If I Was Broke, Here’s How I’d Start A Business (In 8 Steps)

it's a common misconception that you need money to start a business you don't and I'm going to show you the eight ways that you can start a company with no money and I built 19 companies 15 of them with no money many of which I sold for multiple millions of dollars so if you can't watch for 5 minutes and learn what took me 30 years to learn then I've got some news for you you're probably not going to make it now let's go I'm sure most of you are in the early stages of trying to

start a business but I'm going to talk through the whole cycle and the reason it's important to understand the whole cycle even if you've got no money today and you're starting a company using some of the early strategies I'm going to give you you need to know the end game on raising money you need to know where it might go so that as you build a business as you raise money you do it right because if you raise money wrong it will stop you raising money later and you need to know what happens later to

raise money right now so the first strategy I'm going to give you I'm going to talk about how to get the first $10,000 getting the first 10,000 is actually super easy now the obvious way is to go to people that know you best so we call this the family and friends strategy now I know when you listen to that you might be like well Simon I don't have any family and friends that have $10,000 you're wrong you've limited yourself you might not have a direct family member that has that money but you know somebody in

your family that has that money you just haven't asked them and you haven't pitch to them something that makes them feel like they're going to make money working with you if you don't believe in your idea no one will believe in your idea but the great thing about the family and friend strategy if you really dig in is that they know you best if your dad recommends you to your uncle you're going to get the money now how do you frame it so that this money actually comes to you if you do know someone distant

cousin uh great grandfather anybody that might have the money you have to make sure you frame it correctly so how do you frame it to get money from them now the first step is always be honest tell them they could lose all their money now it might seem like saying that well why would I give you money if I'm going to lose all my money but it establishes with people that you're honest and that is one of the best things in sales not what you've been told about sleazy car sales people I've done a whole

video on sales if you want to learn about that but I know for a fact if you lean in and say look this is my idea this is what I'm going to do this is how you're going to get your money back this is what I'm going to do to make sure you get your money back but there is a chance you'll lose all your money you will build honest relationships with your friends you don't want to have Sunday dinner sitting around a table where you've lost their money and you told them you were guaranteeing

getting it back for them and you haven't but I promise you there is someone in your family that can give you the money now friends is an interesting one I'm also going to talk about this a little bit later in one of the other points but I honestly think that another option people don't explore is if you look at all businesses that have started out and being successful Airbnb Facebook all of the founders of those companies basically got the money initially from their friends and so someone in your University someone at your school has money

maybe they have a trust fund maybe they have a little Nest Egg they can put money into your business my guy here behind the camera Callum put money into my business and he looks poor on the outside but he put money into my business now I do it for a different reason I do it because I want him to be committed which he is he's here right now making this video with us now but I'm trying to teach you something you'll be surprised that people you think have no money like Callum actually do and if

you have a good enough pitch if you have an honest enough pitch if you have a most compelling pitch Poss those people will invest in you so don't overlook family and friends and I know people say don't mix friends with business they're wrong they're wrong they're wrong sometimes friends in business can literally be like your army they will fight for you don't tell yourself it's a bad idea to have friends in the business tell yourself it's good to have structure around that deal do a proper term sheet if friends come in I'll put a term

sheet down below do a proper agreement about the rules of the business who makes decisions and how again I can put an employment framework in links down below do not limit Yourself by thinking your family and friends are not good investors they can be great investors I'm going to give you an alternative 0 to 10 a bit later if you don't want to go down the family and friends route but I don't want you to overlook it the next strategy generally is again Z to 200,000 us and this is Angel Investors now when it comes

to raising money it's important you stay organized at all times for this I like to use notion if you don't know what notion is I'm going to give you a little demo notion is basically a productivity platform that helps users manage their work including tasks projects and knowledge and this is now made even more powerful with the new notion AI which I love you can use notion AI to keep on top of all your angel investment Outreach for example notion AI please give me a list of all the top angan investors in the UK okay

that's great but now I want it in a different format notion AI can you please organize these into a structured table so I can easily tick off the ones I've contacted okay maybe we can go one step further notion AI can you add a column for contact information and a column for money raise perfect this will really help you keep on track with your potential investors now that is all amazing but I could also really use a list of us-based Angel Investors notion AI can you create exactly the same for top Angel Investors based in

