How to Start a Business with No Money
By Mark Baird

Some of us need to work for ourselves. Some of us choose to work for ourselves. Do you cringe at being a supervised “employee?” Are you at your most energetic, alive, creative and productive when you are given full responsibility and leadership?  Do you take tremendous pride in your work? Everything we do is a reflection and radiance of our being.  Excellent work is a product of our intrinsic character?  Do you enjoy working?

Do you seek challenges?  Do you, like a cork in water, always go straight for the top? Is striving to be the very best at what ever you do a part of your nature? – Achieving the summit of every penultimate peak, inevitably, requires focus, complete commitment and endurance. Success comes when the passion of one’s desire is equal to the effort exerted. Are you motivated by the challenge of being a successful, independent business owner? 

Do you also care about other people? Loving ones neighbor as ones self is just sound, practical advice. Nothing good can come from doing otherwise. Is always giving an honest day’s labor for an honest day’s wage, and vice-versa, something you feel compelled to do? -- Honoring clients by providing the same or better quality and service that you would provide for yourself is the golden key to establishing a thriving enterprise. Entrepreneurs in it only for the money rarely succeed, and never for long. -- A purpose greater than your self must motivate you.

If you are similar person, then looking into being a business owner is probably the perfect move for you.

Starting with Zero

Unfortunately, there are people who possess the personal attributes necessary for entrepreneurial success; but, they have no personal finances available to get their dream started.  If this is you, then getting loans and investors probably will not be feasible.  By necessity, you must start with $0 and grow from there.

I got married at 19 and had a kid when I was 21. I was a high school drop out, living on welfare and food stamps. -- I wanted to work and sometimes was given a job; but, these jobs never paid nearly enough for me to support my family. I was a salesman for several companies. I was a janitor at a hospital. I was a gardener’s assistant. I dug ditches for the water district. I cleaned cages for a vet. But I never made enough. I know what deep poverty is.

“Necessity is the Mother of invention.” “For every problem there is a solution.” “Seek and ye shall find.”  “The reward does not go to the swiftest but to he who endures until the end.” – These are some mottos to live by when starting out.

Someone at church gave us a vacuum when they noticed that we did not have one. As I was vacuuming our apartment, the thought came to me: Who else needs their carpets vacuumed and floors cleaned? Then later that day, I was in a restaurant and I saw the owner. “Who vacuums your carpets? I asked. She asked me to sit down and I told her how I wanted to earn extra money at night. I walked out a few minutes later with my first janitorial account. For $500 a month, I was to come to her large restaurant and clean all the floors.  It took me about 2 hrs. and I worked 3 nights a week. So I was earning $41.66 an hour! At the department store, I had earned $2.75 an hour.

I created a bid sheet that listed several areas of general cleaning tasks Then I went around to various businesses throughout my area and spoke with the owner, Manager or Operations Officer.  Within a month, I had 12 nightly janitorial accounts. By the end of 1977, I was earning $49,000 a year. The most I had earned before that was about $8,000 a year working full time at a department store.

For 20 years afterwards, I built and then sold almost a dozen janitorial businesses. I would go out and bid for numerous buildings, using my references from current clients and get 8-10 janitorial accounts. I would then sell these accounts to people I trusted and knew to be honorable and hard working; and, who wanted an opportunity to be their own boss. I would take 25% of their income from the accounts I sold them for one year. Then they would own their own business. If they failed to pay me for any month during that time, all the money they had paid me was forfeited and all of the janitorial accounts reverted back to me. (I never had to follow through with doing this.)

 I went from working night and day, finding accounts, to having others do most of the work.

I went to the beach everyday. – Life had gotten much better. At the beach, I saw a new invention: the plastic kayak that you could sit on top of, instead of being wrapped inside of it.  I bought six and starting taking them down to the beach. Tourist and some locals paid $25 an hour to use them. Then I went to all of the local hotels and put a flier in all of their “Local Attractions” racks and tried to work out a revenue sharing contract with the larger hotels. I also sent my story, with pictures to several tourist magazines. It was published in several of them. – Using these publications as I spoke with hotel managers made me appear legitimate and more trustworthy. – In several months, I had exclusive contracts with virtually all of the hotels within my area.  But instead of continuing to run the day to day business myself, I again sold the business and the kayaks.

What is your skill? What do you enjoy doing? – More importantly: What can you do for others that they do not want to do themselves? Or: What can you offer people that they want and would have difficulty doing or supplying for themselves? – Find a need and be the answer.

