Most top 5 lists on what to do to start a business include getting a business license, setting up a bank account, and finding a lawyer to complete your important documents.  We at the Entrepreneur School think that these steps come much later in the process and may not even be necessary until you are actually selling your product or service.

The basic philosophy of The Entrepreneur School is to bootstrap your business by selling first and then using that money to build your business.  This is opposed to the approach of raising money first and then trying to build your business.  So, in light of the bootstrapping mentality, here are 5 ideas to get your business going at little to no cost:

1. Start a Blog
Four years ago, I was looking at getting into the business side of the music industry.  I had a few meetings in New York with some big wigs in the industry.  People who had worked with Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, and many others.  When I asked one of the gentleman of a good way to position myself for a job in the industry, he told me to start a blog about the music industry.  I am a musician and had worked in International Business.  He told me to approach the blog from that point of view.  He said this would have the following benefits:

• It would keep me in tune with what was going on in the industry.
• It would show potential employers that I was daily reading and commenting about the industry.
• It would get me in the discussion.  Others would read the blog, comment, and I could begin building a network within the music industry.

I took his advice and faithfully blogged for a long time about the music industry.

2. Share your business idea with Family & Friends
Professor Jim of The Entrepreneur School recommends sharing your business idea with those closest to you.  Those whom you can trust.  The important thing here is to be sensitive to their response.  If they say, that’s a good idea and don’t offer any criticism, the opposite may be true.  Jim says that the true test of a good idea is to see if your friends and family argue with it.  As A.O. Scott wrote yesterday in his NY Times review of the new movie Inception, “Any movie worth seeing is worth arguing about, and any movie worth arguing about is worth seeing.”  The same should be true about a business worth starting.

3. Put out an Ad
I wrote about this option in a previous blog.  When I think of an idea to make money, one of the first things I usually do is place an ad on Craigslist for that service.  Posting to Craigslist is free.  This is a great way to gauge interest in your idea.  If you get a lot of response, you know the idea is worth pursuing more.  A good thing to do is to engage your responders in conversation to see what other services or products you could provide to meet their needs.  Let your potential customers define what they want instead of you defining what you think they want.  And be diligent in your ad placements.  Put up a new ad every 4-5 days so it is fresh.

4. Check Forums
Another great way to see what types of services people are demanding is to visit forums.  For example, I am a website developer and when I am on website design forums, I often see questions from new designers trying to make changes to their pre-existing templates.  They don’t know how to do it and often times are asking people for help & pay if they can fix an item.  This tells me that there are probably a lot of people out there who would be willing to pay money for a web developer to make small changes to an existing site, and not just create a website from scratch.  Most web developers only target clients who want a site from start to finish.

5. Look for Opportunities where Big Companies are Failing
I had breakfast with a friend last week who told me about an acquaintance of his who was making a good living by doing the following.  In a specific mall in the Atlanta area, there was a store selling a certain product off the shelves at a rapid pace.  Most of the consumers who purchased this product needed to have a customized addition to the product.  For some reason, the store within the mall was not filling this need of the customers purchasing the product.  So, this guy would wait outside of the mall in the parking lot and fill the need this store failed to meet.  What ancillary items are bigger companies in the industry you are targeting failing to complete?  Is there an opportunity there for you?

Please use the comment box below to add other ideas about getting your business going for little to no money.