7 Best Businesses to Start For Less Than 1000$

Name: 7 Best Businesses to Start For Less Than 1000$
Uploaded: 2025-10-17T23:24:33+00:00
Duration: 34 min 58 s
Channel: Shine Star

Shine Star

You won’t believe how simple these
7 businesses are — and how little capital they need to start.

#LowBudgetBusiness
#StartWith1000
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#Bootstrapped
#SmallBiz2025
#EntrepreneurLife
#BusinessOnABudget
#SideHustleNation
#StartUpOnADime

Your low-cost business starts here — join me.

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00:00What do you do if you want to run your own thing, but you're short on dollars?

00:04So I did some research, and it may surprise you how many things you can make money on

00:08without you having to spend money first.

00:11But first, we need to define what success looks like, or what I call high ROI, low cash businesses.

00:17We are looking for a very particular type of business, one that cash flows to us, aka high ROI,

00:23but we don't have to spend a bunch of money up front, aka low cash down.

00:27Now, ROI means return on income, or to show you mathematically, ROI equals net income

00:33divided by the cost of investment times 100.

00:36So if you want to earn 10K and you've spent 1,000, you've made ROI of 9,000.

00:41Pretty damn good.

00:42But then we add what's called investment length, or how long did it take you to earn on it?

00:47These are the metrics today and how you should decide if a business is a good business or not.

00:51For every time you hear someone say, but I have no money, I want you to come back to this video.

00:55We'll talk about the seven businesses to start, with less than 1,000, what the real return

01:00in time expectations are, and who these types of businesses may be good or bad for.

01:04Now, how do I know this?

01:06We review hundreds of businesses a month in our portfolio.

01:10We have invested in five of these types of businesses, and three of them, we have gone

01:14direct to others who have done it.

01:16Because we're not trying to teach theory, we're teaching what actually happens in the

01:19world of business.

01:20So first, let's show you why you don't just put that $1,000 into stocks, crypto, or real

01:26estate, or at least why I don't.

01:28Stocks, they average 10% per year over any 10-year period.

01:31That ROI is then 10%.

01:33The time or investment length is one year for you to make $100.

01:38Not great.

01:39Real estate.

01:40Now with real estate, you got a bit less.

01:42We're at 9.5% on the high end, and single family homes are at 1.32%.

01:47So you're making somewhere between $95 to $13 a year on $1,000 invested.

01:53I own both of these things.

01:54They're great.

01:55But if I only have $1,000 to work with, I'd be betting on myself and my businesses.

01:59You have to earn before you can make real money investing.

02:03Here's my business matrix.

02:04We'll go over seven of these businesses.

02:06The matrix is called Sell.

02:08Aren't we clever?

02:09It stands for the four characteristics we want.

02:11Sellable.

02:12You can sell a product on day one.

02:14You don't have to do this forever.

02:16Two, high earning, or E, you can make that $100,000 plus a year in profit.

02:21It's not just a side hustle.

02:22Three is low cost, cost you less than $1,000.

02:25And four is high leverage, aka you can outsource a lot of the work.

02:29You start the business, but you don't have to do it all forever.

02:32So let's get into it.

02:34But a disclaimer first.

02:36You have to do the work.

02:37Life hack, always the stairs, never the elevator.

02:40You have to do the hard things, and then you won't have to worry about the cost of things.

02:44That's the trade-off.

02:45Now, I've saved the best for last, so make sure you stay for that.

02:48And also remember to subscribe.

02:50I've been planning an hour-long video for like eight months that's dropping in a couple weeks.

02:54I think it's my best video yet, and I don't want you guys to miss it.

02:57Business number one, remote window cleaning company.

03:00Let's break down just the bare cost for this business.

03:02Now, how much money can be made?

03:17You can charge around $100 to $500 to clean the windows on a house.

03:21With only one or two houses, you've paid for your entire window cleaning business.

03:25If you get them up to $500 to $1,000, you need two, and then you've paid for that second stage of $1,800.

03:32If you add pressure washing, we're talking about thousands of dollars for each endeavor.

03:36I just pressure washed my fence around my house, and it cost me $2,500.

03:41So with one to five clients, you are at break-even.

03:44Everything above that is profit to you.

