Hi, everyone, and welcome to Build a Business Without Debt, hosted by Grow with Google and the Rebel Business School. Grow with Google helps people grow their skills, careers, and businesses by offering free digital skills training and tools. We're thrilled to bring this workshop to you today in partnership with the Rebel Business School, a UK-based alternative to the traditional way of starting a business. They've helped over 11,000 people in 10 countries start
their own businesses to date, and have been backed by organizations, including the Henley Business School, the Westminster City Council, and the UK Department for Work and Pensions. My name is Ari, and I'm the lead for Grow with Google OnAir. I want to thank you on behalf of the team today for joining us. In this workshop, you're going to hear from Alan Donegan, the co-founder of the Rebel Business School. He's going to give you five different ways that you can turn your business idea into
reality without taking on debt. Alan works tirelessly to inspire people to take control of their own financial destiny, making and investing their own money to build the life of their dreams. He does this through many ways, including the Rebel Business School, the "Rebel Entrepreneurship Podcast," the Rebel Finance School, and his blog, alandonegan.com. Through his work with the Rebel Business School, Alan seeks to change the way that entrepreneurship is taught, and to free people to make money
doing something that they all love. In his free time, he eats far too much pizza, loves LEGOs, and uses his financial independence to travel the world and explore. Now, we want this to be as helpful for you as possible, so Alan's going to be taking my questions at the end of the workshop. And in order to get your questions answered, you to make sure that you're posting them directly under this livestream video. We're going to choose the top voted question, so it's really important that you all
vote for your favorites. If you'd like to access additional resources for this class, check out the Resources section, which is below the video player on the right-hand side. You'll also be able to watch this video on demand after the livestream today by visiting either the same URL or going to on-demand section of the Grow with Google OnAir home page. And finally, don't forget to post and share on social media using the hashtag #GrowWithGoogle. Now, I'm going to hand it over to Alan, who's
going to dive right in. Take it away, Alan. ALAN DONEGAN: Thanks for the introduction, Ari. My name's Alan. I'm from the Rebel Business School, and I've been traveling around the world for the last 10 years helping people build businesses and make money doing something they love. And everywhere we go, in every country, I ask the same question-- what stops you from building a business? What stops you from starting up? So what do you think stops you or stops people in general from building a
business? If you've got some ideas, put it in the comments now. So everywhere we go, we ask this question, and this is from the most recent people we've asked. We did a survey of 1,000 people, and the number one thing that stops them is fear, or the flip side, confidence-- lack of confidence. Because if you were 100% confident about your business idea, you probably already would have gone and done it, so there is something missing in your confidence, knowing what to do and where to go. And
actually, that brings me on to the second one, which is quite closely related, which is, what do you actually do? Because starting a business is a huge project. Where do you start? What do you actually do? There's all sorts of advice out there in different ways. And the third of the main three that stops people starting up is finance or money. Where do I get the cash to be able to start up? Because it takes money to make money. And I think, actually, the cash and the confidence are very closely
related, because if you're putting your own money in, if you're investing, if you're going into debt or borrowing money to start a business, well, you better be very confident that it's going to work. And that lack of confidence, that fear of failure is what stops people. And then there's also some general knowledge about the industry you're going to work in. So is it a food industry? Is it photography? Or what exactly are you doing? There's some general industry knowledge. And actually, if you
can help people to feel confident to know what to do first and to find the finances, or realize they don't need it, you've empower people to overcome most of the barriers that stop people from starting up. The other things are personal situation, how do I make sales, some other stuff, and a little bit about, who do I do it with? But those are the biggest barriers to starting up, and the first three are what I'm going to focus on for you today. So if you think about the traditional startup
approach-- if you were going to go to a traditional startup advisor, a bank manager, or an accountant-- if you went to someone like that, what is the first step they recommend you do? Because you go in and you say, I've got an idea, and they say, have you written a business plan? Do you feel excited about business plans? Because there seems to be the first step of the traditional route. And it's interesting. Business plans became very popular in around about the 1970s, and they were a way to
raise venture capital. So you wrote the business plan to prove you had a plan to make the money to get the money to grow your business and to be successful. And there's so many people I've met who write these business plans that say, the global market for what I do is X. If I can just secure 1% of it, we'll be wealthy. And that's kind of the thinking behind this traditional startup approach of you come in with an idea, you write a business plan, you work out how much money you need to borrow--
because that's one of the primary functions of a business plan-- and then you get funding. And it's interesting. In the business world, we have lots of words that we use as code words for debt, such as funding, capital-- all of these different words. They basically mean that for you to grow your business. Then you spend that money. You develop the product or service and build it in its entirety, because you can't sell it until it's built in its entirety. Then you set up the legal structures.
