The #$100 Startup - Chris Guillebeau | Summarised Books

The $100 StartUp : Reinvent The Way You Make A Living,  Do What You Love, And Create A New Future

Make your business about helping others and it won’t have any problem growing

The reason almost 90% of all startups fail to thrive today is that entrepreneurs often fall into the trap of making products or offering services that nobody wants. Once most people have a big idea and enough resources, they immediately set up a business without first taking the time to identify a market need for their products.

The truth is, when it comes to building your way to freedom by starting a business that is based on skill, hobby, or passion, there is only one key principle: find out what people want and then find a way to give it to them. If you make this principle the foundation of your business, you’re destined for success. However, if you start your business fumbling along, uncertain whether your big idea will resonate with customers, then you’re simply setting yourself up for failure.

To plot your way towards freedom, to create a business that will thrive, you must be able to give something that can add value to people. Chris Guillebeau defined value as something desirable and of worth, created through exchange or effort.

When considering starting a business, if you begin with the main aim of helping people, then you’re on the right track. Even when you get stuck as you continue to grow the business, all you have to do is ask yourself: How can I give more value? Or more simply: How can I help my customers more?

Ultimately, a business succeeds because of the value it provides its end-users, customers, or clients. The main goal of starting your own business is personal freedom, and the only way to get that freedom for yourself is by providing value for others.

Moreover, we humans are emotional beings; and more than anything else, value relates to emotional needs. A lot of business owners talk about their work in terms of the features it offers, but it’s much more powerful to talk about the benefits customers receive. This will appeal to the emotions of the customers and make them realize how greatly that product or service will benefit them.

For instance, if you make wedding dresses and bridal accessories, instead of giving your company a fact-based description like “Wedding dresses and accessories,” give an emotion-based promise such as “Feel special on your big day.”

A feature is descriptive —“These clothes fit well and look nice” — and a benefit is the value someone receives from the item in question — “These clothes make you feel healthy and attractive”.

By default, we tend to talk about features, but since most purchases are emotional decisions, it’s much more persuasive to talk about benefits. In essence, the more your business can focus on core benefits instead of boring features, the more customers will connect, and the easier it will be to profit from your ideas.

So how do you identify what customers really want? According to Chris Guillebeau, humans are very simple and generally want more of some things and less of others.

We want more of things such as love, money, acceptance, and free time. And we want less of things such as stress, long commutes, bad relationships, anxiety, and debts.

Let the main goal of your business be to improve people’s lives by either adding something new and appealing or removing something stressful. If your business focuses on giving people more of what they want or taking away something they don’t want (or both), then it’s bound to thrive.

To get paid doing what you love, you must connect it to what other people want

It all sounds so simple: Pick something you love and build a business around it, and you’ll be smiling to the bank in no time. But is it really that easy? The truth is, not just any passion can be turned into a paycheck — there are plenty of things you may be passionate about that no one will pay you for.

You might like to eat pizza, for instance, but no matter how passionate you are, it’s highly unlikely you could craft a career around your love for mushrooms and black olives. Instead, you have to find something more interesting to the rest of the world.

Many successful follow-your-passion business owners understand an important principle that aspiring and unsuccessful business owners don’t. And it’s this critical point: you usually don’t get paid for your hobby itself; you get paid for helping other people pursue the hobby or for something indirectly related to it.

For instance, Chris Guillebeau started his writing career by sharing stories about his quest to visit every country in the world, but he didn’t get paid for that. Before he started making money, he had to find a way to create value with his passion for travel. Chris understands that without real value, he wouldn’t get paid, and traveling would be just a passionate hobby.

In addition to passion, you must develop a skill that provides a solution to a problem. Only when passion merges with a skill that other people value can you truly follow your passion to the bank. Here is a simple formula for carving a new life for yourself with your passion:

So, you see that even though passion is vital to the success of any business, it is just one part of the equation. If you don’t have the skill to carve your passion into a valuable business, it will only remain a passion and nothing more

Keep your plans as simple as possible; action beats planning

No matter how great and outstanding your plan is, it is not going to be worth anything if you don’t execute it on time. How do you know an idea is even marketable unless you bring it out there in the first place?

There’s nothing wrong with planning, but you can spend a lifetime making a plan that never turns into action. In the battle between planning and action, action wins. As you are well aware, creating a business is about actively providing value for others, and value relates to helping people and fulfilling emotional needs. It goes without saying that you can not help people by only planning to help them.

