Shownotes
Starting a business doesn't require a big investment, a loan, or wealthy investors. In this episode, Adam McCullough shares the lessons he learned after bankruptcy, the surprising assets that matter more than money, and how anyone can build a business using the skills, knowledge, relationships, and resources they already have. Adam reveals why mindset, creativity, and action are often more valuable than startup capital, how to avoid common entrepreneurial traps, and why there has never been a better time to launch a business than right now. If you've been waiting until you have "enough money" to get started, this conversation may completely change the way you think about entrepreneurship.
Alternative Title Options:
- The Hidden Assets That Matter More Than Startup Capital
- How to Build a Business When Your Bank Account Says No
- Why You Don't Need Money to Start a Successful Business
- From Debt to Opportunity: Building a Business From What You Already Have
- The Real Secret to Starting a Business With No Money
- The Assets You Already Have That Can Build a Thriving Business
- How One Bankruptcy Led to a Better Way to Build a Business
- Stop Waiting for Funding: Start With What You Already Have
- The Entrepreneur's Greatest Asset Isn't Money
- Building a Business Without Investors, Loans, or Startup Capital
Free resources for starting a business on a shoestring
https://www.startupwithadam.co.uk/community
On Substack
https://startupwithadam.substack.com/
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Transcripts
You World Orderhis business journey was over. What happened next led to a discovery that now helps people build businesses without investors, loans, or even startup capital. The surprising part? The assets that changed everything weren't financial assets at all.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hi, and welcome to the UWorld Order Showcase Podcast, where we feature life, health, transformational coaches, and spiritual entrepreneurs stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart, The Coach's Alchemist, on a mission to empower coaches and entrepreneurs to amplify their voice.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Monetize their mission, and get visible. If you're ready to start attracting premium clients without chasing algorithms or hunting people down like a banshee on a mission, head over to Coachesalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's the first step to building a business where your clients seek you out, rather than you having to hunt them down. Today, we are chatting with Adam McCullough. Adam is a business coach, author, and founder of Startup with Adam. After experiencing bankruptcy firsthand, he developed a practical approach to helping aspiring entrepreneurs build businesses using the skills, knowledge, relationships, and resources they already possess.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Through his coaching community and content, Adam has helped countless people take their first steps into business ownership without relying on large amounts of startup capital. Welcome to the show, Adam. How are you doing today?
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Hi, Jill, I'm doing amazing, thank you. And that's such an amazing, overview that you've just given. I've got nothing left to say.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yes, you do, I got questions.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So you're gonna be good.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I know that you're panicking over the question, the big question.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, go.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: About what's the most significant thing, in your opinion, as individuals, we can do to make an impact on how the world is going.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And if you choose not to answer, that's totally fine, but I am going to ask you the question. I'll give you the opportunity to reject it.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah. I'll pass. Every… yeah, everyone… I don't know.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's so good! I…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Great.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I know that you often help people start businesses with little or no money, and what was the moment you realized that most people are looking in the wrong place when they think about what they need to get started?