the US perfect now we have all that sorted I want to send a message notion a can you draft a unique message for each of the investors in the list above this is so incredible I'm thinking about all the time this has saved me in the past to build my businesses it's taking me weeks if not months to do what we've just done in seconds another really cool feature of the new notion AI is that you're able to connect to your slack and Google Drive accounts allowing you to ask notion AI information from both platforms

without leaving your notion workspace for example notion AI please summarize this raising money video I have saved wow look at that it's just blow my mind it's broken this video down step by step for me this is super powerful stuff I mean I could take this video now make it a PDF and you could also read it as a PDF it all summed up down to watch the whole video like this is incredible and to top it all off and this is important to me notion AI will never share your data for any AI training

purposes only obtaining information from places you have access to get started with notion for free and unlock the new notion AI feed for just $10 a month using the link on screen now Now angel investors a lot of people misunderstand them I think the Topline thing I can teach you straight off about getting an angel investor and how this piece works is there's a load of people out there with money who are lazy and they want their money to work for them honestly there's millions of people like this and they make money in their jobs

as doctors or lawyers but they can't really scale so they they try to invest in other people's hard work and honestly the only way to real make real money in this world is own equity in a company anyway so what do they do they buy equity in companies and you know the worst examples of this are like Shark Tank and Dragon's Den people sitting in chairs I've got all this money and you need it that's not actually how it is right so I'm an angel investor I've invested in 78 companies nearly every single one of

those companies that I've invested in I felt honored and lucky to invest in them because the people that gave me the opportunity to invest in them framed it correctly first step to getting an angel investor the psychology of it is if you want money don't ask for money straight up the way to do it is ask for help the rule is if you ask for help you'll get money if you ask for money you'll get help now the irony of Angel Investors is that they actually want to give you their money they do because money

sitting in a bank account even today the interest rate is not as bad as it used to be but 5% it's not exciting it's not interesting they as Angel Investors don't learn something they as Angel Investors if they're smart people they can't influence the outcome of the investment if you put the money into Tesla you can't make the Tesla stock go up with your skill so angent investors the other thing is they want to feel like they can influence the outcome of the investment and actually for you you want to make sure these people can

help you be successful so not only do you want to profile have they got the money can they invest in you will they invest in you but the most important thing is if they invest in you will they bring value now you can go on all sorts of different Angel investment sites I'm going to put a link down below to a list of all the angel investors there's a lot of hidden Angel Investors people that don't talk about it but there's a lot of people that also list themselves as Angel Investors including me you can

go see all the businesses I've invested in on Simons scrip.com if you want to see now this is another key thing about Angel Investors you want to understand what they've invested in in the past because if you understand what they've invested in the past it will make you realize whether or not your businesses are fit and it can help you also tailor your pitch to those investors Angel Investors are everywhere every restaurant you go to every time you walk down the street there'll be an angel investor walking by you you want to be ready with

your pitch and it should be a question if you had this business what would you do if you had this opportunity how would you execute on it get those Angel Investors excited about your idea Angel Investors are everywhere do not be lazy though be ready for Angel Investors in a way that means understand that angel investor get deep into what they do if you can research don't just send blank emails to hundreds of people from the links I've sent you down below instead tailor make it realize what they like to do realize what they're interested

in because the sales process of getting an angel investor is one do they like you and do you like them second is do they need you do you need them and the third step always happens the investment will come in your bank account if you follow the first two if they like you and they need you always always the third bit making it happen happens so follow this Angel Investors I'll put the links down below they're huge source of Revenue and there's millions of them number three one of the most exciting yet one of the

most under realized opportunities to help start your business with no money you probably heard it crowdfunding now crowdfunding is one of the most misunderstood parts of raising money for a business most people think that for example you need a product to go and crowd fund you don't you don't need anything to crowdfund and there are four different ways four different sty stes of crowdfunding which again I think a lot of people don't understand if you understand it you'll realize what I've been saying from the beginning of this video you don't need money to start a

business now the first one is probably best illustrated by a platform like GoFundMe we just raised $10,000 for an entrepreneur on GoFundMe and all it simply was was a video of her dream and we put it up and people 111 people decided they're going to support her strangers are going to support her and so people people think that you can only do platforms where there's no value to the person who's giving you the money not true there's a lot of amazing humans out there despite what the media have told us humans are amazing and they

