Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – author of the business and time management books TimePeace: Making peace with time – the The Book of Answers: 105 Career Critical Situations – and I am a business and efficiency coach that specializes in time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.
Today’s question comes from a busy entrepreneur and small business owner:
I’ve been unemployed for a few months now. Could I still start a business without money?
I’m curious because I’ve read about it but never made a decision. So I do believe that the answer would help me.
Without knowing your talents, work experience and skills, this answer will be very general.
Starting a business without money is possible, but difficult.
Business Plan
The first step would be to create your business plan, which outlined your business goals, start-up fiscal needs, revenue expectations, resource needs, and general business strategy.
The business plan should also include how you plan to acquire the start-up and maintenance funds. Most businesses take 3-5 years before becoming self-sustaining. So, if you don’t have 3-5 years of funds to sustain yourself while you are building your business, you may need to attract outside investors like Angel Investors or Crowd-funding. Or investigate getting a small business loan.
Your business plan would cover the following:
- Describe Your Business Idea
- Analyze Your Market and Challenges
- Assess Your Capital Needs
- Explore Crowd-funding Platform (or small business loan)
- Strategy for Networking with People
- Strategy for Running a Trial or Prototypes
- Gathering Feedback on your Business Idea
Consulting businesses have lower overhead
Depending upon your work experience and business goals, consulting is often one of the more lower-overhead businesses that you can start. This type of business allows you to work for other businesses as a contractor until you have enough clientele and experience to branch out into a more formal Consultant Agency with additional staff.
Depending upon what type of consulting, you can often work from your home-office and conduct business meetings in rented conference rooms and offices.
Common Shared New Business Needs
Regardless of the industry of your new business, you will need a way to market and promote your new business. Digital Marketing is one of the lower cost ways to market.
The below lists are some low overhead way to start marketing your business.
- Create your website
- Create your business Facebook page
- Create your LinkedIn page
- Continually supply valuable content on all marketing platforms
- Create an attractive Product Funnel that helps your interested clients move down their buyer’s journey
Once again – without understanding your specific background or industry, these are some general recommendation. Most of these are low-cost steps, but if you are not knowledgeable about how the best way to design or implement these pieces, it may take you a long time to see results.
I know your situation is different. If you would like additional information on this topic, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
I am a business coach and this is what I do professionally. It’s easy to sign up for a complementary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ
With enough notice, it would be my honor to guest-speak at no cost to your group organization.