Bootstrap Business | Entrepreneurship, Bootstrapping A Business, Bootstrap Business, Start A Business

Rolling It off the Giants’ Shoulders

Friday, June 6th, 2008

Small businesses have a tendency to grow a little. The founders move out of the garage and into an office. Part-time and then full-time employees start to appear. Business goes well–and then it hits an almost invisible hump. Well before bootstrapping is over, the business is too big for the founders to run on their own. As the giants, the founders hunker down and brace themselves under the heft of the team standing on their shoulders. Somewhere in there, reality strikes. The team has to step forward and the founders have to roll the responsibility onto their shoulders. If the founders hold on too long, they collapse under the weight. If the team steps off early and isn’t ready, the founders watch as their fledgling company crushes their workers. When giants are working with humans, it takes maturity, balance, and vision to keep the company rolling forward.

“It’s tricky for the owners to let go,” Rich says. “You see companies where the owners can’t let go and it crashes and burns.” It takes maturity for a founder to do what is best for the business. Think of it. You’ve lost sleep over this. You’ve sacrificed family time (hopefully not all of it). Whatever it is you’ve done, you’ve poured your heart and soul into your enterprise. If the company grows, you can’t baby it forever–but by the same token, growth isn’t necessarily eternal. Walking that line means making decisions with your head as well as with your heart. You love the feel of that team standing on your shoulders. Each colossal step forward shakes the earth. But giant though you be, you’re still a mortal. Be mature enough to trust your team.

Trusting your team and shouldering the burden is always a delicate balance at first. They didn’t keep a futon in the office for six months. They have a steady income. They haven’t seen everything you have, so shifting the burden starts with little things. “A great example is this monitor,” Rich points out, one that had died a few days earlier. The team member poked his head into Rich’s office and asked what to do. Rich remembers how before, he might have dealt with the problem himself. Now? “What are you going to do about it?” he asked. Obviously the owners keep their eyes on things, but having your eyes on a project is different from being up to your ears in it. Ron adds that “one of the things we’ve also seen is that we’ve got guys . . . who’ve come from more of a corporate background. [Their] initial attitude is, ‘Those guys are the founders. They’ll take care of it.’” Ron shakes his head. “Some of it’s environmental, but some of it’s physiological.” Some team members naturally invest themselves in the survival of the business. Others need to learn. For both, there is only one way.

That way is the vision. Helping your employees catch this vision at the appropriate time keeps things rolling. “So oftentimes people look at the physical compensation,” Rich says. “Typically, that’s the smallest compensation in a company of this nature. What [our team is] using, five-year-college-grads couldn’t get the knowledge.” They need to lose sleep the way the owners lose sleep. They don’t just have to sweat deadlines; they have to sweat bullets. “Give guidance, direction, and incentive,” Ron says. Rewards or profit-sharing programs help take the team from balance to vision. For me, if I stick this out, I have a career path. If I don’t, I putter along and fizzle out. In bootstrapping, make or break is not one day or one deal. Make or break is the whole tenor of the work. Humans have to step down and race forward. Giants have to let work roll onto the team’s shoulders. When that happens, fire doesn’t belong alone to the bellies of the founders. Fire fills the office, the enterprise, and the vision of the future.

Posted in Rich Christiansen, Ron Porter, Loyalty, Bootstrap Business, Accountability, The Team, Peter V. Hilton | Comments Off

No News Is Bad News

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

In war, the primary objective is to knock out communication. Your job gets that much easier once lines are broken, powers supplies are cut, radio frequencies are jammed, or towers are taken down. You throw all of your energy into disrupting the enemy’s communication–except for the energy you spend in protecting yours. In business, you don’t even need an enemy. Without accountable communication, your employees can cut ties and cause fear on their own. Your primary objective, then, should be to keep that from happening.

In other areas of life, it may be that no news is good news. “But,” Ron points out, “we don’t like to be left out of our own circle. We like to know what’s happening.” When bootstrapping a business, you’re in the same boat. Hold yourself accountable in your sphere of influence–not just inside your head, but outside your mouth and lips and tongue. Talk, type, or tack a sticky note on their door, but be sure that people know where your project is going.

