The best ways to start a business with no money

Is having no money keeping you from starting your own business? Well, not anymore. There are actually plenty of ways to start a business with little to no money.

Now that you’ve decided to become an entrepreneur, Let’s take a look at how you can start your business with no money.

Make use of what you already have

When you don’t have enough money to work with, make use of your time, skills, and available resources.

Here’s an example.

If you are good at something, then try selling it as a service.

Most businesses are very busy running their day-to-day operation. So instead of learning new skills, they may consider outsourcing such talents for their business.

If you think you can help businesses by adding value with the skills that you have, then here’s your chance.

This does not only applies to businesses but also to consumers. There are plenty of services that you can offer to consumers as well.

For example, If you love animals, you may offer a dog walking service. The best part is that you won’t think of it as work because loving dogs is just your nature!

You would be surprised how valuable your services may be to other people. So trade your time (with your offered services), and your customers would be happy to pay that with their money!

Time will be a great asset to you at this point. While you may not have enough money, you’ve got plenty of time.

Take advantage of free resources

Thanks to technology, it opens a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs. Starting a business today provided us with a lot of unfair advantages over starting a century ago.

Today, there are plenty of free tools that you can use for starting and growing your business.

Here are some examples.

Platforms such as Amazon, Shopee, Airbnb, Udemy, and Fiverr are some of the great places to start selling your products or services online.

Need to create marketing materials? There’s Canva. If you badly need help with your grammar, just like me, use Grammarly.

And because most of us have been active all the time on social media such as Facebook, promoting your brand has never been easier today.

There are plenty of free tools to consider to jumpstart your business.

While some tools may seem to be free, It may cost you an extra buck if you need more features from them (most companies are using freemium pricing model nowadays). But you won’t be needing that for now, and can always add more features later.

You must adopt the mindset of build now and refine later.

Take advantage of these tools while they are free to use.

Get funding

If you need funds to start your business, there are plenty of ways for you to try.

But when you are just starting out, raising funds from venture capital and Appling for loans from the banks are tough.

Raising funds that you may consider when starting out is from family & friends.

That’s how I got some funding when I started.

I start pitching my idea to my friends. And I ended up partnering with some of them.

And since then, we’ve been partners in most businesses that I’ve started.

Some of them will not support you, but most of them definitely wanted you to succeed. So start pitching them your unique business idea and start getting some funding.

And when you do get some funding, don’t forget to discuss how you pay them back. It’s either you pay them back as a loan or give them a share in your business.

Final thoughts

With the help of technology, starting a business today don’t require a lot of cash. You just need to work smarter and be creative.

Have you started your business with little to no money? Let me know in the comments below.

And if you liked this article, don’t forget to share it with your friends.

Featured image credit: Nicola Barts