This is sounding like a long process to me. I don't know about you. You market the product, and then maybe you make money in year 2. Does that sound exciting? Can you wait two years to make a profit? I can barely wait 30 minutes for a pizza to come up, let alone two years for a business to start, but this is what we seem to think the way to start a business is. And it's fascinating. If you look in the United Kingdom, there is something called the Start-Up Loan scheme. And the government decided
that the way to build businesses was to make capital available to entrepreneurs, help them get money to be able to get going. And the interesting bit about this scheme is the default rate-- IE, the number of people who take the loan and then stop paying it back-- is around about 40%. And that's not the people that have taken a job to pay back the loan. That's the ones that have completely defaulted. So what's your chance of surviving as a business, if you take on a big loan at the start? And
all of this is based on the belief it takes money to make money, or the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. There's plenty of police around there-- that I need to get the money first to be able to get going. And that's what I want to disprove today. Now, this passion for me to help people do this started a long time ago. That's my dad and me. My dad was an entrepreneur, and he borrowed a lot of money to build businesses when I was younger. And guess what the only thing that was secured
against-- the family home that me, my mom, and my little brother lived in. And when he went bankrupt for $5 million-- and that was back when $5 million was a lot of money-- the bank came for the house. And we spent a long time fighting to try and keep our family home. Eventually, my dad left. He ran away with another person. And I remember one particular day, we were called into court, and I went with my mom and my brother. And if you can imagine a gray council court building-- and we argued
the court case against the banks solicitor, the bank's lawyer, whose name was Mr. Bond. You cannot make this up. I was arguing against Mr. Bond in court. And at the end of the court case, the judge ruled that we had one month to get out of our family home. And he banged down the gavel, and he took away our family home. And that experience made me averse to that like you wouldn't believe. So if you fast forward 10 or 12 years, I wanted to start my own business. And I went to the British
government for advice. They had this service called Business Link. And they gave me three workshops. They gave me how to write a business plan-- really exciting; finances, which is a code word for, where do you get the money to get going; and marketing. And they did me more to put me off starting a business than they did to actually help me. And my business partner Simon likes to joke that I'm well-educated, I have a loving mom-- I have a lot of advantage in life, and this process was putting
me off? What do you think it's doing to everyone else? So I started to think, there must be a better way. There has to be a better way of building a business. Rather than building out of debt, there must be a better way to do it. So I set out to build my own business. There is a slightly chubby 28-year-old Alan who was getting his picture taken for his LinkedIn profile and launching his business. And I set out. I built my own successful training business. I made some money. I had a lot of fun
training people around the world how to present, how to have more gravitas and impact. It was so much fun. And eventually, that led me, with my friend Simon, to found Rebel Business School-- which, the whole purpose of it is to help people build businesses without debt, and make money doing something they love. So we travel around the world working to change the way entrepreneurship is taught so that people can be free to build their own business. But this all starts with a mindset shift. We
need to change the way you think about business, because if you change the way you think, you'll change your actions, which will eventually change your results. So let's shift the mentality. And the first thing I want you to change is stop thinking about starting a business when you're starting up, and start thinking about running some mini experiments. And if you think about an experiment, an experiment is, I'm going to go and run a test. I'm going to run this test and I'm going to get some
feedback. And with an experiment, there's not failure. There's just feedback. Did my test work? Did it not work? What happens? And it's only a test, so this removes a lot of the perfectionism and barriers to people having a go. So one of the key principles I want to give you today is that of running mini experiments, because what's the only way to know if your business idea will be successful or not? What is the only way? And I've got Elaine from Google with me today. Hello, Elaine. ELAINE
CLELAND: Hi. ALAN DONEGAN: So for this section, imagine I've come up with a business idea, or imagine anyone comes up with a business idea. Who do they first go and tell? Who do they speak to first? You've come up with an idea. Who do they go and tell? ELAINE CLELAND: Personally, myself, I would first tell probably my family or someone that's close with me that I talk to already about work, or my closest support system-- because obviously, not only will they be helpful in supporting me, but
they'll also shoot me straight and be like, this idea is really great or this idea is really bad. So that's probably the first person I would go to, and then, from there, I'd probably expand. But I think getting purview from friends and family that are really close would be the first thing I would do. ALAN DONEGAN: And that's exactly what people do is they go to friends who they believe will be supportive of their idea. So for just for this bit, Elaine-- you can reject me again later-- imagine
you're one of my closest friends. And I come to you and say, I've got an idea. I've got an idea for a new mobile phone cover. It'll help enhance the sound of the speakers. It's a hard designed to protect the mobile phone. It's a new design. What do you think of my idea? ELAINE CLELAND: I think that's a great idea, but have you researched to see if anyone else is only doing that idea? What will the retention be on this product? Will this be easily adaptable, if things change, and phones change,
and all these different things? I would make sure to tell you, do your research before you even go anywhere with that plan, because I'm sure there's a company out there that's doing something [INAUDIBLE]. ALAN DONEGAN: And Elaine was actually very nice to me at the start. She said it's a great idea, and that's what family and friends do. They want to be nice to you. They want to support you. But is that great feedback? Yes, you should-- you're telling me to go and check and do some research,
