This one type of business has made me hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit over the years.
The best part is it cost me no money to begin.
Today I'm going to go over the best business to start with zero dollars from the business model to marketing, to pricing.
To help guide you along, I'll be creating a brand new business alongside you, step by step.
And I'll even show you how to get your first client.
Let's dive in.
Step one, business model.
Let's get right to it.
The best business to start with zero dollars, zilch, nada, nothing is different for every person.
Let me explain.
Here's the deal.
If you don't have money to invest, the best business to start all comes down to what resources you do have.
Resources that can make up for your lack of capital.
These might be time skills knowledge creativity passion, physical strength, relationships or equipment you already own.
Everyone has a different amount of these resources, which is why there's no one size fits all best business.
Depending on what resources you have, you can access more, if not better, business opportunities.
It's like an RPG video game.
Depending on your level, skills, and inventory, you can unlock better jobs, classes, or quests.
Sit down and make a list of the resources you have.
Maybe you have a car, a vacuum, a spare room in your house.
Behind a hobby of yours could be useful knowledge, skills or passion, even if you have nothing going on in your life.
You have at least a computer, phone, internet, and lots of free time.
Once you've made your list, you'll wanna circle what resources you have that others may not have.
This is the key to determining the best business for you.
You're gonna focus on your strengths, your advantages over others and find a business idea that makes use of them.
Now, I don't know what resources you have, so you'll have to find that business idea on your own.
However, I can help narrow down the business model for you.
I recommend you start a service business.
This is typically the best business model to pursue if you have zero dollars to invest.
Regardless of what resources you have, there are mainly two reasons why.
The first is that many service businesses have low to no startup costs.
Unlike most product businesses, which require you to spend money upfront to manufacture physical products and hold inventory, service businesses don't need to deal with that.
They deal with intangible products that are created using time skills, knowledge and resources that aren't money.
The second reason is that service businesses can immediately generate positive cash flow.
When you're hired to provide a service, you're guaranteed income.
This contrasts with product businesses, where there's no guarantee that the product you manufactured will sell.
The quicker you can achieve positive cash flow, the quicker you can start profiting and have money available to invest in your business.
For the service business we're starting together.
I was digging through my shed and found this bad news.
I'm thinking of starting a lawn care business and offering lawn mowing around town.
As the business grows, I can see it expanding into fertilizing weeding, hedge trimming, leaf removal.
There are a lot of possibilities.
I think this is it.
We're all set for step two, platform.
I need a place to offer my service. there are three main platforms to do so.
The first is a service marketplace.
These are online platforms that match service businesses with clients.
If your service is physical, like lawn mowing, you can look into TaskRabbit.
If it's digital, like video editing or marketing services, you can check out Upwork and Fiverr.
Marketplaces instantly give you access to a large client base and assist you with communication and payments.
With this convenience however, comes fees and high competition, which can affect how much money you make.
My take is that marketplaces are a good way to kickstart your business, gain experience and build out your list of clients, but it shouldn't be your only platform.
You don't want to be totally reliant on its algorithm.
Which brings us to the second platform, social media.
While social media has an algorithm as well, it can reach far more people, has less rules and is more flexible.
You can also offer your service directly through.
With everyone on social media these days, many services are straight up using their Instagram and Facebook pages as essentially their sole website.
They describe and showcase their service through posts and use built-in business features like messaging, scheduling forms and the link in bio to handle everything else.
If having people slide into your DM sounds like your type of thing, it's an approach that could totally make sense for you.
Now, whether your service business is on a marketplace or not and on social media or not, I still recommend that everyone should have a website, which is the third platform.
Websites give you complete control of your business online.
The ability to use plugins to run your service better and just makes your service that much more professional.
To create a website with 0.
You can explore free website builders like Google Sites Card, Canva and Notion.
If you know HTML and need a free website hosting service, look into Netlify and GitHub Pages.
I will say these 0 solutions do have their limits, because well cost zero dollars, you won't have a custom domain name and they might not be as powerful or as intuitive as paid website builders like shopify or squarespace.
Fortunately, many service business websites don't need to be too complicated.
You really just need info about your service, a lead generation offer, which we'll talk about in a bit, and step three branding.
Branding is your business's identity.
It's incredibly important for services because, Unlike products, where the goods can speak for themselves, services are intangible.
It's hard for people to judge a service before experiencing it.
That's why branding is a key method service businesses use to communicate their value, differentiate themselves and build trust with clients.
A strong brand all starts with having a strong target market, a group of clients you want to sell to.
You're going to want to define their demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals.
For instance, I'm planning to target 30 to 65 year old homeowners that have a lawn to mow in my city of Vancouver.
They care about maintaining their lawn but are too busy or unable to take care of it themselves and are willing to spend a good amount of money, preferably on a regular basis, to have it conveniently mowed.
There's my target market.
With your target market, you're now going to build your brand around them.
There are four brand elements to nail down, starting with your name.
People looking to hire service businesses usually know what they need, so I suggest including a descriptive term in your business name to clearly indicate what you're offering, either within the name itself or at the end.
For my business, I'm going to call it Sunshine Lawn Care.
When I hear that name, I just envision a fine lawn of green grass on a sunny.
It's descriptive, with the lawn care, yet emotional with the sunshine.
I like it.
Next up, your logo.
It should give off the vibe of your company and can be an image or just text.
To create it, you can use free graphic design tools like Canva and Kittle, or AI art generators like Leonardo.
With the name Sunshine Lawn Care.
You can probably guess what my logo is gonna be son, but with a twist, I'm gonna make it a fun retro character.
Speaking of which number three, visual identity this refers to all the other visual elements of your brand.
