One myth that some have around innovation is that it takes a lot of start-up capital to implement a winning idea.

Yes, you will need to spend some money…

Whether it’s $10 to buy a domain name, $1,500 for a website, or $10,000 to build a native app, you will have to spend something to bring your idea to life.

Too often, we try to use our own money to fund our ideas…

We do for a number of reasons:

• We’re afraid of being rejected should we ask anyone to fund our idea.

• We often don’t have access to financial capital due to inherent institutional biases. Women are twice as likely as men to be denied a business loan. If you’re a minority-led business, you’re 4x more likely to be denied for business loans compared to white-led businesses.^1 2

The struggle is real…

And here’s the truth…

There are many ways to fund your ideas. You don’t have to rely on banks. The government has grants specifically directed to women and minority-led businesses. You just need to search for them.

You can also rely on crowdfunding…

Kickstarter and Indiegogo are two of the more popular ones. There are also women-specific crowdfunding options, such as PlumAlley.

Here’s an option if you’re a budding author…

Self-publishing can be quite expensive. I should know. Of my seven books, six were self-published. There’s satisfaction in bringing your book to market, but you can offset some of the expenses by having a traditional publisher publish your book instead.

Publishizer.com gives budding authors a chance to test the strength of their book idea. They list it and get people to pre-order copies. If the author’s minimum amount of pre-orders is reached, literary agents and publishers are queried. The money raised through the pre-orders is used as the author’s advance should the book be picked up.

Thought leader, Brad Szollose, used this method to sell 276 pre-orders of the second edition of his bestselling book, Liquid Leadership. Once he surpassed his minimum pre-orders of 250 copies, his book proposal was queried to 58 publishers. Morgan James Publishing will be publishing Brad’s book.

This just proves that you don’t have to finance your book on your own…

Finally, you can create fresh new combinations and charge high fees…

Innovation doesn’t mean creating something brand new. Very few of us will invent something that never existed before. However, we can take something old, give it a new spin, and offer it to the market. That’s innovation.

For example, you can buy a head of lettuce for $2, or you can buy a bag a pre-washed, shredded lettuce for $5. The bagged lettuce is a fresh idea on an old product.

As for your fees, there’s no middle ground anymore. You’re either a luxury brand (charge high), or you’re a bargain brand (charge low).  The middle is disappearing (middle class, centrist politics, middle class retailers). That means you have to make a choice.