03:47And no, you don't have to be the one doing all the cleaning.

03:49Let's break it down.

03:50We're actually going to learn this from my buddy, Johnny.

03:52Johnny was only 19 years old, and he built a $20,000 a month remote cleaning business.

03:57Here was his playbook.

03:58And my favorite part, I think, is how simple it was.

04:01He goes around to really big houses like this and stores like this and charges them anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to $10,000 to clean all of their windows.

04:10The reason why this is interesting is there's a super disaggregated market, meaning there's a bunch of window cleaners all over the place.

04:16Their pricing is totally differentiated, but the thing that's hardest for them is getting new clients.

04:22Johnny, being young and hungry, is actually good at the getting new clients part.

04:26Probably not so great at the squeaky clean windows part.

04:30And so what does he do?

04:31He matches the two, and I'm going to break that down exactly.

04:34Let's talk first about how he gets new clients, and second, let's talk about how he actually does none of the work in the service business by using what's called employee arbitrage.

04:42First, let's start with getting customers.

04:44What do you do?

04:45Three things.

04:46Most customers for window cleaning comes from where?

04:49Google Ads.

04:50Just think about what you do.

04:51If you have dirty windows, you need cleaning, or you need a housekeeper.

04:54You go to Google and you type in cleaners.

04:56So what Johnny Robinson did was get really good at ads.

05:00You could watch a couple of courses or YouTube videos on this.

05:02I mean, better than 97% of 65-year-olds who actually own these businesses.

05:07You make your ads look like this, a little sexy.

05:09Most of their ads look like this.

05:10Step two is he actually used TikTok and Instagram because check this out.

05:15TikTok and Instagram Reels, as well as YouTube Shorts, basically are searchable.

05:20So now these are videos that are Google SEO.

05:24So he did really straightforward videos like this that, again, a 65-year-old would never do, but he did.

05:29And then finally, he got really good at local SEO to basically be the number one item that shows up when you're searching for cleaning in Orange County, which is the name of his company.

05:41Those three things drive 95% of his customers to his local window cleaning business.

05:48Now, the second part, if you're thinking, well, I don't want to run a cleaning business because I don't want to clean anybody's windows, not even my own.

05:54The beautiful part about this is he actually doesn't do any of the cleaning.

05:57He uses employee arbitrage, or the fancy word for it is called subcontractors.

06:03So remember when I told you that most people who own these small businesses don't know how to get leads?

06:08What if all you did was provide the leads for those small business owners?

06:12That's what Johnny does.

06:13He uses his three funnels to draw on a bunch of customers, and then he calls up a bunch of his competitors and says, hey, I'd love to do a deal with you.

06:22I have too many leads.

06:23I can't service them all.

06:24If we did a deal where I get a percentage of everybody I subcontract out to you to do the actual cleaning, would you be interested in that?

06:32You're a small business owner.

06:33Think about it.

06:33Of course you're going to take free leads.

06:35So now we have a business where Johnny started off with basically $0.

06:39His original startup costs were something like $1,000, then $3,000.

06:44He got it to $20,000 in revenue, and now that business is doing $1,000 to $2,000 plus, and he sold it.

06:51That's why I love this idea of window cleaning.

06:53What do I really mean?

06:54I mean subcontracting and lead gen for service businesses.

06:59How do you find subcontractors?

07:01Three ways I like to.

07:02One, you go to Google, and you look for all your competitors, and you start reaching out to them asking for the owner.

07:07Two, you go to local Facebook groups.

07:09These could be neighborhood groups, mom groups, and ask for referrals to their professional cleaners.

07:14And three, you go to local trade groups.

07:16Google right now.

07:17In your area, window cleaning association, cleaning association, small business cleaning association, and you're going to find a bunch of your target audience.

07:26How do you tell if your subcontractors are good or not?

07:28You see how many jobs they currently do in a week.

07:31You see how many reviews they have.

07:33You ask them how much they would price these services for, how long they've been cleaning, and you get a referral or two.

07:40From the answers to those three questions, you negotiate that split I talked to you about for every lead you send them.

07:46And after each clean, you set up, through that booking koala, a quality assurance text to see how the clean went and build relationships with the customers.

