Book Review: 100$ Start-up by Chris Guillebeau

Care to know how to start a business with only less of an amount for a capital? In this book 100$ Startup, Chris Guillebeau made a guide for people who want to leave their eight-hour-day work and start their own business. Mr. Guillebeau is an entrepreneur and a writer who loves travelling. To him, visiting every country in the world is a success. He is also a dedicated individual regarding self-employment and encourages people to live their lives with fulfillment. With over 300, 000 visits on his blog site, The Art of Non-Conformity; he sees to it that every reader can gain insights from him.

100% Startup is created to help individuals, who started leaving the hierarchies and rules of traditional employment, to do what they love, follow their passion and start their own business to make a living. Moreover, this book also talks about Chris Guillebeau’s advice to microbusinessmen who are interested in successful small-business ideas and to individuals who wanted to grow their microbusiness and increase their income.

Reading through the whole book, it is informative in such a way that anyone who was able to come across it would be interested in a scheme such as self-employment. It is not a walk in the park, but if one is determined to be his own boss of his company and earn money from it, then this book can definitely help a lot. Also, experiences from around 50 different entrepreneurs who started with a capital of only $100 or less, became an inspiration and a source of motivation for this book and for interested individuals who wanted to venture on this type of money-making method.

The following are some insights from the book that are helpful in making one realize that joining microbusinesses is fun and exciting:

Break away from the nine-to-five and become your own boss—it’s a lot simpler than you think.  One of the most important stages in the whole process is making the choice to act. And yes it is true. Many entrepreneurs often feel that struggles come from competitors or market forces, but it is the other way around. Having those internal insecurities and fears can make you go one step back because it involves risk-taking. But the reality is, you have to take a leap of faith. We never know, you might just see some gold coins at the end of the rainbow.

Passion is not enough for business success; you also need customers and the right skills. Finding your sweet spot where your passions, your skills and the needs of others meet is the best recipe for success. And it is also important that you provide value to your customers.

Understand your customers’ deepest needs and craft your offering accordingly. Knowing your customers is one important thing for a startup entrepreneur to begin with so it is essential that you reach out to your customers and ask them what their passions, skills and needs are. From there, you will know what they are interested in and can start a move on how to advertise and showcase your products to your prospects. 

Get creative with your marketing, and focus on the benefits that your product provides. In crafting messages, don’t dwell too much attention to the features of your products but instead focus more on the core benefits for the customer: how it will help them. And with this, you also need to hustle with your marketing strategies to be able to gain better results and build up more audience.

Successful launches rely on thorough preparation and instilling a sense of urgency.  Essentially, every entrepreneur should plan and prepare their launch meticulously. A few of the techniques that an entrepreneur could do is to engage your audience prior to the big launch, say you are going to build up their anticipation by telling them proactively about your on-going project.

A business needs to make money, so stay focused on your costs and income. This means you need to consider things like your funding, your costs and most importantly, your income. Moreover, every entrepreneur should be proactive about business development. For example, asking yourself about how to make more sales, know if there are long-standing problems that needs to be fixed and so on, to keep focused on the lifeblood of your company.

Get paid more than once, price your product ambitiously and use small tweak to make a big impact in profits.  Make sure that your pricing is based on the benefits you provide, not the cost of producing a service. On the other hand, you also need to raise your prices periodically, which can be an indicator that you are much more than what you charge.

Make your business as big as you want: stay small or grow by bringing in other people. In business, it is okay to have different ambitions. And as your business grows, you may soon find out that you simply cannot manage everything by yourself. And this where the need of bringing people in is important.

Keep plans simple so you can focus on the action. Action beats planning when it comes to starting and running microbusiness, every time. Business plans should be simple and essential things such as what to sell, to whom you should sell your products and how you’ll get paid should be noted. 

Below is video of Chris Guillebeau talking about The Business of Inspiration.

In conclusion to the insights from the book 100$ Startup, Chris Guillebeau wants every aspiring entrepreneur who have decided to leave the workforce and start their own business, they will typically find a lot of people giving unsolicited advice. Moreover, this book reminds ever individual that you do not need anyone’s permission to be successful. You should learn to trust your own judgment and take the leap. You won’t believe how good making that first sale will feel.

Overall, this book is a big yes for recommendation. It is a good-read and with the very concise approach, the impact is big that it would make you think of ideas on how to start your own microbusiness.