Ep. 5: How do I start a business with no money?
About this Episode
Incoming! 🖨️This week’s caller (or should we say, printer) is Puno’s very own label maker, Dymo! They want to know, “How do I start a business with no money?”
We feel ya. Makin’ money can be tough. Hop on the 1-800-HEYPUNO time machine and let’s go back to 2014! Puno takes us through her journey on starting her businesses and how she made $100K through Squarespace Freelancing. Cha-ching! 💸
⭐️ Don’t forget to check out our Squarespace Design Course⭐️
👀 Mentioned: Digital Bujo and Do The Math Spreadsheet
👋🏼 If you like what you see, hit Subscribe on YouTube.
Transcript
Intro
Puno: All right. And I guess just wait a little longer......
Dymo: "Hey Puno."
Puno: Okay.
Dymo: "I have a question for you."
Puno: What's your question?
Dymo: "I don't have any money, but I'm trying to start a business."
Puno: Oh, damn.
Dymo: "How did you do it?"
Puno: Ooh, let's unpack this!
[Music] 🎵
Puno: Yeah, you gotta have some money, but you're right, I didn't have funding. What I did have was years worth of savings. When you start a business, just assume three years of not being able to support yourself 100%. After the first year, I was like, ughhh, I need to make the money. I decided that I should start freelancing. One of the hardest things about starting your own business with your own money, AKA, bootstrapping.
Puno: What's bootstrapping? Well, it's when an entrepreneur builds a company from personal finances or from the operating revenues of the new company.
Puno: Make sure that your side gig doesn't hurt your main business. I had already freelanced about five years before, and I knew that I could hate it really hard. I mean, it's client services at the end of the day.
Puno: I made a point of figuring out what freelance gig would make the most sense for me at this point in my life. I needed to create freelance work that would essentially supplement my business. And more importantly, I didn't want it to take too much emotional energy.
Puno: "Mmhhmm."
Puno: Yeah. You know what I'm saying, little Dymo? It couldn't take too much time, like actual time, and it actually had to bring in enough money. This is my timeline, and I want to share with you exactly how much money I made and how it was making all these decisions to create a freelance gig that actually supplemented my business.
Puno: So let's go back in time. What was in 2014? What was happening? Oh, that was happening.
Puno: 2014, I made about $38,000 in freelancing and I still had savings. Since I was a UX designer, It was actually pretty easy for me to get work because everybody, I mean everybody, was building an app. So one of the main freelance gigs that I had was designing a mobile app for another company. I realized that it was actually way too hard for me to turn off my brain. Also, they wanted me to be in the office. It was really good money, but I needed something easier for me on my brain and remote, meaning I wanted to be at home and not wear pants.
Puno: Mmhmmm. Yeah, you know what I'm saying!
Puno: In 2015, I had made about $14,000 in freelancing because I still had my savings. I decided not to do UX design. Instead I decided to do more graphic design, which is fun, but it was just a lot of back and forth. Also, it was, it was hard to find clients that actually just wanted graphic design. They typically wanted it for their website, which brings me to 2016. In 2016, I made about $60,000 in freelancing, and I was at the end of my savings at this point. My freelancing was my main business income, and I decided to focus on website design versus graphic design. Branding, specifically. Initially, I just helped a few people builder their Squarespace site, so that I wouldn't have to manage it later, but I found that Squarespace clients were pretty ideal in that they were very eager to learn and ready to launch immediately. Before, when I used to work at Activision and Call of Duty, we would work on a site for a year before we would launch, and the turnaround time for Squarespace websites was like a month. So much faster!
Puno: "How do you identify what freelance gig you should say no to?"
Puno: It's more about finding which gigs should be coming in. You know what, you can say no all day. You just be like, yeah, no. Really, you want to say yes more. For me, I had to brand myself to the kind of gigs I really wanted. What that meant for me when I was focusing on all Squarespace clients, I ended up taking off all of my agency portfolio work and that's like about, I don't know, four to five years of work working on like Pepsi. I think it was Taco Bell, Activision, Wells Fargo. I'm just not going to get those kinds of clients anymore, and personally, I just didn't want those kinds of clients anymore. I needed to take it all off and replace the work with the kind of clients that I wanted.
Puno: 2017, this was a great year. Also, the year that I started doing my digital bullet journal /my time. In 2017, I made $100,000 in freelancing, and it was my main business income. Actually. I made a spreadsheet called "Do the Math," and it showed me that I could work two hours a day and make $100,000/year.
Puno: "Okay, Woo. Oh yeah. Where can I get that spreadsheet?!"
Puno: I think it's on ilovecreatives.com/dothemath. Take it. It's great. I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but if you have a question about it, you know, so that was my goal because I didn't want to sacrifice my lifestyle for my business, meaning I didn't want to have to always budget. Even though we were on a path to being profitable with People Map and ilovcreatives, you still never know. Right? Freelancing had to work- no pressure. I mean, it's a fallback just because it's not, the primary thing I want to do doesn't mean it has to suck. Fortunately, all the leg work that I did before, turned into a lot of referrals. I do this thing at the end of the year when I have to do my taxes and essentially I take every single one of my clients and figure out where they came from. 80% of my income came from referrals in 2017, and 20% of that came from networking.
Puno: What I mean by networking was literally going to events, not saying, hey, my name's Puno, I'm the founder of ilovecreatives. It was, hey, my name is Puno. I make Squarespace websites. At the time I was like, I need to have Squarespace clients. So I hit my goal and I literally made $100,000 doing just Squarespace websites and working two hours a day. It had a lot to do with my hourly rate being able to increase. It had a lot to do with, like I said, that legwork in 2016.
Puno: In 2018, I quit freelancing. That was this year. I mean, I do some freelancing every now and then, but only for like super, super fun projects. The hard work paid off. But now my main business, and I started another one along the way, is bringing home the bacon. I hope that gives you some clarification.
Puno: This is great because I was so focused on my business that I forgot about the one that makes the money, and I can change it up to what I need. Yeah, you got it. Damn. Took home the point.
Puno: No, but it's true. And you have control of how you're going to make your money, which is amazing. You should definitely change it up to what you need. Cool.
Puno: All right, well, um, thanks for printing in. [Laughs].
Puno: If you have any questions, feel free to go to www.ilovecreatives.com/1800HEYPUNO and fill out the form. Then, maybe I'll know the answer, and if I don't know the answer, maybe I'll call a friend. Thanks so much. Dymo thing?
Puno: Thanks girl. Byeeeeeeeeeee.
Outro
Puno: Thanks for watching or listening. Don't forget to click to subscribe. Okay. All right. We're still here. That's fine. That's fine. We can do that. We, uh, what do we, what do we got? What do we got? Oh, have you seen this video? 'Cause that, cause that video definitely is really good. WHO, just binged all of them, so she's, she's a little tired, but it's because her brain is like hurting from all the knowledge that she gained. Like she's twitching hardcore right now because she's just tired.