07:55This is so tiny, and yet nobody does it.

07:58Now let's break this down.

08:00Does this business fit our model?

08:02One, high ROI.

08:03Johnny makes 20k a month, so that fits the 10k a month demand.

08:07Two, is low cash down.

08:09He started with less than a grand and scaled up to three grand that he needed.

08:13So, low cash business.

08:14And three, how long does it take to hit that first 10k?

08:17It took Johnny 90 days, so we're inside of the six-month window.

08:22Check, check, check.

08:23Why else do I love this business?

08:25Low failure risk.

08:26Your only real cost is your labor cost.

08:29If you decide to scale up this business, you don't have to have a bunch of inventory.

08:32You don't have to have a warehouse, no shipping expectations.

08:35So the cost to the business owner, you, is less, and bankruptcy risk is less.

08:41I'd add a B2B component to this.

08:42You have your houses.

08:43Those are going to be easier to close, smaller dollar amounts.

08:46You add commercial.

08:47They pay you, I don't know, 5k every month up front in a contract that's reoccurring.

08:53You keep their sidewalks clean, their windows clean, their parking spaces clean.

08:59The last reason I like this is the beginner-friendly nature of this business.

09:02You don't have to be licensed.

09:04You don't have to have a complex business model.

09:07You live next to most of your neighbors.

09:09They need this service.

09:10Did you know 35% of small business owners bought an existing business?

09:15As a matter of fact, I just bought my 27th.

09:18And the first thing I'm going to do is set up payroll.

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10:04With Roll, I can buy businesses 28, 29, 30, 31.

10:11And now back to the video.

10:13All right, let's go to business number two.

10:14Real estate listing video editor.

10:16Okay, I love this because actually one of my employees, Sam, did this before I hired him.

10:20I know what you're thinking.

10:21You know, I'm not a video editor.

10:23And I get you.

10:24I thought the same thing.

10:25What's fascinating is that you don't actually need to be.

10:28This is so simple.

10:30It's really just a process game.

10:33Most people think that they can't edit, and so they would never try to start this business.

10:37It's a good moat.

10:39But all you have to do is put in a couple of hours of work, and you can see how high the demand is

10:44and how easy actually the fulfillment or delivery of it.

10:48I spent literally five minutes with Sam earlier pulling some clips together.

10:52And now, as someone that's never edited a video before, I could make videos like this.

10:57Not Spielberg, but just watch any of these videos, and you'll probably be better than me in half a day,

11:08two to three hours of your time for a hundred thousand a year business, which is exactly what Sam made.

11:13And to prove my point even further, I hired Sam full-time.

11:17He couldn't run his real estate business anymore.

11:19And so now, this person, which is his fiancée, is the one running it.

11:22She used to work in mortgages.

11:24She had no idea how to edit a video, and now she's running this business for him.

11:28Here's why I love this business.

11:30It's a huge name.

11:31Real estate agents, they get 403% more interest in their listings if they have video on them.

11:38Scroll through Redfin and Zillow, and you'll see what I see, which is that none of these guys have video on there.

11:43It's all images.

11:44Some of them really bad images.

11:46This business would be very easy to start.

11:48You reach out to these real estate agents by clicking on their links on Zillow and Redfin.

11:52All of them have their contact information in front of you.

11:55You give them a few sample videos of videos that you've clipped together from other people's work.

12:00You send it to them, and you say, hey, I charge $50 per video and $100 if I need to shoot the video,

12:08and you don't shoot the video yourself.

12:09For $150, you could close a transaction 403% faster.

12:14Does that sound interesting to you?

12:16I know firsthand how hard it is to hire video editors.

12:19My suggestion, you start with real estate, and then you go up.

12:22Why I like this business?

12:24Very low startup costs.

12:26Sticky clients.

12:27When real estate agents start seeing that huge conversion number.

12:31Such a simple business model.

12:33If you can't understand pulling a few clips together, you probably shouldn't look at other businesses.

12:38Relatively recession-proof.

12:39Even when the market goes down, realtors are going to want to sell houses even more.

12:44Okay, so here's how I would start a video editor business.

12:47Spend a week learning how to clip videos together.

12:50Make a demo of videos like this one.

12:51Go to Zillow and Redfin and start emailing all those real estate agents.

