How to Start A Business With NO Money | Blake Mycoskie (Founder of TOMS)

BigDeal

Codie Sanchez

Business, Marketing, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.9 • 972 Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2026

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most people think you need money to build a business. Blake Mycoskie proves you need creativity, conviction, and resilience. He built TOMS from $3,000 into a $600 million exit and launched multiple bootstrapped ventures, revealing what it really takes to start from nothing. In this raw conversation, Blake shares the frameworks behind businesses started with almost no capital — including a $500 laundry service that made $100K in three days and a $1,500 driver’s ed company. He explains why too much funding can hurt startups, how he cold-called Kid Cudi into becoming a founding partner, why industry experience can limit innovation, and his “utility marketing” approach — showing real value instead of selling hype. Blake also opens up about the depression that followed his success, waking at 3 AM with suicidal thoughts, and the healing journey that led to Enough, his mental health movement. He discusses lessons from failure at TOMS, using AI therapy during panic attacks, confronting his core belief of “I’m not enough,” mantra meditation, scheduling joy, walking the Camino, and why bold goals should be held loosely. This is practical entrepreneurship and personal transformation from someone who built millions from pocket change and found purpose beyond profit. Ready to turn your newsletter into your career? Head to https://beehiiv.link/nuiowa and use code CODIE30 for 30% off your first three months. ___________ 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:11 Starting Businesses With Zero Money: The EZ Laundry Story 00:03:06 The Two Biggest Lies Entrepreneurs Are Told 00:07:15 Utility Marketing: The Purple Cow Principle 00:11:08 Taste, Style, and Hiring the Right People 00:20:25 The ENOUGH Movement: From Depression to Purpose 00:31:52 The Dark Night: Suicidal Ideation and the Path to Healing 00:44:18 Big Goals Loosely Held: The Buddha Tree Moment 00:48:50 AI Therapy and Pattern Interrupts: Tools for Mental Health 00:55:26 Scheduling Joy and Engineering Adventure Into Life ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Two years ago, I started waking up at three in the morning and I wanted to kill myself.
0:05.7	Underneath all of it was this belief that I'm not enough.
0:09.7	The reason I'm bringing this up is it's the most important thing anyone can do who is suffering is...
0:14.6	If you think that you don't have mentally what it takes to lead a company, this guest is going to prove you wrong.
0:20.0	We're talking to Blake McCoskey, who built Tom's, but maybe you don't know that he started out probably just like you and I. No cash, no credentials, and started not one company, but a ton of them. After I sold Tom's, I got super depressed. I built, like, what I think is the perfect company. I gave 100 million children's shoes. I made more money than I ever could imagine.
0:38.9	And I felt empty.
0:40.9	No matter what I did, no matter how much success I had, I just never felt that I was enough.
0:44.9	When you feel enough, you have so much peace, because then you can actually just be.
0:49.7	In three days, we sold $100,000 worth of laundry services.
0:54.5	Boom!
0:55.2	Everyone signed up.
0:56.3	No big deal.
0:56.9	That's wild.
0:58.0	How many times do you think you've been rejected?
1:00.1	You can think of any celebrity that has had a mental health challenge.
1:03.1	I have cold-called every single one of them now, and I only have six founding partners.
1:08.2	You want to call one of them out publicly?
1:19.5	What are my favorite things about you, actually, that I didn't know is what you're not famous for, actually, which is all these other businesses that you started. And a lot of them,
1:25.6	you didn't even have a lot of money. Some of them, maybe you have
1:30.1	money today, but you don't use money as like the main driver for growth. So I wanted to ask you,
1:35.6	for somebody listening today who wants to start a business, but thinks, I don't have the cash to do it,
1:40.5	I don't have the credentials to do it. What would you tell that person?
	...

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