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: So, I actually started… so… so, growing up, we had nothing. I was raised by my single mom with two sisters, we had a stepfather who, didn't add much value to our lives, and so… it was really tough.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And I wanted to start with, I always knew that there was, you know, I was terrible at school, really, just very… just… all of the teachers had just written me off as, you know, trouble and things like that, so…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: despite that I am quite well spoken, now.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: back then, you wouldn't recognize the earlier version of me getting into trouble, riding out of stolen cars, like, oh, I was terrible, you know, smoking at 13, and all this kind of stuff. So, I got in with the wrong crowd. But there was always this little spark that
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: that I knew there was something better, and I just kept, kept on going.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And one day, I've had loads and loads of ideas from, like, I've always had this entrepreneurial spirit, always doing little money-making schemes at school, and selling action figures that, you know, the old Star Wars figures, and all sorts of little side hustles.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And yeah, but… but it's really, really hard when you don't have access to, money. So when I started a window cleaning business, I didn't even have money for a ladder. So I specialize in cleaning bungalows.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And it wasn't until… so I just literally knocked on all these doors.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: built up a round, and then it wasn't until I'd started doing the round that when I walked around the back of the house, they were all built on a hill.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And there was… I think it was about 2 or 3 storeys at the back.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And so I borrowed a ladder off somebody, booked borrowed steel, and then I realized, at that point that I was terrified of pies. It was awful. So a lot of my ventures would start off with all this
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: you know, incredible energy, and kept on trying, and kept on failing. And one day, I…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Applied for a…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I've forgotten the original question, anyway, but I'll just carry on. But I applied for a… I had a really good idea to set up a business.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And I wanted to use my creativity as a graphic designer, so I wanted to be so. So I wrote this little business plan. I sent off to who, the Princess Youth Business Trust, who the Prince Charles is obviously now the King of England, and he really kindly lent me £5,000,
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And from where I had come from, £5,000 felt like a billion pound. I was just… I had no idea what to, you know, how I was going to spend
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: so much money, and I promptly, wasted it really, really quickly. I bought a car, which was, I think was about £3,000.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And then didn't have enough money to buy any of the things I needed, I bought all the wrong things, and…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And then, of course, I started the business having spent all the money in the first week.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: just made so many poor decisions, but the biggest amount of value that I had.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Was that they assigned me a mentor, called, Peter Lakey.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And he… and also the team… the team of people that believed in me.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Not necessarily my idea. The idea was average.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: But it was that kind of belief, and the mental, and the guidance, and that, you know, he connected me up with some people.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And just through his experience, was able to give me the, the value of coaching. And it's that reason
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: why, after I eventually kept on trying so many different businesses and then found a few that stick.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: made me want to follow the same path, so I signed… I, approached Peter… the Peter Jones Foundation to do some voluntary coaching to give back, because I'm essentially retired. I retired about 3 or 4 years ago in my late 40s, and
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: it's boring, isn't it? There's no… so I thought, I'll give back with a bit of mentoring, and it's so…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I just got so much value from helping youngsters and seeing them go from, you know, just fresh out of business school with, these brilliant ideas and the nurturing and opening doors, and it's just… it just gave me so much satisfaction. So the reason I started the community was
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: was just purely out of the passion of helping people, and I think that's why our community is so value-led.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: as opposed to some communities I've joined, I just feel like I'm a statistic, or a number, or part of their sales funnel, whereas
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: We are basically trying to just…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: absolutely help people is our first number one goal, because we know that when they are ready to then go, okay, I think, you know, I trust you enough now, I'm ready to do this, then they'll have enough money to pay us. So, it's win-win-win, which I love.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that model. That's the model we use, too. I'm all about…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Getting everybody out there. Let's see what you're doing, and how you can help other people, and…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Everybody's got some special gift, I truly believe that.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Oh, absolutely. And what you said earlier is about, how we help people using the skills and resources that they already have. That's definitely our focus. So, the first thing when somebody comes into our community is… and also, everyone's version of success is entirely different.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: So, some people just want gazillions of dollars, some people just want a really nice lifestyle where they can work a little less, or just,
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Some people are just happy having a nice little hobby business that pays more than their 9-5, but, you know, and other people want billion-pound corporations, you know, so,
