If You Don’t Have Thousands of Dollars for Entrepreneurship, Start Here
2 ways to start a business for free or for very little money
The middle-aged guy is sitting in his office. He is in a black suit with an expensive tie, smoking a Cuban. He thinks about the investments he will make and the new factory he will establish. He has too much money to spend, and he wants more. The happiness of doubling his father’s legacy a few times resulted in his desire for more, in a short time.
He knows that all activities other than work are a waste of time and money. He considers network is more important than knowledge. Instead of reading a book, a business lunch with rich friends is more profitable. Also, he has no idea about;
- Marketing and sales; he is hiring tons of people to do this creating; he has lots of people to do this.
- Sharing; he doesn’t want others to know what he knows.
- Developing from scratch; he is trying to develop further what is already developed.
If you google these types of people, all you can find is that they are respected businessmen. Other than that, we cannot know exactly what they are doing.
Suits are still common, but the term of a businessman is getting old day by day. With the internet power and the modern entrepreneurship culture, it is allowed that any person-with jeans and a t-shirt- can create their income-generating mechanism without any background or capital.
Okay, but how?
According to Seth Godin, one of the pioneers of modern entrepreneurship, there are two ways of setting an income-generating mechanism for free or for little money. Passion based enterprises and problem-solving based enterprises.
Passion based enterprises
Passion is a booster. It fuels us, supplies energy, provides acuity and insight for the long term. My father is passionate about animals. He was raising sheep as a hobby. Every day of a year, he needed to be nearby the sheep for 20 years. We couldn’t understand how he can do this because we were not passionate.
Also, any kind of entrepreneurship is hungry for research and reading. These actions are high in energy consumption. Therefore, passion provides us with endless energy for our beneficial activities for a long time. If you don’t have thousands of dollars to establish an enterprise, find your passion for free.
After finding your passion: it could be technical, art, copywriting, bee culture, or any field. Now you should gather and share knowledge about it. At this point, you need to squeeze tons of books, twits of inspirers, feedbacks of your audience. Then you can present this refined knowledge via Instagram, Facebook, or WhatsApp groups, it doesn’t matter what. Eventually, know-how about passion will turn into a commercial income-generating mechanism.
This gathering and sharing transport you from a passionate person to the owner of a commercial income mechanism. Sharing knowledge means gathering people who trust you. After commercialization, your first customers will appear among this group.
For instance, I am trying to build an Instagram page about my cats: Erdinc, Minnosh, and Memo. I often take pics of them and post them on Instagram. My followers are getting crowded, albeit slowly. And I know that I need to allocate time to research how I can increase my followers. And again, I know that I can earn income from this page when I have enough followers. I already occasionally contact cat food companies and other big Instagram cat pages.
Secondly, I have another Instagram page about copywriting. I move around like a magnet and attract all the knowledge about it. And this makes me force that I share notes, strategies, and essential points. I feel happy when I share this refined knowledge. It is very beneficial not only for me but also for the ecosystem. Large numbers of people can benefit from this information, which means we can rise together.
Problem-solving based enterprises
We use money to solve problems. There are lots of issues waiting to be solved. Therefore, there are lots of people who are ready to pay for solving a problem. For example, Airbnb solves accommodation problems in another way. Uber solves transportation problems in another way. I agree that these companies solve significant and fundamental problems, but we also can find issues that problem owners are willing to pay us for solutions. We can count three steps for it.
- Finding a problem
- Solve the problem
- Sell the solution to problem owners
Finding a problem
Anyone can always find a problem. But it is hard to find a problem that owners are willing to pay for. According to Kevin Hale[1]; there is a survey that you can check your problem is a good one. Here is the survey.
- Are there many people who have this problem?
- Is the problem growing in the future?
- Is the solution to the problem urgent?
- Is the solution expensive?
- Is the problem mandatory?
- Is the problem frequent? They need to be solved multiple times a day, a month, a year.
If your problems hit more than five-shot, it is a super problem, then immediately move on. It is an opportunity. Otherwise, you can prefer to find a new and better one. Of course, it is not a definitive test. It just shows the chances of success, according to probabilities.
Solve the problem
It is time for the MVP. Once you find a super problem, then you need to build a minimum viable product[2] (MVP). It is the main part of the full product. MVP aims at minimum effort and maximum efficiency. Therefore, you can build an inexpensive MVP.
Sell the solution
Finally, you can find your first ten customers to sell your MVP. Seth Godin[3] said that;
“Those ten people need what you have to sell or want it. And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they’ll each find you ten more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Repeat.”
Honestly, this way requires a bit of effort. Super problems don’t come to the person who is always sitting lying on the sofa. Good problems are shining among the bad ones. We should increase the probability of coming across problems by experience. Also, building the MVP and product is most of the work.
Conclusion
Here, I told you how to establish an income mechanism that does not require thousands of dollars, also supported by accepted entrepreneurs like Kevin Hale, Seth Godin. That’s why the term of traditional black suit-businessman is getting old. Anyone can have this kind of income mechanism on different levels. You can see a lot of people who get this kind of income mechanism for free or with very little money. I will prepare an article listing such people. I also follow these two strategies both. If you are interested in entrepreneurship and you don’t have capital, you can choose one of the ways, maybe both. Is this super? There is nothing to lose. Just start. Jump into the hole.