Here’s a great little recipe for starting a business in three hours or less.
Ingredients
- 1 laptop or other suitable computer
- 1 paypal account
- 1 domain name
- 1 budget hosting
- Expertise (your thing)
- 1 skype account
- 3 hours of your time
Method
Map your domain name (it should match your great idea in some way) to your budget hosting account, connect to that domain name using a browser and you should be presented with a default page (time 15 minutes).
On your budget hosting, install WordPress the easy website creation software. If you have a one click installer on your hosting even better. Name your site, give it a tag line and go with the default theme. (time 45 minutes).
Using WordPress create four pages; a home page, a contact page, an about page and a consulting page.
On the home page write copy to tell the world what your great thing is. (30 minutes).
On the about page tell the world why you are so great at your thing (30 minutes).
On the contact page add a contact form plugin so people can contact you (30 minutes).
On the consulting page, tell people that they can buy your time by the hour at rate X, that you will get on a skype call with them and solve their problems related to your thing. Add a paypal button to collect rate X from them (30 minutes).
Tell everyone you know about your new site and make sales.
Minimum Viable Business
This is the recipe for a minimal viable business. It’s not fancy I know, but that’s all that is really needed to start an online business. Experience in a subject and the ability to help other people doing your thing.
Selling your time as a coach or consultant is the easiest business to start. All you need is expertise, a website and a skype account.
It’s not the best business model, I know from personal experience, but it gets you in the game, once you are there you can begin to build a bigger and better business.
This proves your idea is a good one and that you can make sales. Forget about the custom look and feel for your site, business cards, incorporation and all that jazz, just go out and try to sell your thing.
If you can do that ,you are in business. Don’t sweat the scaling models or write a business plan, just sell something. Once you are past the initial hurdle of selling something, and fulfilling that sale to your clients, your confidence builds and you can perfect your business as an iterative thing.
The overwhelm of the huge number of things a business needs often creates a flich and that great idea is never baked into a beautiful business cake.
What’s Stopping You?
You can be in business in the time it takes to watch a movie. Go and do it now.
“what a wonderful and dangerous thing it is to walk out of your own front door. You step out on the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
Bilbo Baggins – The Hobbit
Image by dorkomatic