7 steps to start your business from ZERO in 2025 — Silicon Valley Girl Podcast

Marina Mogilko: So you're trying to start a business in 2025 and you're hoping for an extra $10,000 a month from this business, but you think it's impossible because it takes so much time to start. You need to quit your job and you don't have time. Well, I have great news for you. 2025 is an amazing year to start a business, and here is why we have AI tools that empower businesses to grow faster than ever before.

Just listen to this. When I was going through an accelerator in 2015, 500 Startups, they told us you have to grow by 10% week over week. And only one or two percent of startups at 500 Startups and Y Combinator, which is a top accelerator here in Silicon Valley, were able to do that. Now, at 10% growth week over week, that's the average of startups at Y Combinator. And they have these incredible cases where a startup was able to go from zero to twelve million in just a year because with AI tools, it doesn't matter if you're a beginner or you don't have capital. AI gives you steroids. AI makes you this person who can do multiple jobs at the same time.

So today, I'm going to empower you with AI. I will share my best tools for entrepreneurs. So listen up, write down, and start using them to start your business in 2025 and grow faster than ever.

Step number one in starting any business is identifying your niche. Finding the right niche is super important because sometimes you start a business in a niche that's dying. But if you start a business in the right niche, that means your business is just going to grow with the niche. You have external factors helping you grow. And today, AI tools make this process simpler and more effective than ever.

With the help of these tools, you can analyze market trends, consumer behavior, and competition to identify profitable opportunities that align with your skills and interests. Here are some powerful tools that I personally used when I was starting my company, Daily Value Yumkin, which are healthy snacks for school-aged kids.

First, Exploding Topics. This tool helps you discover trending topics before they hit the mainstream. It analyzes millions of online searches to identify rapidly growing topics, giving you a head start on identifying emerging opportunities. You know how people who launched their matcha brands are exploding right now? That's because they noticed the matcha trend years before and launched their company. And right in this moment, there are hundreds of people working on a trend that is just emerging, meaning that their companies will just grow and grow because the trend is going to explode.

Another great tool to identify trends, and I use it a lot for my videos as well, is our old classic called Google Trends. It's an incredibly useful tool for analyzing search trends across the globe. It not only helps you understand the popularity of specific topics over time, it also helps you understand the popularity of topics based on location and seasonality. For example, we do a lot of test prep, and whenever we're thinking of launching a new course, I'm like, let's check whether IELTS is actually a trending topic in June. We're like, oh no, June is not the time where people are taking IELTS, so we probably need to launch closer to September or October when this search term is peaking.

Another one is Statista. It provides comprehensive statistics and reports on a wide range of industries and markets. There is an AI tool called Semrush Market Explorer. It uses AI to analyze industry trends and provide insights into market dynamics, and it's perfect for identifying growing markets and understanding consumer behavior in different sectors.

And the last one is actually my favorite for consumer goods. It's called Helium 10. It's well known for Amazon sellers. I think if you're launching a physical product, you will be selling on Amazon anyways, and Helium 10 also works for Walmart. So basically, with this tool, you can see how much every seller is making every month. And they have this AI tool that helps you analyze emerging trends and predict the revenue that you can have if you launch that product.

Now that you've identified your niche, I want to talk about some basics. You know, when they say like you need to be ready to accept millions of dollars, you need to be ready to grow really fast, that means laying a foundation for huge growth. And I didn't do that when I first started my business. I didn't really pay attention to our finances. I had a Google spreadsheet, which was really basic. And when tax season started, my accountant was just shocked at how disorganized I was. Since then, I never ever make this mistake again.

You need to manage your business finances regularly, and this is where today's sponsor Relay comes in. Relay is an all-in-one business banking and money management platform designed to help new entrepreneurs take control of their finances from day one. Really important, day one.

Here is why I love Relay. It's free to sign up with no account fees, no minimum balances, and no hidden charges. Whether you're selling a product, freelancing, or running an online store, Relay helps you organize your money with up to 20 different accounts for different expenses like taxes, saving, or marketing. Relay is built for simplicity and control. You can issue up to 50 debit cards with custom spending limits, automate transfers to save money effortlessly, and integrate with QuickBooks Online or Xero to make bookkeeping a breeze.

With Relay, your financial foundation will be rock solid, even if you're just starting. Ready to start your dream business? Sign up using my link in the description. It takes only 10 minutes to open an account. No more excuses. Build something amazing together with Relay.

