Start a business from nothing (and make it worth something)

Becoming your own boss has never been easier. To start your own “microbusiness”, you just need three things: 1) A product/service to sell; 2) Customers who’ll pay for it; 3) A way for them to pay.

Find that sweet spot between what you care about and what other people are willing to spend money on. You have to be skilled at this and it has to be useful – something people really need. As long as you’re providing value (helping others in some way), you’ll most likely succeed.

Usefulness matters more than innovation. Think in terms of what you can add to or take away from people’s lives. Almost everyone wants more love, money, and time, and less pain, debt, and stress. Where do you fit into this equation?

Set aside the literal description of what you’re offering. The core benefits of your businesses should be leveraged to appeal to customers’ emotions. If you run a yoga studio, for example, you’re not selling yoga instruction… You’re selling improved wellbeing.

“Follow your passion” is not wise career advice. Businesses and hobbies serve very different purposes in life. Most passion-driven businesses are formed around something indirectly connected to a passion, i.e. when it gets merged with something objectively useful.

Prepare for your launch as if it were a Hollywood premiere. If you don’t build anticipation, it will flop at the box office. So communicate! Spend as much business development time connecting as creating. Anticipate objections and address them in your FAQ.

Your business offering doesn’t need to be cheaper than competitors. It just needs to be better. A simple way to do that is by purposely overdelivering. Make a point of greeting every transaction with acknowledgment and reassurance.

Spend 45 minutes offline every morning proactively thinking about: business development, offer development, pricing, long-standing issues that need to be fixed, and customer care. Monitor one or two key metrics constantly and review the rest monthly or bimonthly.

You can expand horizontally (create new stuff for different customers) or vertically (more stuff for the same customers). But scaling the business doesn’t have to mean upping the workload. And if you’re okay with the bottom line, you can focus on optimizing a metric other than mo

In a nutshell: Taking on debt to start a business is no longer necessary. You just need a laptop and a website. Sum up your mission statement in 140 characters or less. Focus on providing value, aim to overdeliver, and then optimize profitability along the way.