mosessaloe
New member
This is an excerpt from Forbes billionaire Chris Kelsey:
To me, being an entrepreneur is like MacGyvre, an 80s action TV show where the main character would always use the things around him to escape from his enemies. He’s the type of character that would turn a dildo into a grenade launcher to blow a hole out of the prison wall, then use the bricks as body armor to protect himself from the onslaught of 100+ police officers shooting at him and actually survive.
The art of entrepreneurship is the ability to use the limited resources around you to build something greater than you could’ve ever imagined. Whether it’s leveraging Facebook, Reddit, or Youtube, if you provide something of true value, your business will speak for itself.
In this article, I specifically want to discuss how to start with no money andstillmanageto build wealth in the right way. This formula will allow you to earn the money you’ve always wanted to earn and use it to fulfill your greatest dreams and beyond. I will explain my points by using my personal experiences. By the way, I’m never going to sell a book (I’ll only give them away for free).
Phase I: Starting Out with $0
When I dropped out of high school, I had $10,000 saved up (it was entirely money I made myself) from some methods that, while they didn’t really harm anyone, were not completely legitimate. Now, the goal of this article is to focus on building legitimate businesses, therefore I will save the experiences I did to earn this initial $10,000 for another post.
With that being said, I didn’t spend any of my savings to start my first legitimate business, Appsitude. I was afraid to invest any significant amount of money in any business idea because I was worried the $10,000 I saved up would disappear quickly. As the story goes, I dropped out of high school in December 2014 and posted craigslist ads offering app development services (with no knowledge of how to code).
Within 2 weeks of posting my first ad I’d gotten my first client for $16,500, with $7,500 paid upfront. I used some of this initial $7,500 to pay for developers in India and a designer. They completed the project and within three months I had around $100,000 worth of contracts (that were paid out over the course of the year and early 2016).
When you start any business idea, I highly recommend you do something that costs very little to start. If you can make it succeed organically on its own (without paying money for ads, etc.), then you have a great potential business. Now when I say don’t spend any money, if you feel the need to have a website landing page or the sorts, it’s okay to spend that $50 (or more) to get it going. I’m not saying refrain from spending any money. My only point is that you should spend as little as possible to validate the concept.
My point is that you should test the idea by offering the service/product to others as if it’s already been made to test their reactions. A friend of mine told me that he “pretended” to have a painting company and ended up getting £300 painting gig for 2 hours of work. This is a great example of a test on a small scale.
Now imagine that my friend began marketing his services on Craigslist and other relevant sites. He could then start getting more gigs and begin contracting them out to other painters while making a nice margin (without doing the painting himself). This is the exact model I had for Appsitude.
I started an app development company because it was a validated market where I knew I could get contracts that were almost risk-free for me (since I only had to spend money if I earned money).
I didn’t want to build my own app and try to make it viral because I knew that it’d be expensive (relative to the $10,000 I had saved up) and very difficult to do since I felt that it wasn’t my path. If you have a lot of money saved up, it does not mean you should spend a lot of money just to get a business going. I’ve found that the most successful businesses are the ones that originally started with minimum capital.
For example, you may look at certain video game companies announcing their skyrocketing sales and all of a sudden everyone assumes it means the company is doing well. At the end of the day, profit is the only thing that matters (if you want to make it succeed). It doesn’t matter if you sold $50m copies of your video game if you spent $65m to build it. Another example is of the many startups that have raised ridiculous sums of money (which often lie about how much they raised) and focus on gaining users rather than profit. At the end of the day, receiving investments in your company is still considered a profit if it means you have earned new money to accomplish what you want.
Despite what I just said, I do plan to start a video game company at the end of the year and I want to make all of the games completely free (although extremely amazing and high-quality). I will “lose” millions of dollars but I’m willing to make the sacrifice in order to bring amazing fun for everyone and myself. So, as I’m saying, do
Phase II: Now You Have Money
Once you’ve started your first business that has been reasonably profitable, you will likely start thinking of ways to make your business grow larger or pursue other ideas.
When Appsitude starting making hundreds of thousands of dollars, I began realizing that, while it was a profitable business, I wanted to follow my passion. This turned out to be Cazza, my 3D printing construction startup.
I used the leftover funds from Appsitude to invest in designing our new technology for Cazza. In March 2017 we’d started really running out of money (since I stopped working on Appsitude at the time) and thankfully we received our first 100k investment.