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: So yeah, we're… and we understand that every single person is so unique.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And so we're very anti-guru, very anti-blueprint, because we know that they just don't work, because you're not there.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: different time, different skills. So, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, you didn't live all of the life experiences, and, you know.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You went through a bankruptcy, and it's gonna tease.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Fully paid.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: lessons.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Not to mention that.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That teaches you a lot of lessons! It's like…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, I'll let you share yours.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: After going bankrupt, so pre-bankruptcy, even when you're, like, tens of thousands in debt, people will still throw money at you, so you don't realize you're in a hole until
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: until that very moment, when suddenly you realize, actually, I can't afford to pay the bills. And I… I didn't learn after about bankruptcy, so I went bankrupt for about £23,000 in 199…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: 6, I think? Which was a lot of money then.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: when you take inflation into account. And… but then…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: within a few months, I was £15,000 in debt.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: immediately afterwards. But the problem is, once you've gone bankrupt, you… you know, you…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We'll do it again for a while.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: receivers on your case, they're scrutinizing your every single purchase, there's no way you can get away with doing it again. So that is when I learned the lesson, was when suddenly I had to take responsibility. So, going bankrupt, yeah.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I sat in a courtroom, they said, okay, you don't owe anyone any money, we'll take care of it, it's fine.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: But that doesn't teach you anything. That just teaches you that you can borrow money and not pay it back. The real lesson is when I got myself back in debt.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And then, suddenly, had to take responsibility and go, actually.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I need to… I need to sort my life out and make a plan to pay it off.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: you know, list your outgoing expenses, and actually, taking charge of your money is the very first thing that somebody needs to do.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: also just stop being a con… this is the thing people hate to hear, is stop spending money, because we all love to spend money. And I have friends that earn, six figures, a year, and
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: have nothing to show for it, because they spend just, you know, just slightly more than that every year. So, yeah, taking charge of the money was a huge lesson. And of course, it was at that point that I had learned to be super creative, and learned to build
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: without… Any, any finance, because, yeah, when you're a post-bankrupt who's just got… got into more debt.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: you're just searching down the side of the sofa for money to buy food for the week. Yeah, nobody's giving.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it becomes… it can become either…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Like, oh, woe is me, I'm so poor, or it can be a game.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: In… in our house, We have way more than enough, but…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I like to play the game. We shop on Tuesdays because you get double points, which means you can go get stuff and not have to pay for it!
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Absolutely.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Oh, I think that's a.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And we have stuff we buy at the dollar store, because it's a dollar cheaper there. Same stuff. And they're right next to each other. So, we have the list, and we… it's just my husband and I now, and really, it doesn't take a lot
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To keep us going.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But… Kind of fun to, like…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I agree, yeah. And, and, I mean, there's loads of tips in my book. I don't know if I told you I wrote a book, How to Start a Business with No Money, obviously.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And in there, there's lots of tips about just… there's simple little strategies for… there's credit cards that will give you points and cash back. There's so many ways… and I mean, other people's money, as well is actually…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: You can… yeah, you can just set up a whole business using other people's assets and money and…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: you don't have to risk a penny, so anyone who tells me, oh, I can't… well, anyone who says I can't full stop, I'm just like, yeah, you can.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Of course you can, because, because 90% is fine.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Maybe you can't because you think you can't. But there's always opportunity, and there's spaces out there. We were talking about SubSnack. SubSnack's free, and you can make money. They make money when you make money, so they're inspired to actually help you make money.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Cool.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's just like… That's just one place, and there's… there's…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hundreds, if not thousands of them. Everybody has an idea.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And, you know, if one person will buy your idea, others will too.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Simple, so simple. I think also we're all really guilty, and, and…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: of over-complicating business as well, and sometimes I wonder if
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: a lot of this is a procrastination strategy of maybe we're just a little bit afraid of the success, or putting ourselves out there, because it's so much easier. I was just thinking today, I was gonna… one of my little Substack notes was gonna be, are you…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Are you busy, or are you being productive?