and that's fantastic, but the nice bit-- and what actually I suggest you do is, if you tell someone about your idea and they say it's nice, that's the point to say, well, actually, I've got one here. It's $30. Would you like to buy it? ELAINE CLELAND: My answer would probably be no. ALAN DONEGAN: There's the real feedback. There's the answer. And that's the bit. People will be nice to you, up until you ask for the money. When you ask someone to take their wallet or their purse out of their
pocket and give you cash, they'll tell you what they really think. So the only way to know if your business will be successful or not is ask for the sale. That's it. Up until that point, people will be nice, and they don't want to hurt your feelings. Even if they don't know you and you're on the street conducting market research, they're like, oh, yes, I would buy that for $20-- knowing that they don't have to afterwards. People will be nice to you. Thanks for helping me with that, Elaine. I
can't do that bit on my own. ELAINE CLELAND: Of course-- thanks, Alan. ALAN DONEGAN: So my business partner and I, Simon, have this thing about, what's the number one secret to starting a business? And Simon likes to say, close the blinds. Turn off the lights. Close the doors. Let's tell you the real secret to starting your business. And then we go, hushed voice, the secret to starting a business is sell something to somebody. And then people look at us and go, is that it, Alan? What are you
talking about? Well, if you sell something, you've created a sale. You've got a customer. You have to build the product. You've generated a return. You've started to build a business. But people make this so complex. There's a little bit of detail, because what is this something? Is it a product or a service? How much are you going to charge? What's the details around that? And then the bit that clients-- or entrepreneurs always fight against is, who is the someone? They always fight against
niche, or "nitch" marketing-- depending on where you live in the world, "neesh" or "nitch" marketing. I did when I started. I was like, I can sell my products to anyone. Why do I have to niche? Well, it helps you to make the first sale, because selling to everyone, you'll end up selling to no one. So that's the secret to getting a business started is sell something. And that's why we run our events in shopping malls or shopping centers, because it's the quickest possible distance from idea to
customer to try and get the sale. So if you google how to start a business and find the number one result-- and I did this in private mode to have a look-- it's interesting the steps they tell you. So the traditional approach, the very top result, is conduct market research. And I think I've told you my feelings on market research. Stop asking people would they buy it, and start asking people to buy. Market research is not going to help you in the same way as actually going to a real customer
and asking them to buy, because that's when you'll find out. Then they tell you to write a business plan. Well, you don't need one of those unless you're raising money, which is obviously the third step in the traditional process-- where do I get the money to start my business-- because it's predicated on that belief. And I'm going to show you how to build a business with no debt. Then you pick a location, which I always find interesting. Why do you need a location? Why do you need an office?
Anyway, choose a business structure. Choose your business name. Register your business. Get federal and state tax IDs. Apply for licenses and permits. Open a business bank account. Where is sales in any of this business advice? Where is going out and finding customers, and actually launching? So what we do is the complete opposite. We start with sales, because it's the only way to know if your business idea will be successful or not. But why don't people want to sell? Let's play the word
association game. So in the comments, write the first thing that comes to mind when I say this word. So if I say the word salesman to you, what's the first thing that comes to mind? And when I'm running these courses live, people shout out things like sleazy, dodgy, pushy, used car salesmen, shiny suits. We have a terrible image of what sales is-- a terrible image. And this is around the world. This is not just the US. This is not just the UK. This is every country where we run pop-up business
schools, whether it's France, Namibia, whether it's New Zealand. It's really interesting. We have such a bad image of what sales is. And when you think about it, what actually is sales? What, fundamentally, is sales? It's actually the process of finding someone with a problem that you can fix. And you find someone with the problem that your product or service fixes, and then you charge them for doing that thing. So you get paid, or you earn money for helping someone solve their problems. So in
essence, every sale you make makes the world a slightly better place. And that's how I look at it. When I was selling my training courses, I'm selling these courses that help people achieve things they want and fix problems they have, and I get paid for helping make their lives better. And I don't care what it is. A photographer-- you're helping people capture their family memories, or weddings, or holidays, or whatever it is. You're giving them something, and you're fixing a problem-- that
they don't have those good memories. If you're a food business-- I love food businesses-- you are definitely fixing the problem of hunger and unexciting food and entertainment. I don't care what business it is. Sales is finding someone with a problem, an issue, and it's making their world better. But people don't feel comfortable selling, and this is where I want to get to. Everything you want in life-- everything-- is outside your comfort zone. That thing you want-- running a business,
launching your product or service, doing that thing-- it's outside your comfort zone. Otherwise, you'd already have it. If you were comfortable going to get the thing you wanted, you would have already done it. You would just go and you would get the sale. You would launch the business. You would do the thing, and you would launch it. But it's not comfortable, and this is some of the pieces we need to overcome, and help you feel more comfortable taking action-- and also to realize, if you ever
have that feeling of discomfort-- like, OK, I need to pitch my business, I need to launch my website-- I am nervous, I am uncomfortable launching my website-- if that's the case, that's probably the thing you need to do to make progress towards your goal. And it's really fascinating when you start to look at these things, because well, the universe likes to challenge you. The thing you've got to do is probably the thing that makes you nervous. And if you're comfortable all the time, you're
definitely not going to get towards the goal that you want to get to. So let's get them comfortable and make progress. So my suggestion to you is to start a mini experiment. So here's our full process for what we do. We launch a mini experiment. We choose one idea-- and I think this is really important. Lots of people want to start a business, and they have a plethora of services and different things they do, so they want to launch with everything ready at once. Start with one. And it doesn't
