Business On A Shoestring, Part Two

I suppose if I were to summarize what I've learned about bootstrapping to date, it would be: don't spend money unless you absolutely have to; what you make from your business, sink back into the business; and don't quit your day job until the numbers are right. As promised, here are some great resources I've found in the course of my research.

Entrepreneur.com is a must-read site for the bootstrapper. Here's a great article on bootstrapping your startup; be sure to follow the links he's included, which provide some helpful additional reading.

If you don't have many resources, marketing can be a challenge. This Enterpreneur.com article provides some creative ideas for marketing your product with little or no cash outlay. I'll cover some of the things I've been doing to promote Metier in Part Three of this series.

Bob Weinstein's contribution to Entrepreneur.com tells some success stories and gives his take on bootstrapping. He also provides some advice from a professor of entrepreneurship at a Pennsylvania college. A good deal of overlap with the other articles, but also worth reading (hey, another viewpoint is always worth the read).

Jeff Cornwell runs the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University, and frequently blogs about bootstrapping. Put bootstrapping into the search window at his site, The Entrepreneurial Mind, and see what he has written on the topic. This is a great site in general for the entrepreneur.

He's selling a book, but The Bootstrap Entrepreur provides a number of freebies at his site that are worth the read. I can't say anything about the book, because I haven't read it but the site's worth a visit just for his tips & articles. My take on it is, if you're spending a lot of money on books, seminars, CDs, and other bootstrapping learning tools, that ain't bootstrapping. :)

This is a great opinion piece on bootstrapping by a CEO in the software industry. The focus here is on why bootstrap rather than the how. Definitely worth the read.

You can't have too many top 10 lists, right? Here's a list of 10 tips for the bootstrapping entrepreneur that focuses on the home business startup.

The Bootstrap Network provides a fantastic networking opportunity for the bootstrapper, and has as of today 16 local chapters in the USA and India.

Finally, BootStrapMe is a blog that provides a lot of good articles & links for the bootstrapper.

That should get you all going. In the third (and probably final) installation in this series, I'll talk about the things I've been trying to bootstrap my business ventures.

Business On A Shoestring, Part One

When I started Metier Career Coaching, I did so with zero external funding and a few dollars in my pocket that I was willing to risk on this venture. I'm not really a born entrepreneur, if there is such a thing; just a guy who wanted to start a coaching practice and didn't know how to go about doing so. Taking big risks isn't my cup of tea, but I also know that no risk = no payoff, so I've had to become comfortable with a small level of risk. Recently, I've realized there's a term for this approach to entrepreneurship: bootstrapping. Turns out I'm not the only one who's taken this approach, and there's a lot of articles out there on the internet to help bootstrappers. There are books on bootstrapping, networking sites for bootstrappers, blogs on bootstrapping, and resources for bootstrappers out there. Just google "entepreneur bootstrapper" to see what's out there. Gee, wish I'd known about this a year ago! Here are eleven inspirational stories of bootstrappers who made it from Bootstrapme.com to get your creative juices flowing.

In the next entry in this series, I'll do some googling myself and let you know what I found.

Entrepreneurship and Balance

Jeff Cornwall posted an excellent article on his blog "The Entrepreneurial Mind" on the need for a balanced life, and the risk faced by the entrepreneur who gives his/her all to a new business venture. He writes: "...If we are to become all that we were put on this Earth to do, we have to temper the temptation to become consumed by our work..."

Good advice. That's why in coaching client careers I focus on finding balance, and why we'll talk about all areas of your life. A person who knows only one note but plays it well will have a hard time finding harmony in his/her life. You can read Jeff's post by clicking this link.

Vasily

Thanksgiving Day

Here in the Midwestern USA, it's Thanksgiving Day. The first few flakes of snow drifted by my window this morning, the days are getting shorter, and convincing myself that winter is a long way away is becoming increasingly difficult. This is a day of reflection for many of us, to count the blessings in our lives and share time with family or friends.

