How to bootstrap your business

Bootstrapping opens reservoir of opportunity

 

Regular readers know that we’ve already opened this blog up for sponsorship.

In a unique move (at least, I think it’s unique) we’ve asked folks to contribute what they think this service and the information they find here are really worth.

It’s an opportunity for us to attempt to:

• Continue providing this and other blogs coming soon on the PostRanger.com network as a service to our readers
• Do so free of pesky pop ops, impression ads and other distractions, making this truly “your blogging community”
• Allow you to continue supporting what you like and withholding support from what you don’t.

But our new move also brings with it new opportunities including:

• The chance for contributors of $100, $200, $300 or more to show their support for this blog and promote their website, business, or service through silver, gold and platinum star sponsorships to the entrepreneur community
• The opportunity for those who refer sponsors contributing $300 or more to this blog or others soon to appear on PostRanger.com to receive a finders fee for sending us in the right direction
• The hope that those who refer sponsors to us on a regular basis or who refer sponsors who decide to stay with us for up to a year will earn even more for their referrals. (You must become a member of LeadVine to refer a sponsor at this time, but there is no cost to get started.)  

We hope the reservoir of opportunity will not dry up anytime soon and that the continued success of How to bootstrap your business will offer additional opportunities for readers and sponsors in the future.

Join the Earth tribe!

 

Though they specialize in launching business without outside backing, bootstrappers are not necessarily loners.

As bootstrapping advocate Bijoy Goswami explains in this rational for the founding of the Austin-based Bootstrap Network and in the below video, teamwork and community can be key in sharing resources and forming the teams that can be so integral in many ventures.

If you can’t rely on your immediate face to face community for the necessary resources to launch your venture, other options may include the following:

• LinkedIn—Pretty much the ultimate network for forging long distance business relationships in a variety of fields with online groups in a variety of entrepreneurial areas.
• MySpace—Though often thought of as the first choice for hook-ups, sometimes questionable business ventures and promoting your band, the fact is that the community remains one of the largest on line and offers a much less restricted way to meet new contacts.
• Yewie—Sort of like MySpace but with a share of the advertising revenue going to the creator of each profile. It also seems to have some of the same drawbacks and a much lower membership hence less potential contacts. The future, however, remains uncertain.
• Facebook—One of MySpace’s great competitors with some differences thatg may make it somewhat more discriminating in the kinds of contacts made.
• Squidoo—Seth Godin’s website creating community, it encourages websites developed around expertise and thus the potential of more select contacts. The actual community aspect of this site, however, is somewhat less defined and thus each site is more like a blog than a profile page.
• MyBlogLog—A community developed to promote and connect the readers of specific blogs, it has evolved into a high volume network driven more around profiles but is more focused in terms of shared interests because those who read similar blogs often share other commonalities.
• Bootstrap Network—The site co-founded by Goswami, it is much like Facebook but much more tightly focused (too tightly for some perhaps.)
• Second Life—A weird virtual reality community. Believe it or not there is actually a book out on how to do business on this site. It may turn out to be very effective for spreading certain ideas.
• Flickr—The best known image sharing community on Earth, unfortunately, as I have found recently, somewhat slow in responsiveness on technical issues. Naturally, posting images of any press conferences, products or launch parties would likely generate interest for your company from unanticipated quarters.
• YouTube—As Flickr is to still images so YouTube is to video. Some companies seem to actually be using this site to launch their product or service with a podcast-style profile page dedicated top their efforts. Immitators have spring up in the form of Revver, Blip.tv and LiveVideo (with elements of MySpace mixed in).
• Two sites I’ve recently profiled include LeadVine (a social network that turns it’s community into a sales force for new products, services and opportunities) and ZooQ (a sort of problem solving network.)
• Others I’m less familiar with but which have been recommended to me include Xing (another business networking community) and Virb (a kind of everything but the kitchen sink sharing space.)

Think we’ve missed something truly incredible? Please add it in the comment section below or e-mail me and we’ll blog about it in a future post.

Thanks to Greg Cruey at BootStrapMe.com for recommending John Jantsch’s Let's Talk: Social Media for Small Business, a guide to this new frontier, available free here.

Leftovers: Most recent posts revisited

 

Just like those turkey sandwiches and mounds of mashed potatoes and filling served this weekend on paper plates after the big day, here are some of our best recent articles served anew for your post-holiday enjoyment.

(Add plenty of gravy and reheat in the microwave for best results!)

• More on the new guy taking over at BootStrapMe.com
• A special holiday list of great bootstrapping links and resources
• The secrets of bootstrapping karma
• How to join our online bootstrapping communities
• Bootstrapping through outsourcing…and offshoring
• Bootstrapping idea for a bad real estate market
• Help us keep this blog alive and serving YOU!

New face at BootStrapMe.com

  

There’s a new face at BootStrapMe.com, the site I helped launch back in June 2006 and hosted right up until October of this year.