actually matter which one it is. Just pick one. Because I think, a lot of times, people are hesitant of picking which business idea, because they think, if I launch a business with this idea, I've got to stick to it for the rest of my life. And you don't. We're just going to do a mini experiment, so maybe two weeks, four weeks, six weeks-- that's it-- to test the idea. So choose one. Develop a pitch. Develop a prototype. Develop some marketing materials. Create something that you can then put
in front of your target audience. And then you market the idea to that target audience, and you ask for the money This is the key bit. Ask someone to buy. And we're going to come up with the tools to be able to do this, but there are so many ways. You ask them to buy and then we evaluate. Did people buy? If yes, you have a business. Fulfill the order, start the business, start doing it, and then start selling more. If no, what did we learn? Because this is a mini experiment. This is just a test
to see what happens. If no one bought, what did we learn? Did we ask the question, what stopped you from buying? Was it the price? Was that the quality? Was it this? Dig in and find out what it actually was, and then we go back around and we either start again with a different idea or we refine that idea, if we saw some green shoots and some hope. And that's the process is test the idea. Now, one of the things that stops people from doing this is that most people want to have created everything
before they launch. And this is for many reasons. One is confidence in themselves. If I built all, I know I can do it. Two is that's the way big business does it. They create everything and then they launch. We don't have to do things that way. People want to write the entire book before selling it. People want to create the product in its entirety, get it made and manufactured before selling it. People want to set up all the legal structures, the documentation. They want to write the entire
course. They want to rent the office before selling anything. And this leads to garages full of stuff that people can't sell, because the market doesn't want it. I have a coaching series on my podcast, and I'm working with a young guy who's got a YouTube channel. He's been building his YouTube channel fantastically. And over the weekend you get excited about launching a clothing brand. And he looked at the retailers, the wholesalers for the clothing. He filled up his basket. He was about to
spend 2,000 or 3,000 pounds-- so maybe $4,000, $5,000-- on a bunch of clothing that he would order, get shipped to his house, and then try and sell on his channel. And I'm thinking, why are you doing that? You don't even know if they want the sweatpants with your logo on it. Why do you even need to do that? Sell it before you create it. You can easily find a picture of a T-shirt, and put your logo on, and try and sell it first. Rather than having 1,000 printed without knowing if anyone actually
wants them, sell before you create. But this is where people start to get nervous and they go, oh, I don't know if that's right. I don't know if I should do it. What should I do? Well, if you can sell a house before it's built, you can sell anything before it's built. I don't know if you ever seen this, but I've seen presentations where someone's in an empty lot of land, and they're saying, well, look, this will be where the kitchen is. And imagine the windows here. And everyone's peering out
of the window as if it's real. They're selling the home before it's even built to bring the money in to be able to then start constructing it. So if you can sell a house before you create it, you can sell a T-shirt, a comic, your service before you build it. So these are some of the fundamental key principles and shift in mindset that will help you to launch quickly. So let's get into the five ways to build a business without debt, because this is some of the tools that you'll be able to apply
with this mindset to be able to launch. And the first is get free stuff. People think you need to spend money when you get going, because I need to look official. I need to look proper. I need to do all these things. You would not believe how many business cards I bought because I'm like, if I have a business card, I'm a proper business. So I print 1,000 business cards, 1,000 letterheads, and 1,000 compliment slips. Who uses compliment slips? Who sends checks nowadays? But I print all these
things and I spend all the money. You don't need to do that. There's so much you can do for free. But you can build a free website. Google has some incredible tools. There's Weebly. There's Wix. There's many places you can build a free website. You could connect PayPal up to be able to take the money. You can create some marketing. You could do it on [INAUDIBLE]. You can find free templates online. Google has some phenomenal tools, including Google My Business, which is an incredible tool for
getting your business on a map and finding customers. There's so much you can do for free without spending money. You don't need to borrow money to be able to spend $1,000 on a website to launch. That's crazy. Launch and see if you get a customer, and you can upgrade later. Let me give you an example from one of our courses. This is Joanna. She launched her business, which is the Bra Boss of Kent. So she does bra fittings and help ladies find the right clothing. She, with her friend Leah,
wanted to do a launch party for her business, and using the negotiation skills and these skills that we talked about right now, she went out and wondered, how can we launch this without spending money? So it was Jo and Leah. There's their two businesses. If you want to find them on Instagram, you can. I'm sure they would love some likes from different places. They actually went out to get sponsorship for their businesses. They found a posh lemonade company in England called Fentimans, and they
asked them to sponsor the launch event. And Fentimans sent them some cases of free lemonade for their launch event. Why would they do that? Well, it's promotion for the lemonade as well. So they managed to get free lemonade. They found a cracking local bakery that did cupcakes. And the deal there was we would supply free cupcakes for your launch event, and then we'll put flyers for the bakery in the goodie bags that go to the customers, and we'll give out flyers on the day. So that promoting
the bakery and they got the cupcakes for their guests. They invited the local press along-- which, actually, the local press lady brought three bras, and wrote a fabulous article. And they were able to do this launch event in their home garden for an incredibly low cost, and get their business out there by getting free stuff. And I think, actually, my mom-- shout-out to my mom-- she had it right on this stuff. She used to drum into me, and I hated it at the time. She said, you don't get what