If I'm going retro with my logo, I'm doing the same with everything else retro color palette, font and imagery, with a a touch of modernist to it.
I think this visual style not only makes my brand appear friendly, but it also appeals to both the younger and older segments of my target market.
Again, it's all about your target market.
And finally messaging to attract your target market to your brand.
You need to speak what they want to hear.
You'll wanna center all of your brand's communication around their needs and how you will solve their problem.
For example, Sunshine Lawn Care's key message is going to be reliable, hassle-free lawn care that wows and delights in Vancouver.
All of my messaging will revolve around this as this is what my target market wants to hear.
With your four brand elements decided on, it's time to share your branding across every platform.
Your business is on your website, social media and or marketplace.
Once that's done, you can move on to step four, promotion.
There are many free marketing channels you can use to promote your business.
These include social media, search engine optimization, online communities, Google business profile, cold calls and emails and old school door knocking.
The best marketing channels to use depend on your business.
Whichever you choose though, you should focus on lead generation.
Lead generation is the process of attracting potential clients, known as leads, to your business.
Typically involves offering people an incentive in exchange for their contact info, such as their email or phone number, with the goal of eventually converting them into a client.
Lead generation is essential for service businesses because many services, particularly the more expensive and complex ones, are not impulse buys.
People tend to take their time to consider services before purchasing them.
Lead generation lets you maintain contact, build trust and guide your leads through their decision-making journey so you can seal the deal with them.
To generate leads.
I like to refer to the five steps listed in this introduction to lead gen guide by HubSpot.
You can download it for free in the description.
The first step is to define what a lead is.
What info do you personally need from someone to consider them a lead?
The must haves are name, phone number, and email.
Depending on your service, you might need more.
For Sunshine Lawn Care.
I also need the address and city of the lead's property to see if it's an area I service.
It's important you only ask for info that is essential to have to follow up with leads.
The more info you request, the more friction there'll be for people to provide all the answers.
Nobody likes filling out a long form.
Once you define what a lead is to you, you can take the second step.
Get to know your buyer persona, aka target market.
I talked about having a target market earlier to guide your brand.
You're now going to have them guide your lead generation strategy and create a compelling offer for them, which is the third step.
For your target market to hand you their info and become a lead, you need to offer them something in return.
They ain't going to do it for nothing.
One of the simplest offers any service can provide is pricing.
For people to know the cost of your service, you can require them to submit their info through a form to get a free quote.
This is what I do for Sunshine Lawn Care.
Other offers you can consider include consultations newsletters eBooks webinars, templates and guides.
With your compelling offer in hand, it's time for the fourth step.
Give visibility to your offer.
You can do this by promoting your offer through the many marketing channels I mentioned earlier.
For Sunshine Lawn Care.
I promote my free quote offer through my website, social media, door knocking and neighborhood communities like Facebook, Reddit and Nextdoor.
Do note some may not allow advertising, so read their rules before you get kicked As you get your offer out there.
The fifth and final step is to track your results.
Is your offer getting views?
Is it generating leads?
Is it attracting the target market that you want?
Analyze your offer's data and see if it's working well.
If it's not, you probably need to make some changes.
But if it is, you've got yourself a successful lead generation strategy.
For more tips and creative ideas for offers again, you can download the full introduction to lead gen guide in the description.
A big shout out to HubSpot for the free guide and for sponsoring today's video.
So let's say you've got a lead.
You followed up with them through phone and email and they seem interested.
You are gonna close this deal.
And then they ask the big question.
How much does it cost?
Enter step five, pricing.
Before you can even decide on how much you're going to charge, you first need to decide on how you're going to charge.
Services are primarily priced in two ways with an hourly rate, where you charge depending on how much time you work, or with a flat rate, where you charge a set fee no matter how much time you work.
Both have their benefits.
The easiest way to determine which pricing model is best for your service is to answer this question.
Does your work have a well-defined scope?
If no, if your work is unclear, constantly changing, or ongoing, charge an hourly rate.
If yes, if there are clear deliverables and you know how much time you need to put in charge a flat rate.
Here are some example services that commonly use each pricing model.
Sunshine Law Care would go with a flat rate.
But that's not to say that there's a best model for each service out there.
Some services perfectly align with both.
A freelance programmer could charge hourly for their ongoing development support of an app, while also charge a flat rate to deliver a specific feature of the app.
It all boils down to how you offer your service.
Which brings us to how much you should charge.
Obviously, it depends on what your service is.
I suggest you research what the typical rate is for your service at your scale, skill level, in the market you're serving and use that info to determine your number.
Make sure you account for your costs and for flat rates in particular.
Pat in some extra dollars, because I find that projects somehow always end up taking longer than you expect.
Personally, I'm an advocate of not competing on price, not being the cheapest player on the market.
This is because one, you make less money and two, you tend to attract difficult clients.
Clients that are stingy yet have high expectations.
Those are the worst.
I will say though, when you're just beginning and looking to land your first few clients, you might have to start off at a lower price point, just to get your foot in the door.
You can slowly raise your prices over time as your experience, reputation, and list of clients grow.
In step six, adjust.
Expect to adjust your service business a lot.
Your target market, your branding, your lead generation strategy, everything.
There'll always be new problems to solve, new lessons to be learned and new improvements to be made.
So don't get too attached to anything.
As you bring in money, remember to reinvest in your business.
The moment you make your first dollar.
There's no need to run it like you still have zero dollars anymore.
Gradually make the proper investments in a domain name, a good website, employees and other paid resources to bring your business up to speed and have it run at its best.
Your ultimate goal is not to run the best business for you to start with zero dollars, but rather the best business for you to start period.
If you enjoyed this video, be sure to like it, subscribe if you haven't already, check out this other video and peace out.
