Some starving, needful folks thing that it would be wonderful if they could solve their unemployment problem if only they could start a business with no money. Well it is possible.

When I was a boy my friend Paul was full of ideas about business and since we had no money, he started them without money. He never planned to work for anyone. He wanted to be independent. His older brother, Bob, was the same way. He went to the University of Utah and graduated in speech therapy but he never worked for anybody. He always was in business and the funny thing was that he too knew how to start a business with no money.

I worked for Bob when I was in college. He asked me if I wanted to bird dog for him. I didn't know what that meant but he told me what the deal was. I would not be paid by the hour. I was to knock on doors and asked if the folks would like to have a new basement room, a new porch, or any other remodeling.

I was not required to sell them a project, my job was done if the home owner was interested. Then Bob would sell them the project, Bob would have his carpenters do the work, and, in theory, I would get ten percent of the price of the job.

That is one way to start a business without money. You would need a license as a contractor according to where you live but that is easy to obtain by taking a test you can bone up on. You can pay no one until a project is completed.

Paul has another brother, Dick, who never wanted to do anything but sell life insurance. He joined the merchant marines during World War II, risking his neck in the Atlantic, but he was able to earn a large amount of money to hold him over until he could get established in the insurance business. He then came home, married the sweetest girl in our church to all of our disappointment, built a house and settled down. But did you notice that it cost him nothing to get started in his business? He was really able to start a business with no money. I think with the Henderson boys, above, that it may have been their father who guided them before he died. He was an independent businessman, a chiropractor. However, he did not get started without money. He had to get educated.

My father always loved the stability of a job. He never was independent. However, my two brothers were both inclined not to work for others.

My older brother, now dead, was an attorney and was independent for a while but he decided that there were better benefits by working a job, which was true in his case.

My younger brother repaired typewriters before the Korean War and he repaired typewriters as a marine in Korea right after I came home from there. But when he got discharged he had only one thing on his mind and that was to get into the insurance business. He said that he work for a big insurance company and then open his own agency. He could start a business with no money.

My brother, Don, was born in 1935 in my parent's bedroom where I was trying to sleep. I was almost three years old. The room had several people whom I didn't know. One was a nurse. Our doctor, Dr. Phelps, was there and a neighbor lady named Sister Perry. (All women in the LDS Church are called, Sister.) Sister Perry took me out to the cold kitchen and fed me cold oatmeal instead of my bacon and eggs. I couldn't figure out why mother would not get up and feed me, but I blamed it on my new brother.

When I was walking though our cold house to the kitchen with Sister Perry, I said to myself, We're poor! And we were. Only the kitchen had heat in the morning. The stove in the parlor was not started until about 4.00 P.M. (That became my job not too long later.) My clothes were hand-me-downs from my older brother or from my cousins. Once I was given a pair of pantaloons from my cousins. That was going too far and I refused to wear them. Poor is poor but you don't have to wear obsolete trousers.

Don became the rich boy of the family. He is welded to his business at age seventy-six. (I retired at age sixty-two.) He is finally letting it go to others but he will still get his cut. The longer he has owned that business, the more money it has produced. He probably doesn't know what to do with it all. He made that money in insurance. He knew how to start a business with no money.

My brother has always worked from a home office. That eliminates a lot of overhead and gives tax advantages. Working from home allows a person to start a business on the Internet with little money. You can learn to sell on the Internet as I do. You can take a current business and add income by moving some operations to the Internet.

The government will guarantee you a loan if you have a good business plan to help you get started in a business. Talk to your banker and to local and state colleges and universities. Go to your local chamber of commerce. Talk to business people, the people you would like to emulate.

When I was an engineering professor a fellow asked me to give him a hand with his business. He knew how to start a business with no money. He visited businesses, fire and police departments, associations like the Kiwanis and sold them dinner plates with decals to commemorate special events. He would go to a decal company and have the decal designed. Once the decal was approved, he would have a dinner plate decaling company or a dinnerware company manufacture the plates.

This was a good deal for all involved. The organization could sell the plates as a money-maker. The decal people and the plate manufacturers all made money. Finally, the man himself build a business that he could go to the bank with.

He got an insured loan and started his own decaling operations. He simply purchased dinnerware blanks and designed the decals himself and fired the decaled plates in his own kiln (which I designed and helped build). Unfortunately he was not a good manager of people and could have done a lot better than he did, but he had the right idea. What he needed to do was to hire a manager and start a new business with no money.

Yes, you can start a business with no money. Start with you and your interest (passion) and knowledge and spend some time thinking. Dreams are filled when dreams are implemented.

Fly Old Glory!