12:56Don't send generic messages to thousands of them.

13:00Instead, take the extra minute to show you care by writing a specific email to them with your example clips.

13:06You get 20 clients paying you $5,000 a month, and you could very easily be making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year,

13:13or at least what Samuel did, which is $100,000.

13:15Does this hit our metrics?

13:17Three things.

13:18High ROI.

13:19Yes, we've pretty quickly seen that Samuel made the demanded $100,000 at least a year, or $10,000 a month.

13:26Two, low cash down.

13:28All you need is a camera.

13:30Actually, you might not even need that.

13:31You could use this 99 cents editing software and just not do the filming yourself.

13:35Third is length of investment.

13:37How long would it take before you could hit that $10,000 a month?

13:39I think you could do it easily within six months.

13:41If it was me and aggressive, I'd probably have pre-orders on this business done inside of 30 days for $10,000.

13:48So we got high ROI.

13:49We got low cash.

13:50We got low time of investment.

13:54Now we've got microgreens.

13:55This is a weird business, but I kind of love it.

13:58And we're basing it off of Jonah's business, this guy.

14:01He started with less than $700, exactly, and started cash flowing with microgreens, aka gardening.

14:08I mean, that's what us millennials are into.

14:09Anyway, he basically tried a bunch of different things.

14:12He tried basil, tried kale, tried lettuce, and then realized that growing microgreens is where the most cash was.

14:19Why?

14:19They're one of the most profitable crop varieties and one of the easiest to grow.

14:24The numbers back that up.

14:25So Jonah now made $60,000 within his first year.

14:29Not bad for starting with less than $1,000.

14:32Let's break down how he did it and how you could do it too.

14:35You need a six-foot plant rack.

14:37For every six-foot plant rack you have, you're going to make about $2,000.

14:41In the beginning, your margins are going to be high, like 85%, because you're going to be doing everything.

14:46So for every plant rack you have, you'll keep about $1,700 in profit, which means you need five or six of these to get to that $10,000 number.

14:54That's probably about the size of a square bedroom, maybe half of a square bedroom.

14:58You could put all of these plant racks in there.

15:00If you get to big scale, like past that couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue, your margins are going to drop.

15:07You're going to be like Jonah, where he made $700,000 in 2021 with about 40% margins.

15:12The cool thing about this business, though, is you can start small and scale really easily.

15:18You could have racks that are two feet and put it in your cupboard and put it in your laundry room because you actually have internal pink light that grows these bad boys.

15:27Let's break down exactly how I would start this business.

15:30Here's Jonah's playbook.

15:31Step one, find your space, grab your equipment.

15:34We talked about the six-foot indoor space to get started.

15:37Window light, not required because of those pink lights.

15:40Offices, spare bedrooms, cupboard under the stairs, you could have a few different varietals.

15:45Step two, you've got to buy your seeds.

15:46Basically, very standard.

15:49Seeds, dirt, light, and the infrastructure to build it.

15:53It takes about three weeks for you to get your first seed started.

15:57If a green thumb just isn't your best quality, you can leverage a software called VertiGrow, which will create a daily checklist for you to manage your plant rotation and watering schedules.

16:07That's what I'd do.

16:08Step three, finding your customers.

16:10When you're first starting out, you're most likely going to operate direct to consumer.

16:15I would use something like Facebook Marketplace.

16:18This is what he does.

16:19Or going to a farmer's market, which a lot of people do.

16:23In fact, that's how my friend Kat started her business, Mush, that led to a $50 million business.

16:29Then, I would want to create a subscription model and schedule deliveries continuously to keep that profit growing.

16:36I love this business because it's non-traditional.

16:38It's not an internet business.

16:40It's not a boring business.

16:41It's for those of you out there that want to do something with a green thumb.

16:43Make some income, play with plants, but also not spend a ton of money.

16:48Let's see if it hits our three things.

16:49High ROI.

16:50Well, yeah, Jonah's doing $700K a year with this business.

16:53And we've sort of calculated you can get to $10K having five of these six-foot racks.

16:59Step two, low cash down.

17:02Those racks and the seeds all cost you less than $1,000 to start.

