The $100 Startup summary

Most people dream of making a living from something they’re passionate about, such as traveling to exotic countries. But there’s a catch: unless someone is actually willing to pay for it, your passion “business” is just a hobby.

The true recipe for success is to find the sweet spot where your passions, your skills and the needs of others meet. But where do you start?

To build a successful business your offering needs to provide value to customers.

To understand whether this is the case, you need to know whom you are selling to. What are your target market’s demographics? Don’t lazily define your customers by age, gender or income; think hard about their shared personality. What are their passions, skills and values?

Just as with creating compelling offerings, the key to great marketing is focusing on how you can provide value to people.

When crafting your messages, don’t devote too much attention to the features of your product size, power or speed, etc. Instead focus on the core benefits for the customer: how it will help them.

Every entrepreneur’s worst nightmare is to spend months working on a product and then not sell a single one.

To avoid this, it is essential to plan and prepare your launch meticulously. Much like the premiere of a Hollywood movie, a successful launch is advertised so heavily beforehand that people are drooling for it months in advance.

No matter how passionate you are about your business or how much value it provides to others, it needs to make money. Otherwise, it’s just a hobby.

This means that you need to consider things like your funding, your costs and, of course, your income.

How can you make your business as profitable as possible?

One key principle is getting paid more than once by providing a subscription service. Just think: with just 400 subscribers, a $20-per-month subscription will bring in close to $100,000 every year! Bizarre sounding businesses like the Cupcake of the Month Club exist because this model is so profitable.

Entrepreneurs differ greatly in their ambitions for their businesses. Some are happy with their one-person show, some dream of huge growth, while others still want something in between. Each option is perfectly acceptable.

If you do decide to grow your business, this will generally happen either vertically or horizontally. Vertical growth means you start offering more services to the same customers, engaging them on a deeper level. For example, if you sell customers some piece of software, you could offer those same customers training on how to use it.

When it comes to starting and running a microbusiness, action beats planning every time. Far too many would-be entrepreneurs spend their time making complicated plans that never materialize.

Therefore, when you do plan, keep it simple: your business plan should fit on one page and merely outline – not explain exhaustively – what you’re going to do.