Pod Insights The $100 MBA Show Five Lazy Ways To Start A Business On The Side This Weekend About this episode Most side business advice is exhausting - websites, funnels, branding, endless prep before you even make a dollar. By the time you’re done, the weekend’s over and you’ve made exactly $0. Omar’s approach is different: five businesses you can genuinely start this weekend, with nothing more than a phone or laptop and a few hours of effort. In this Q&A Wednesday episode, Omar answers Rob’s question about how to start a business quickly and simply. He reveals five refreshingly lazy ways to launch a side hustle by this weekend - no logos, no business plans, no endless prep required. Each idea is designed to get you to your first sale fast. These aren’t shortcuts that fizzle out, they’re low‑cost, practical starting points that can grow into something serious if you want them to. If you’re ambitious but kind of lazy, this episode’s for you. Don’t just think about starting a business, see how easy it can be to actually do it. Hit play up top and discover Omar’s five lazy ways to make your first sale this weekend. MBA2768 Five Lazy Ways To Start A Business On The Side This Weekend Resource:If I Wanted To Turn $100 Into My First $100K In 2026, I'd Do This Recommended episode to explore:Why I've Always Hired More Women To submit your questions, visit 100mba.net/q. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is the payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? For example, I really wanted to love the show Mad Men. I really tried to watch it and love it, but it just didn't do anything for me. As a marketer and business person, the show was a little bit of a disappointment.
0:45 Speaker 00 Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, like impressions. But then, we don't see revenue. LinkedIn has a word for that: bullspend. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn Ads. Cut the bullspend, advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBAShow. Terms apply. If you're ambitious, but you're kind of lazy, this episode's for you. Listen, most side business advice is frankly exhausting. Build your personal brand. Create a content strategy. Define your niche. Design a website. Set up your funnel. By the time you're done with all that, the weekend's over and you made exactly $0.
1:30 Speaker 00 What I'm sharing today is different. These are five businesses you can genuinely start this weekend. No website, no logo, no business plan. Just you, a phone or a laptop, a little courage, and really just a few hours. Each one I'm going to share is zero or near zero cost to start. Each one will make you real money, fast. And each one has the potential to grow into something serious if you want to. But if you want to do this, you gotta get serious.
2:08 Speaker 00 Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.
2:21 Speaker 00 I got a quick favorite ask. If this show has helped you in any way, leave me a quick review. You could do so wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps me and my team reach even more people who need the same no-fluff, practical business advice that you're getting from the show. It only takes a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference. Thanks for being a part of our journey to help others on their journey. Today's episode is actually a question from one of our listeners, Rob, and he asks, "Hey, how do I get off my butt and start a business this weekend? I'm not the most motivated guy, but I know I can make it happen." So, Rob, I got your back. And, you know, the title of today's episode is a little tug-of-cheek, "Five Lazy Ways to Start a Business on the
3:04 Speaker 00 Side This Weekend," and I'm going to explain more. But this is right up your alley. You're gonna really love it. If you've got a question you want to ask, just go to 100mba.net queue and submit it, and we'll go ahead and answer it right here on the podcast. I have one rule I want you to hold on to for everything I'm about to share. The goal of this weekend is not to build an empire or build a mega-business. The goal is to make your first sale. That's it. One customer, one transaction, one payment, proof that someone will give you money for the thing you offer. Everything else, the branding, the scaling, the systems, all that stuff comes after. The most important thing is
3:48 Speaker 00 that you've got to prove that somebody wants what you have. And the reason why I'm stressing this at the beginning is because most people never start. They never start because they're trying to build the whole business before they even test whether anybody wants what they have. Don't build, you need to test first. Make a sale first, then build around that. Business is all about doing something, learning, and making it better. Basically, experiment. And you don't want to waste too much time and money and effort on something that's not proven yet, on something that you don't know for sure, any information about, because you haven't put it out in the world. Make the sale first, then build around that. Keep
4:31 Speaker 00 that in mind as we go through all five of these businesses you can start this weekend. Let's start with number one. Sell what you already know. Sell what you already know. This one is the one I start with because it's the most underused and the most overlooked. Whatever you do in your day job, whatever it is, whatever industry you're in, you've been working in this industry for maybe five years, 10 years, 15 years, some of you 20, 25 years. The thing that you are overlooking is that someone out there would pay you well for an hour of your time to understand what you understand. Not because you're the world's expert and you're on CNN and you're like the panelist on all the, you know, business
