How to start your own business UK. Starting a business from home with no money.
Tired of working for someone else?
Want to start building towards your own dreams and not someone else’s?
Then it might be time to start thinking about how to start your own business UK.
Maybe you want to start a business just as a side or passion project, or you want it to free you from a 9 to 5 type of job.
Whatever the reason, it has never been a better time to start your own business UK or anywhere in the world.
Have you heard of the internet? It’s been around for a while.
Well, the internet has made starting your own business much easier.
Find out how starting your own business might help you reach wealth, health and happiness much faster than you previously thought.
Be clear on your Why.
If you were going to set up your own business of whatever size, what are your goals for it?
- To earn some side income
- Learn new skills
- Take forward a passion project
- To help people overcome something
- Make enough money to make work optional one day
Being clear on the purpose of your business will make carrying it out through the good times and bad much easier.
Just to make money is rarely going to be a good enough reason.
Being clear on what you want the money to do for you will help a lot.
It might be material things, but it will likely also be for lifestyle, career and relationship reasons.
Giving you the lifestyle you want
A meaningful and challenging career work-life balance.
Giving you the time and space to work and be around the people you want the most, including spending more time not working.
Finding your why may also help identify what sort of business is right for you.
Think about your personal success habits and behaviors
It’s not just going to be about whether your business idea is a good one or not – obviously, that really helps.
But it’s going to be about how you make it happen.
What will be your habits and process for success?
- Eating and sleeping well
- Seeking out people to help you
- Continuous learning
- Tracking the right things – like cash flow
Understanding your personal success formula will help a lot in making the journey a lot smoother.
If you know you tend to be lazy, get bored quickly, or hate it when you get things wrong, what can you put in place to ensure they don’t guarantee your failure?
You can only really fail if you give up.
Persistence, patience and processes are likely to be part of your success formula.
What problem will you solve?
You might find yourself thinking, “I want to start a business but have no ideas.”
Well, you might be surprised by how many ideas you can come up with by answering a few simple questions.
- What are you good at?
- What do you like doing?
- What does the world need?
- What will people pay you for?
These questions will help you clarify what type of business you would like to undertake and have the most impact.
Starting your own business can be tricky enough never mind trying to start something:
- You’re not very good at
- You don’t like doing
- Nobody needs it
- No one wants to pay you for it
If you are going to start your own business, make sure it’s something you can see yourself enjoying.
Yes, there will be days that you don’t particularly enjoy, but if you are at least enjoying most of it, it’s going to be much easier to take the ups and downs.
2 other questions that might help you formulate some ideas
- what problem/s are you going to solve?
- Who do you think has these problems?
If you’re not sure what problems people have, start with your own.
- What things annoy you and you wish you had, or even better, you know of a solution?
- What pain do you want to move away from and towards pleasure?
And pretty importantly, what will be your solution to those problems.
Finally, how will people get access to whatever you offer?
- Will you have a physical or digital presence?
Both of these have their advantages and disadvantages depending on your business.
However, a digital business has much lower overheads and makes it easier to sell to people worldwide and not just those that walk past.
How to start a business with no money
One of the main blockages to people starting a business is the belief that it will or needs to cost a lot of money.
The costs that many people believe they need to save or borrow for can include
- Premises
- Stationary – business cards etc
- Stock or whatever it is you’re going to sell
- A website
- And on and on
But you don’t have to incur any of these costs if you don’t want or need to.
You can sell to nearly anyone in the world (who has the internet also) at no or very little cost.
A few of the platforms that allow you to market, advertise and sell to people for free in various ways include
- Youtube
- Google my business
Some of the above allow you to set up a specific business page, but they all allow you to start communicating with your audience for free.
A good idea is to figure out where your ideal client’s hangout and then master that platform rather than trying to do them all
Figure out how people will find you
The advantage of an online business is that anyone can find you.
However, they can also find other people and be distracted by thousands of other companies and cat videos.
Why would someone click on your business page?
How will they know you solve their problem?
How will they know you exist?
If you are figuring out how to start your own business with no money, then a few of the methods below might help with attracting clients
- Blogging– writing articles about your offer or the problems people have and your solution
- Youtube – talking about and showing your solution/s with videos
- Twitter – showcasing your solution in 280 characters
- Instagram – showcasing your offer in pictures
Quite a bit of the above comes down to understanding SEO – Search engine optimisation and searcher intent, i.e., what they are looking for and what they want to do with it.
SEO is a larger topic for another day, though.
Thinking about how people will find you will help you understand what skills you might need to develop and or look for help in.
You can also set up a free or inexpensive landing page.
This is a one-page website which explains what you do and how to buy or find out more.
Worry about an all-singing dancing website later; get the one page up and get traffic to it.
Figure out how people will pay you.
Taking payments from people who you have provided a great service is really easy now.
Payment services like the ones below can take payments anytime, anywhere and in any currency.
- Paypal
- Stripe
- Klarna
- Payoneer
- Amazon pay
- Shopify
- Etsy
- Upwork
- Fiverr
The above services do charge fees, but these usually come out of the payments you get depending on your account type.