Mom & Pop vs. Goliaths

There is an advantage to being a start up company. Agreements are made personally between you and the owner or manager of your business accounts. And since you are either doing or supervising the work, you have control over the quality of work performed. And always check with your new accounts every few days, then weeks, then months on how happy they are with your work. Are there areas they would like to see improved? Of course, asking these questions will insure that you keep your accounts, as long as you do good work (and they stay in business.)

Goliaths, on the other hand, are impressive in their size, capabilities and resources. But they represent themselves through sales people, who do not do any of the actual work. These companies usually are not able to guarantee quality work. They are too big to micro manage. And when their clients have complaints or extra work that needs doing, it usually gets done poorly and takes forever. 

Employees

Know this to be true: A person’s work is a reflection of them self, their inner being. You will never be able to make a person’s work improve by monetary incentives alone. A business owner’s livelihood depends upon keeping their clients happy. It is important that you train your employees thoroughly. But it also important to make them partners. Once they have proven themselves, these employees become potential buyers of your business.

Benefits and Drawbacks

If you like to be in control and if you do not need an alarm clock to get you to work and you do not need anyone to tell you how to do good work and if you are personable and able to behave professionally, then you just need one more element to be successful: Courage.

I sometimes think of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett when I think of entrepreneurs. We are true trail blazers. We find a way to succeed where others see nothing but walls. We keep going when others quit. We are a particular and a peculiar people. We believe in our selves enough to take risks.

At the beginning, you will not have any safety nets. Most start ups cannot afford medical insurance, workers comp. and luxuries as those. If we get sick, we work. For months, I cleaned 15 businesses offices 5 nights a week on a shattered ankle held together with pins.

Marriages and families also can suffer. For me to make enough to support my family, while my wife went to college, I needed to work a regular job during the day and build my janitorial business after work and during the evenings. I rarely saw my wife and daughter. But as I have grown as an entrepreneur over the years, I have been able to spend more time with my loved ones than most people. And I have had the satisfaction of employing hundreds of people and helped them support their families. I have also set up several people in their own businesses that have also employed hundreds of people.

Also, becoming successful requires personal growth. I have studied and listened to CDs and seminars of many successful people. Learn from them. Never try to re-invent the wheel.  Follow in the footsteps of those that you admire and want to emulate. Ask for advice. Seek counsel. Constantly seek to improve yourself and to expand your personal abilities. Never stop learning, reading, studying, and growing!

HirePatriots.com

In 2003, I moved to Oceanside, CA to take care of my mother-in-law who was dying from Alzheimer’s. My nephew lived in the area and I began a carpet cleaning business to help him get started in life. Our venture was just taking off when a Marine from nearby Camp Pendleton knocked on my door. “Sir,” he said. “I’ve just gotten back from Iraq and discovered that while I was away my wife’s car got repossessed and the electricity in our house has been turned off.

Do you have any work that I could do to earn some extra money?” – I gave him what I had on me and told him thanks you for his service to our country.  Then, when he left, my wife and I cried. We realized that this one Marine must represent far more who are also in serious financial difficulties. – There was a huge need! 

We began a free job posting website for residents to post jobs for local Marines: www.HirePatriots.com.  It was an immediate success! Local news, TV and radio picked up the story. A county supervisor in my area gave me a check for $25,000. I used it to hold a job fair at Camp Pendleton. Of course, I had never done anything like that before. But 2 months later, my wife and I had 127 companies from across the country attend our very first military job fair.

 We expanded our website to include full-time job postings and resumes searches.  It quickly grew to over 60,000 visitors a month. We now employ over 1000 military members and veterans every month across the United States. Currently, several major corporations are vying to become our exclusive national sponsor.

Conclusion

I did not mention in the beginning that I am handicapped with Hemophilia. I frequently get spontaneous bleeding in my joints and experience excruciating pain. I also wrestle with PTSD. But one day, I decided that my poverty, physical limitations and trauma were not impediments.

I decided that they were actually advantages. They became the wind in my sails: Motivators. They gave me clear direction for my life: Help others in my same situation. I was going to do whatever it takes to find a way out of poverty and help others escape too. I began building businesses.

I have always had one tremendous advantage: I believe that God loves me and is concerned about everything that happens to me and mine. My faith in Jesus Christ has been my Rock. And God’s wisdom in the Bible has also guided me. If you want to find life, then die to your self and live for others. All of our services to the military and veterans are free.  God’s offer is also free. Get all your sins forgiven and entry to heaven. Believe in Jesus Christ!