5:14 Speaker 00 channels. No, because you know something they don't know. That's it. You are steps ahead of them. Here's the thing about expertise that a lot of people don't understand. It's not about being the top in your field. It's about knowing more than the person in front of you, more than anybody that is a beginner. Let's say, for example, you went to Disney World last summer and you had a great time. You went to all the parks. You stayed there in the hotels. You maybe you drove there, even flew there, whatever it might be. Now your friend wants to go to Disney World. Your friend is going to ask you for advice because you've been there before. You've done it already. And to them, you are the expert. You are the expert they have access to. The difference between your knowledge
5:56 Speaker 00 of the experience of going to Disney World and their knowledge is day and night because you've done it. If you spent five years in HR and you know more about hiring than most small business owners because they never hired anybody before, then you're valuable to them. If you spent a decade in accounting and crunching numbers, you know more about financial management than most entrepreneurs, you can help them. If you've been in marketing, in operations, in logistics, in education, in healthcare, in real estate, in management. In any field, your experience has a value, has real value to people who are trying to figure out what you already know and have lived. You are not starting from scratch. You have
6:37 Speaker 00 information that other people want. And by the way, companies right now, big companies with money are desperate to hire consultants so that they can come in and help them out for a project-based period, or a time-based or time-bound period. And they don't need to make a full-time hire. It's actually more cost-effective for them to hire you as a consultant. So, how do you start this weekend with this idea? Easy! Open up your phone. Go into your contacts. You know, that contacts little icon you got there? And then just go through them and think about five people who run businesses, or are in industries that are adjacent to your expertise. That's simple. It's not that complicated. And guess what? This is where a lot of people stop
7:21 Speaker 00 and get stuck. They find the contact, but they don't know what to write to them. Don't overthink it. Send them a message. Send them something that sounds like this. "Hey, I help people with whatever your expertise is, accounting. I'm offering a focused 60-minute advisory call to get you X result, whatever that result is, to save you 10%, 15% on your profit and loss sheet. Would that be useful for you or anyone you know?" That's it. Leave it there. I'm gonna pause for a second. This is your first sale, or your attempt to make your first sale. And you don't need a website, account, lead, a fancy proposal, to start that process. Just a direct
8:02 Speaker 00 offer for a person who knows that you have something valuable that they might use, or somebody they know might find valuable. If even one person, if one person says yes, you made your first few hundred dollars, and you've proven your concept, you've made a huge, huge step. From there, you can build a proper offer, and reoccurring client base, and eventually, you can build an agency or a consulting practice. But the weekend goal is to do what? Make your first sale. Get your first yes. Go get it now.
8:37 Speaker 00 Today's episode is sponsored by Whatnot. You've probably heard about live selling and it's taking off on Whatnot. Sellers on Whatnot don't need a storefront or paid social media ads to reach customers. This is what I love about it because with live video, you interact and engage with your customers. You just need your phone and buyers can ask questions. They can make purchases in real time. On Whatnot, you could see people selling from living rooms and warehouses, selling sneakers, electronics, vintage, even a guy on a boat selling lobsters he just caught. Thousands of items are sold every minute because customers get to know sellers and see the products live. For many sellers, it's gone from side hustle to full-time job since they're selling 10 times here than on other marketplaces.
9:20 Speaker 00 I've personally shopped on Whatnot and found the whole experience actually pretty fun. I got the bid on a product that I was looking at, which was a little tripod for my phone. And when I won the bid, the seller gave me a shout out and gave me a little demo of how the tripod works. In a couple of days, the tripod was at my front door. It couldn't be easier. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store. Download and start selling right away. Today's episode is sponsored by Upwork. I don't need a script to tell you how much Upwork has helped my business. I've been using Upwork for over a decade and it's the easiest way to find top talent to grow your business. From software development to AI implementation to marketing, design and business operations.
10:04 Speaker 00 You can browse profiles, review past work and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork. With over 170,000 freelancers holding five-star ratings, you can hire with the confidence that comes from hiring someone with a verified track record. I've hired engineers, customer service agents, marketers, copywriters, all on Upwork that helped grow my business from the moment they got hired. The best thing is it's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-R-K.com, upwork.com.
