A journey into entrepreneurship
For many years, my most stable source of income has been as a dance teacher. I started the dance school with my partner Cheryl William in 2006, and since my entrepreneurial energy has gone into our dance school.
Along the way, I have searched for other sources of income.
- I tried day trading in the stock market
- I tried being an Airbnb host
- For a while I was an Uber driver
For the past six years I have been an event photographer, and my latest project is to become a website designer.
An encounter with website building
My curiosity for building websites started when Cheryl and I hired a friend to build a website for our dance school.
To be honest, it was a frustrating experience. The website was build with an old software called Dreamweaver, which I found difficult to understand and operate. We were completely dependent on our website designer to make even the smallest changes on our website, and… as you can imagine, that all cost money.
WordPress was the solution to my lack on knowledge
Eventually, we heard about and easier software called WordPress and we decided to give it a try.
Finally we were able to operate the website on our own and unfortunately for our web designer, we fired him.
At that time, I just learned the bare minimum to upkeep our website, and if we ran into trouble we would spend hours on YouTube trying to figure things out.
COVID the disruptor of many businesses
Then COVID happened. On April 2020, the COVID epidemic was spreading around the world. Governments closed almost all businesses in which there were close human interaction. The unfortunate consequence was that we had to stop our dance classes and I had to stop my photography business as well.
The Government of Quebec offer of free education
Fortunately, the government of Quebec responded by offering free education for workers who wanted to transition into the technology sector.
I decided to take the government of Quebec on it’s offer and I took a class on website design.
The classes were awful. I found the material outdated and there was a lot of work focused on keeping the students busy with irrelevant information.
However, there was a spark of curiosity, and a desire to learn website design was born.
Returning to YouTube University
After the seven month program was finished, I started taking classes in YouTube (I have learned almost every skill I know on YouTube).
After two or three months of taking YouTube, I took my first client. Then, I took another client and another one.
In less than six month I created a business building websites.
I still don’t make enough money to cover my expenses
I have to admit, I still don’t make enough money to pay for my living expenses, but my earnings continue going up month after month.
I have complete faith that my business will flourish and that by the end of 2023, I will be able to earn in excess of my living expenses.
My total investment for this business is just my internet expenses. The software that I use is WordPress (which is free because it’s open source), my education is free (YouTube), my client acquisition is free (LinkedIn and Instagram). This proves my point that practically anyone can start a business with little or no capital.
The competition is fierce
The drawback of the business is that because the barrier to entry is quite low, there is a lot of competition. Worse yet, because the business can be done from practically anywhere in the world, my competitors can come from countries with lower value currencies and who can do the same job for much less.
Fortunately,
People do business with people the know, like and trust
So a client can do business with me, the person they know and trust, or do business with someone who they don’t know who could be based in The Philippines or Bangladesh.
As it turns out, one of my present clients, Montreal Vendors, had her website done by someone in Africa (I forgot which country). The website was terrible and I had to delete the whole thing. Her money and time were wasted, and because she knows me and trusts me, I am the one doing her website now.
Similarly, all my other clients know me in person and they have confidence that I will do my best by them.
The industrialized world if full of opportunities.
There are so many other careers whereas any person can make a decision to start a business and start working. By the way, my other two business, the dance school and the photography business, were also created with very little capital. The major ingredient was the decision to start a business.
And you?
Which business have you started with little or no capital? Please share your story.
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