you don't ask for. But I always felt nervous asking, so I never did-- which brings us back to everything you want in life is outside your comfort zone-- otherwise, you'd already have it. So there's number one. Stop spending money. Get free stuff to launch. Number two is borrow stuff. You don't need to own the asset to be able to use it. Just borrow it. Now, this is Katie and Andrew on the slide from Timetrap Escape Rooms. They are an incredible escape room in Reading in Berkshire in England. So
if you ever go to Reading, make sure you go and check out their escape rooms. They were in our workshop about five years ago, and I was giving the example of a guy who started a restaurant by borrowing a space, and they were inspired. So they went out into their local town Reading, and they walked around to see if they could borrow a space to run an escape room. After going round all of the different places in the town, do you think people said yes to them? They spent all day being rejected
time and time again. Now, if you apply our things and our methodology, people are going to say no to you, and that's OK. And it's also OK for you to ask, because they are allowed to say no. But you're going to get rejected. So they spend all day being rejected. They were a little bit down, and as they trudged back to the car, they saw one last hotel that they thought of going to. You can't make this stuff up. The hotel was called Great Expectations. It's in Reading. You can look it up. And they
went into the Great Expectations hotel. The manager was behind the bar. They made friends, and they said, this is what we're trying to do. We're going to launch an escape room. You don't have a spare space, do you? And the guy said, well, yeah, we've got a room at the front we're not using. They had a lot of discussion. They made friends. Why would the hotel lend them a room? Well, it brings in customers who might stay the night, who will buy drink and food before the escape room, after the
escape room. It brings customers into the building. And they were able to borrow a room for six weeks to launch their first escape room. And in those six weeks, they made enough money to be able to put the deposit down on their permanent building that they operate from now. And they did this from sales, not from debt, which is the exact opposite of a friend of ours who did it the traditional way-- borrowed an incredibly large amount of money to deck out the escape room, to get the building, to
sign the lease, to put it on market, and then to get no customers. And they lost all of their money and went heavily into debt. So what I want to say to you is do it from sales. Borrow stuff until you can afford to buy it. Do it from profit, not debt. So there's number two. What can you borrow? Number three is, what can you barter for? So barbering is the swapping of a skill, a talent, an item for something else. Before cash, we would swap items. We kind of forgotten about that as we're
entrepreneurs and launching businesses, but you definitely can. When I was first launching my training business, I was not very good at marketing. That was not one of my skills. I was rubbish at that. So I did a deal with a local marketing agency where I ran presentation skills courses-- that was what I was good at-- for their staff, and they would help me with my marketing strategy, my graphics, all of those different elements. And we did that deal. No money exchanged hands, and they helped me
get going. And the interesting bit is every single one of you listening to this-- you have a skill that you think is easy that other people think is difficult. That's the thing you need to swap. I think presenting's easy because I've been practicing for 10 years, but I can swap that skill with someone else who thinks it's difficult. One of the people on our course came along. She was a musician, a singer, and she wanted to record her album, but she couldn't afford to rent the space to produce
the album to then sell it. And what she actually did was she went to the local university that had a course on that subject, and she said to them, can I borrow your recording space? They said, actually, you can't just borrow it, but the students are looking for projects to work on. So if you will use the students to record it, and edit it, and help you, then we can do-- allow you to use the space, because they will get something to go on their project list. You will get that done. And they
bartered for her. And the barter deal was, you can use our space for free if you use our free labor as well. And she scratched her head and said, OK. I'm happy to have someone help. And it's fascinating what you can swap for, so get creative. And I want you to see this list of things, because we've got, number one, get free stuff; number two, borrow stuff; number three, barter for stuff. I want you to see these things as like a menu. Before you spend any money, can I get it for free? If I can't
get it for free, can I borrow it? If I can't borrow it, can I barter for it? And I want you to see this as a menu of options, because spending money shows that there's a lack of creativity, because there's nearly always a way to start with nothing. And if we move on to number four, it's sell stuff. I always find this incredible, the amount of stuff people have lying around their house-- that they could just sell off DVDS that they've got, or books, or old stuff to raise the money they need to
buy something. So the micro example of this is we had a lady on the course in Birmingham called [INAUDIBLE].. She wanted to be a mobile beautician, and she needed one of those fold-out tables with the head-- the hole for the head, and the fold-out table to be able to take around with her. But she couldn't afford it, and that was what was stopping her. So we said, what do you have in your house that you could sell to be able to afford it? She said, well, I've got a running machine in the bedroom
that I've used once, and now it's just a fancy clothes horse. So we got it on eBay, we sold it, and we raised the money to be able to buy the table and get her going. So before you go borrow money, look for all the stuff you've got lying around in your garage and sell it-- which brings us on to number five-- which, this is the point. This is the message I want you to get from this whole workshop, and it is sell before you create. Sell before you create. If we went back to the first ever event
we ran, it was a pop-up event in Weston-super-Mare. And there was a guy there that wanted to launch a cafe, but he was a recovering alcoholic and he just-- he didn't have the financial history to be able to borrow the money to be able to do a cafe. And I wouldn't recommend it anyway. So we said to him, we run a course here. There's 50 people around you. Why don't you sell them lunch tomorrow? And he looked at me and said, well, I could do that? And I said, well, Dennis, what's the dish that
