The lowdown: Learn how to start your own micro-business with The $100 Dollar Startup summary.
Have you ever thought of quitting your nine-to-five and start your own business? Maybe you’ve dreamed of the financial freedom of being a successful business owner.
It is easier than ever before to start a business. In fact, there are entrepreneurs around the world starting businesses with under $100.
Chris Guillebeau, the successful entrepreneur and host of the popular Side Hustle School (subtle brag, check out the Side Hustle School episode featuring yours truly) gives the game plan for starting your own micro-business for under $100, using examples from 50 business owners.
- Audible Audiobook
- Chris Guillebeau (Author) – Chris Guillebeau, Thomas Vincent Kelly (Narrators)
- English (Publication Language)
- 05/08/2012 (Publication Date) – Random House Audio (Publisher)
The three main lessons from The $100 Dollar Startup are
- Use your current skills even if they don’t immediately relate
- When starting small, you need to hustle for good marketing
- Action beats planning, especially in micro-businesses.
Lesson One: Use your current skills even if they don’t immediately relate
If you’re looking to start a micro-business for under $100, you obviously aren’t going to spend it all on up-skilling.
Instead, focus on utilizing what you’re already good at while you work on the other aspects of running a business.
Even if you don’t have the specific skills to run your business of choice, odds are you have related skills.
For example, Kat Alder was a London waitress who started a PR company. Kat didn’t have any of the traditional skills related to Public Relations, however being a waitress, she had incredible people skills.
These people skills helped her in the early days of her business while she learned the finer details of business.
Lesson Two: When starting small, you need to hustle for good marketing
Again, starting with $100 means that you can’t be slashing the cash around on Facebook ads and hoping shit works out.
Instead, you’ll have to get creative with your marketing.
That means that you should at least start blogging at the very least.
But along with blogging, you should look to hustle your way into effective marketing.
That means that you’ll have to reach out to others and offer value.
Try collaborating with similar businesses, contacting journalists, guest blogging on other websites… Whatever you can do to get your name out there.
Hustling for your initial marketing will generate far better results than paid advertising at a much cheaper price.
You can also gift your offer to potential customers and other stakeholders to get the word out about your product or service.
For example, John Morefield was an unemployed architect who offered “5-cent architectural advice” at a local farmers market. People were so impressed that they started hiring him on the spot. His story was even picked up by local news programs which lead to even more work.
So, if you’re starting small, hustle your way to good marketing.
Lesson Three: Action beats planning, especially in micro-businesses
So many businesses suffer an early death by over-planning.
The thing is, when starting out, if you spend too much time planning, you don’t have enough time to take action.
If you’re planning a micro-business or any startup for that matter, taking action and
Far too many want-to-be entrepreneurs spend their time making complicated plans that they never actually put into place.
Because without action, your ideas are useless.
So, don’t be the person.
Rather than over plan and underact, you should look to create simple basic plans that guide your way and take action on them, adjusting your course as you see fit.
My Personal Takeaway
What I love about this book is that while it a how-to guide for someone starting their side business, there is plenty that I can still take away as someone who is already in business.
I know that I should take some of these marketing tips from the book for my own business. The added networking benefits you get from hustling to get your name out there is worth the hassle alone. Collaborating with other like-minded business owners is a great way to learn more and open doors.
Put it into action
To fully capture the idea of minimum planning and maximum action, re-write your business mission statement.
But don’t just re-write the statement, make sure it is under 140 characters.
Why? To make sure that you have a memorable phrase that you can use to guide what you do.
Narrowing down your mission statement will also make sure you get rid of all the buzzword bullshit that plagues corporate mission statements.
Rather than only being a page of your website, your mission statement should be the northern star for your business.
You should consider buying this book if…
This book is obviously the ideal read for anybody looking to start their own business on the cheap. If you are working a nine-to-five and looking at starting a business, then The $100 Dollar Startup is the perfect companion.
Or, read our other business book summaries.
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a Swedish university student, marketing professional, and life-long learner. Here at BookSummaryClub I summarize my favorite non-fiction books into easily digested posts. Hope you like what you’re reading!
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