Since I’d already made money before starting Cazza, it allowed me to understand the principles I needed to follow for any potential business I wanted to start. I always spent as little as I could on Cazza to maximize our results and not run out of money. As you may know, I ended up losing most of the funding after my ex-business partner stole it, but that isn’t a big deal because I always bounce back. The main point of Phase II is that once you have some experience and feel confident enough to invest your hard-earned money into a new idea (that requires money to get it going), you should do so.
I’ve heard so many stories of people earning a lot of money in a random field, whether investment banking or something else, and they go invest a lot of their money in a shitty idea. They waste millions of dollars on a business concept that could’ve been validated for $1,000. You cannot lie to yourself if your business model is not going to work. You must also remember that just because your business hasn’t taken off yet, it doesn’t mean it never will.
It is up to you to decide whether or not your business idea will eventually succeed. I launched the first version of Kelsey Coin in January and it had almost no users. Even as of writing this article today, we only have 51 users. The total investment was around $25,000 for building all of the platforms I want, and I still have not yet made a profit. The thing is, I don’t care because I know that this business model requires certain things to be achieved before it will take off. Kelsey Coin alone, while amazing, depends on Black Market World and World Home (which gives more places to use Kelsey Coin) in order to gain a larger following. Until these two other platforms are launched, Kelsey Coin will not become the massive success that it will soon become.
There are also certain industries that are a lot harder to get into than others. Unless you feel really confident in your ability to market music and make money from it, entering the music industry (even as a label) is very difficult. The reason I say this is because it is very possible to do well, but there are far more things you must do in order to make a profit. I look at the music industry as this: the artist will get paid for shows, endorsements, and a cut from the amount of people that listen to the artist’s music on places like Spotify. Now, unless you manage to make massively viral videos like 6ix9ine, it will be very hard to make a lot of money in the music industry. 6ix9ine is a 6-figure artist who does well for himself although it can be hard to stay at the top without doing certain things for attention. I have a lot of respect for 6ix9ine and I fully support everything he’s said on the news, even if it was for trolling/attention. Why? Because I’ve done the same.
Now keep in mind, the other issue with the music industry is that you have to continuously make hit songs that justify people paying you $30,000 for one show. Of course you can leave a legacy where old songs you made 10 years ago bring money in today, but it’s not the best way to depend on remaining financially successful. At the same time, the music industry is filled with leeches who want to take a cut of every dollar you make. This is the same as other industries, but in my personal experience, the music and movie industries are quite vicious.
I’m entering the music industry (and soon film industry) but I’m doing it out of my passion rather than trying to make money. When I say this, of course I’m not saying it’s bad to make money from the music industry, I am just specifically saying that I personally don’t care to make money from it.
The thing is, once my music does take off, it will help my other businesses earn more money, so it always positively affects me in other ways even if I don’t earn money from Spotify plays or shows. Although, if someone is adamant they want to pay me for a show, I won’t say no.
At the end of the day, you must always face the realities of the business you are in. You should always keep a positive attitude, but don’t blind yourself from the truth. One of my friends has a million-dollar revenue “blockchain” company. He knows that the hype of blockchain will soon disappear. Instead of lying to himself that the business will always continue to make the same amount of money it does now, he is already preparing himself for the next stage of his business and other ideas along the way (because he’s smart).
Phase III: The World Is Yours
Everyone knows the reason Tony Montana falls apart is because he didn’t donate to charity.
Once you have all of the money you could’ve ever wanted and more, it’s time to give back (and even before then it’s nice to give back). I never realized how much money can make people happy. In November 2017 I went out with my friends from Canada and we talked to random homeless people in Hollywood. We listened to their stories and gave them help if they needed. It completely changed my life.
I realized that a lot (not all) of homeless people are more normal than I thought. It gave me a very positive outlook on the world because I realized that very soon we will be able to completely end poverty. When I first began Cazza, I knew we’d be able to reduce construction costs and help build proper housing for everyone in the world. The difference is that I didn’t realize how big of an impact it would be until I met the actual people I’d soon be helping.
There will be a certain stage in your life where you will begin to see beyond money. A lot of broke people like to say that my life is surrounded by money but this is an ignorant statement. They assume that because I’ve become financially successful, my life only revolves around my net worth. The irony is that I am one of the least materialistic people on the planet and I could lose every material thing to day and not have a care. As I said on another post, I know this to be true because it has already happened to me. I won’t go into details of the things I’ve done for people even after I lost it all, but I know one day they will tell others what occurred. I don’t care about having my name as the person who is “oh so generous,” I simply want people to know that if I can be generous while on my last dime, so can they.
At the end of the day we are all humans and we have to work together to continue bringing a beautiful future for the world. There will be a day where people no longer feel the need to screw other people over because they won’t feel desperate for money. I believe, this day will come sooner than any of us imagine.