you're best at cooking? And he said lasagna. I said, well, OK, go ask people if they want lasagna for lunch tomorrow. So he went around the room asking people, would you like lasagna for lunch tomorrow? I'm going to cook. Would you like lasagna for lunch tomorrow? And he came back and he had this face, like I'm upset. And he looked at me and he said, I've made 28 orders. And I'm thinking, Dennis, why are you upset? Why are you upset? You've sold 28 of these. You should be happy. And he looked
at me and said, well, I've sold 28, but I don't have the money to be able to buy the ingredients, buy the baking tray to be able to fill the orders and then be able to produce the product. He was lost. And I said to him, well, why don't you ask them if they'll pay up front? And he looked at me and said, Alan, I don't know. Would they do that? I'm like, I don't know. Let's go and ask them. The only way to know is if you go and ask them. So we went around and he said, the lasagna tomorrow-- it's
going to be 4 pounds, $6. This is a few years ago. Would you pay up front so that I can buy the bits and produce it? What do you think people said? They said yes. This time he came back with a wad of money in his hands and the biggest smile on his face you'd ever seen. And I was a little bit worried that would be the last we would ever see of Dennis. But luckily, he came back the next day with two tray-baked lasagnas, some salads, and garlic bread. He served lunch. He'd made profit from the
start. And if you want to make profit from the start, start with sales, not debt. And part of this story is about dialing back the idea. Dennis wanted a cafe, but he wasn't there. He had to start with selling what he could. Now, there's a reason as a dance floor on this slide. We had a lady that came to the event in Kent, and she wanted to launch a business selling giant dancing events. She wanted to fly the best teachers from Argentina, who taught tango, over to the UK-- put on this giant
event, rent the hall, sell all the tickets. She wanted to borrow a huge amount of money to be able to do this. I'm like, just start where you are. Start small, start where you are, and sell what you've got. You'll get to the giant event flying teachers over, if you start selling the local event and teaching dancing there. And also, don't skip ahead, because the learning you will get running the local event to build your mailing list, to find the local people will build the foundations that will
make the giant event successful. But people want to skip ahead. They don't want to take the time. They don't want to learn on the journey, but it's so critical-- so critical. And then you've just got to start where you are. That's the key. And that is in complete contrast to a dance teacher that I helped in Los Angeles, and she was able to find and borrow a space that didn't cost her to run courses. She presold all of the tickets. She sold monthly memberships. She sold one-to-one teaching. She
did all of that, and in the first month, she made $10,000 sales. That's the complete opposite, but people get stuck going for the dream vision. How much of the two-week-long course of the Rebel Business School do you think I wrote before we sold it to start with? Zero-- what did I have? I had the idea, and I took the idea, and I went and sold it. And that's the key. Why would I bother writing a course that no one wants? I need to know first. On the podcast, I've been working with a lady. We
have a coaching series I coach people on how to build their businesses. She's Ms. Jaymie Dillon, if you want to find her on Instagram or socials. She's an incredible artist, and she wanted to do a comic book. So we did a Kickstarter. She launched her comic book on Kickstarter. We found clients on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. We drove them to the Kickstarter page. She created some visuals, but she'd not produce the full comic. And then she started selling, and she sold the comic before it was
created. And that is what I want you to do is sell before you build-- because why would you build something? If you're doing it for a hobby, it's different, but why would you build something that you don't know if people even want? The only way to know is to ask for the sale. So you've done your mini experiment. You've asked for the sale. Let's say you've got some customers. So Jaymie actually managed to get her Kickstarter funded. She hit 232% of funding goal. She had 170 backers who were
buying her comic. She sold before she created. Now the question is, did the mini experiment work? So here's how you evaluate a mini experiment. Number one, did you enjoy it? Did you have fun? Did you enjoy producing the product? Did you enjoy working with the people? Did you have fun? Because building a business is a lot of hard work. It's time. It's energy. It's effort. Sometimes it's easier to go and get a job. It's hard work, and if you didn't enjoy it, maybe entrepreneurship isn't for you,
or maybe the dream of running that business isn't what you thought it was. What we want to do is enable people to test their dreams risk-free. Number two is, did you get customers? Did people buy? Did they like your product? Did they like your service? How did it go? And number three is, did you make any money? Because if you didn't make any money doing the mini experiment, well, we need to work out what happened. And do you want to do it again? Can you make it profitable? One of the biggest
downfalls for entrepreneurs is they're so focused on the product, they forget to know their numbers. And you wouldn't believe the number of people who say to me, I'm just-- I don't like maths. Well, you need to know your numbers. Otherwise, you're exposing yourself to a huge amount of risk. You need to know what it costs to make the item, what you selled it for-- what you selled it for-- what you sold it for, and what the difference is-- IE, your profit. If you don't know that, how do if it was
successful or not? I've met so many entrepreneurs that sell the item for 20, and don't realize they're actually costing them 25 time. So every time they sell an item, they're going slightly into debt. This happened to my family. And how many could you possibly sustainably sell each day? If you don't know your numbers, you're in for trouble. So let's come towards the end. The extraordinary belongs to those that create it, and this hit me like a ton of bricks. An extraordinary life-- you have to
build that. People don't just hand it to you. You don't just get an extraordinary life. You don't just get a business. That's not how it happens. You build it. But people don't bother, because they think entrepreneurship is risky. And well, it is risky if you borrow a lot of money, if you gamble the family home. It can be incredibly risky. But here's the bit they don't realize-- you can choose which risks you take. People think you have to risk money, and you don't. Using the five tools I've
just told you about, using the mentality of a mini experiment, you can choose to risk time, energy, maybe reputation, maybe risk rejection, but you're not risking capital. That changes the game. And one of the trainers on our course is-- her name is Katie Coombes-- she is incredible. The question she asks is, will I still be able to come home for tea afterwards? So if I'm risking putting my website out live, well, people might not like it, but I can still come home for tea. If I risk pitching
