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Let’s call out some myths today…start your six-figure business today with a $0 investment.

We have all seen the posts, heck I am guilty of this too (we live and learn). Yes, technically you can start a profitable business with very little cash upfront. But what can this business actually accomplish for you? The results vary.

No one would try to start a franchise restaurant business without upfront investment.

No one would try to start an Etsy shop without upfront investment.

Why are we trying to convince people to start an online business without an upfront investment?

The only thing we have accomplished is bringing in a bunch of people who are unprepared to invest in their business and learn the skills necessary to succeed. So these people ‘tinker’ with their business for a few months, and then decide it is a scam, or it is not with it and they bail. So they end up leaving thousands of dollars on the table because they were told you do not need to invest to succeed.

Let’s be real you have to invest your hard-earned money to grow ANY business. 

I started as an affiliate marketer with under $30 in investment. And I made some quick commissions, but it was not sustainable and I knew it. I knew the only way to grow my business was to reinvest. I chose to purchase a higher ticket educational program that had group coaching attached to it. That program changed how I think about my business and taught me very valuable skills (copywriting, lead generation, mindset shifts). Now my goal is to keep making commissions so I can reinvest. I need a paid mentor next. Knowing that this is how I take my business from financially successful but fragile to stable and booming.

I am not recommending you go out and drop $5,000 on the first online course you see (there are a lot of scammers out here). But I want you to know that you can absolutely start your online business on a shoestring budget, but once that money starts coming in you need to think about how you are going to reinvest in your business and continue to scale. 

It is absolutely possible to change your life forever by building an online business. But just starting an online business does you no good. You have to build it! So after you research a business model and decide what kind of business you want to build, write out a business plan. I like 12-month goals that are broken down into quarterly and monthly goals, but whatever works for you do it!

In that business plan, you will identify your target market, your traffic source, the products you are selling, your profit margins, and your expenses. Any sustainable business has business expenses that increase over time proportional to the revenue increase you are seeing as you gain traction.

Here is a simple example of a concession stand business.

Target Market: parents and fans at the local sports park

Traffic Source: handwritten signs and word of mouth

Products: candy bars and soda- purchased in bulk from Costco

Product Cost: candy bar $1 each and bottle of soda $.50

Sales Price: candy bar $1.50 and bottle of soda $1.50

Profit Margin: candy bar $.50 and a bottle of soda is $1

If I started a concession stand selling candy bars and soda my upfront investment would be low, maybe just $100. I could buy 50 candy bars and 100 bottles of soda. The profit once I sold out would be $125. That isn’t bad for a small business venture. But now I know what is selling, I adjust my products and listen to my customers. I learned that they want more than just candy and soda. They actually want chips too. Perfect, I add chips to my business and reinvest my profits to purchase new products. Wow, people love this concession stand and now they want hot food as well. I decided to start cheap and easy with nachos and frito pie. Now I am really making a profit and realize that I have the beginnings of a food truck business. 

See how reinvestment happens every day in businesses across the world?

No one would ever stop you from reinvesting in a brick-and-mortar business even if it starts out as a small concession stand.

So we need to change how we think about investing in an online business. You can absolutely start out with low upfront costs, but eventually, you will need to reinvest. Since you do not always need product inventory your reinvestments will probably be in the form of software, tool, educational course, or mentor. That is okay! That is how you grow. Do not be afraid to delay a huge payday to set up a long-term business.

So if you are starting up on a shoestring budget here are my must-have tools:

Domain Name ($6 per year)

Funnel Builder/Autoresponder (Free)

Introductory Educational Program ($7)

IF you are ready to reinvest in your business and scale to large numbers  take a look at these products:

Elite Educational Program ($1,497)

Funnel Builder ($97 per month after a 14-day free trial)

Autoresponder (starting at $19 per month, free option available)

Copywriting Tool ($49 per month after a 7-day free trial)

These are the tools and educational programs that I have found to be most beneficial for me. Everyone is going to have their own learning curve and have different tools and software that work best for them. Don’t be afraid to try things out and see what works for you. The best tip I can give anyone in this business is to take advantage of free trials. These trials allow you to test out the tools, software, and systems without putting your hard-earned money on the line immediately. If you are worried about forgetting to cancel a trial and getting charged (we have all been there!) set a reminder or appointment in your calendar to cancel the trial a day or two before you are supposed to get charged. This allows you to test out the free trials with peace of mind.

Whatever you decide, get out there and start working! Starting a business does nothing for you, building a business can change your life.

Welcome to my blog! Thanks for taking the time to read. I am excited to share my story and journey with you.

I wanted to pull back the curtain a little and share how I got here. After graduating from Texas A&M I had my mind set on one thing and one thing alone- becoming an elite softball coach. I worked my way up the ranks as a youth travel ball coach, high school coach, college coach, and international team (Great Britain) coach and spent my entire adult life working to further my softball career. Working 70 hour weeks consistently was slowly eating away at me. I love coaching and I love teaching, but anyone who has ever been in the world of elite athletics knows that it takes a huge toll on your mental health and personal life.

This spring I realized that as much as I love coaching it is not my ideal career. It is not a great fit for me. Wow, did it take a long time to come to that conclusion? I had no idea where to turn or what I should do next. My world felt like it was falling down.

I was looking for a career change so I hopped on Indeed to find a new “real job”. I got interviews and job offers for a wide range of jobs, but nothing seemed to feel right. Not knowing what I was looking for led me to apply for anything and everything that would support my family. With no idea what I wanted to do next, I started thinking about why I wanted a new career.

I have significant mental health struggles with PTSD thanks to some old trauma and while I can interact with people and “sufficiently” do my job on bad days it is really not fun. I am not at my best and I know it. Struggling with PTSD for years made me dread the next day that I would wake up on a bad day and have to coach or teach all day long. I could not possibly be at my best no matter how badly I wanted to be for my athletes and students. I just survived the day.

