HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITHOUT MONEY - PART 2

…Continued from previous post

Some of the greatest and most successful entrepreneurs started with little or no money. They may not have had money but they had vision. Some examples are as follows:

In 1975, computers were very large, expensive and only available in Universities or large companies. Steve Jobs envisioned a computer in every home. Jobs and Steven Wozniak started, Apple, from Wozniaks parents garage. 

Sam Walton the founder of Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer started with a loan of $20,000 from his father in-law. How many men will be humble enough to borrow money form their in-laws. Walton didn’t have pride, he had vision.

The two co-founders of Hewlett Packard started their business with $500. In 2010, the company generated $126 billion worth of sales alone.

Tom Monaghan founder of Domino’s pizza, had a tough childhood. He was raised in orphanages. He started his company with a loan of $900. Today Domino’s pizza has many franchises all over the world including Nigeria.

John Paul DeJoria started of as a newspaper courier, cleaner and tow truck driver. He partnered with Paul Mitchell to start a hair care business with a $700 loan. His net worth as at 2011 was $4billion.

True African story

A practical example is that of Ugandan, award-winning entrepreneur, Andrew Mupuya. In 2008, when Andrew was 16 year sold, his parents lost their job and found it difficult to take care of Andrew. They could only pay for his school fees and Andrew was left to cater for his basic needs. Around the same time, the government of Uganda announced that in order to reduce environmental damage, they were considering a ban on plastic bags. Andrew, immediately saw this as an opportunity and considered starting a business by producing paper bags as an alternative for plastic bags.  Andrew Mupuya said “ I conducted a feasibility study, market research around retail shops, kiosks, supermarkets around Kampala and discovered there is need and potential market for paper bags” . As a result of his research, he estimated that he needed 36,000 Ugandan shillings ($14) to start his paper bag production company. The problem though was that he didn’t have any money to start the business. So how did he do it?

Over a week, Andrew collected used plastic bottles and sold them. He was able to raise $11. The problem was that he was still short of $3 and so he decided to borrow the remaining amount from his school teacher. Since then this paper bag production business has grown and Andrew is the owner of the first Ugandan company to make paper bags, Youth Entrepreneurial Link Investments (YELI). He is reported to have 16 staff who produce up to 20,000 paper bags each week and 72 clients which includes restaurants, retails sotres, supermarkeyts, medical centres and multinational companies like Samsung.

If you do not have money and want to earn money or start your own business, do not despair, you are not alone. Most successful entrepreneurs in the world today started off with little or no money at all.

                                                                                                                 …to be continued