1747: [Part 2] 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 Do, Part 2 by Steve Chou of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com. Choose Your Medium Even if you have no clue what business you want to start later on in life, and even if you have no money, you need to put yourself out there. I started MyWifeQuitHerJob.com by writing on a consistent schedule about life, family, and e-commerce.

[00:00:28] People found me via search, social media, word of mouth, and my readership gradually grew over time to where it is today. Once I developed an audience, making money became an afterthought. When you have a large group of raving fans interested in what you have to say, the money will come. Trust me on that. The hard part is finding and gathering your fans. Today we live in a day and age where you have lots of options depending on what you want to do.

[00:00:53] I personally chose to start a blog, but there are many other low-cost options to choose from. You can pull a KevJumba and start your own YouTube channel for free. You can start a podcast and create your own personal radio station. You can start an online store. You can create a compelling Facebook fan page. Or you can start a blog for under $5 in under 5 minutes. You have no excuse. Gather and retain your followers.

[00:01:20] Once you've developed your fan base, it is essential to retain them as you continue to build your brand. In the case of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, 99% of my early readers would come, read a single article, and then leave forever. So instead of missing out on a potential regular, I started gathering email addresses using a service called Aweber. In return for a reader's email address, I would give away a free 6-day mini-course on e-commerce. And 9 times out of 10, that reader would stick around after the mini-course to check out my new articles and updates.

[00:01:50] In fact, I have readers on my blog who have stuck with me for over 8 years. You know who you are, and I'm very thankful. The key is to retain your existing audience while simultaneously attracting new fans. This way, your audience count has nowhere to go except up. One thing that I like to tell my friends is that my blog is like a stock that only increases in value. As long as I keep doing what I'm doing, it can only get better, not worse. I've got an audience now. So what?

[00:02:18] Once you've gathered a small group of raving fans is when the fun begins. And it is infinitely easier to start a business when you already have an established base of potential leads. Using my blog as an example, if I ever wanted to develop an e-commerce plugin for Shopify or BigCommerce, I could instantly gather a user base of customers by sending word out to my email list and blog. I could also leverage my audience to gather ideas for products to sell even if I had no idea what to create.

[00:02:45] When I launched my annual e-commerce conference, The Sellers Summit, I instantly sold out of tickets because my loyal fans wanted to attend. The possibilities are endless. Case Study How to Make 4K Without a Product to Sell Here's a real-life case study of a student in my Create a Profitable Online Store course who built a small audience and started making money right away with online webinars. Ari Chung is an artist who writes and illustrates children's books for a living.

[00:03:14] And as we all know, you can't make real money as an artist, right? Wrong. First off, Ari is Chinese and I have no idea how his parents allowed him to become an artist as opposed to an engineer, lawyer, or doctor. But that's beside the point. Ari is a talented artist with a unique skill that other people want to learn. So one day he decided to give an online tutorial on how to create a children's picture book from scratch. He simply emailed his list of less than 100 people, gave a one-hour-long online webinar,

[00:03:42] and made over $4,000 in one shot. He didn't have a product, but his presentation was so compelling that people were willing to pay him for a course that he hadn't even created yet. Crazy, right? Here were his exact numbers for the webinar that day. Ari emailed a list of 80 people. 60% of the people who attended his live webinar purchased his class. He generated $4,315 without a post-follow-up sequence. He didn't have a website.

[00:04:11] What's funny is that when he first told me about his webinar, I was very skeptical. I didn't believe that there were people out there willing to pay hundreds of dollars to learn how to create a children's picture book, but apparently I was wrong. If you stop and think, there are over 7 billion people in this world, and somewhere out there is someone who will pay to learn from you. But you'll never reach these people unless you try. Remember, you don't have to be an expert to charge for your services. You just have to be helpful and provide a benefit. After all, what does it mean to be an expert anyway?

[00:04:41] As far as I know, there's no expert credential or placement test. We are all expert enough, and that's what matters. So take some time to document your skills and start spreading your knowledge. A veteran entrepreneur's take on the fastest way to make 5K starting from scratch. Recently, my buddies Greg Mercer, Mike Jackness, Scott Volker, and I got together on my podcast to discuss how we would personally make $5,000 as quickly as possible starting from complete scratch. And guess what?

[00:05:11] All of our answers were all over the map, which just goes to show that there are many different ways to make money online. Having an audience is the key. Overall, making money is infinitely easier if you have an audience, and it doesn't cost any money to build one. So if you take away anything from this post, please remember this. Start creating something today and put yourself out there. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. Take your smartphone and start recording videos about your philosophies on life.

[00:05:40] Find something that you are good at and start talking about it. Put together some tutorials about a recent skill you have acquired. At first, you will be skeptical that anyone will be interested in what you have to say, but there is always someone out there who will care. You just have to find the right audience. I'll bet Kev Jumba had no idea he'd be attracting people almost twice his age to his YouTube channel. The point is that you'll never know unless you try. Start gathering an audience now, and you will have the courage to start your own business someday. I guarantee it.

[00:06:13] You just listened to part two of the post titled How to start a business with no money. Here's exactly what I do. By Steve Chu of mywifequitterjob.com Steuer? Steuer? Aber easy. Mit Wieso Steuer? Einfach Foto deiner Dokumente machen und schwupps wird alles automatisch ausgefüllt. Kein Plan, ob's passt? Wieso Steuer prüft deine Angaben noch vor Abgabe. So gibt's keine Fehler mehr. Und bei Fragen hilft dir Steuer-GPT so, dass du's verstehst. Das Beste? Du siehst jederzeit, was du zurückbekommst.

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[00:07:51] Und thank you again to Steve. One thing I didn't mention yesterday in Part 1 thank you so much for being here and for listening all the way through and I'll be back with you tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.