want to help you you just need to make it easy for them so some people only gave $10 other people gave 50 some people went mental fell in love of her story and gave a th000 that's the way the world is the world is Kinder than you think and platforms like goam me don't expect you as the person doing the crowd funding to give anything to the person who you're crowdfunding from and you can sell on your dream people will fund you again it's happened many times for the people that I've been helping on my

videos it's a great way to get what you need now the next thing again you're going to see how all eight of these strategies tie together and this is a quick example your family and friends you might not want to ask them directly to fund you but if you do a gofund me and you let them know you're doing a Gund me they will support you again Maddie the the lady we just raised $10,000 a lot of them there were also her friends and then her friends promoted the GoFundMe link to their social networks because

a lot of the GoFundMe style raising the non-equity raising is about Community it is about asking people to help you the hardest thing in this world is to ask for help I honestly think those people that ask for help deserve the most amount of respect this is a great cool simple fun way of doing it now there's plenty of platforms out there that can help you do this I just happen to love GoFundMe they don't sponsor this video I just think it's a really good platform where people kind of understand it when they hear it

and this is a great way you don't need to sell equity in your business to raise money and you don't need a sub story to sell your business you just need a good idea that people want to support you to make happen next up product crowdfunding now you can have an idea and it does work best if it's a product you can say right I'm going to do this whiteboard but this whiteboard is going to be good and it's going to have your branding etched in it and it's going to to sing Happy Birthday to

you on your birthday whatever it is then you can say this idea you don't need to make the product you can say this idea and a good video put a camera in front of your face and record it and you can put it up on these platforms and then people can pre- this product so this product would be £10 $10 would you buy it let me know in the comments if you would buy it cuz I can make it for you the point I'm trying to make here is that's how crowdfunding works on a product

level and example sites are platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter um I'm actually right now trying to get kickstarted to sponsor us actually so if they see this video please sponsor us and the reason I want to sponsor us is because I believe this product these types of products are not explained to the public properly and I think they're great ways if you've got no money of getting prepaid for an idea you have a lot of people for example want to launch garment companies they want to have a hoodie and you can pre-sell your hoodies you

can test your Market penetration of the product you can see if how many people might order it too many people go and order all the product and then can't sell it you you can pre-order it then you know how many people will buy it and so Kickstarter Indiegogo these platforms are brilliant for this you basically don't even need a product get that out of your head that you need a finished product that's what stops you because you don't need money to do these types of things you just need an idea and you need it explained

well in a video next type of crowdfunding is basically Equity crowdfunding now there's thousands of platforms doing this now and there's all sorts of different ways to do it but the basic principle is a bit like crappy Dragon Den you can sell Equity to people but instead of having one investor that can perhaps end up like on Dragon Den taking over your company or not following through this is a community of people investing right it's not relying on one person to after the TV show go through with it you can tell I don't like Dragons

Den that much you actually can get thousands of people to invest in your business and own Equity then there's so many benefits to this I'm going to do this for help bank I'm going to do a crowdfunding campaign for help bank I want the community that are on help Bank the people that help on help Bank to own help bank then you have an army of people that care about your product as much as you do because they're Equity owners now the way that crowdfunding generally Works in this way is you go and raise money

a little bit in advance yourself again ideally back to the things I've only teaching you family and friends and so on and then you go to crowdfunding platforms and they list you now some of them are good at marketing some of them are not so good at marketing I'm going to put some links down below to a few Cedars Crow Cube they're the UK versions I put I put us and UK versions down below but the key with Equity crowdfunding is ideally you want people who are going to come in invest and I I think

the Holy Grail on this is they are users they are buyers they are customers there are people that going to engage in your business now of course if they're just straight up investors fine they'll all sit in one vehicle so you won't have thousands of shareholders you'll have one entity all the investors will go into that one entity and then they'll own 10% of your company or 15% of your company so you won't have thousands of people necessarily to manage but I would say that is also a way of building Community if once those people