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Like, you can find the words, but it's very easy to… to get… dive into your emails and start doing all this stuff, and then sit back and go, oh, I've been… I've done so much today, but actually, what you really should be doing… thinking is, how much have I
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Actually works towards my goals, so, yeah, so quite a bit.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: How much of what you're doing is money-producing activity versus busy work?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That's true.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Exactly, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love AI, because AI helps us with the busy work. You can knock that out so much faster than you.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: used to.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: be able to, and get back to the things that actually are income-producing things, like having conversations with people, or, you know, helping people do the thing that you're really good at that they're not good at. And, you know, you can tell people how to do the thing you're really good at, and you're gonna think.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm giving everything away, but you're not, because people don't know what you know. It's like the auto mechanic, you know? They can tell me how to change the oil in my car, and could I do it? Maybe.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I watched enough YouTube channels and videos or whatever, but I don't want to. Just tell me how much you're gonna charge me to fix a thing.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I'm out the door. I'm happy to pay you for your expertise, and everybody has some sort of expertise that another person is willing to pay them for.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, I agree. And I've just learned this recently, is that we should always be doing the things that are natural to us, that we really love to do, because
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: it's very easy to read all the books, and all the… watch all the YouTube videos, all the information that's out there, and go, okay, I have to… I have to have a YouTube channel.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: But, if YouTube is something that terrifies you, and you absolutely don't want to do, but you love writing.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And just write. Just change your model to do that. Or whatever. Even if you just love to party, then set up a business, like, hosting parties. Like, there's always something that will fit your
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: what gives you pleasure. And also, if you're following your passion and doing things that you absolutely love.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: then you're bound to succeed over some… something that you just go, hey, this'll make some money, and just do, you know? So I'm a big believer in following your skills and your passion.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: For sure.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think this is good parenting advice.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Is to look at your kid's superpower, even if you don't understand that superpower, and everybody has one!
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And… and encourage them to lean into it. I think if somebody had done that with you when you were in school, schools are notorious for, like, stamping out any.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Anybody who's unique.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah. Or won't play the game, then you're automatically, you know, there's something wrong with you, and it can really impact people for the rest of their lives, when there's really nothing wrong with you, you're just a human being, and this is how your flavor showed up.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Like, there's nothing wrong.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: No, if I… I've still got all my school reports, and if I look at them as Adam is a dreamer, Adam could do better, or can work well when he applies himself. And actually.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, being a dreamer is a brilliant, creative skill, but it was sold to me as a negative, not, like, Adam's a dreamer, he's a visionary, he's got all these amazing, brilliant ideas. So, yeah, I think schools are a bit better now than they were in the 70s.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Maybe.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't think so.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I think they're… I think they're actually worse.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And you have a little…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: A whole bunch of people that are really young.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Who went through school in the 70s and 80s, and…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're like…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: just homeschool your kids, you'll do fine. You don't really even need to school them, you need to teach them how to read, how to write, how to do arithmetic, because those are things that you actually need in life. The rest of it is, like, teach them how to cook, teach them how to identify what food is.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I know, it's a shocking thing, but there are so many people in the world that don't really understand what is food and what is not food.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: This is actually…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's… yeah.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: That's a whole nother, I think, isn't there?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is, totally. There was a… was there an aha moment that eventually led to your book and the work you do today?
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, I tell you, there absolutely was an aha moment.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And so when… so this book, How to Start a Business with No Money, I had in me…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: for about 8 years before I published it.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I haven't actually published it, it's available for pre-launch, but before I wrote it.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And the reason it took 8 years is because I felt like a fraud writing the book.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Because I have started many businesses that would… I would start, and they would rocket, rocket, rocket. And then they would level off, and then they would die a little bit, or completely, and fall off the cliff. And then I'd start another business, and it would go, go, go, go, go, and it would peter off and die.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: So I thought…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I could… I mean, yeah, I know how to start a business with no money, but people don't just want to have a business that's going to do okay and then die.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And one day, I wrote… I read a book.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I can't even remember what the book was. It was… because I have property, that we rent a lot of property out now, and it was related to that.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: the name escapes me. But I read a bit, and I read a snippet of information in there that suddenly
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: it was like finding the final piece of the jigsaw, because suddenly, I knew how to scale
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And the thing I discovered was that the skills that you need to
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Scale your business from this point, where normally it would do this and die.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: It's the exact opposite to what you need
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: To get there in the first place. So, of course, you know, when you're doing it all by yourself with no money, you're doing everything.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And there comes to a particular squeeze point where you, if you're doing everything.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: you can't possibly do any more. You've reached maximum capacity, so you either burn out.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: or you just carry on at that level forever, because there's only 70 hours in a day. There's only… so, in our case, there was only 2 of us in our business. Even when
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: we would employ people, we would still try to have that control that we had learned, and our own ways of doing things. And the most important thing is just to let go, trust people to do… to run with their skills and what they're good at, and outsource a lot more than…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Then even… and outsource before you even think you can afford it, because
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: that buys you that precious time and attention that we can then focus on growth, rather than just running our business. Because otherwise, you've just made a job.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Like, we should.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: just to give ourselves a job. Well, unless we're loving it, and that's our life choice, that's fine, but for many of us, we actually want a bit more.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You can often… Collaborate with people.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And swap skills, especially when you
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: point where you need to, like… you need other people in your business to help you get a little bit further, and there are ways to do that without actually having to pay out money, and because of AI, AI has solved so many problems.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: For me, personally, I just, like…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: No, I agree. I thoroughly embrace AI, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I could have spent…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: literally thousands of dollars on a project that I've been working on, that I spend $20 a month.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: That's amazing, isn't it? Isn't that incredible?
