Five Lazy Ways To Start A Business On The Side This Weekend
The $100 MBA Show Podcast Recap
Published:
Duration: 23 min
Summary
Omar Zenholm outlines five straightforward business ideas that can be started with minimal effort and investment over a weekend. The focus is on making your first sale quickly rather than building an entire business infrastructure.
What Happened
Omar Zenholm emphasizes the importance of making your first sale to validate a business idea before investing time and resources into building a full business infrastructure. He suggests starting with what you already know by offering consulting services based on your current expertise to businesses or individuals in need.
Another idea involves creating a one-person agency by connecting businesses with freelancers to fulfill specific tasks, enabling you to profit from the difference between what you charge the client and what you pay the freelancer. This method is described as labor arbitrage and can be applied to services like social media management and lawn care.
Zenholm also discusses the classic buy low, sell high model, where individuals can purchase undervalued items from garage sales or thrift stores and sell them for a profit online. He encourages experimenting with various products to learn market demands before scaling the business.
A productized service involves offering a specific service at a fixed price, such as auditing LinkedIn profiles or writing blog posts. This approach simplifies the sales process and ensures clients know exactly what to expect.
The final suggestion is one-on-one coaching, where you teach a skill or knowledge to individuals. This method provides immediate feedback and helps refine the offering based on client interactions.
Zenholm stresses that while these methods are described as lazy, they require effort and courage to approach potential clients and deliver on promises. The first sale is crucial as it provides validation and proof of concept.
He concludes by dispelling the myth that entrepreneurs need to be fully prepared before starting, advising that readiness often follows action. The priority is to make an offer and secure a transaction, with other business elements developing later.
Key Insights
- Making the first sale is essential for validating a business idea before investing in infrastructure like branding and systems.
- Utilizing existing skills as a consultant is a low-cost entry into business, offering immediate value to clients who lack your expertise.
- Profit can be made by acting as a middleman between clients and freelancers, a concept known as labor arbitrage, which is effective in service-based industries.
- Productized services with fixed pricing simplify the sales process, allowing for clearer client expectations and more efficient service delivery.