Now, when you've figured out your business idea and you've figured out your business finance management, some people might tell you, oh, it's time to develop your business plan. But let's be honest, business plans can feel overrated in the startup world. If someone's starting a company, no one's writing 20-page documents with finances anymore. Investors just don't care about spreadsheets. They care about your ambition and understanding of the market, your vision, how persuasive you are, how strong you are as a founder.

But still, having a picture of your competitors and how long certain steps might take can really help. So what I recommend doing at this step is, first of all, analyze all of your competitors on Amazon to see how much they're making. Or using other AI tools, you can use tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or DeepSeek.

At the day of recording of this video, this app completely ruined the American stock market because it was created in China and it was trained using just $5 million worth of resources, when OpenAI used billions and billions of dollars to train their model, which just shows how fast everything changes these days. So make sure you start now because the world is moving so quick.

Anyways, these tools can help you figure out market trends, competitive strategies, and time frames for different business models. For example, if you're working with physical products, you need to research how long it typically takes to find reliable suppliers on platforms like Alibaba, get products shipped to your region. In real estate, you need to learn how much time and money is needed to get an Airbnb ready for the market. So there are different timelines for different businesses, and it's good to know them before you actually start.

Bottom line, you don't need a traditional business plan. Just focus on understanding your market and competitors.

Step number three. As a creative person, I love this step. It's called design your brand. And as a super creative person, I used AI to create our snack brand. But basically, it has to have this memorable identity, and it doesn't have to be expensive or complicated. I remember I spent days and days coming up with the name Lingua Trip, and later on, I realized somebody already had a trademark in one of our key markets. But anyways, with this company, I just went straight to AI and it took me like 10 minutes to come up with a cool name.

The app that I used is called Namelix. So you basically tell this app, you know, I'm building this brand, kids snacks, healthy donuts, and it came up with a name, Yumkin, and I loved it. It's like yummy plus munchkin. Yumkin. I feel like it's really good. At least all my American friends, when I tell them like the company is going to be called Yumkin, they're like, oh, that's amazing. And the second name that we have is Daily Value. I think we're going to create a vote situation in my stories on Instagram, so make sure you follow me on Instagram, @LinguaMarina.

So basically, Namelix generates creative and catchy business names based on your preferences. And then the creators of Namelix created another tool called Brandmark.io. This tool helps you create professional logos, color palettes, and brand guidelines in minutes. It's perfect for building a cohesive visual identity without hiring a designer. It is crazy how every important aspect of a business can now be handled with AI. And this is why I'm saying this is the year, this is the time of solopreneurs who are very frugal, who don't have to hire a team. They just acquire knowledge of various AI instruments and they deliver and they hustle.

If you want truly unique and artistic visuals for your branding, Midjourney is a very powerful AI image generator and is perfect for creating product mockups, website banners, or any visuals that make your brand pop up.

Another mix of tools that I like to use are ChatGPT Plus and DALL-E. Use ChatGPT to brainstorm name ideas, taglines, or even brand voice strategies. With DALL-E, you can generate logo concepts or custom illustrations to bring your brand vision to life.

Number four, probably the most well, after finance, the most important. Build your online presence. This is also crazy. Like, we're in the world where your followers don't really matter. You can start as a brand new account. All you have to acquire is the knowledge of how to go viral. We've seen with Dubai chocolate, you know, this lip stain that stays on your lips. We've seen how products go from zero to millions of dollars thanks to a couple of TikToks or a couple of viral reels.

So this is the knowledge you need to acquire. We're no longer in the time where you need to just consistently post good content and hope it's going to get traction. No, no. Because one viral video can make all your annual sales. I experienced this last year when we launched a new course and I just created a viral reel. I didn't know it was going to go viral, but we used a viral concept that was already filmed by other creators, and it just went viral and it generated great sales in December. That was like an end-of-year gift from the algorithm to me.

So you need to acquire knowledge on how to be online, but also how to get viral. Thankfully, AI tools make it simple to create a website, to automate communications, and to manage your social media. First of all, let's just talk about website builders because you need a website. You need some online presence, right? You need an outlet where people can actually pay you money.

A tool that I like using, and the tool that I'm going to use for my website, is called Hostinger. It allows you to build stunning, mobile-friendly websites. I don't know, like I can talk about this for hours, but basically we're in an economy where a lot of our purchases—for some people, like Gen Z, their whole purchasing behavior is based on whatever they saw online. Like, I saw this snack, I go and buy it. I saw that somebody has this nice house, I'm looking for something similar. Like, clean aesthetics, whatever, whoever I follow, they dictate my purchasing behavior.