So in my search for a new job I was looking for a few key things:

• Work From Home– I have two amazing dogs who are the best untrained therapy dogs ever. They make every day better, so working with them on my lap or at my feet was important to me.
• Limited Surprise Interactions with Others– As you might guess unplanned social interactions drain my introvert social battery quicker than most. I needed to find a job that did not require hours on the phone or on Zoom meetings.
• Flexible Work Schedule or Generous PTO– Having the ability to use it last minute on a particulary bad day was important to me. Sometimes PTSD rares its ugly head and you just have to curl up on the couch with the dogs and watch a movie. I have been lucky enough to always have jobs with paid time off, but most of the time taking that time off came with a feeling of guilt.
• Support My Family– I knew I had very high expectations for my new job so I was not expecting anything close to my previous salary. But I was looking for a job that I could grow into and see how my salary could grow over time.

I knew my expectations were high and I was fully prepared to compromise to find the best job possible for me, my mental health, and my family. At the end of the day being present and engaged with my family is 100% more important to me than having a high-paying job that takes all of my time and makes me miserable.

I applied to more jobs than I could count. I got a bunch of interviews and even a few job offers, but I knew those jobs were a stepping stone. They were going to be short-term bandaids that required me to make a change in the future. Then I got a text message from a guy saying he would like to set up an interview to talk about a 1099 sales position. I was intrigued. The ability to make my own hours, work from home, and control my income seemed like a great fit…

Then I got on the phone with him and it was short, like barely a 4-minute call, and he said he thought I would be a great fit so he was going to send me some information and we would set up a follow-up call for a few days. I was intrigued until I clicked through the links…it was a pyramid scheme. Requiring me to pay over $14,000 to purchase personal development courses and then sell those courses to other people. I smelt scam from a mile away, but I googled the business anyway. That is when I found a review of these products that confirmed it was a pyramid scheme (my opinion is it is a scam). But in that review, the author talked about affiliate marketing and his recommendations to get started building an affiliate business.

I jumped in. I started researching affiliate marketing, watching youtube videos, and buying low-ticket educational courses. The information I was learning was exciting, eye-opening, but very surface level. The big thing in affiliate marketing at the time was Tik Tok and all of the fast-growing free traffic. So that is where I started…

It was not a good fit for me. I am not a huge fan of being on video and staying consistent with video posts was hard. The procrastination was real! I would dread making the videos and find every excuse imaginable to not record videos. I knew TikTok was productive for some people but it was overwhelming for me and I never really got any traction. 

So I went back to what I knew worked…Indeed. I copied the sales process, sales funnel and copy that the ‘scammer’ on Indeed sent me. I made sure to be more upfront and give potential customers a lower ticket option to get in. It worked! I made high ticket sales fast (over $10,000) in commissions in under 48 hours. But it felt awful. I was making money, controlled my schedule, and still felt slimy. People go on Indeed to find jobs, not to buy things. Don’t get me wrong, the traffic was free, it was high quality, and it was consistent. But for my personality, it was not a great fit. I am a teacher at heart. I want to genuinely help people. While I did believe in the products I was promoting it felt like a bait and switch scam. Honestly, it pretty much was…

So I continued to post on Indeed (still have to provide for my family since I had left the classroom by this point) but I was searching for a better way. I saw that a lot of affiliates were having success on Facebook using organic marketing strategies. So I set up my Facebook profile funnel, joined a bunch of groups, and started posting. Again it was working. I was getting 100-200 people a week into my sales funnel. But it still wasn’t feeling right. I was again overwhelmed by the amount of time I had to spend on Facebook Messenger and felt like I was begging for sales. I got frustrated and stepped away from Facebook for a few weeks to re-evaluate what I wanted to do.

Throughout this process, I knew I wanted to stay in business online. I love the freedom, the constant strategizing, and the income potential. But I hadn’t found my fit yet. So when a full-time job popped up on my radar that checked all of my boxes above I couldn’t resist. I took a full-time job as an online teacher. I knew I was taking this job for the stability and for the gift of time. Having a stable income allowed me to build an online business I could be proud of. So I went through all of my training programs again and EVERYTHING kept saying to create good content to help people. 

Yes, I knew this was a thing, but so far every time I created content I got no results, and every time I used a high-pressure sales tactic I made money and then felt slimy. Now I did not have to worry about making any money. I just had to find my place online and put out good content. That is the goal of this new blog. 

I started thinking about all of the traffic sources out there: SEO, Facebook Ads, Facebook Organic, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, Quora, Blogging, Solo Ads, Google Ads. Then I made a pro and con list for every single traffic source I could think of within affiliate marketing. I knew video was tough for me. I knew I procrastinated on Facebook Organic because it was draining my social battery. I knew SEO and Youtube took a long time and Ads cost money. I also knew that I like to write. I enjoy sitting down at my computer and putting my thoughts down on paper. The idea of sharing these thoughts with the masses is a little scary, but hey you have to step outside your comfort zone to create success.

This is how I decided to start my own blog. I will be honest with you I don’t have a 10-year plan. I don’t have an elaborate plan to market this blog and make millions of dollars. But I know some basics.

I know that the world of online business is scary, but represents a true opportunity for so many people to change their lives. I genuinely believe in the benefits of passive income, multiple streams of income, and helping others achieve financial freedom. I am not an affiliate marketing expert. I am not an online business expert. But I am going to take you along my journey as I try to build a profitable lifestyle business online while working a full-time job.

Thank you for reading this far, really I can’t believe anyone would stick around this long lol. But it means a lot to me and I can’t wait to share my journey with you.