Page 153 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

$12,480 in twenty days thanks to a nice video and well-written copy.
Before going to the masses, Shannon went to her bank for a small loan. Her

business was profitable and promising, with several new publications coming
out over the next year. This wasn’t just any bank. It was a community bank in
Ohio where she had an excellent personal and business relationship. Shannon
was a meticulous bookkeeper with a conservative attitude toward finances; she
brought along detailed sales figures and a clear plan to repay the money.
Unfortunately, when she mentioned “craft publishing,” she was dead in the
water. “They looked at me like I was a silly, silly woman who couldn’t possibly
know anything about running a business,” she said.

The rejection turned into an opportunity. Taking the project on Kickstarter
generated both funds and widespread interest in the project. Nearly three
hundred backers came through with donations ranging from $10 to $500, leaving
the project fully funded with capital to spare. Oh, and Shannon was not one for
going quietly. After she reached the $10,000 level in her Kickstarter campaign,
she printed out the front page of the site, wrapped the page around a lollipop,
and sent it off to the bank’s underwriters. “I think they got the message,” she
says.

As I collected stories for the book, I was mostly interested in people who
avoided debt completely. But I did hear two fun stories about borrowing money
that I thought were worth sharing. On a flight from Hong Kong to London,
Emma Reynolds and her future business partner Bruce Morton had an idea for a
consultancy that would work with big companies to improve their staffing and
resourcing. They calculated that they would need at least $17,000 to start the
new firm. There was just one problem … or actually, two: Emma was twenty-
three and unlikely to get a business loan, and Bruce was going through a divorce
and would also be a poor candidate for a business loan. Somewhere during the
twelve-hour flight, one of them realized that although they couldn’t get a
business loan, they could probably get a car loan.

Bruce proceeded to do just that, borrowing $17,000 for a car and then
investing the funds in the business with Emma instead. They paid back the car
loan within ten months, and the bank never found out that there was no actual
car. Now the firm employs twenty people, is highly profitable, and has multiple
offices in four countries.†

Finally, here’s a fun story from Kristin McNamara, who started a California
gym specializing in climbing:

To fund the latest incarnation of the gym, we called upon the community to
“invest” in us, much like a three-year CD. We offered 3 percent above