I'm having dinner in a few hours with several friends. The menu will be Southern USA, Turkey Roulades, Gumbo, Hominy Casserole, Sweet Potato & Rutabaga Casserole, Cabbage Pudding, Bread Pudding with brandy sauce for dessert. I was born in Virginia, and have always had a spiritual connection with the South. This is the time of year when I start feeling homesick for the South, for (as a friend of mine once wrote) "magnolias bleeding their bright seeds into the snow".

I'm grateful for many things: health, meaningful work, the love of friends. Although we celebrate thanskgiving in this country in a special way on this day, for many years I've tried to start my day on awaking with a prayer of gratitude - that I have been given another day, that I be given the grace to Get It Right this time.

May you have a thoughtful and grateful day, whether or not Thanksgiving is part of your traditions!

Baby Boomers & Retirement

I've often said I'm not interested in retirement in the "classic" sense. I have too many plans to think about lazy days of fishing, golf, and volunteer activities. At some point over the past decade I've become enthusiastic about continuing meaningful work well past employment. I still haven't written the Great American Novel or developed my Legacy, and I sure don't want to spend my Golden Years living on Social Security. Plus, I plan on living long enough to start a whole new career ... or two. Here's a great article from Small Business Trends with some great advice for those of us who are approaching "retirement" age.

Facing Up to Failure

There are a number of lists of famous "failures" on the internet, folks in various disciplines who stuck with something until they succeeded. Here's one from the Division of Educational Studies at Emory, University. Back when I was doing a lot of software engineering work, I remember reading that at the time something like 40% of all software projects fail. Improvement in software engineering disciplines has reportedly reduced that failure rate to 15% in recent years, but that still means that more than one project out of every ten software projects started will fail. And some studies continue to report high failure rates for IT projects. In fact, more than one software project out of every ten should fail.

Being able to recognize failure for what it is and accept our own failures means we can learn from our mistakes and oversights, and reduce the chance of their happening in the future. I've sometimes had people who were considering great life changes ask me, "but what if I fail?" One might ask them, what if you don't and you continue down a fruitless path without learning anything or growing from your mistakes? What if you never try and come to regret your fear later in life?

There's a time to be optimistic about our prospects for failure, and a time to be pessimistic. Martin Seligman has pointed out that we don't want the person piloting our airplane to tell herself, "I can have a couple of drinks before I fly ... the likelihood of something bad happening is low." When the cost of failure is high, we want to be careful with the optimism. Two key questions to ask ourselves when making an important life decision (career related or otherwise) are: what would be the cost if I fail? and what will be my regret if I never try?

I suppose another way of putting it would be: take risks, but take them wisely.

The Search For Meaning

In Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl wrote: "Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life." Later, he writes that meaning in life can be discovered in three different ways:

1. Creating something of value or doing something worthwhile (our legacy)
2. Experiencing goodness, truth, beauty etc. or experiencing love for a person
3. Seeing unavoidable suffering as ennobling rather than degrading

This is strong stuff. I first read Frankl in graduate school, and my encounter with him was transformative. His little book was inspired by his experiences in the concentration camp, and the many barbaric and seemingly random experiences he had there. Where, he had to ask himself, is God in all of this? Where is the meaning of it all?

Some of you might be wondering: what does this have to do with one's career? A career can be congruent with our deepest selves, with our identity as human beings and our sense of being called to do something with our lives that makes a difference. Or, it can be something we do just because it's there, or because we've drifted into it.

I've known many people who have said to me that when they go to work it's to make money for the time when they're not at work, or to put money away so they can retire early and do the things they really want to do. They have claimed that their careers don't have to have meaning: making a decent salary in a comfortable environment is enough. Is it?

Suppose one starts work after college at the age of 22, and retires at the age of 66, with three weeks off each year. That's 44 years times 49 weeks per year times 40 hours per week. This person will spend 86,240 hours on the job over the course of his/her career; with overtime, that's over 10 years of his/her life. And it's a substantial fraction of a life to be spent in the hope of better things after the need to work for one's daily bread is done.

Frankl would say, I suspect, that one needs work that meets one or more of the criteria above so that our lives will be filled with meaning. Essayist Frederick Buechner wrote that we're called to the place where our joy and the world's need meet. Finding a career that fills us with joy and creates meaning for ourselves and others is more than a career goal: it's essential to our being human.