Which service is the right one for you depends on a combination of the services you want and their cost, given the number of transactions you may have.
Don’t agonise over which one, though; start now get perfect later.
Don’t be afraid of competition
The upside of competition is that it’s telling you there are many buyers out there.
The downside is that your competition shows what good looks like – which is also pretty helpful.
Don’t try and just be the cheapest. That may be a race to the bottom.
Try and compete on service and making customers happy.
Think about your obstacles now (but not too much)
When you’re thinking about how to start your own business, you might come up with numerous reasons why it won’t work or that are holding you back from starting.
Whenever you come to a roadblock, try and think of at least 3 ways around it
Some common questions or roadblocks
- I don’t know how to do x?
- Where would I find Y?
Some common answers to the above (most of which are free)
- Google it
- Youtube it
- Find a podcast on it
- Find a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whatever group on it
- Find a book on it
- Find someone who has done it and ask them (this could be free or might involve some money; it depends on how painful the question is and how quickly you want it resolved)
Thinking about your obstacles
Try this mantra.
It can work, and I can find a way to make it work.
The key is finding a way to make it work; it just might be different to how you initially envisaged it.
It might even take a few dead ends and failures learning opportunities, but it can work, and you can find a way to make it work.
Please don’t spend too much time thinking about obstacles, though, as this may cause you to freeze with fear.
Start now get perfect later.
When is the best time to start your own business?
Probably 10 years ago, you would have made a load of mistakes and learned from them, but today could be the next best time!
Your life circumstances and levels of risk you can take maybe a steer on if now a good time is, but it’s a bit like asking when the best time is to have kids – never! You just have to get on with it sometimes.
Recessions etc, shouldn’t be an indicator if it is a good time or not. If you can start a business in a recession, imagine what it will be like in the good times!
Having an eye on your monthly needs and how quickly they need to be covered might help hint at a good time.
- Do you have an emergency fund in place?
- How long can you go without a sale?
- Do you have other sources of income you can fall back on?
If you have a 9-5 job covering your bills, then the risk of starting a side hustle might be a lot lower for you.
It works or doesn’t work as quickly as you thought it would be managed better if you have other sources of income to fall back on.
The best time is probably now; you never know when or if it will get any better.
Cash flow is king
Think profit first.
Understand your numbers so that you know what is going out and coming in.
Quick hint you want more coming in than going out.
How much money to do you want or need to make? This loops back to what the business is for a bit of pocket money to change lifestyle.
Once you have a mixture of the above, what your competition is doing and what value you are bringing to your customers, you can start to charge what you need or want.
You will only know what people will pay when you ask your ideal client if they will pay it.
If you are starting your business from home with no money keeping an eye on your costs will be critical criteria for success in the short and long term.
Worry about these things later
Tax, yes, you need to make sure you are keeping some money aside for this.
But only once you are earning money.
If you are not earning anything, tax is not your problem yet.
Registering your name, logo etc. etc. – if you think you have intellectual property rights issues, then registering may be necessary, but if it’s just you, then just getting started might be your best course of action.
Maybe you will want to secure the website and social names, but this can be done for free or very inexpensively.
Logos, business cards etc. etc these are all a distraction at the beginning.
Business cards – really!
Sell something first them worry about this stuff if you even really need it at all.
How we can help
By the way, if you would like to start a business to help you become financially free one day, this is what we do in our GAME Plan process.
Helping you understand your goals, the actions you need to take, what means you have and need to create, including business assets and your plan to execute all of this.
If you would like to find out more about how to start your own business UK set up your clarity call through this link.
Here is a link to some of the best books for online business and how to start a side hustle with no money.
Summary: How to start your own business UK. Starting a business from home with no money.
If you want to get some extra income, pursue that passion project or leave your 9-5, then starting your own business might be the way to make it happen.
Start with why you want a business, and this will help make sure it covers your most important values and goals.
Starting your own business is also about knowing what your success habits and behaviours will look like. Learning how to be your own best ally will help make the good and bad times more manageable.
Starting with no money is possible by using free platforms like google my business, Facebook, and LinkedIn to market and showcase your offering. With time an inexpensive website is also within reach.
Learning how these platforms work will also make sure that people can find you. Knowing a little bit of SEO will help you to pop up on people’s search queries.
Don’t worry about competition its shows you there are buyers out there and lets you know what your competition does well and not so well.
Think about your obstacles now not to paralyze you but to give you a head start on how to resolve them and where to find the answers you need.
When is the best time to start your own business? When everything in your personal and work life is perfect – the next best time is now.
Cash flow is king – make sure you track what is going on and that more is coming in than going out. If it’s not, then having a plan for dealing with this in the short and long term will be critical.
Worry about trivia later. No one cares if you have business cards or not. Just ask for their card or email and stay in contact that way.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on how to start your own business UK. Let me know yours in the comments below.
A few of the best books on starting your own business
Life and Financial Planning
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