have invested you can build a place where you can communicate with them whether that's WhatsApp telegram whatever it is it can be hugely powerful if you have a new product drop a new idea you want to get their feedback on that investor Community can end up being your biggest fan base the people that promote you the people that buy your product and I don't think people understand how far they can take Equity crowdfunding they're too busy thinking just about the money if you can build a commity Community around your fund raise your business I guarantee

it will be successful and again you don't need money to do this you can promote this idea to a community of investors and you don't need a lot of money to make it happen now there is a final crowdfunding option that I've never seen anyone do except us I believe that this Social Media stuff now is so powerful there's so much impact that you don't need to follow any of these platforms that are out there this is probably going to get me cancelled from Kickstarter sponsoring us so what we did recently it was a young

man pitched to our doorbell his dream was to launch a new uh nutrition Health product we posted his video up on LinkedIn and in the comments in in LinkedIn people all agreed to invest in his business and literally we just sent a link to his bank account and people put the money in the end right so social media crowdfunding again I know it's hard for people to ask for help I know it's hard to put yourself out there and be vulnerable but if you do just use social media and you'll be shocked these platforms will

all take commission these platforms will all have their ways of working and I probably just got my sponsorship deal from Kickstarter cancelled although I believe in platforms like Kickstarter for certain things but you know honestly just put it out there you know like crowdfund within your social media Community is powerful and is possible now the next three strategies I'm going to go through with you are actually how to raise hundreds of millions of US Dollars now I know when I tell you that instantly you're thinking well this isn't for me this part is so important

I wish they would teach it at school if you can just sit through this bit even though you think it's not relevant to you you'll pick up knowledge that will help you make it relevant to you later but if you don't have the knowledge now you won't be able to make it relevant to you so these three steps are how to raise 1 to 10 million how to raise 10 million to 100 million and the big one 1 billion now I know ass soon you hear those numbers you think it's not relevant to you but

you just need to quickly understand this so that it can help your business in the future as you grow it so quickly 1 to 10 million is generally what we call Super Angels so I actually have a super angel in involved in one of my businesses an investor called yatsu he's also an entrepreneur he owns his own business called Anoka he's been a friend of mine for 20 years and he is what I will call a Super Angel he's someone that has the ability to put a large amount of money of course famous ones such

as Elon and Jeff Bezos of course these people are also potentially super Angels these are people that will put 1 million 5 million 10 million into your company and not even think twice now the reason I want you to just understand that segment is because you never know you might get stuck in the lift with one of these people one day be ready maybe even plan out in your head if you could get 10 million what would you spend it on because when you're getting this sort of money people want to know what you're going

to do the money is it going to make a difference in the world how is it going to make a difference in the world how are you going to turn that 10 million into 100 million 500 million 10 billion super angels are worth thinking about because you just never know when you might come across one you never know when you might need one understand the mindset of these people is often yes a return on their investment definitely but not always most of the time shockingly billionaires can actually be pretty decent individuals and they just want

to figure out how to make their money do amazing things so think about super Angels the 10 to 100 million also not out of your reach I don't care who you are it's not out of your reach and these are super VCS Venture capitalists these are people that will be looking at buying businesses turning businesses around now VCS generally have a bad name so you got to be a little bit careful Brands like black rock for example one of my favorite Brands called oat Le they're an oat milk brand I love them and then Black

Rock invested in them they're are super VC and a lot of their customers refuse to work with them anymore cuz Black Rock invest in all sorts of weird things that people don't like so you got to be careful with this category and not get the wrong people involved but there are people sitting on 100 million right now looking to deploy it now I know it might not be relevant to you right now but I want you to know about this because it doesn't matter how big your ambition is it's possible every single day these super

VCS invest 100 million in a company so it could be you once you understand it at least you know it it's there not saying it's relevant to you now but you got to know it number six the 1 billion yep that's a b a big b IPO pre IPO now a lot of people think they need to build their business up and sell it that's the goal no you don't need to sell your business to make a lot of money you just need to build a great company and I want you to know how preo

and IPO works I'm going to put a link down below to like what is the criteria to get a business to IPO it's quite a detailed thing very elaborate thing in this video it might not seem relevant but I want you to understand it because it is relevant if you have the ambition to grow something very very very big so I'm going to just highlight these three I'm not going to go into any more detail about them I'm going to put some links down below that will help you understand more about them if you want