So basically, and if you want to tap into that, I saw this quote: 2025 is smart people paying beautiful people to promote their product. Something like that. So be one of the smart people paying beautiful people, and when beautiful people promote your product, they're going to promote it on mobile apps. So make sure your website is mobile friendly.

Anyways, Hostinger is beginner-friendly, offers templates for various industries, so you can have your site up and running in hours, not days. And by the way, I'll have all the links below. Some companies gave me some promotions for you guys, so make sure you click the link and see what kind of promotion they have. Some companies just never replied anyways. It doesn't matter. I still use them, but yeah, make sure to check all the links below.

Then another thing, email and text. Very important. We're going to use Omnisend for my new company. Basically, Omnisend personalizes messages and tracks performance, helping you optimize your marketing efforts, build funnels, automate everything that you're doing.

And now social media automation. Oh my God. So first of all, train ChatGPT to be your great help in analyzing trends. I always do this when I have some video go viral. I copy the comments from that video to ChatGPT, and well, it already has the memory of who I am. But if you're just starting from scratch, you can say, like, hey, this entrepreneur launching this product in this niche, here's a reel. Maybe you take somebody else's reel. Here's a reel that went viral in my niche. Here are the comments to this reel. Analyze these comments because clearly people liked this video. Analyze what exactly they liked about this video and generate more ideas that can go viral. I chat with ChatGPT about this all the time.

Another thing you do is dumb scrolling. You don't need an AI app for this. You just scroll and scroll and scroll, and you save videos. My threshold is over a million views. Like, if I see a video that got over a million views, that's a good video for me. I'm not going to copy, but everybody copies each other. But it's like, let's take the inspiration from here and just change it to my topic. And then this is how you go viral. And that's the only way to do social media in 2025.

There are some apps like Hootsuite. It helps you not only schedule posts, but also check trends and generate content ideas based on what's performing well in your industry. So you don't need to just scroll.

If you are not good with editing, please try out CapCut. I think it was blocked in the US, but I use it all the time. So try CapCut as an editor.

Another tool that I love using, if you're doing talking head videos, is Descript. It's an all-in-one tool for video editing, audio transcription, and captioning. Perfect for producing polished videos and podcasts. If you talk for too long, Runway is another very powerful AI platform for creating and editing videos. It offers features like background removal, video generation from text to images. Unbelievable. Like, two years ago, if you told me like, Marina, you will be generating videos from text, I'd be like, come on, it's going to happen in 2040. No, it's already happening in 2025. 3D modeling, lip syncing. It's perfect for high-quality content creation.

Opus Clip. I use it all the time for my short videos because I just love these videos. I like to sit down and talk, but we're in the era of short videos, so I want to make sure you see more of me. And we use Opus Clip to take videos like this and transform it into videos like these. And it's not just cutting the videos. It's also analyzing the virality potential for TikTok, Instagram reels, or YouTube Shorts.

And of course, if you're camera shy, you're like, Marina, I'm not like you. I don't want to be in front of the camera. I don't want to do embarrassing dances and sing in front of the camera. You know, there are no excuses in 2025. You can use Invideo to create stunning videos quickly with customizable templates and AI-powered editing features. Drag and drop whatever, and you can create perfect content for marketing campaigns, ads, and social media content.

There is another one called Veo by Google. They generate high-quality videos based on text. If you want to have a persistent character in all of your communications, you can create a virtual avatar or AI-generated voice.

There is an app called HeyGen that lets you create any avatar you can think of. It can be you, it can be somebody else, can be a non-existent person, it can be a cartoon character, whatever you want. HeyGen can help you do that.

Another app is called Hour One. Use this tool to create lifelike AI avatars for your video.

Another app that we love using is called 11 Labs. It's just crazy how many apps we're using. I'm just naming and naming them, and they're all so good. The thing is, I'm not removing my team really. I'm just empowering every single member of the team to be more productive.

So 11 Labs is something that all my producers use because it generates realistic voiceovers for videos. Anyways, this is me talking. This is not my AI avatar, and this is my real voice. But I might go somewhere in a week to interview an amazing person, and then the advertiser in this video might be like, oh, could we please change this line? And I don't have my mic when I'm traveling. But what my team can do is that they can create my voice with 11 Labs and replace some sentences that need to be replaced.

So try as many tools as possible, see what works for you, and create this perfect stack for every aspect of your business, including social media.

Step number five, customer service. You know, when we started Lingua Trip, I was doing all the customer service. I created a Google Doc with all of the frequently asked questions. It was so old school. Now excellent customer service can be provided with AI-powered chatbots that are available 24/7. And it surprises me even small businesses that creators start. If they are like communicating with me without AI chat, I'm like, come on, it's 2025. You have to use a chatbot. It's easier for me because it's 24/7. It's easier for you. You can focus on what you really love.