and get rejected, well, people might not like it, but I can still come home for tea. If I risk my house, I might not make it home for tea because there might not be house left. Now, there are some legal considerations, like do not launch a gas repair business without a gas safety certificate. If you're launching a business-- a food business-- you need hygiene certificates. There are some things you need to put in place and consider. Those are different for every type of business. Please
consider them first, because you can take a risk-- just not with the family home. So what I want to inspire you to do is to start to build an extraordinary life. That's the thing. So the barriers that stop people-- fear, what to do, finance, and knowledge. If you're doing a mini experiment, it removes a lot of the fear. If you're doing a mini experiment, you know what to do first. Create some materials and try and get a sale. And if you do that, you don't need to finance, because you're getting
sales in first, which funds it. So you can overcome 60% to 70% of the barriers that stop people from starting a business with this process. So there is more support, if you would like it. Grow with Google has some incredible bits for you as well, and we have completely free business schools that last 10 days. The Rebel Business School runs online events that last 10 days. They are completely free. We get sponsorship from councils, housing authorities, and corporate sponsors to make the best
entrepreneurial education we can available for free. So come along to one of our events. They're an incredible way to get going. And we hope you get to that first sale, run that mini experiment, and launch your business. Or you can listen to the "Rebel Entrepreneur Podcast," which-- we go into detail about all of these different items-- the sales, the marketing, the mindset-- all of those different items. And there's lots more help and support there for you. But what do I really want you to do?
I don't just want you to listen to the podcast or come to the course. I want you to go do it. I want you to take a chance on your ideas. Or if you already have a business, test a new business idea. I want you to run a mini experiment. So choose one idea. Build a free website. Put it in front of an audience, and ask them to buy. And if you do that, you've taken the first steps to building something extraordinary. So that brings us to the end of the presentation portion of today's workshop. I'm
now going to give you a few minutes to ask any questions you may have, and I'll come back to answer them live. Please post them directly under the video player in the Q&A section, and I'll be back to answer all your questions. Hi, everyone. I'm excited to answer a few of your questions that you've been putting in the comments through the session. And if you've got more questions, please do put them below, and we'll see if we can get to them. If we don't get your questions, we'll be going back
and answering all the questions on the Google-- on the Grow with Google OnAir page below the virtual event. We'll be doing that shortly after it concludes. So let's start with the live questions. And we'll start with one from Jason. Jason, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for being part of it. And he says, do I have to start a business with the end goal of selling or IPO? An IPO is about launching your business publicly. Why can't I start a business just to do what I want, and live more
without corporate nonsense in my life? There is such a drive amongst the business advice world for scalability and growth. People want you to scale. They want you to grow. They want you to build, exit, because they think that's the only way to do it. There is no problem launching a lifestyle business. And a lifestyle business-- you might make a decent amount of money. It gives you time to spend with your family. You get to build the business you want. So I would not listen to those particular
things. I would say build the business that gives you the life you want to lead. That should always be the end goal is your happiness. It's your customers happiness. It's the fun that you want to do. So if you want to build a lifestyle business, build a lifestyle business and have fun. Moving on to the second question, we've got Shanley who says, what stops me is the business side. I am an idea grinder, but soon enough, I hit the wall of, what now? And I think this happens to us all. It's part
of business life. You will always find stages through your business career when you hit the wall and go, what do I do now? That's normal. What's important is how you respond to that wall and what you do. So my advice to you would be to work out how you're going to respond to it. For me, when I hit the wall, I sit down, I look at all of the areas of my business-- so the human resources, the staff, the product, what I'm doing, the customers. And I review each of the areas, and I work out what's
working well and what's not working well. And then I think, what do I want to change and what do I enhance? And that process of sitting down and reflecting on where you've got to up until that point will enable you to work out what to do next. What you feel when you hit that wall is natural-- happens to all of us. So just work out where to go next and what to do afterwards. Sit down. Reflect for a couple of hours. Think about it. And I know, I trust you will come up with what to do next. And if
you don't, drop us a message. I'm sure we can help. Question from Amy says, where can you build a free website? There's lots of them about. There's Weebly. There's Wix. I believe Google has a service to help you. There's a huge number of them about. What we recommend for the mini experiment is just design a one-page website that pitches the one idea or one product that you are going to sell. Maybe add a PayPal button or some way to take the payment, and then promote it out there, and see if
anyone buys. Lots of people want to jump to the end-- like, I've got the perfect website. It is full with content. It has all these different bits. They want to jump to the end goal. Just start small, get the one-page website done, and then go from there. And you can do this one-page websites. There's so many different ways to start a free website. I've named some of them there for you. So Amy, go do it. Build one page. Launch it. See what happens. We had a second question from Jason who says,
I'm in the middle of launching a business. I have the LLC. We're maybe a week or so away from taking money from customers. If the business isn't an immediate raving success, traditional advice says you should cut your losses and try another thing. Is that the correct path to take? If you really love the idea, would it be better idea to iterate on the product and try again? Now, I think there's lots of different elements on this. Number one is it depends how many green shoots of growth you see.
