What to do When You Have No Money

[GT Bulmer]

Hello, Forum Members and Guests:

This week, I watched a video titled What to do When You Have No Money, presented by Jay Abraham. Jay is considered by many prominent business people as “the World’s Most Preeminent Business Growth Advisor.”

In this six-minute video, Jay introduces and gives examples of the “cashless philosophy of business growth” and he offers five specific methods to apply the philosophy.

My first impression was that the message being presented is directed only at small and medium sized businesses. Initially, I wasn’t certain that Jay’s presentation would be relative to small, home based entrepreneurs.

However, the more I listened, the more Jay won me over and by the end I could see applications for entrepreneurial businesses of all sizes. In fact, I know some home based Internet Marketers who are already applying some of Jay’s recommendations.

Jay began by saying, “Right now, in the world today, the vast majority of small to medium sized businesses, start-ups, entrepreneurs and even professionals are struggling mightily for cash flow, for more sales. They need more money.”

They don’t have access to the capital they need to develop and grow their business, says Jay. And that’s where the “cashless philosophy of business growth” comes in.

“It can liberate anybody who seems up against the wall or stymied,” he advises.

Jay then asks the listener a few questions.

First, what would you do if you had the capital right now? Would you advertise? Bring in a sales force? Bring in more inventory? Develop more sales avenues? Attend trade shows? What would you do online and offline? Jay says to make a list and prioritize the items.

Your list will show you what you need to grow your business.

Second, ask yourself “Who already has access to those services, those activities, and might be willing to provide them to you, either for an override on sales that result, or on a deferred payment plan where you pay it at a later date with interest?”

Think about who needs you to succeed more than you do.

First example: say you want to advertise but you don’t have the money. Jay notes that the vast majority of services selling advertising are not selling all of their ad space.

“You can go to them and arrange revenue-sharing deals where they run ads for you and get a share of the revenue,” he explains.

Or, as a second example, you can find companies that have a sales force calling on your market and if your product or service is not competitive, you can strike collaborative deals where they take your product or service through to their market.

A third alternative is to find marketers online who have sold similar products or services but have nothing else to sell to their market. You can get them to offer your product to their past buyers.

A fourth option is to simply trade or barter your products or services for products or services you want or need.

Jay’s fifth suggestion is to get passive investors to put up the money to market your product or service. Give them a higher-than-market interest rate and a share of the profit.

“The bottom line,” he says, “lack of capital, lack of cash flow should not, would not be a deterrent to any entrepreneur, any business owner, any professional who wants to grow today who follows my direction.”

~ ~ ~

[mbrand2222]

GT,
Great ideas you shared. I'm sure all of us can probably find them very useful at some point. I'm thinking of trying a couple myself. Even if you aren't in a position where you HAVE to pinch pennies, I think it's always good to save and time you can.

[TannyL]

Hi GT,
Thank you for posting this. It can help many newbies who start their business because they need the extra money, and like Mary added it's also good to save.

[GT Bulmer]

Hi, Mary and Tanny:

Thanks for your comments. As I mentioned in my review, at first I didn't think Jay's video message was going to be suitable for small, home-based entrepreneurs, but the more I listened, the more I could see that Jay's suggestions were suitable for just about any business.

In a nutshell, Jay suggests partnering with other businesses to get the word out about your products and services. In Internet Marketing circles, this is often called a "Joint Venture" or JV.

And one more point: you don't have to wait until your finances are short or the economy is poor to do this. There may be partnership opportunities out there just waiting for you to take advantage of them. Even if you are a newcomer to marketing, you can put together a good, reasonable presentation and suggest a partnership arrangement (such as Jay outlines in his video) to a suitable potential business partner.

GT

[Carol Aston]

Great post GT, as always

There's a lot of helpful advice there, some that I've had to use myself as I lost my day job because of the recession.

Still, I was never one to give up!

“The bottom line,” he says, “lack of capital, lack of cash flow should not, would not be a deterrent to any entrepreneur, any business owner, any professional who wants to grow today who follows my direction.”

Take care,

Carol

[GT Bulmer]

Hi, Carol:

Thanks for the encouragement and for posting some personal perspective on the issue.

GT

[MichelleJ]

Great post GT,

Carol you will do well even though you lost your job through the recession, I think that you have the will and determination to succeed with your internet marketing business. Your knowledge and help is always great and you will make a success of it.

MichelleJ

[David Hurley]

A third alternative is to find marketers online who have sold similar products or services but have nothing else to sell to their market. You can get them to offer your product to their past buyers.

Hi GT,

Ezine publishers are always looking for quality content so one option for online marketers operating on a tight budget would be to send in articles and product reviews for publication and distribution to the ezine network.