cuz I want to move on to what I'm really excited about strategy 7 and8 in my opinion will make you a lot of money make your business successful and I want to get straight onto those but I didn't want to miss these when it comes to raising money and for you to understand how the system works it's very important okay strategy seven and eight they're kind of linked these are my favorite things and I'm pretty sure you've never heard of them either the first one is brand Partnerships now you might think by me just describing

it brand Partnerships Brands pay you money that's it it's so much more than that my last company fluid that I built up to be one of the largest creative agencies in Asia I sold to price Waterhouse Cooper the largest accounts company in the world and that all started from a brand partnership so we just work with them to service clients and that ended up them acquiring us brand Partnerships can also throughout my career power up businesses in all sorts of ways so for example I launched a business called coaster ads which was basically advertising on

drinks coasters and I didn't want to pay for let's say samples or I didn't want to pay to do anything until I got an Advertiser so I managed to get United Airlines on board as an Advertiser from day one I charged them 50% up front which covered all my cost to launch the business so I launched a business that made2 million profit it with no money right so I'm not only telling you how to do this I've done it many times and so United Airlines were very excited about advertising on this coaster ads model that

we had where we put all these coasters in bars and restaurants the 50% deposit that I charged them for that idea for that service paid for all my cost to launch the business right people don't realize these Brands often lack Innovation they lack imagination and they need you they need you and your idea whatever it is and most of the time people don't realize these brands have money and you can get it you just need to bring value to those Brands you need to understand these brands have one simple goal the people that run them

don't want to get fired you want to bring value so they don't get fired but they get extra clients extra exposure and it doesn't really break the bank for them in other words if they lose that money it's not the end of the world so if you're looking to get $10,000 to start a business a brand can be it you get them to sponsor your event or get them to sponsor your new product or get them to pre- your product for their customers brand Partnerships a great way of launching a business with no money and

people are not tapping into it not being taught it and it's a great way Brands will work with you if you satisfy their need to make a return on their investment it's simple don't get the people fired that give you the opportunity those are the two criteria number eight I'm going to label up as co-founder you may or may not know but I started this whole platform 5 years ago and and then I launched help bank.com a platform to help people for free start a business help people for free get the knowledge they need and

have a community to help them two and a half years into this business I brought in some co-founders some people that invested in the business that helped the business that helped the business grow and they're Equity owners in the business and they work in the company now a lot of people misunderstand that if you're a Founder you have to be there from day one no that's not true not everyone can afford to be there from day one not everyone sees your vision at the beginning I had to spend 2 and half years pretty much working

on my own I had a PA helping me working on my own initially to build it up and then when I saw that it could work then I could ask people to invest co-founders to come in and partner up with a business so in other words sometimes your friends as I mentioned earlier in 0.1 2 and three your family the member of staff you're dreaming of employing there might be someone out there right now that you absolutely love but you think you can't afford them go to them as an investor as a co-founder get them

to buy equity in your IDE idea and they become a co-founder with you don't make co-founder this precious thing that only you own it's stupid it stops your business from growing go find the employee that you've always wanted I for fluid brought in someone very senior to run that company they were number two in a very very big company I told them you're never going to own equity in the company you're working in they're too shortsighted to realize they should give you Equity so come and buy equity in my company come and be a co-founder

in my company come and be a partner in my company you might be asking how how am I going to get someone who's really expensive to employ to come and work for me and pay to come and work with me now you have to remember your dream is Big your idea is inspiring you have to have those factors in there ideally have a purpose save the human race that's how El musk gets people on board he gets investors in board he gets people to come and work with them because he's not competing with NASA he's

saving the human race by populating Mars with humans so when this planet gets destroyed we don't die you don't want to go work for him you don't want to go invest in him you don't own equity in a platform like that you have to think big you have to help the people that are going to join you think big and the truth is most people out there are working for dumbass companies who don't give them Equity who only allow them to earn money from their time and time is not scalable you sell the dream you

have to sell to these people that yes they're spending money to come and invest in your business to come and work with you but they will make a difference to their lives make a difference to the world that's how you get these people on board you have to think so why not think big I hope you got a lot of value from this video I'm starving I'm going to go get some chicken now if you did get value let me know in the comments you guys are awesome go out there and make your dream happen