics right, there is one very important thing that you have to do to make sure that you are scalable, and that is to build processes and systems.
And the best tool set to use for this is a combination between Airtable as a database, Softer to build a front end, and then have some automations made through Make.
Idea 2: Building a Newsletter
Now this second idea is what allowed Sam Parr to sell his company for $30M. It’s called the Hustle. And what is it? It’s just a newsletter. And then he taught his buddy Shawn how to do this, who then sold this company for $20M.
So if you only have $100 in a bank account, yes, you can just start a newsletter.
If you want to start a successful newsletter, there are 5 questions that you have to be answered to get this right.
The first one is, who is your audience?
For example, it is non technical entrepreneurs. Either people who have ideas and want to build them, but don’t know how to code, or people who actually have a business and want to use no code and AI tools to really grow.
Number two, what is the actual outcome that you provide to those readers?
Example, you provide them with actionable steps and useful tools that they can use to build their businesses with no code and AI.
The third question is, what is the format of your newsletter that’s going to allow you to deliver the outcomes that we’ve just talked about?
Example, you have a section about success stories built with no code and AI. You have a featured tools section that talks about tools and what they can be used for.
And that’s question four: What are the actual tools?
In this case, there’s only really one tool that I use for my newsletter. It’s called Beehiiv. It’s really cool because it’s kind of an all in one tool.
And so what it allows me to do is to create a template for my weekly newsletter, then to be able to schedule all of my newsletters. Then they have some cool features that allow you to actually grow your audience, even though you’re going to have to also go out and get some subscribers. And then they even have a network of ad partners that allow you to monetize it.
And the final question is, how do you actually get readers for your newsletter?
For this, you can create valuable content in the places where these people actually hang out.
Your audience might be on TikTok, it could be on Instagram, it could be in Facebook. Another thing I’ll probably try out is to pay Beehiiv to get myself placed in other newsletters too. It’ll be an experiment.
If you don’t want to launch a newsletter and don’t want to learn a new skill, then you could simply make money by selling the existing skills and knowledge that you currently have. And that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about in this next idea.
Idea 3: Productized Service
It’s a way for you to be able to take all the knowledge and insight that you might have in an industry or the skills that you have already developed and to make those into products that you can then sell to hundreds or thousands of other individuals. This could be in the form of a course, it could be an e book, it could be consulting services, it could be coaching services, or even build a software platform that delivers the knowledge you have.
Now for most of these ideas, it will literally cost you zero to $100 and you can make them once and sell them over and over and over.
Let’s take a concrete example here.
If you were a real estate agent based in California, for example, you could create a course teaching first time home buyers the specific things they should look out for when they’re buying a house. That could cost them thousands of dollars and even how to negotiate a better rate when they’re buying the property. Or teach them how interest and loans actually work and what values they should be looking at. Or you could build a website that gives access to people to off the market properties based on the relationships you have with other agents before those properties get listed on Zillow. You could even build a template that helps other agents organize the sale of individual properties with checklists, reminders, things like that.
Now remember, if you build one of these businesses, then you have the cash to start investing in higher risk, higher reward opportunities.
Conclusion
These zero-cost business ideas prove that entrepreneurship doesn’t always require a large investment. With creativity, dedication, and strategic use of free resources, you can launch a venture without spending a dime.
Remember, the key to success lies in providing value, building relationships, and continuously learning. Start small, focus on execution, and be prepared to adapt as you grow. Your journey to business ownership begins now – all it takes is your time and effort.