It is only through action you’ll be able to discover what people truly want, and gear your idea towards fulfilling their needs. You don’t need to make excessive analysis and create a complex plan. Once you’re sure you want to start a microbusiness, get started quickly and see what happens. wins. Here’s how to go about it.

1. Select a marketable idea and determine who your customer is.

As Chris Guillebeau recommends, a marketable idea doesn’t have to be a huge, exceptional idea; it just has to provide a solution to a problem or be useful enough that other people are ready to pay for it. When selecting your idea, endeavor to focus on usefulness instead of innovation.

2. Keep costs low as much as you can.

Most micro businesses cost less than $100 to set up; most of the time, all you need is a website, Wi – Fi connection, and one or two pieces of simple equipment. The vast majority of the “solopreneurs” Chris interviewed while writing this book started their projects with $100 or less. Rather than pump a huge amount of money into their projects, they invested sweat equity by working as hard as theycouldwith little capital.

For instance, an entrepreneur Chris met in Canada started with only $56.33, the cost of a business license in 2000. Another one, Amy Turn Sharp, who runs a successful handcrafted toy company in Ohio, started with just $300. By investing sweat equity in your project instead of money, you’ll avoid going into debt and minimize the impact of failure if it doesn’t work out.

3. Get the first sale as soon as possible.

The first time you make a sale in a new business, no matter the amount, it’s a very big deal. That initial feedback is very potent, as it gives you cues on what actions you need to take next. After an initial success, you will be able to reorganize your thoughts and decide what needs to be done next.

So, when you’re starting out, the question you need to ask is this: How can I get my first sale? Forget about competition from other businessesfornow; the greatest problem you face at this stage is the reluctance to start.

4. Make sure you market your product before manufacturing.

It is wise to be sure if people want what you have to offer before you put a lot of work into making it. One way to go about this is through surveys, but if you’re adventurous, you can also just put something out there, see what the response is, and then figure out how to make it.

That’s why it’s so important to get started as quickly as possible and why the first sale can be so empowering.

Conclusively, in a microbusiness built on low costs and quick action, you don’t need to do a lot of formal planning. Mostly, all you need is a product or service, a group of customers, and a way to get paid.

For your business to thrive, you must learn to make offers prospects can’t refuse

On your journey to becoming a successful entrepreneur, it is vital to know how to offer your product to people in a way they can’t refuse. Yes, you must create what people want to buy, but you must also ensure that you’re marketing it to the right people at the right time.

No matter how useful your product or service is, trying to market it to the wrong people or at the wrong time will only make it appear useless. For instance,Chris Guillebeau ran a marathon in Seattle. By the 18th mile, Chris was absolutely exhausted but as luck would have it, he saw a volunteer handing out fresh orange slices on the side of the road ahead.

As tired as he was, Chris made sure to change his position, slow down, and gratefully accept the gift. The piece of fresh orange was an offer he couldn’t refuse — even though it was free, he would have gladly paid for it if he had the money.

Two miles ahead, he saw another volunteer handing out donuts. Unfortunately, this offer did not excite Chris or any of the other runners at all. While the intention of the volunteer was a good one, the offer was unattractive and a poor fit for the context. In the same vein, sometimes, you can have the right crowd at the wrong time; marathon runners are happy to eat donuts after the race, but not at mile 18.

A compelling offer is like a slice of orange offered to a runner at mile 18. It’s a marriage proposal from the guy or girl you’ve been waiting for your whole life. Once you’ve got the right crowd at the right time, the next step is to take your product or service and craft it into a compelling pitch — an offer they can’t refuse. Here’s how you go about it.

How to construct a great offer:
• What are you selling?
• How much does it cost?
• Who will take immediate action on this offer?
• What is the primary and important secondary benefit to the offer?
• What are the main objections to the offer and how will you counter the objections?
• Why should someone buy this now?
• How can you make this offer more compelling?

While constructing your offer, Chris Guillebeau suggests you bear some important factors in mind. First, you have to understand that what people want and what they say they want are not always the same thing.

For years, travelers have been complaining about crowded planes and cramped seats, and for years airlines have been ignoring them. Why? Because airlines know that when they add extra inches of space between seats, flight fees increase. And when this happens people get even angrier.

Despite what they say, most travelers don’t value the extra legroom enough to pay for it; instead, they value the lowest-priced flights above any other concerns. Airlines have figured this out, so they give people what they want — not what they say they want.