10:53 Speaker 00 Business two you could start this weekend, the one person agency without doing any of the work. I've talked about this in a previous episode in detail. It's an episode that's called, "If you want to turn $100 to $100,000 in 2026, do this." I wanted to include it as number two on this list because it's one of my favorites. And it's the closest thing to how a real business is built fast. And here's the business model in a very short and snappy way. Find a business or person that needs a service. Find someone who can do that service for less than what you charge. Pocket the difference. You see, one of the things that people get hung up on is they think that business is complicated, but it's always been simple. Since the beginning of time,
11:38 Speaker 00 people buy something for less than what they sell it for, and they make a profit. That's basically business. In this example, we're doing this with a service, and it's called labor arbitrage. And I'm sharing it with you because it works. The services that work best right now in this model are a few things. There are highly technical things like short form video editing. Every business needs it. Social media management, like things that require you to post and do a bit of labor. Now, remember, again, when I say you, this is not actually you. This is somebody who you're hiring to do it for your client. Writing email newsletters, blogging. Let's get out of online. You can do cleaning services, lawn care. Come to your home car wash services.
12:22 Speaker 00 There's so many things that people need. You can't just let your lawn grow forever. You have to cut it regularly. So that's a problem that people have. Solve that problem by providing them somebody to cut it for them. And here's the thing about services that I love, that I love, is it's so easy to differentiate and be the number one service in your area by doing really good customer service, by being somebody of integrity, of actually doing what you said you're going to do. The bar is so low. You know what I'm talking about? So many people are phoning it in. If you just do a little bit better. than anybody else, you will become the number one service provider in your area.
13:07 Speaker 00 So step one, pick a service that you want to provide. Step two, find a freelancer or somebody to do the work for you. Step three, pitch businesses, professionals, people on LinkedIn, for example, or people in your local neighborhood, if it's something that is physical, and ask them, do you have this problem? Would you like me to solve it? That's simple. Let me give you a very simple example. Let's say you go to all the local restaurants in your neighborhood, and you ask them, hey, would you like to grow with social media? Would you like to get more customers? Would you like to get more bookings? Whatever it might be, right? More takeaway orders? Yes, great. I will manage your social media and increase your visibility, and I'm only going to charge you $500 a month.
13:51 Speaker 00 I'm going to take care of all your social media on all platforms. You're going to be everywhere. You never even have to open social media. You don't even have to have it on your phone. I'm going to take care of for you. This is music to their ears. Then you just pay a skilled freelancer. You can go to upwork.com, for example. They're a sponsor of the show, but I've been using for a decade. They're great. And you pay a freelancer $100 for it, $200. You just made $300 a month by doing no work other than securing the customer. You have five clients, you're making $1,500 a month, working part-time hours. You get 10 clients, and you have a real agency now. So the weekend task with this idea, sign up your first client. Go around your neighborhood, find somebody.
14:34 Speaker 00 One business, one conversation, one yes. By the way, to get a yes, you're going to have to endorse some no's. And that's okay. You're not going to die. They're not going to hate you. They're not going to ban you. They're not going to beat you out of the restaurant or whatever. No, they're going to be fine. They're going to be actually quite pleasant and more polite than you think, even in their nose. Get that one client and build around it. Third idea, buy low, sell high. I touched on this earlier, but you can do this outside of an agency. Now, this one requires the least amount of skill, but it is the one that requires the most hustle. Okay, it's been working for centuries. Like I said before, find things that are undervalued, sell them to people who want them at a fair price.
15:19 Speaker 00 Simple and it's timeless and it's profitable. My first business was this. I used to find rare Air Jordans on eBay, find a buyer and sell those Air Jordans to them at a markup. Now, there's Facebook Marketplace you can do this with, Craigslist, if you're in Australia, something called Gumtree. There's so many different apps and sites for this. You want to buy low, go to Garage Sales and Estate Sales. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this all the time. He geeks out about it on his social media and goes to Garage Sales himself to buy things that are really undervalued. You can go to thrift stores and buy like underpriced electronics and furniture and clothes and collectibles. And then you're going to go ahead and sell them on eBay,
16:01 Speaker 00 on Facebook, on Facebook Marketplace, on Amazon. There's even apps that you can look up. I think eBay even has its own app where you can just take a picture of items and it will tell you the value of the item and how much you could sell it for, or how much it's selling for already on eBay. And if you see that, hey, this item is selling for $15 and you see it in the thrift store for $3, wow, you can make $12 right now on this just one item. So if you're the kind of person that loves a good deal, loves to hustle, loves to find diamonds in the rough, then this is the model for you. This weekend, take $100, go to one garage sale or a thrift store and buy a few things that you can flip. Sell them online. Listen, the goal is not to get rich this weekend, okay?