“‘Perception is reality,’” Rich adds, “and you can often create the reality by creating the perception. None of us like to just be randomly left out in the cold.” Whoever you are responsible to in your project, keep them updated. However the project is going, it will continue to go because you are sharing that status with someone. It may be that things are running smoothly and that there appears to be nothing worth saying. Not so! Are you ready for the great secret of business communication? There is always something worth saying. As you adopt that mentality, you will find snippets of information or ideas that you can forward to clients or employees. If you go quiet, they start to worry, just like how their silence churns your nerves. “And it doesn’t have to be overly complicated,” Rich continues. “Little two-line emails go miles.”

I wholeheartedly agree. Let’s take a look at where I stand: I’m a gung-ho college student with a bright, sunny personality and even brighter, sunnier dreams. Whenever I set myself a deadline, I can sometimes be a bit on the overzealous side. I underestimate the time some projects will take (like this blog post). I had big plans–and then reality hit. Some things had to be pushed back. When it became clear that the post wasn’t going to be on time, I could have done two things: fessed up or kept quiet. If I hadn’t said anything, they would have grown uneasy while waiting for news. When thebad news finally came it would have confirmed their fears; if it didn’t they would have broken and come running after me. “At the point you have to actively go out seeking information, that’s usually the frustration point anyway,” Rich says. Neither scenario is very pretty. So what did I do? Well, maybe I can be a communicaholic–those little two-line emails sometimes clutter up inboxes a little too much–but until I get told to stop, I’ll keep communicating. I kept Rich and Ron updated and they kept happy. Now, I’m sure they would much prefer it that everything happened on time, as would any good businessman, but information is an acceptable commodity in place of punctuality.

Talking about their engineering contacts in India, Ron returns to Rich’s comments about perception and reality. “With email and Skype and those kinds of things things, it’s instantaneous–but they’re twelve and a half hours away. Did they get it? Did they get it? Did they get it? Just let me know!” Especially with global contacts, two-line “yes-I-got-it-I’ll-get-on-it” emails are about two notches above absolutely vital. That way, perception is created, and reality follows because accountability is measured. “Even though we have no control, we want to feel like we have a little bit of control,” Rich finishes. Whether communication in your company needs to be reinforced between departments, between client and provider, or between employer and employee, the key thing to realize is that the information is there. Somebody knows what’s going on–and to keep you from getting chilly, all they have to do is talk.

Posted in Bootstrap Business | 2 Comments »

Tonight, on 80/20 . . .

Friday, May 9th, 2008

True to the company culture at CastleWave, when time came for Rich and Ron to give me the next round of assignments, we sat down and planned. That said, there were no battles fought with flying memos, no flurries of emails, and no two-hour meetings.Â What we did–what has to be done–was to sit with a pen, paper, three minds, and the list of tasks at hand.

There is a giant whiteboard in the hall at CastleWave. Ron has a big one in his office, as does Rich (not to mention Rich’s little one on the other wall). There is planning software, people who work on planning, and notepads and Post-Its galore. With all of this potential for planning, how do things move forward? Simple: byÂ prioritizing. “It’s so easy to get caught up in all the superficial things,” Rich says. The fluff has to be cut, and it has to be known to be cut.Â ”It doesn’t matter what mechanism–Palm Pilot, task manager, Franklin Covey, whiteboard–do it weekly and daily, if needed.” Overplanning is dangerous, but not planning can be even worse. The whole purpose of these tools is to know what needs to be done when, and what fluff needs cutting. That sort of planning empowers you. It makes tasks happen.

“It’s important that you get them out in front of you,” Ron adds, “so you can say, ‘Yeah, that’s it, I’ve got them all. I’m considering everything, seeing the full picture, and not just running after something without consideration.” In their book, Get a Life, Rich and Ron talk about something called the 80/20 principle. “Twenty percent of the effort always yields eighty percent of the results,” Rich says. “The trick is identifying the twenty.”