According to his bio, Greg Cruey has:

…lived on four continents and in 14 times zones. In the past 25 years I have worked in education, community development, economic development, journalism, and teaching in a variety of public and private settings in parts of the Pacific, and in rural Appalachia.

Greg’s experience, according to the info his site provides, includes work as a journalist in settings ranging from beat reporter for a regular daily newspaper to holding a position as editor-in-chief of a small college newspaper.

He adds that he has been writer in both the blogosphere and elsewhere on line for over a decade.

 

He can also be found blogging at My Secret Blogaholism.

 

His first post is about John Jantsch’s new book Let's Talk: Social Media for Small Business available free on line here.

It’s nice to see the blog I got rolling more than two years ago, supplying bootstrap business tips to visitors on the Creative Weblogging network, is in good hands.

Good luck in your future endeavors, Greg. Keep in touch!

Holiday bootstrapping links

 

While enjoying the leftovers and avoiding the clean-up this Thanksgiving, take some time to check out these great links on bootstrapping and be sure to bookmark this page as a resource to share with others…

Great bootstrap links:

• Start with nothing. The inspiring story of Greg Gianforte and his bootstrapped startup of an information technology company in rural Montana from Inc.com.
• The art of bootstrapping. Startup guru and former Apple executive Guy Kawasaki lays out key elements of bootstrapping a startup business
• The Bootstrapper’s Bible. A link to the free download version of Seth Godin’s book on the bootstrapping entrepreneur.
• Bootstrapping your business. The on line site for Greg Gianforte’s book on the subject of bootstrapping with a great overview on why entrepreneurs today should consider bootstrapping their startup strategy of choice.
• Bootstrapping your startup. Some additional thoughts and advice on the process by the folks at Entrepreneur.com.
• 10 reasons for a bare bones business startup. My own post from Jan. 16, 2007 on the topic of why starting with little or nothing can be key to success for an entrepreneur.

Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Happy Thanksgiving, bootstrappers!

 

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish readers of this brand new blog a Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Enojy the video below from Howcast on the important art of carving your Holiday bird, then read my Thanksgiving update and watch for a bonus resource post later today.

       

Less than a month ago, I launched this blog after leaving BootStrapMe.com and the response thus far from readers has really been better than I expected.

 

More posts (helpful, I think) will be on the way soon, and this whole new venture is part of a larger effort I call PostRanger.com.

 

The larger blogging community is something I’m hoping we will see grow in time, but for now I cannot thank regular readers enough for the attention they’ve givern this brand new enterprise and am thankful for it.

 

I’m also thankful to those of you who have joined our Yahoo!, MyBlogLog and MySpace groups and hope more of you will in the future in the hopes that we will together create a very special network on the Internet for bootstrap entrepreneurs interested in changing the world.

 

Stay tuned for some of my favorite bootstrapping links coming later today as a special thanks to readers…

 

Photo Credit: Mary R. Vogt, MorgueFile

Bootstrapper give and take: the key to good karma for the entrepreneur

 

Whether it’s a big well-established property like Flickr or a small barely known startup, everyone can benefit from feedback.

Word is that when Greg Gianforte, founder of RightNow Technologies, started making calls on his new software, he always asked people who said they weren’t interested just why that was then tried to build any extra features customers wanted into the product. (Read more here)

A business associate of mine, Edward A. Ipser, Jr., co-founder of ZooQ, a new community problem solving platform, has tried to build this kind of give and take into his product (See more on Edward’s venture here) with little “Help us improve ZooQ” buttons spread throughout the site.

Here’s why input for bootstrappers is so important:

• Feedback works both ways. As the title of this post implies, giving input also may encourage a two way dialogue and is the best way of developing resources from which to draw for your own ventures. As another old saying goes “As you sow so shall you reap”.
• Sales is market research. This one is borrowed from Gianforte (see the link above) who would argue that sales is the start not the end of the bootstrapping process and that figuring out what product your customers want through feedback is the best place to begin.
• Bootstrappers need community. This was a major impetus behind bootstrapping advocate Bijoy Goswami’s own decision to help create the Bootstrap Network…and our incentive to found bootstrapping communities on Yahoo!, MySpace and MyBlogLog as well. Please have a look.
• The customer is always right. Ultimately, convincing others of the value of your product or service is what entrepreneurship is all about (bootstrapping or otherwise). Some comments that veer too far from what most of your feedback is telling you must, of course, be ignored. You cannot and should not always change direction to suit every potential sale or opportunity. But ignoring the feedback of the majority of your customer base comes at an obvious peril.
• You can’t think of everything. Mostly, as Greg Gianforte experience suggests, you simply can’t think of all the features for your product or service that might interest a customer…so let your customers help you. In the end, feedback is a kind of free marketing research and research and development all rolled into one. And that is what bootstrapping is all about.