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: cheapest VA ever! But you have to know what you're looking for. I mean, it isn't going to read your mind, and you have to know how to use the tool.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: to actually save you time and energy. But…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Jesus, like, there has never been an easier time to start and succeed at a business than right now.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Do you know what? That's exactly the words in my opening line of the book, because there is the perfect time of opportunity
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, and I mean, I… when I wrote the book.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: it's even easier now, because you… because AI tools are, yeah, they're so obtain… there's just so many things you can do. I mean, it's just so much quicker, easier, it's so much easier to collaborate with
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: anyone in any niche, because… and you can communicate with them at the speed of light, and it's just… yeah, I mean, compared to… compared to when I was trying to start a business in the 90s, where you'd literally have to go to the bank and… it's a whole different world.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I started a cleaning business back in the 90s, in the early 90s? It was late 80s.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I went door-to-door.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Bungalow.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: today?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Window cleaning business. You knock on the door and you ask them.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: me.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You need somebody to do this service for you, and they say yes or no, and you knock on a lot of doors, and then you finally build up a clientele, and then you have to go do the work, and it's just like…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That was hard!
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah. All those, a lot of the core principles are the same, in the respect that we still have to go out and find, you know, find other people, and…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You have to knock on the digital door.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: But nowadays, you know, it's so easy, you can knock on a thousand doors in a day easily, and not only that, but you know they're in, you know they're interested in exactly what you've got to say, yeah, it's just… because the targeting is just so specifically granular.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: So, yeah, opportunity, absolutely.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: At the start of this conversation, we talked about the hidden asset that can be worth more than funding, investors, or even a great business idea. What is that asset, and how can someone listening today identify it in their own life and use it to start building a business immediately?
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: What do you think that asset is, Jill?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I really think it's your superpower.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's that thing that you're gifted with that…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: What I was gonna say is it is your brain.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Because that… all you need to succeed is…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: your idea, and your passion, and action, and that's literally all you need, because all of the information you need is out there. You definitely don't need to buy another course, unless that course is very specifically going to take
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: give you, you know, to get you to your goal quicker, as part of your strategy. But you definitely don't need to buy, you know, 100 different courses and not act on them.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: It's just literally, here's an idea, how do I do it, find out how to do it, and just run with it.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: It's so simple, isn't it?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is so simple. I…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: about 10 years ago, I decided that I wasn't gonna buy courses anymore unless I bought something that solved a specific problem
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: for my business.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it's not to never buy courses. It's to buy things that are moving you towards your goal, not derailing you and sending you off in a different direction. And it's so easy to do.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: That's exactly right, Jill.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And… So, I… you know we said earlier, about…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I think I was going to say, I would happily start from zero again.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Because the challenge… it's just a fun challenge. You know what we're saying about just how we get all the points and try and save as much money as we can on different things?
