Hey, it’s Carrie here, and in this video I’m going to be talking
all about how to start a business with absolutely zero money.
I’ve got some amazing tips for you, so stay tuned!
This is the She Means Business show, where we show you how to turn your ideas into reality
and become a wildly successful entrepreneur.
Carrie Green: She Means Business.
Hey, it’s Carrie Green here, the founder of the
and the author of She Means Business,
and in this video I'm going to be sharing some amazing tips
for how you can start a business with absolutely no money.
But before I get into the tips, there's something really important that I want to share with you,
and it is this: there is this myth that in order to build a business you need loads of money,
and it is simply not true.
I have built both of my businesses with absolutely no money to begin with. You can do this.
The key thing is that you have to focus on building your audience first.
No matter what your business is if you can build your audience, you can build a successful business.
And the best thing is that you don't need any money to be able to build a really big audience.
So focus on that.
The first way to do that is through getting online and joining relevant groups -
you can do this on Facebook - there are so many amazing groups on Facebook - and networking like a crazy person.
Go and build incredible relationships with people; go and connect with people.
Let them know what your message is:
what you're about, what you have to offer, in a really authentic way,
and do it not because you want to sell; do it because you want to build a relationship with them.
So a really good friend of mine, Nikki Elledge Brown, did this.
When she started her business she didn't even have a website.
She went on Facebook, she joined relevant groups
They discovered what she was really great at,
what she was passionate about, what her business was about;
and then she put out a survey to find out more about what
and at the end of the survey she offered people a free session with her.
And that is how her business got rolling.
This is really simple, so get online, go and join relevant groups
and start to build relationships and start connecting and start building your audience.
That is the first thing to do.
So the second thing you need to do is to start building your social media presence.
There are so many social media platforms to choose from, it can be ridiculously overwhelming,
so just pick one and decide to become amazing on it.
Whether that is Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest; whatever it is, decide what is going to be best for your business.
If you don't know, just go with one and see how it works out.
This is not rocket science. People get so hung up on it.
Keep it simple and just focus on becoming amazing and building your following on one platform.
So, a really good friend of mine, Kate Jones - she started The Little Jones -
decided that she was going to focus on building her following on Instagram.
So all she did is set up an Instagram profile.
She was creating prints for children's nurseries on her computer and she also set up her Etsy shop,
which was also free.
then on Instagram she was just focused on posting out consistently - every single day -
really really great images that were aligned with her brand.
She started to build her following, build relationships with people on Instagram, drive traffic to her Etsy shop,
and then she started making sales.
It didn't really cost her any money to get to that point.
So, build your following on social media and you will start reaching out to people,
and that is how you will drive traffic to your offer
at the point that you have something to share with them, or something to sell them.
And that is the focus right now: building your audience up. And the key thing is: you have to do this stuff consistently.
You can't just do a little bit one day and then not do it the next day.
Be consistent at it. It's not always going to be easy;
there are going to be days when you think, “No one is looking at my stuff, what should I do?”
and you want to give up, because no one is paying attention to it.
But you have to push through and keep going.
Once you have your audience you can survey them; you can find out what they want.
The third thing that you can do, which again is really really cheap and really easy for all of us to do,
is to go networking offline.
Get out of the house, get out of your workspace and go and meet people in real life.
This is so powerful. I did this like crazy when I began my second business, The Female Entrepreneur Association.
I networked like a crazy person.
Go and meet people, go and tell them what you're all about,
go and have meaningful conversations around being an entrepreneur and about what you're up to.
You will make really powerful connections with people, and you never know where those relationships will lead.
They will help you to really build an incredible business. So get out there and network like crazy.
So the fourth and final step is to be ridiculously consistent with all this stuff.
It is so easy to start a social media following or to start networking and to feel like no one is paying attention to you;
no one is listening to you; no one is hearing your message,
and it feels like it would be easy to give up, because what is the point?
But you can't. Don't give up.
Stay consistent at it and just keep going with it and keep building your audience.
It is going to be the absolute foundation of building a successful business.
Once you've got that audience of people who love what you're about
then you can survey them and go deeper and create an incredible offer for them and sell to them.
We're going to be talking about that in a future episode of She Means Business, so be sure to keep a look out for it,
because we're going to go into how you can sell to your audience and make your business ridiculously successful.
For now, just focus on building your audience.
I have created a free worksheet for you with a bunch of other ideas that you can use,
to start building your audience at no cost whatsoever.
Download it - the link is below - download it and check it out.
Implement it, take action on it and start to build your audience, and you are going to create a wildly successful business.
I will see you next week for another episode of She Means Business.
Hey guys! If you like this video, leave a thumbs up.
Also, I'm really curious to know what steps you are going to implement in your business.
Leave a comment below and let me know what you're going to take action on.
I really hope it helps you to build an amazing audience and build your incredible business.