To me, being an entrepreneur is like MacGyvre, an 80s action TV show where the main character would always use the things around him to escape from his enemies. He’s the type of character that would turn a dildo into a grenade launcher to blow a hole out of the prison wall, then use the bricks as body armor to protect himself from the onslaught of 100+ police officers shooting at him and actually survive.
The art of entrepreneurship is the ability to use the limited resources around you to build something greater than you could’ve ever imagined. Whether it’s leveraging Facebook, Reddit, or Youtube, if you provide something of true value, your business will speak for itself.
In this article, I specifically want to discuss how to start with no money andstillmanageto build wealth in the right way. This formula will allow you to earn the money you’ve always wanted to earn and use it to fulfill your greatest dreams and beyond. I will explain my points by using my personal experiences. By the way, I’m never going to sell a book (I’ll only give them away for free).
Phase I: Starting Out with $0
When I dropped out of high school, I had $10,000 saved up (it was entirely money I made myself) from some methods that, while they didn’t really harm anyone, were not completely legitimate. Now, the goal of this article is to focus on building legitimate businesses, therefore I will save the experiences I did to earn this initial $10,000 for another post.
With that being said, I didn’t spend any of my savings to start my first legitimate business, Appsitude. I was afraid to invest any significant amount of money in any business idea because I was worried the $10,000 I saved up would disappear quickly. As the story goes, I dropped out of high school in December 2014 and posted craigslist ads offering app development services (with no knowledge of how to code).
Within 2 weeks of posting my first ad I’d gotten my first client for $16,500, with $7,500 paid upfront. I used some of this initial $7,500 to pay for developers in India and a designer. They completed the project and within three months I had around $100,000 worth of contracts (that were paid out over the course of the year and early 2016).
When you start any business idea, I highly recommend you do something that costs very little to start. If you can make it succeed organically on its own (without paying money for ads, etc.), then you have a great potential business. Now when I say don’t spend any money, if you feel the need to have a website landing page or the sorts, it’s okay to spend that $50 (or more) to get it going. I’m not saying refrain from spending any money. My only point is that you should spend as little as possible to validate the concept.
My point is that you should test the idea by offering the service/product to others as if it’s already been made to test their reactions. A friend of mine told me that he “pretended” to have a painting company and ended up getting £300 painting gig for 2 hours of work. This is a great example of a test on a small scale.
Now imagine that my friend began marketing his services on Craigslist and other relevant sites. He could then start getting more gigs and begin contracting them out to other painters while making a nice margin (without doing the painting himself). This is the exact model I had for Appsitude.
I started an app development company because it was a validated market where I knew I could get contracts that were almost risk-free for me (since I only had to spend money if I earned money).
I didn’t want to build my own app and try to make it viral because I knew that it’d be expensive (relative to the $10,000 I had saved up) and very difficult to do since I felt that it wasn’t my path. If you have a lot of money saved up, it does not mean you should spend a lot of money just to get a business going. I’ve found that the most successful businesses are the ones that originally started with minimum capital.
For example, you may look at certain video game companies announcing their skyrocketing sales and all of a sudden everyone assumes it means the company is doing well. At the end of the day, profit is the only thing that matters (if you want to make it succeed). It doesn’t matter if you sold $50m copies of your video game if you spent $65m to build it. Another example is of the many startups that have raised ridiculous sums of money (which often lie about how much they raised) and focus on gaining users rather than profit. At the end of the day, receiving investments in your company is still considered a profit if it means you have earned new money to accomplish what you want.
Despite what I just said, I do plan to start a video game company at the end of the year and I want to make all of the games completely free (although extremely amazing and high-quality). I will “lose” millions of dollars but I’m willing to make the sacrifice in order to bring amazing fun for everyone and myself. So, as I’m saying, do
Phase II: Now You Have Money
Once you’ve started your first business that has been reasonably profitable, you will likely start thinking of ways to make your business grow larger or pursue other ideas.
When Appsitude starting making hundreds of thousands of dollars, I began realizing that, while it was a profitable business, I wanted to follow my passion. This turned out to be Cazza, my 3D printing construction startup.
I used the leftover funds from Appsitude to invest in designing our new technology for Cazza. In March 2017 we’d started really running out of money (since I stopped working on Appsitude at the time) and thankfully we received our first 100k investment.
Since I’d already made money before starting Cazza, it allowed me to understand the principles I needed to follow for any potential business I wanted to start. I always spent as little as I could on Cazza to maximize our results and not run out of money. As you may know, I ended up losing most of the funding after my ex-business partner stole it, but that isn’t a big deal because I always bounce back. The main point of Phase II is that once you have some experience and feel confident enough to invest your hard-earned money into a new idea (that requires money to get it going), you should do so.