But basically, there are so many tools that can offer support, handle inquiries, even automate sales. There's one called Salesforce Einstein. Salesforce Einstein offers AI-powered CRM, predictive analytics, and sales automation. And actually, all of these CRM tools, like HubSpot that we're using as well, they have free periods for smaller businesses, and I highly advise you to start using something. So again, maybe you have three customers, maybe you have four customers, but you learn how to work with them because you need to be ready for your business to explode. And once it starts exploding, you won't have time to create a perfect customer support system. You have this time now, so please pay attention to the tools that I'm mentioning. Play with them, see what works for you, use them when you have three or four clients, because then you're going to have millions, and the system is going to handle them for you.

But basically, Salesforce is perfect for managing customer relationships, sales pipelines, streamlining your customer service processes. Zendesk AI is something that we use at Lingua Trip. It basically automates customer support with personalized responses, task automation, and real-time insights. So what I did when we discovered Zendesk, I just copied and pasted my FAQ into Zendesk, and then our customer support took over, and you can create tickets there. It's one of the greatest tools out there. It's suitable for businesses of all sizes, providing 24/7 support and improving overall customer experience.

Step number six, streamlining operations. Because you don't want to be stuck in day-to-day with your business. You want to be growing as an entrepreneur. You want to be meeting people. And you know, as Steve Jobs said, the entrepreneur's job is to interview the most talented people. 60 to 70% of your time. It's really hard when you're just starting out, but you have to have this mindset. Like, in two years, all I will be doing is going to conferences, exploring opportunities for my business, not just doing operations. And in order to be able to do that, you need tools that can help with operations.

Zapier automates repetitive tasks and integrates hundreds of apps with ease. You can basically create workflows for returned merchandise or for some particular requests. When something needs to be done manually, but you tell the AI bot how to process every single request.

Another app that I love using is called Otter AI. Remember how we used to have an assistant to take notes during meetings? Or I would take notes? Now I have Otter. It transcribes conversations, summarizes meetings, and provides real-time insights, helping you stay organized and focused. It will be like, oh, you just talked to this person about that, create this task for you, shall I help you with this, shall I analyze this? It's like a real assistant that follows you to every meeting that you have, online and offline as well.

And another tool that we love using is Trello. It's a simple project management tool that helps you organize tasks, set deadlines, and track progress. Trello's automation feature, Butler, makes managing workflows even easier by automating repetitive tasks.

And of course, you can always start using Google products. My favorite Google products, like Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google Meet, I use them all because they're so powerful, free, and available in all countries of the world.

And the last step is to analyze and improve. If you don't have numbers, if you don't know how to control the numbers, you can't really control and grow your business. Something that I've learned in my 14-year journey since starting my business in 2011, I'm an established businesswoman right here. Anyways, analyzing data and improving your business strategies is essential for growth.

With AI-powered analytics, you can make informed decisions and optimize your business performance. And honestly, AI is like a business coach. It's just incredible how I started using AI when I have a problem. Be like, hey, you know what would Elon Musk do if he was me? Or I have this situation, like this, this, and that. What should I do? Shall I reply to this? Or what's the action plan? I had a scam call a couple days ago, and like, the way they talk to me, I got really scared. So the first thing I did, not go to my husband, the first thing I did, I like, ChatGPT, does it sound like a scam to you? What should I do? And they're like, yes, this is a scam, block them, stay calm. Like, it's crazy how ChatGPT became our business coach as well.

But there are some apps that you can use as well. You can use Rows to automate data analysis and generate reports quickly. This tool allows you to create AI-powered formulas to improve your business decision-making using real-time data.

Relay, the tool we talked about already, you manage your finances with this all-in-one platform that helps track expenses, set up automated transfers like taxes, and you know, your security fund. And it makes it easy to stay on top of your financial operations.

By using these AI strategies, you can start and grow a successful business in 2025 with no money or experience. You can become an entrepreneurial powerhouse, and it's going to be just you and your amazing AI apps. Many of them have free starter versions, which means you can start right now with no money and get to the point where you're growing 10% week over week.

And please come back to this video and tell me, Marina, thank you for this. I started a company and it's growing, and you inspired me to do this. Because this makes me feel so good, and it makes me continue making these videos for you and sharing my knowledge as an entrepreneur living in Silicon Valley.

Thank you guys so much for watching this video up to the very end. I'll see you very soon. Please subscribe. Bye.