1746: [Part 1] How To Start A Business With No Money - Here’s Exactly What I’d Do by Steve Chou of MyWifeQuitHerJob

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Work Daily. How To Start A Business With No Money. Here's Exactly What I'd Do. Part 1 by Steve Chou of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com. Contrary to popular belief, it does not require a large upfront investment to start a successful online business. What you lack in funds can be made up for with a little ingenuity, and this post will show you how to start a business with no money whatsoever.

[00:00:24] But first things first, you have to be determined. And when it comes to determination, you have to be willing to persist with your business for at least two years or more regardless of the outcome. You also need to believe in yourself and understand that you are a person with unique abilities who others want to learn from. If you possess both of these qualities, good things will happen and it won't cost you a cent. A Personal Story

[00:00:50] When I started my first online business, I completely lacked confidence. And I wasn't willing to take any risks whatsoever unless I knew that I was going to succeed. As a result, I hesitated on the sidelines for many years until my wife became pregnant and decided to quit her job. Finally, the threat of losing half our income gave me the kick I needed to just say, F it, let's do this.

[00:01:12] So with just $630, my wife and I started an online store selling handkerchiefs that made over $100K in profit during our first year. Handkerchiefs? How insane is that? Today, this same store makes well over seven figures. And to be honest, it still feels completely ludicrous to me. And with mywifequitterjob.com, if you told me that I was going to make over a million dollars blogging last year, I would have told you to get the heck out of town.

[00:01:38] In fact, the mere premise of making significant money selling handkerchiefs, or blogging for that matter, is so ridiculous that I'm often challenged by my readers as to whether my success was a direct result of luck and circumstance as opposed to skill. Did I just happen to stumble upon a small niche that no one else was into? Did I just get lucky that no one was selling these types of linens online? And the answer is yes, luck certainly did play a part. It always does. But you have to put yourself out there in order to take advantage of it.

[00:02:08] Today, I want to address the readers of mywifequitterjob.com who are currently on the sidelines with very little money. I want to address those of you who have no idea where to begin, but want to start your own business someday. How do you convince yourself to begin? How do you lay the groundwork for your future business if you don't feel ready? Today, I'm going to teach you how to start a business with no money. And here's how I would do it. Start gathering an audience. Before I started my blog, I used to think that no one would care about what I had to say.

[00:02:38] And as a result, I had extremely low expectations when I first decided to start a blog over at mywifequitterjob.com. To put things in perspective, I didn't think that anyone would read my blog except for close friends. But then something surprising happened. Very few of my friends took an interest in my writing. And instead, complete strangers started emailing me about my experiences and my philosophies on life. I started having conversations with random people. And these random people and I started to become friends.

[00:03:07] And before long, I had a bunch of regulars reading my blog. Note, this was the complete opposite of what I expected to happen. I expected many of my friends to take an interest in what I was up to. I expected my friends to be 100% supportive of everything I was working on. But I did not expect total strangers to care at all. After all, why would people care about some random Chinese dude on the internet? The truth is that people care about what you have to say. You just have to find the right people to talk to.

[00:03:37] Put yourself out there. But the only way to find these people is to put yourself out there. Even if you have no money, there are a variety of ways to create a following. For example, there's this Asian kid I follow on YouTube who has over 1 million subscribers to his channel. His name is Kev Jumba. Kevin started out by posting silly videos of himself dancing online. Then he used a cheap webcam to record himself talking about his beliefs and his philosophies on life.

[00:04:05] Things started out slow, but year after year, he started gathering more and more followers to his channel. And over time, he developed a huge following. Because of YouTube, he now makes a living creating his own films and producing his own movies. Here's the thing. Kevin was only 18 years old when I started watching him online. And you would think that a 30-year-old dude would have no interest in what an 18-year-old would have to say. But Kevin was spunky and funny, and I liked his attitude.

[00:04:33] Not only that, but the reason I followed Kevin had nothing to do with the production quality of his videos, which were pretty bad early on. There was just something about him that resonated with me, and I wanted to know what he was up to. This is exactly what you need to do. To be continued. You just listened to part one of the post titled, How to Start a Business with No Money. Here's exactly what I'd do, by Steve Chu of mywifequittherjob.com.

[00:05:33] And thank you to Steve. When his wife became pregnant, and she planned to stay home with the baby, they knew that they needed to find more income. So, as Steve mentioned in this post, they started a little online store. They called it Bumblebee Linens. And in just one year, they were able to replace his wife's salary of $100,000 per year. And they started My Wife Quit Her Job to document it all, including income reports. Ultimately, Steve was able to leave his job too, so it's not just his wife who quit her job anymore.

[00:05:59] And Steve also started the Sellers Summit, and you can learn more about that at SellersSummit.com. But that's going to do it for me today. Have yourself a great weekend. Thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you back here in the Sunday show, where we're going to finish up this post from Steve, and where your optimal life awaits. LoveBody Sandman and so on then got started. Top 5