I’ve heard so many stories of people earning a lot of money in a random field, whether investment banking or something else, and they go invest a lot of their money in a shitty idea. They waste millions of dollars on a business concept that could’ve been validated for $1,000. You cannot lie to yourself if your business model is not going to work. You must also remember that just because your business hasn’t taken off yet, it doesn’t mean it never will.
It is up to you to decide whether or not your business idea will eventually succeed. I launched the first version of Kelsey Coin in January and it had almost no users. Even as of writing this article today, we only have 51 users. The total investment was around $25,000 for building all of the platforms I want, and I still have not yet made a profit. The thing is, I don’t care because I know that this business model requires certain things to be achieved before it will take off. Kelsey Coin alone, while amazing, depends on Black Market World and World Home (which gives more places to use Kelsey Coin) in order to gain a larger following. Until these two other platforms are launched, Kelsey Coin will not become the massive success that it will soon become.
There are also certain industries that are a lot harder to get into than others. Unless you feel really confident in your ability to market music and make money from it, entering the music industry (even as a label) is very difficult. The reason I say this is because it is very possible to do well, but there are far more things you must do in order to make a profit. I look at the music industry as this: the artist will get paid for shows, endorsements, and a cut from the amount of people that listen to the artist’s music on places like Spotify. Now, unless you manage to make massively viral videos like 6ix9ine, it will be very hard to make a lot of money in the music industry. 6ix9ine is a 6-figure artist who does well for himself although it can be hard to stay at the top without doing certain things for attention. I have a lot of respect for 6ix9ine and I fully support everything he’s said on the news, even if it was for trolling/attention. Why? Because I’ve done the same.
Now keep in mind, the other issue with the music industry is that you have to continuously make hit songs that justify people paying you $30,000 for one show. Of course you can leave a legacy where old songs you made 10 years ago bring money in today, but it’s not the best way to depend on remaining financially successful. At the same time, the music industry is filled with leeches who want to take a cut of every dollar you make. This is the same as other industries, but in my personal experience, the music and movie industries are quite vicious.
I’m entering the music industry (and soon film industry) but I’m doing it out of my passion rather than trying to make money. When I say this, of course I’m not saying it’s bad to make money from the music industry, I am just specifically saying that I personally don’t care to make money from it.
The thing is, once my music does take off, it will help my other businesses earn more money, so it always positively affects me in other ways even if I don’t earn money from Spotify plays or shows. Although, if someone is adamant they want to pay me for a show, I won’t say no.
At the end of the day, you must always face the realities of the business you are in. You should always keep a positive attitude, but don’t blind yourself from the truth. One of my friends has a million-dollar revenue “blockchain” company. He knows that the hype of blockchain will soon disappear. Instead of lying to himself that the business will always continue to make the same amount of money it does now, he is already preparing himself for the next stage of his business and other ideas along the way (because he’s smart).
Phase III: The World Is Yours
Everyone knows the reason Tony Montana falls apart is because he didn’t donate to charity.
Once you have all of the money you could’ve ever wanted and more, it’s time to give back (and even before then it’s nice to give back). I never realized how much money can make people happy. In November 2017 I went out with my friends from Canada and we talked to random homeless people in Hollywood. We listened to their stories and gave them help if they needed. It completely changed my life.
I realized that a lot (not all) of homeless people are more normal than I thought. It gave me a very positive outlook on the world because I realized that very soon we will be able to completely end poverty. When I first began Cazza, I knew we’d be able to reduce construction costs and help build proper housing for everyone in the world. The difference is that I didn’t realize how big of an impact it would be until I met the actual people I’d soon be helping.
There will be a certain stage in your life where you will begin to see beyond money. A lot of broke people like to say that my life is surrounded by money but this is an ignorant statement. They assume that because I’ve become financially successful, my life only revolves around my net worth. The irony is that I am one of the least materialistic people on the planet and I could lose every material thing to day and not have a care. As I said on another post, I know this to be true because it has already happened to me. I won’t go into details of the things I’ve done for people even after I lost it all, but I know one day they will tell others what occurred. I don’t care about having my name as the person who is “oh so generous,” I simply want people to know that if I can be generous while on my last dime, so can they.
At the end of the day we are all humans and we have to work together to continue bringing a beautiful future for the world. There will be a day where people no longer feel the need to screw other people over because they won’t feel desperate for money. I believe, this day will come sooner than any of us imagine.