[GT Bulmer]

Hi, David:

Excellent suggestion! Thank you for posting. We who are students and practitioners of online marketing know the value of article marketing and product reviews. However, we don't always look at it from every angle ... I like how you tied the article marketing concept into a need that publishers have.

A question for you: You used the term "ezine network" and I suspect that many of the ezine publications I receive via email from ezine publishers draw info and articles from the same or similar "network." Is there a singular place to send articles specifically for the "ezine network?"

There are a number of article directories, EzineArticles.com for example. But is there an "ezine network" - like an ezine syndication service - where your article goes into numerous ezines?

GT

[Harmison]

waoo its really a good post...i am also looking for such a forum...i am newly graduate and want to start my own business..i am interested in dairy farm and poultry business because as i researched there will be shortage of these things because population is growing at high rate.
what you people say...and i don't have lot of finance

[MichelleJ]

waoo its really a good post...i am also looking for such a forum...i am newly graduate and want to start my own business..i am interested in dairy farm and poultry business because as i researched there will be shortage of these things because population is growing at high rate.
what you people say...and i don't have lot of finance

Harmison what I would suggest is to look for ezines or article directories that specialize in your particular niche. This is where you will find the people interested in your kind of business and where you are most likely to get good traffic to a website and also sales for any product you have connected to this field.

MichelleJ

[Alan Mater]

Very inspirational, GT. You're right, these tips can be applied to any form of business. I especially like the "barter" one, where you trade one service for another. With today's economy, people are very willing to help other people out for getting their own help. It's a win-win for both sides, and they each get what they want. I guess this could even go a step further towards a Joint Venture partnership, as someone else mentioned.

One avenue I utilize to get some extra cash is to sell unwanted and unneeded stuff on eBay. Now's really the time to start selling as they enacted a new policy where your first five listings are free, every 30 days! I'm definitely taking advantage of that. This is just one simple way. It doesn't apply to business per se, but it doesn't have to when you're looking for quick ways to make some extra cash.

David, I like your idea about submitting articles to ezine networks. I was going to try this a while back but found that many ezine publishers have strict standards when it comes to the format of the articles. It will take time to alter the articles, but I imagine the rewards could be worth the effort. I'm going to try to utilize this technique shortly. Thanks for the reminder.

GT, there are large lists of ezine publishers willing to accept articles and send them out to their lists, lists sometimes as large as 20,000 subscribers or more. Crazy, I know. That kind of publicity could be huge. The one and only place I recommend looking is the Directory of Ezines, owned by Charlie Page. It's a high quality list of ezine owners. It's very easy to navigate and find exactly what you're looking for in terms of article acceptance, advertising, etc.

As marketers and business owners we should always be on the lookout on great deals or anything that could save us some money.

[GT Bulmer]

... GT, there are large lists of ezine publishers willing to accept articles and send them out to their lists, lists sometimes as large as 20,000 subscribers or more. Crazy, I know. That kind of publicity could be huge. The one and only place I recommend looking is the Directory of Ezines, owned by Charlie Page...

Hi, Alan:

Thanks for this tip. Where did you find that link for Charlie's ezine articles service? I know that we, as Plug-In Profit Site (PIPS) members, have links on our PIPS sites pointing to Charlie's web biz articles and his ezine advertising services. And I know that his articles sometimes mention his ezine articles service, but I can never find a link for it! Is it somewhere on our PIPS site?

GT

[Alan Mater]

... GT, there are large lists of ezine publishers willing to accept articles and send them out to their lists, lists sometimes as large as 20,000 subscribers or more. Crazy, I know. That kind of publicity could be huge. The one and only place I recommend looking is the Directory of Ezines, owned by Charlie Page...

Hi, Alan:

Thanks for this tip. Where did you find that link for Charlie's ezine articles service? I know that we, as Plug-In Profit Site (PIPS) members, have links on our PIPS sites pointing to Charlie's web biz articles and his ezine advertising services. And I know that his articles sometimes mention his ezine articles service, but I can never find a link for it! Is it somewhere on our PIPS site?

GT

Hi GT,

I believe it's somewhere on our PIPS site on the articles pages. We have articles written by him, and at the end of the articles there's a link to the directory. At least that's what I remember as it's been quite a while now. I grabbed a lifetime membership at least two years ago if not longer.

[GT Bulmer]

Hi GT,

I believe it's somewhere on our PIPS site on the articles pages. We have articles written by him, and at the end of the articles there's a link to the directory. At least that's what I remember as it's been quite a while now. I grabbed a lifetime membership at least two years ago if not longer.

Hi, Alan:

I'll do some checking in the articles.

GT