17:06I think if you want to scale up to $120K a year, you're going to have to spend a couple thousand dollars in seeds, et cetera.

17:13But you're not going to do it all at once.

17:15You'll do it over the course of three to six months.

17:17And step three, how long until your investment returns?

17:20Well, the seeds take 30 days.

17:22So within 30 days, you can sell your first crop.

17:25I would actually do pre-orders if I could, selling to friends, family, farmers, markets.

17:30So I would try to get my cash up front, which means we are well within the six-month window.

17:35That's microgreens.

17:36Renting wedding arches, or really any wedding decoration.

17:40I love this business because have you seen what people spend on weddings?

17:44Astronomical.

17:44It's just like any idea to financial awareness goes out the window.

17:49Now, you could say that this could cost more than $1,000 to start, but I think there's a few ways to hack this.

17:54And it just might be one of the simplest businesses out there.

17:57So let's check it out.

17:58Average revenue per job, 521.

18:01Time commitment, let's call it one to three hours per job.

18:04Here's the story.

18:06Jimmy basically noticed that less than 22% of weddings take place indoors.

18:10That meant there was a market for mobile marriage supplies.

18:14So Jimmy started looking at the numbers.

18:15$2,200 to purchase the tents.

18:18Gigs were $500 and could be paid back after four installations or four gigs.

18:22The tents would last roughly five to 10 years.

18:27And he realized if I could just spend a couple K up front, I could make all of my money back with basically five to 10 jobs.

18:34Let's do the cost breakdown.

18:36About $1,100 for the arches and some of the accessories that go on them.

18:41Let's call it another $1,200 for the additional accessories that he could upsell people to.

18:47So we're in for what?

18:48$3,300.

18:49Okay, a little bit more than a grand, but not much.

18:52But then look at this.

18:53Let's say that we do 60 different activations throughout the year.

18:58Basically just wedding season with a couple weddings a day and we charge on average $1,500 for the arch plus the upsells.

19:06We're making $90,000.

19:07Then if we add tents and accessories, we're making another $90,000 to $100,000.

19:12So we're sitting at $180,000 to $190,000 a year.

19:16If you think from a time perspective, you're going to expect to be at each location for about an hour to set up and an hour to take down.

19:24So two hours during your weekend, you could do two or three or four weddings a day.

19:28Basically.

19:29And then finally, the materials last you anywhere from two to, they say, 10 years.

19:34I don't know, but let's call it two to five years.

19:36So with that first amount of investment, $3,300, you can basically run your operations for two years.

19:42I think what you're going to quickly find is the fancier stuff that you can have.

19:46The more add-ons you can add, the more money you can make.

19:48But I really like this rental equipment business.

19:51It looks like it hits all of our parameters.

19:54So what would I do to make sure that I had a ton of clients now that I know that the cost and the revenue is sufficient?

20:00One, I would go straight to the source, wedding planners.

20:03They're always looking for new vendors.

20:05I would create a nice but not fancy website.

20:07I would start a social media account with a bunch of cool arches.

20:10They don't even have to be yours.

20:12They could just be inspo.

20:13And I would create a little one-page email that I send people showing what my actual arches look like and pricing.

20:20I would reach out to these wedding planners individually.

20:23And I would also probably go to a couple wedding events.

20:25I would also identify some common niche themes.

20:28So this one in particular may be an Indian wedding.

20:32So you have something exactly that would be to the specifications of one target customer.

20:38Once you get one person and they love it, guess what's going to happen?

20:41They're going to talk.

20:42And that wedding planner is going to use your stuff again and again, but tweaked because you can have customization.

20:47You can certainly do search ads and dominate, let's say, remote suburbs where this isn't really something that's provided.

20:54But I think I would go straight to wedding planners before anything else.

20:58And with that and a little bit of social media, you're going to be able to grow yourself a business that could do $180,000 a year.

21:05All right, let's break down if it hits our three components.

21:07It's high ROI.

21:08Well, we've just shown that Jimmy makes tens of thousands of dollars a year.

21:12We've just shown that we can make $180,000 a year.

21:15So I think it hits that.

21:16Low cash down.

21:17Well, we think it's probably more like $1,000 to $3,000, not $1,000.

21:21But it's such an interesting model.