And the same criteria we talk about for evaluating a mini experiment. It would be the same criteria-- I would be saying to you, after a few weeks of doing this, check, am I enjoying running the business? If yes, if I'm having fun, if it's going well for me, are the customers enjoying it? Do I get good reviews? Are people talking about it? Will they come back and buy more? That's the green shoots, that you can see growth. Even if it doesn't happen immediately, you get a sense, a feeling that it
is going to happen. And finally, know your numbers. Have you broken even? Are you making a small profit? How are you doing? Those three things will give you a better idea of what to do. And then, if it isn't quite hitting, go speak to the clients and ask them, to get you to come back again, what would I need to change? And iterate on the idea. The final bit I would say is that-- be careful not to fall in love with your first idea too quickly, because quite often, entrepreneurs-- we get very
excited. I've got this idea. I'm going to go out there, and people are going to love it. You go out there, and you pitch it to loads of people, and they don't love it, and you don't hear the feedback, because you're in love with your own idea. So just be careful. Listen to what the market is telling you. And at this particular point with sales, I always say listen to the market, not the experts. Because if you come to me and you say, Alan, do you think my business idea will be successful or
not, I don't have a crystal ball. I can't answer that question. I can't give you that. There's only one real question I can answer, which is, would I buy? I can tell you that. You say, Alan, here's my product or service. Would you buy it? And I'll say yes or no. You ask me for the money. That proves whether I will follow through. And then you can ask my advice. Why didn't you buy, or why did you buy? The most important thing is to go and get the advice from the market. It's the customers. And
if the customers aren't buying, try some new customers. If they don't, buy try a different niche market. If they don't buy, we need to really listen to what's going on, and then develop from that. I hope that gives you a few ideas of what you can do, Jason. And then we've got another question here from Laura. She says, if you're producing something and rely on vendors and suppliers, how can you control your timeline if you sell first, and someone is late supplying the materials? Well, Laura,
you've picked up on a risk. This is absolutely a risk, because if you sell first, and then let's say the supply you're using gets a massive order from somewhere else, and they're busy, and they say we can't get to it there is a risk, and you might have to scramble to find another supplier. So I am a big fan of having backup plans. So let's say you presell, and you've got one supplier. Have a backup supplier. If it goes wrong, you're going to go to the second supplier. You've got the price,
you've got things set up, and you can do it. That's absolutely a risk that can happen to your business, so have a backup plan, because these things happen. If there's one thing that I am the team at Rebel Business School have learned, it is stuff happens. Things go wrong. Things change. The market changes. Things happen. And it's your ability as an entrepreneur to respond to those changes, take action, and make it right. And if it does happen, one absolute key to this is your communication with
the client. Clients are very understanding if you communicate with them. If you don't communicate with them, and then you miss the delivery date, and it gets late, they get more irate. If they don't know what's going on, they get more irate. If you tell them before the delivery date, look, we've had a few problems on supply-- I'm working on it-- please, can you bear with me, they will talk to you and negotiate with you. So the key here-- if a problem happens, go straight away and speak to the
client. That is so important-- so important. Wow, you have a lot of questions. We have a lot of energy. I think that's it for the live questions at the moment. I've got no more on my list. And that wraps up our Q&A for today and our livestream. Thank you for joining us for Build a Business Without Debt. It's been great fun. You can find all of our follow-up resources on the same page you're watching on the Resources tab under the video player. You can also access a recording of today's session
by clicking On-Demand at google.co/growonair. And we'll also be sending a follow-up email with a survey for you to fill out regarding your experience in the virtual workshop today. It's really important that we get your feedback so we can quickly improve the sessions and offer content that's most helpful to you. That is Google's and our aim, is to help you make progress. Thanks again for joining the Grow with Google today, and see you next time.
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