16:44 Speaker 00 The goal is to learn what sells, what the market actually wants and where to buy things at a very good price. And once you know all these things, you can start scaling and start building upon what you've learned. You might want to start niching down. Maybe you want to focus on electronics. Maybe your thing is vintage clothes or niche collectibles. Hey, this actually sounds kind of fun too. So go ahead and choose this if this sounds appealing. But the most important thing is to get started right now this weekend. By the way, if you're enjoying this episode, but you're asking yourself, Omar, this is great, but how do I get better at selling what I'm offering to my customers? Well, you're on luck. I have an upcoming episode called How to Sell More and Make Millions,
17:25 Speaker 00 The Ultimate Sales Masterclass. It's everything I've learned over 20 years in sales condensed right in an episode. I'm putting the final touches on it right now, and I can't wait to share it with you. You don't need to buy some $10,000 training program. You could just hit subscribe to this podcast and you'll get it as soon as it drops at the very low, low price of $0. Yep, that's how we roll. All right, let's get back to it.
17:52 Speaker 00 Number four business you can start this weekend. If you're lazy, the productized service. Okay, what's a productized service? Well, first of all, a lot of people think of service in one way, like I'm going to do social media marketing for somebody. That's a service. I'll do anything for anyone at whatever rate they want to pay. No, there's another way to do this. A productized service flips the model. You take one specific service and you package it at a fixed price and deliver the same thing to every customer. It's basically a menu of outcomes that you're going to deliver for a price, and that simplicity is what makes it lazy in the best sense. Here's some real examples that people are running right now. I will audit your LinkedIn profile and rewrite
18:37 Speaker 00 it for $300. I'll set up your Google Business Profile for $200 so that you can show up on Google and have a little snippet on the side. I'm going to write five blog posts a month for your business for $500 a month and optimize it for SEO. I'll clean and vacuum your car so it's always clean every single week at wherever location you want, like your home or your office, for $120 a month. I'm going to set up your AI tools in your business and train your team with some videos for a flat fee of $1,000. Notice what these all have in common. You can guess if you want. You can say it out loud in your own home or in your car.
19:16 Speaker 00 All of them are selling one specific thing with one clear deliverable or outcome with one fixed price. The customer knows exactly what they're getting and how much they're going to have to pay for it. There's no ambiguity and it doesn't break the rule that I always talk about. A confused mind never buys. Nothing confusing about it. Simple. You're going to get this thing. This is what it's going to do for you. This is the result you're going to get and this is how much you're going to pay. No scope creep, no endless back and forth, no custom proposals, no negotiation. And the more specific the service, the easier it is to sell because people don't buy vague. If they know exactly what they're getting, they're going to be more convinced that you can deliver it.
19:57 Speaker 00 This weekend, ask yourself, what is one specific thing I can do for a business or a business owner and that can save them time, that can make them money, that can remove a headache from them, package it, price it, and pitch it to five people. This weekend, if one says yes, you have a business. And the beautiful thing about this productized service is that as you get better at delivering at it, the faster it gets to deliver. What takes you three hours now will take you one hour in six months because you have a system now. Same price, more margin, more time. That's when it starts to truly feel lazy. Idea number five, you could start this weekend, teach what you know to one person at a time.
20:42 Speaker 00 Listen, you don't need to build a course. You don't need to build a membership. You don't need to launch anything. Okay. Teach one person. I'm talking about one-on-one coaching. One-on-one coaching gets a lot of flack. I want to stop this one-on-one coaching hate once and for all. Coaching and tutoring and mentoring is one of the fastest ways you can get paid for what you know. It's also one of the best ways to learn what people want and how you can improve on what you do to deliver what they want. And right now, the demand has never been higher for one-on-one coaching. People are willing to pay for personalized guidance more than I've ever seen it in the last 20 years. And I'm talking about every area of life that you can imagine. Career transfer.