21:22I figured I'd throw it out there for you anyway.

21:24Also, during non-wedding season, I guess you could do baby showers.

21:27You could do anniversaries.

21:28You could do engagements.

21:30Looks like you're going to be able to buy the goods.

21:32And within 30 days, I would assume, put them together and get your first couple of customers.

21:37If your average cost is only $1,000 to $3,000, you only need to do $2,000 to $5,000 again of these weddings in order for you to cash flow what you need.

21:45Handyman business.

21:45You know all those odd jobs that you've been putting off for months?

21:49The doorknob that's been broken, the paint that's falling off the wall, or that light bulb that's been flickering.

21:55Well, it's not just you.

21:56It turns out most of us have these tiny jobs that we don't know how to do and we're willing to pay a lot for someone else to do these tasks.

22:04This guy, Caleb Ingram, and his two handyman businesses that he created each make $250,000 a year from changing doorknobs, painting, anchoring a TV.

22:15The actual demand he has is so high that he can't keep up with it.

22:19The cool part about this business, too, is apart from a couple tools that are probably in your garage or at a garage sale, the costs are really low.

22:27And now he charges anywhere from $100 to $200 an hour plus material costs to total an average of $500 to $1,500 per house he serves.

22:37And he services them seven days a week.

22:39He's making about $800 to $1,000 himself and per employee every single day.

22:46That's not bad, right?

22:47But if you're thinking, I'm not handy, remember Johnny and the playbook of outsourcing to subcontractors.

22:54I love this business for this.

22:56You, if you're watching YouTube, are way more technical than people in the trades.

23:00So if you like this business model, think, how can I apply 21st century technology to a 20th century business?

23:07Now, here's how Caleb started.

23:09Step one, niche down to a neighborhood.

23:12Caleb chose northern Seattle because it meant he lived there.

23:15No traveling costs.

23:16Plus, it was a small location so he could rank on the first page of Google.

23:21Step two, he obsessed on reviews.

23:23These are the fuel that turn your tiny business into a profitable business.

23:28Google is where it's at.

23:29It's digital real estate for your business.

23:32So you obsess over every customer you get, leaving you a review.

23:35Pro tip that I do for all of my businesses.

23:37I use this company called Jobber that has an entire review system integrated into it.

23:43But you don't have to be fancy like me.

23:44You can just, every single time one of your people goes out, give them a small bonus in

23:49the beginning if they get somebody to write a review.

23:51Be like, I'll give you an extra five bucks if you get that person to write us a review.

23:55You will be amazed how quickly your subcontractors do it for you.

23:59Simultaneously, if it was me, I'd just send a text message with a funny meme like this.

24:02And I'd be like, how's that door looking now, motherfucker?

24:04And inside that, I'd ask them, can you please write me a review?

24:07Maybe leave out the cuss words.

24:08That probably doesn't help you.

24:09Step three.

24:11Up until this point, you're going to have run this business yourself or with one person.

24:14But if you want to get it to six and seven figures, you got to add some contractors.

24:19It's really necessary for you to leverage your time.

24:22Otherwise, you don't have a business.

24:23You have a job.

24:24If you want to hit 250K a year in revenue, you need to have other people doing the work

24:29while you focus on the business, not in the business.

24:32Does this business hit our three needs?

24:35One, high ROI.

24:37Check yes.

24:38250K a year in revenue.

24:40Plus, Google search your local area right now.

24:42You're going to find a ton of demand for handymen all over the place.

24:46Step two.

24:47Do you need a lot of cash?

24:48No.

24:48It turns out Caleb started with less than a grand.

24:52I think you can start with a couple hundred bucks and even borrowed tools.

24:55Look, you can rent them right here on Home Depot if you need to.

24:58Step three, six months or less to get our money back for our investment length.

25:02I think that's true.

25:03We said that an average job, you pay $100 to $200 an hour at $500 to $1,000 for one house

25:11serviced.

25:11That means that you're starting to make money in the black within your first job.

25:16And if you do 10 jobs a month at $1,000, you've hit your $10,000 limit.

25:22If you hire a few people underneath you, I can see where this business scales easily.

25:26Virtual assistant company.

25:28I know this business can make millions because I have three friends running VA firms that

25:32do millions to tens of millions a year.