 Photo Credit:  ameenuulla, MorgueFile

Join our Yahoo!, MySpace and MyBlogLog groups

 

As we launch into our new frontier, we’re trying to bring some old fans over from our previous blog at BootStrapMe.com to the new site and invite new readers in to the fold as well.

 

Regular readers of BootStrapMe.com were aware of a great opportunity to interact and share opportunities with other readers and fellow bootstrappers via the World Wide Web through three great on line communities.

 

We renew an invitation today for readers old and new to join our communities on Yahoo!, MySpace and MyBlogLog today.

 

If you haven’t yet joined these communities and set up profiles of your own, you’ll need to do that first.

 

Afterward, however, you’ll enjoy a couple of important advantages:

• Sharing your projects, blog posts, website URL’s with other members
• Communiticating about upcoming planned projects with likeminded entrepreneurs who might lend advice or even resources
• Making bootstrappers and other entrepreneurs who frequent the groups aware of new products or services that might help them on their journey
• And much more we probably haven’t even thought of yet…

 

What are you waiting for? There’s no cost. Join one or all of our on line bootstrapper communities today.

 

Bootstrap your off shored empire

As anyone who’s paid any attention to the changing global economy knows, big companies have found many ways to outsource key functions, sometimes overseas.

In doing so, they shift the headaches of daily production and service to contractors who can do the work cheaper and with less overhead than companies who once handled many of their operations in house.

At the same time, these decisions have demonstrated how easy outsourcing and off shoring can be, and not just for corporate behemoths.

Tim Ferris, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” advises everyone from the full-time employee to the entrepreneur to outsource the parts of life they would rather not handle making room for bigger issues.

Here are some important steps to outsourcing in your own bootstrapping startup just like the big boys but without a fraction of their existing costs:

• Don’t pay up front. Drop shipping wholesales like Lightinthebox.com, a major Chinese seller, are on the increase and the best offer no cost access to their inventory allowing you to order only once you have made a sale. Read more about the idea in this drop shipping guide at Taming the Beast.net or watch the below video, then research to find the company/companies that are right for you.
• Keep the best, outsource the rest. Serial entrepreneur and blogger Scott Burkett advises “Never, ever, ever, ever, ever offshore a core competency.” Another way to look at this would be that it is unwise to send overseas those things your business does well, is known for doing or that the entrepreneur most enjoys—the reasons you got into the business in the first place. Outsource instead functions like taking calls or orders, billing, on demand publishing or manufacturing, or drop shipping retail services.
• Use technology--big time. The Internet is your friend when it comes to outsourcing. In fact, I’ve become aware of many opportunities simply by blogging. The days when only huge corporations had the resources to operate and outsource over great distances and across national boundaries and time zones are over
• Work from home. This should be an obvious one, but I’ll state it all the same. If you don’t need an office and are doing all of your work through off shored subcontractors, why add the overhead of an office. Having someplace to go does not make your business more legitimate or make you any more of a success.
• Keep your focus. The fact that there are plenty of opportunities out there doesn’t mean you should follow them all. Decide what you want your bootstrap venture to be and, just like the corporate giants, stick to your brand and company identity while outsourcing where necessary to cut costs.

Bootstrapping in a real estate downturn

Be it ever so crumbled there’s no place like home…or whatever other building, nice as it may be, that you’ve gotten stuck with during the real estate downturn.

But seriously, there is a way to bootstrap unused space to profitability even without being able to sell.

Listen to this interview with co-working space founder John Eric Metcalf at Mashable Conversations about a trend Mashable’s Mark ‘Rizin’ Hopkins calls one of the “5 Web 2.0 Businesses That Will Thrive in a Down Economy”.

Here are some of the reasons co-working spaces may be the perfect choice for real estate bootstrappers:

• Space is the premium. If you’ve already got that property, you’ve got the major draw those seeking a co-working space are looking for—a place to hang out and work besides the local coffee shop.
• Payments come first. In his case, Metcalf said a core of interested tenants paid upfront for their space specifying the kinds of amenities they sought making the start up a complete bootstrap.
• Adding is easy. Once you are up and running adding services is not difficult. Use some of your income to upgrade, renovate and make improvements, or start other small business services.
• Camaraderie is key. In addition to paying for space, your clients will be looking for that almost incubator feel of being with others also working on start-ups and other kinds of high tech business. Get to know this community, they may include the folks with lap tops hanging out at the local Starbucks looking nervous as if they feel as if they are staying too long.
• Costs are minimal. Beyond the necessary high speed Internet access and the space, there’s much else too it. I once worked at a newspaper office where freelancers used to sit in their cars outside at night using our wireless high speed connection to send in stories and get other work done so the service is valuable in almost any setting.

For more on how to join the co-working revolution, visit the global wiki for co-working space developers at coworking.