21:26 Speaker 00 Fitness and nutrition, language learning, business skills. Listen, if you speak a second language, or a third or fourth, you are highly skilled. You're somebody that is rare. Most people don't speak a second language. You can just go on Facebook or your WhatsApp groups and post to your friends, who's going to Mexico for the summer? Who's going to Spain? If you speak Spanish, you can easily offer some quick language lessons so they can order their coffee, their meals, they can talk to people at the hotel in their local language. If you've got a skill that you could teach clearly, someone will pay you for it, I'm telling you. Now, I want to reiterate, Y101 is a good place to start.
22:08 Speaker 00 The feedback loop is immediate. You're going to learn quickly about what works and what doesn't. You learn exactly what your students are struggling with. You can start using that in your marketing and sales materials. You discover what language, what words resonate with them. You can use that language when you are talking to your customers. You find out what outcomes people actually want and are looking for, and are hungry for, and start selling those outcomes. And all that intelligence and data is earned through real conversation you're having with people, because the foundation of whatever course you want to build, or whatever program, or whatever community, or even book you want to write, right now, it just starts with one student, one person. So, don't overthink it.
22:50 Speaker 00 This weekend, post in the Facebook groups, in the Reddit community, in the WhatsApp groups you're part of, in LinkedIn, put up a message. It doesn't have to be complicated. It could be something like this, on top of my head. "Hey, I've been helping people learn Spanish. I'm taking on two new students this month for one-on-one sessions. So, if you're going to Mexico, if you're going to Spain, if you're going to Argentina, if you're going to Latin America, if you're interested in learning enough so you can get by, order your meals, and kind of intermingle with the locals, contact me. Send me a DM if you're interested." Charge between $100 or $200 a session, and there it is. You've got your first customer. Don't underprice yourself for something that's valuable. What I've found is that when you charge too little, people don't take you seriously.
23:34 Speaker 00 So, price at a level so people feel like it's an investment and they'll show up. All you need is that first client this weekend. Go find them this weekend. Make it happen. Now, I gotta be honest with you. I called these lazy to get your attention and to highlight the fact that it doesn't require too much work to get started, but no business is truly effortless. Everything I started in my life in business is a little bit of work. Everything I shared with you today has a low bear of entry, but you're still gonna have to put in some effort. You'll still need to sell, you'll still need to deliver what you offer and what you promised. You still need to show up when you don't feel like it, right? When you're feeling tired. But the good news is that no capital's required, no tech skills are required, no months of
24:19 Speaker 00 preparation. The only thing that's standing between you and your first dollar this weekend is the willingness to ask someone to pay you. That's it. You gotta have a little bit of courage, and I believe that you can do it. I believe in you. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The biggest line in entrepreneurship is that you need to be ready before you start. You get ready by starting. You'll never feel ready. Everyone, no one just says, "I'm ready now," and they get started. No, it never happens that way. Every one of the five businesses or ideas I shared with you today can be started with nothing more than a phone on a Saturday morning and the decision, this is important, the decision to make an offer to someone, to go ahead and go for it. Listen, there's money out there. The question is, are you going to take it?
25:04 Speaker 00 Are you gonna go and take what's yours? And listen, the website comes later, the logo comes later, the perfect plan comes later. The first sale has to come now, because the first sale is not just money, it's validation, it's proof, and it's proof that you do business, you don't play business. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. Listen, when you start building out your business this weekend, make your first sale, get some traction, the first thing you're gonna start thinking about is like, "How do I make a hire? Who should I hire?" Well, there's an episode that I published recently that you might be interested in listening to. It's called "Why I've Always Hired More Women." I'm not gonna share too much. I want you to go ahead and listen and hear what I have to say.
25:48 Speaker 00 And trust me, you're gonna be surprised with the answer that I share in that episode.
25:53 Speaker 00 If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.
26:31 Speaker 01 Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. It starts with our approach. Every Mazda comes standard with proactive safety features, so you're more aware of what's around you, more focused on the road ahead, and ready before problems ever start. Mazda, more of what matters most to you. Go to MazdaUSA.com to learn more. Consumer Reports does not endorse or promote any product.
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