25:35One of them is called You Assist Me.

25:37And these two guys out of Costa Rica hang out on the beach while making some cash.

25:41Another one, Support Ninja and Support Shepherd, I use a lot myself.

25:45And they publicly list how much money they make.

25:48The fascinating part is all of these businesses were started with very little capital.

25:52Because you don't need money to outsource talent.

25:55This is very simple.

25:57We're going to do international arbitrage.

26:00Which basically means you're going to make yourself the middleman between a company and

26:04an assistant to do whatever task a client wants.

26:07Any company always has low lift tasks that they need help with.

26:11And rather than going through the difficulty of hiring and the expense of hiring in the U.S.,

26:16you're the person to help them find that help in another company.

26:20To do that, you can charge them anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000 a month or $3,000 to $5,000

26:26just to find one person for them.

26:29The main reason I like this business is because it's a good business for a beginner.

26:32You don't need a bunch of prior skills or upfront costs because you're not actually the one

26:37doing the tasks.

26:38And you get paid at the start of the month by the client and you pay the contractor at

26:42the end of the month so you have something that's called float, which is room to breathe.

26:46I think these three steps could take you from $0,000 to $100,000 a year depending on how

26:51much work you want to put in.

26:52Okay, here's how I do this business.

26:54Three steps.

26:55Step one is going to be find clients.

26:57You're going to reach out to both individuals you know who you think could use a VA and

27:03companies that are talking about hiring on social media and Twitter.

27:06Twitter, I think, is the go-to place for this.

27:08You want people that make at least $100,000 a year and then you want to just send them

27:12this article from Tim Ferriss that basically says if you make $100,000 a year, you should

27:15definitely have a VA.

27:17It's the highest accelerator to your business.

27:19Once you have a few clients lined up, you're going to tell them, I find people VAs so you

27:24don't have to.

27:25It usually takes us four weeks to find you a perfect client.

27:29I might even steal the copy from a website like this.

27:33This business, then you're going to have your first few clients.

27:36They're going to pay you up front.

27:37Then you're going to go on Upwork and Fiverr where you find international virtual assistants.

27:44You're going to screen them and then you're going to provide the service of getting them

27:50in front of those people who are looking to hire.

27:53If you're good at sales, if you're good at hiring, if you're good at figuring out processes

28:01to pull in new talent, this business will be really interesting for you.

28:05Let's talk about how much you can charge.

28:06I want you to charge somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000 a month for the virtual assistant.

28:11They typically get paid somewhere between $800 and $1,500 a month.

28:15And I want to make sure that you have a 40% margin, which will allow you to cover the rest

28:20of your costs.

28:21To make sure that the person is good or not, have them do a project first.

28:25Maybe pay them something small, $10 an hour to figure out one individual product.

28:30That is how you go from taking the hiring process to being miserable and expensive to being low

28:36cost and easy.

28:37And all you are is the middleman.

28:38Last thing I'll tell you about this business is if you figure out how to find international

28:42talent, you will never go hungry again because the ability for you to charge X and hire at

28:48Y translates every business you can imagine.

28:52All right.

28:52Does this business hit our three steps?

28:55I think it does.

28:56Step one, high ROI.

28:58Well, support shepherd and you assist me make tens of millions of dollars a year.

29:02So I think that's doable for you guys.

29:05Look how many clients you need to have to get this rolling and for you to hit your 10K

29:09a month number.

29:10You basically need somewhere between two and 10 clients.

29:13The second, how much it costs you to start.

29:15The only thing this business actually costs you is your time.

29:17Maybe a small amount of money for a website that you create yourself for an email and for

29:22you to ping some resources to people telling them how great you are in this business.

29:27And third, your ROI.

29:30How soon can you get money?

29:31Well, you have to actually first find clients and then find the talent.

29:36So I would say this business, you're probably not going to make any cash in your first month.

29:39This business is going to take you at least two months to start cash flowing.

29:42And certainly within three to six months, I think you could hit that 10K number.

29:47So check, check, check.

29:49Productized service.

29:50This is actually my favorite pick for many of them.

29:53Learn a digital skill and scale it into a multi-million dollar machine.