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: So, when I started Start a Business with No Money, I… and the Startup with Adam, basically as a coaching business, when I decided I wanted to help people, I started…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: On purpose, with no money.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: in this venture. So, obviously, it's a little easier for me, because I've got the gift of time.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: But, you know, unemployed people who are looking to do something more fulfilling have this. So,
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: So, yeah, I didn't have to do a 9 till 5.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: you know, to do this, so I could do it quicker. But still, I literally went, okay, I'm going to start with nothing, and I'm intentionally not going to invest anything in this, because I want to be on the same level as the people I'm helping to demonstrate how easy it is. So I literally started with just…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: finding… I… so I used some affiliate programs and just started, shouting out some of my friends in different communities to say, okay, you know, if you're looking to do this, go to this person, they can help.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And then I earned about $300, so then I went, okay, I'm going to use this $300 to buy a course to learn more about specific AI stuff, because I want to leverage the power of that. And then.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: that, you know, will help us to bring more money, and so on and so forth. So, I think I'm about… it's…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: in the company, because I've not drawn any money, I just take all of the money that's generated, and we're not even monetized with
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: the community. I'm literally just, like I said earlier, giving all the value, because we know that as soon as we say, okay,
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: so I'm going to introduce some paint tiers really shortly, in the next couple of months. And so,
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, but, but it's… Once you've got somebody's attention, the money just comes anyway, because… You…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: just get, like, so if I… I'm going to mention your community and mine, for example, to say.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: you really need a substack, and this is the person to help you with it, so then when people trust you to say, okay, here's, I want you to help me, then I'll get paid a little bit, and that'll be more money to invest. It's just… it's just so easy.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That is one of the hidden secrets of school, because that's what Adam's talking about here, is school communities. You don't have to actually have a community in order to be an affiliate for school communities.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So you can go and find communities that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: are offering affiliate commissions, and you can find that out, because you just click on the settings button over there, and it'll say, you know, we pay whatever their going rate is, and for our community, it's 40%, and anybody and everybody… I have a lot of people making money off of my community.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And that's great, isn't it?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is great! I love paying people to help.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Let me get the word out.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's how you grow, and it's how you connect with other people, and it's just, like, there's more than enough to go around, but you can get started by just helping other people.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Discover things that you love. You have to be part of the community, that's the only requirement on school. But you don't have to own your own community, which is a pay-to-play space, if you're going to have a community. And there's a couple levels in there, but we're not going to go into that. It's just that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You don't have to have a product, but people will pay you money, and…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: It is. It is a hidden gem, isn't it? And actually, I… I was blown away that in my… I mean, I… you know, it's not a life-changing amount of money, like $300 in the first couple of months.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It can be, because it catapulted you to be able to do some other things, which moves you up to the next level, to move you up to the next level. It's not that you should never buy courses, but
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: or that you're never buying courses or paying for information, because information from somebody who knows what they're talking about can shorten your learning curve and speed you up faster. But you don't have to, like, pull it out of your pocket.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: money, and then you use that money for this. It's the back-to-the-game thing.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And that's exactly what… yeah, it's just… it's just…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm so excited.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: prospecting.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, how can people get in touch with you and learn more about starting a business with no money?
