Great Business Opportunities with little or no capital

Great Business Opportunities with little or no capital 

Are you working and wish you could start something along the time? Do you want to explore some business opportunities while you are still in paid employment? Are you ready to try out your business skills? Then, now is the time to explore. You can run your business alongside while you keep your current employment.

Starting and running a small business is not just about working for yourself, it’s also about having the necessary management skills, industry expertise, technical skills, finance and of course a long-term vision to grow and succeed. With the economy still on track and the number of entrepreneurs on the rise, you won’t be alone if you decide to take the plunge this year.

Although thousands of employees dream of escaping the nine to five grind and become their own boss, many are still unsure of what sort of business they want to start and how they can ensure their new venture is a success.

So, I have come up with a list of different types of business you may want to start up in the next few weeks, with comprehensive advice on how to run your new firm. If you fancy being anything from an estate agent to a personal trainer, you can actually make your business profitable.

Web Hosting: This is indeed one of the easiest businesses to start right now. With little or no capital, you can pick up a reseller plan from a reliable web hosting provider from within your location. 

Web designer:  This is one niche where there is high demand right now. You only need to have the basic skills and should be able to work with PHP and MySQL. You will also be able to get many clients if you can design custom wordpress themes. The starting point is for you to create a blog for yourself to show what you can do. You may also need to join forums where you can easily market your skills to others.

Consultancy: Helping other people run their business may seem daunting at first, but many budding entrepreneurs have the skills and experience to become first class consultants.

Clothes shop: With such a wide range of clothes shops out there, you have a several options when trying to tap into this huge market.

Outside catering: Whether its catering for a major sporting event or a low-key wedding, the need for food and drink at gatherings does not go out of fashion. Find out how to set up your own catering company.

Gift shop: Boosted by the tourist trade, gift shops can be a very popular business to own. Why not get wrapped up in the idea and start up your own? Remember Valentine is around the corner. You may be able to make some money…

Driving school: Whether it took you two attempts or 20 to pass your driving test, you wouldn’t have got there without a driving instructor. If you can put up with the exams and novice drivers, this line of work can be rewarding.

Photography business: When your school photo was being taken, you probably gave little thought to the fact that the photographer would soon be off to another job, maybe a wedding, to make ends meet. If you have a passion for photography, get a clear picture of what is involved in setting up your own firm. I was involved at one time or the other in this business. If you need more help, 

Day nursery: With both parents increasingly keen to return to work after having children, day nurseries are also vital to many families who can’t afford to give up a regular income to stay at home. You really need to network and let people know that you are available for this. You are definitely going to make some money from this if you manage it well.

Restaurant: Whether you are celebrating a special occasion or just don’t fancy cooking, eating out is big business with a huge variety of restaurants now inhabiting Lagos streets. This is one business you should consider starting if you have the required capital.

I would be sharing some insights on how you can start out on your own with little capital. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, just make up your mind to do something with your time from this moment. You will succeed.

3 Reasons Why No Startup Capital is Good for Your Small Business

If you think that you need capital in order to start that small business of yours, think again. Startup money is great, but it also makes you think in sloppy ways. A shortage of available cash, on the other hand, forces you to think creatively to achieve your business goals and helps you navigate around pitfalls, which stand between you and success.

Here are 3 reasons why having no dough in the startup phase can be used to your advantage. 

1. Become A Hardened Businessperson

It’s a basic law of evolution – when your surroundings are arduous, you learn to adapt in order to survive. You can’t afford to be lazy and complacent. And so, you learn to become shrewd, resourceful and clever. You begin to think outside the box for solutions to your problems. You learn the art of taking calculated risks.

For example, when throwing a few thousand dollars on a PPC (pay per click) campaign to test market response is not an option, you might investigate options which don’t cost money and which are easy to resist (which, ironically, tend to be more effective) – like talking directly to people about their needs.

This process of struggle can be very useful in helping to dramatically sharpen your value proposition and learn skills, which will help you outmaneuver your more cashed-up, lazy, competition.

2. Avoid The Seminar Junkie Trap

Because you can’t afford to throw money around, you also become less susceptible to the sales pitches of all the so called “business gurus” out there who are just itching to sell you their “money-making secrets”, seminars and “businesses-in-a-box”.

And there’s no shortage of those. They’ll take thousands of dollars of your money and promise that ownership of your dream business is just around the corner. They’ll sell you a dream that apart from their secrets/software/products, you don’t need to do much else.  Some will even suggest to you that you can be in business even if you don’t know what problem you can solve in a marketplace and don’t have a product or an idea. 

The trap there is that you can spend a few years and many thousands of dollars, being a seminar junkie. You’ll end up knowing a lot of business theory and will probably end up owning a dozen domain names and all kinds of weird software.  

But when someone asks you about what value you deliver, you don’t know how to answer that question. 

3. Stop Being A Copycat

When starting a business, there’s a huge temptation to emulate your competitors. You may check out their websites to get “inspiration” for your own web copy. Or you look at the way they package their offerings and make yours a tad different – usually by claiming that yours is a tad better while making it a bit cheaper.

And if you have money to burn, you can pretty much copy their business model, marketing and offering – and purchase everything you need to launch your own version of their business. 

Or so it seems on the surface.

Look deeper, and you’ll see problems with this “rich guy buying his way into a marketplace” approach. The main problem is that the things you can easily replicate are rarely what gives your competitors a competitive advantage over you.

And the things you can’t easily rip off – like tested and faultless processes, culture, customer relationships style, company philosophy and IP – sit at the very heart of your competitors’ businesses – and are instrumental in their success.

Which means that if you try to buy your way into business by copying your competitors, you’ll probably end up spending a lot of money on things that don’t give you much power in the marketplace.  

In Conclusion

If you’re serious about starting a small business and you’re planning to do it with little or no startup capital, you’re going to live through a trying and potentially stressful time.

You’ll find yourself outside your comfort zone and, like most entrepreneurs, will have days where you feel like giving up.

However, this very act of building and managing a business that has little resources and can tolerate even less error, will teach you invaluable lessons.  You’ll grow as a human being and as an entrepreneur, and you’ll learn lessons that would have otherwise taken you years to learn had you had more funds.

The best part is, when you look back on your business, and compare where you were to where you are today, and you say that you created this all on your own… You slogged it out. You made your dream happen the hard way… that will be satisfaction unparalleled.