29:57Meet Brett Williams, a graphic designer who now does $120,000 in monthly revenue, reoccurring,

30:05adding up to $1.3 million in reoccurring annual revenue.

30:09Not bad.

30:10Especially when you find out his business, Design Joy, was built in a day for $29.

30:15So what's the genius idea?

30:17Design as a subscription.

30:19Think of it kind of like Netflix.

30:21You pay a subscription fee, but instead of unlimited movies, you get to make unlimited graphic design requests.

30:26The keyword?

30:28Unlimited.

30:28Whether you make five requests or 50, the price stays the same.

30:32The caveat?

30:33You can only make one request at a time.

30:36Why does this work?

30:36Because the business model hits the sweet spot of clients' graphic design needs immediately and it costs way too much to hire employees in graphic designs, salaries, compensation for most people up front, but you're actually controlling the unlimited with only one at a time.

30:53To make it even easier for your buyers, an important key to the business model is this.

30:58Even if clients don't have enough work to fill an entire month, Brett allows them to pause their subscription indefinitely.

31:03When they do have more work for him, they can unpause and continue wherever they left off in the cycle.

31:08Here's why I love this business.

31:11One, it's a one-man army.

31:13At 1.3 million AR, Brett is the only employee at Design Joy.

31:17There are no other graphic designers, no closers, not even a VA for admin.

31:22He just uses outsourced contractors for graphic design.

31:25Two, no client meetings.

31:27He sometimes allows for people to take an optional 15-minute discovery call before taking the leap, but that's it.

31:32Once you become a Design Joy client, you never see Brett's face again.

31:36It's all acing.

31:38His onboarding process is also brilliant.

31:40You go from first-time visitor to paying client in 30 seconds.

31:43No meetings, no contracts, no bullshit.

31:46Cancel at any time.

31:47Next is simplicity.

31:48If you're wondering how many clients this one-man show can handle, a lot.

31:52Brett services 20 clients every month at $5K per month.

31:56So Design Joy does $120K a month on average, with a few contractors adding up to that 1.3 mil.

32:04Compare that against what he'd be making in an average 9 to 5.

32:08$49K as a designer?

32:09So instead of Brett making $49,000, which is what an average graphic designer makes,

32:15Brett actually makes $1.3 million a year by outsourcing to other designers and using the subscription model.

32:22Let's break down the expenses.

32:25Design Joy really has four main ones.

32:27Figma, let's call it $15 to $50 a month.

32:30Webflow at $30 to $50.

32:32Shutterstock at $99.

32:33Adobe Creative at $29 to maybe $60.

32:37And all other tools, zero.

32:39So that's somewhere between $176 and about $350 in total expenses to make $120,000 in monthly revenue.

32:48That math checks out.

32:50The cool part about this model, too, is I would do this for everything.

32:53A video editing subscription, a podcast editing subscription, a no-code as a subscription, SEO as a subscription.

33:01Any service that you can do, you productize it and turn it into a subscription model.

33:05Now, how would I get started on getting clients for this?

33:08Super easy.

33:09I'd do two things.

33:10I would set myself up on Upwork as a freelancer or a Fiverr, and I would start getting normal clients.

33:16Then, I would ask them if they want to convert to this service.

33:20Easy.

33:21Step two, I'd get all over Twitter explaining this model just like he did.

33:25I would actually steal a bunch of his tweets and threads and make them my own and duplicate them to get more users in the door.

33:32Does this hit our three steps?

33:34High ROI.

33:34Why? Well, Rhett makes $1.3 million a year, so yes.

33:37If we break down the exact cost for this business and you charge people somewhere between $2,000 to $5,000 a month, you basically need anywhere from five to two clients to hit that $10,000 a month number.

33:49Does it cost a lot of money?

33:50What's the cash down in this business?

33:52Well, it looks like with this business, besides your time, you're only spending a couple hundred bucks, not thousands.

33:57What's the length of investment?

33:58He launched his business and had it cash flowing in the first 30 days.

34:02Let's be generous.

34:03I think you can cash flow to $10,000 within three to six months easily.

34:07Love this business model.

34:08You want to see this whole business model?

34:10Hit this newsletter link.

34:11It's free.

34:12We broke down the entire thing for you to copy.