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Join the community. Get on school. Yes, it's, startupwithadam.co.uk forward slash community. That takes you into our school community. So, I refer to it as our school community, because I'll just tell you briefly
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: How we ended up with the resident experts.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: So, because I'm… although I'm retired, I'm busy with projects. I… I love… I'm a…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I love to build things other than businesses, so I've got projects always on the go, DIY, pond sheds, property, and all lots of other things. So, I knew that building a community on school was going to be time-consuming, so I wanted to get a couple of friends involved.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: So I thought, I'll outsource my weaknesses, because I… I've got to admit, I'm terrible with social media.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I've always… it's always been a weakness in our businesses, and also email marketing has been a massive weakness. So I'm going to outsource these two things.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And then I thought, and any other areas that I'm… I might not have the best advice for, and… and there's people better than me at it. And of course.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: the more… the more people I met, and the more contacts I made, and the… and especially, on school, there's just so many super brilliant niches, and like-minded entrepreneurial, value-forward people, that I just…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: fell in love with her and went, oh, I'd love to have you as a resident. So basically, I… I wanted 4 or 5,
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I pitched it to 22 people, thinking I'd get my 4 or 5, and only 2 people decided not to, and the other 20 were like, yeah, of course we're in, we'd love to be able. So that's, that's why we've got so much help.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And it's amazing. It's just incredible to… to have people that can come in and say.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: So now, I know niches are where we're meant to be, but we can literally say, I want to…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Whatever they want to do, there's help
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: in that area. So, you were saying about coming on as an investment expert with Substack. That's an area… it's a niche I didn't even know existed. So of course, you know, at some point in the future, well, you're in our community anyway, aren't you? So, so that help is already there.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, it's just, like…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: physically.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And becoming a resident expert, to me, is about providing value to the community that you're in. It's not about, hey, come over here and buy my crap. It's, hey!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Did you know? And a lot of people just don't know.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I know a lot of the resident experts in your community, and they're all forward…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Thinking very giving people, and those… the…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Trainings that you have in your community are all about, just do this.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: This is the first step in, and I, you know, don't worry about all the bells and whistles. Just take this first step, and we'll hold your hand.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: You got it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're… they're just, like… people on school are so giving, and so all about everybody.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Helping everybody else, and just, like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and making connections, and it's just, like, it's such a special space.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Well, this was the other… I know where I'm probably conscious of overrunning on time now, but that… you just… you just mentioned another point that…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: with school communities, there are so many that you think, oh, this is amazing value, I'm definitely joining. But one of the problems with school is that there are so many.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And then you join 100 different communities, and then you become super overwhelmed, because you got a billion notifications, and suddenly you're like, ugh, I can't support everyone, and I want to. And that is another reason why, as it evolved, we went, okay.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: We're gonna have a room
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Where… more like a… so instead of lots of little communities with everyone shouting over the other for attention, we're like, well, let's all come to this one place.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Where we've got, like, a big round table, so it's more like a pub, where you just go, oh, by the way, have you met so-and-so? They can probably, help you along with that.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: And it's just conversation, and it's all lovely, yeah. I so love it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I do, too. The whole affiliate link thing, it just makes it so easy to share with people, and even if you're not
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: active in a community, just because you've been in that community, and you know the owner, and you know what's going on in there, every once in a while you poke your head in. I'm sharing communities that I've been part of for a really long time. I'm not super active in them. I maybe pop in once a month, really.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, that's fine.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But I'm always recommending them to people that's, like.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you really need to meet this person. They can help you with that problem that you have. And it's just… it's like collecting the old Rolodex. Lots of.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: It's not a mess.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So don't… don't feel bad, and there's ways to turn off the notifications so you're not overwhelmed, or you can just learn to ignore them.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, that's a really important thing, actually, and that's one thing I do do, is the first thing I join the community is turn off every notification, apart from the events. I always leave the events all on, because I love to know what's…
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: going on, and I… but I can… that just goes into a different email folder on my email, and I'll… I'll just browse it and go, yeah, I'll do that one today.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah, I'll pop in and say hi, yeah, because… Yeah, I love it.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Great.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Thank you so much for joining me, Adam. This has been a great conversation.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: I could talk to you all night.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it was painless, you're on… you're on video.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Oh, don't remind me. Don't remind me. I'll hide under the table.
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::Adam McCollough - Start a Business with No Money: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Y'all can learn more about Adam and take advantage of all the massive resources he has in his community by visiting StartupWithAdam.co.uk forward slash community, and we'll be sure to put the links in the description below. Thank you for joining us today. If you're ready to amplify your voice, monetize your mission, and start attracting premium clients, your next step is simple.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Head on over to Coachesalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit. Join us for our next episode as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency. And remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world. Start today and get visible.