Secondly, understand that most people like to buy, but hate being sold. While most great offers often apply subtle pressure, nobody likes a hard sell. So, to make your offer compelling, carve it in such a way that it creates the illusion that a purchase is an invitation, not a pitch.

And finally, make sure your offer provides a nudge. Your offer doesn’t really have to create a “You must have this right now!” feeling among consumers, but it must create a sense of urgency. So, structure your offer in a way that it provides a gentle nudge to encourage immediate action.

For instance, Jonathan Fields owns a yoga studio. In the yoga world, September is usually a drop-off time. So starting September 1, Fields offered first-timers unlimited classes until December at a discount. So, the sooner people signed up, the more classes they could take, which created a subtle sense of urgency.

Hustling: Self-promotion is the key to getting your business up and running

This famous statement first appeared in a December 2010 article in Fast Company magazine. And guess what? The future is here.

When promoting something for sale, businesspeople fall into three different categories.

=The charlatans: all talk, with nothing to back up their claims.

The martyrs: all actions with plenty of good work to talk about, but are unable or unwilling to do the talking.

The hustlers: these people represent the perfect combination — work and talk fused together.

Here is also another way to look at people trying to market something:
Flash: Style without substance. This set of people are like the charlatans; no one respects them.
Unknown: Substance without style. Like the martyrs, everyone who knows these people respect them, but not many people know them.
Impact: Style with substance. This set of people are the hustlers.

Spend as little money as possible and make as much money as you can

As an entrepreneur, one thing you need to always bear in mind is that your goal is to make money. When starting out, it is very easy to become overwhelmed with all kinds of projects and tasks that have nothing to do with making money.

There are all kinds of things you can do, on any given day, that have nothing to do with making money — but you should beware of those distractions, because without the money, there is no business.

In essence, the main goal of business is profit; it’s not being liked, or having a huge social media presence. It’s also not about having amazing products that nobody buys or having a beautiful website with perfectly crafted email newsletters.

Also, it’s very important to know that borrowing money or investing a lot of money to start a business is completely optional. This doesn’t mean that there are no examples of successful businesses that have been built through traditional methods; it just means that borrowing is no longer essential.

Try as much as possible to start on a very low budget. As Chris Guillebeau advised, it’s much more essential to focus your efforts on making money as soon as possible than on borrowing startup capital. The golden rule for starting small and growing big is this: spend as little money as possible and make as much money as you can.

So how do you make more money in a business started on a low scale? Well, according to Chris Guillebeau, there are three key principles to making sure your business gets off to a good start while making as much money as you can.

Whenever you want to set the price of a new project, ask yourself: “How will this idea improve my customers’ lives, and what is that improvement worth to them?” Then set your price accordingly, while still being clear that the offer is a great value.

Also, by offering different versions of your product, for instance, mid-range and high-end versions, you will be able to create an “anchor price.”

Normally, when we see a super high price, we tend to consider the lower price as much more reasonable, thus making us think it’s a fair bargain. This is how the thinking goes: “Wow, $2 million for the latest MacBook is a lot, but hey, the $240,000 model is almost as good.”

Understanding this bias of the human mind, you can literally sell the same product at different prices with no other change. It’s not unethical; that’s how cell phone carriers, hotels, airlines, and tech companies make money. To reduce confusion, however, you can add something with real value to each higher-level version of the offer.

Ensure that your payday doesn’t come along only once. Instead, have repeated paydays, from the same customers, over and over on a reliable basis. The way to go about this is by offering a subscription or membership based service.

This means you will be getting paid over and over by the same customers for ongoing access to your service or regular delivery of your product. For instance, assuming you offer a subscription service for $20 a month.

100 subscribers at $20 = monthly revenue of $2,000 or yearly revenue of $24,000.

Now imagine you have 2000 subscribers. That’s annual revenue of $480,000. You can even decide to raise the price of the subscription, and it will generate an even greater increase. All in all, this strategy is critical because it brings in a lot of money, and because it generates a reliable income that isn’t dependent on external factors.

Conclusion

To start a business that will thrive and succeed, identify what skills you already have and consider how other people may find them useful. Your path to freedom lies in the overlap between your skills, your passion, and something that other people are willing to pay for. So, find out what people want and then find a way to give it to them.Start your business on a very low budget. You don’t have to go into debt just because you want to start big. The best way to get your business off to a good start is by focusing your efforts on making money as soon as possible than on borrowing startup capital.

Try this:
Think of a business idea that'll cost you little to nothing to start up, and get to work