Young startups need life to roll forward. Life isn’t found in carefully orchestrated and thought-experimentally-tested business plans; the juice for bootstrapping comes from cash, action, and customers. “Do the things that bring the biggest fruit first,” Rich says. Brainstorming, whiteboarding, planning, pow-wowing–each of these means the same thing. You have to find what brings the biggest fruit. You do what I did with Rich and Ron. You sit down, create a task list, find the crucial twenty percent, and set your priorities from there. Nobody will be judging your business plan before permitting you to enter the entrepreneurial scene. Good, old-fashioned bootstrapping is only good when the boots fit the foot and the foot starts walking.

Rich closed his thoughts on this by talking about quarters in a Coke machine. If you’ve got four quarters and the first one doesn’t bring anything from the first machine, you don’t stick the other three in three separate machines. You feed that first one until it pays out. Prioritizing is a must. “Lots have written and talked about it,” Ron added, “but boy, it’s even more critical nowadays.”

In my life, I have got to know what constitutes my twenty percent. With everything I get up to, I would be helpless if I went in firing blindly. Poring over trivial details would be just as crippling. When you look at Rich and Ron (or any bootstrapper) and throw in their added responsibilities–family and full-time work leap to mind–it’s no wonder thatÂ they are adamant about this principle. Going through eighty percent of the motions does nothing for the momentum. Twenty percent of the effort yields eighty percent of the results. No matter how fast the world is moving, finding your twenty keeps you on pace. Perfection is nice, but success is better.

Posted in Rich Christiansen, Ron Porter, Bootstrapping, Bootstrap Business, Castlewave, Peter V. Hilton, Get A life, Priorities | 1 Comment »

Pick a Brain, Any Brain . . .

Friday, April 25th, 2008

However I ended up with my brain, the punchline is that itâ€™s the only one where Iâ€™ve got full insider access. I know its informational and creative limits, and Iâ€™ve got a rough idea of what I can do before it just shuts down. Here is the neat thing about that: knowing your limits means that you know where you can stretch. Even so, all that stretching can get tiring, and with me being new to firsthand entrepreneuring, my recent mental calisthenics could have worn me out except for one skill. I learned to pick a brain.

This exercise of picking from other peopleâ€™s brains recently helped on a project from Rich and Ron. They wanted me to write content for a website about cats. Now, I love catsâ€”my ex-girlfriend had several and I never sneezed around themâ€”but deep in my heart, Iâ€™ve always been a dog person. That said, it is about seventy-three goldfish, five rabbits, and my ex-girlfriendâ€™s three cats later that I am still dogless. That, and my only firsthand experience with pets was with those to whom the word â€œpersonalityâ€ applied about as well as Scotch tape applies to wax. (Fish and rabbits are as personable as carpet.)

I worked on the project a while under mere creative willpower. Cats, after all, are just catsâ€”right? That question and others (â€œDo all kittens sleep all day? Are hairballs indicative or personality or just hygiene? Are black cats naturally more sinister or is that just Hollywood?â€) eventually prompted me to do some brain picking. Picking a cat brain might have been pretty effective, but with the inherent communication issues, I settled for a couple of cat lovers.

First up was my lifelong friend Cameron. (We grew up in the same neighborhood.) While I had done some cat sitting for them, his familyâ€™s cat experience was even more extensive than mine with goldfish. To me, it seemed like the cats acted differently each time I saw them. Maybe they just knew that I was a dog person. Armed with my concerns, I went to Cameron, making assumptions, hazarding guesses, and drawing conclusions. He agreed with some and discarded others, but what I took in as unformed creative sludge came out with purpose and direction. This taught me two things about brain picking, and the first was the importance of that initial creative willpower. The second realization was simply this: no matter the subject, you probably know someone who can give you a lead.

The experience with Cameron so emboldened me that I went to my ex-girlfriend for her insights. Her responses lined up with Cameronâ€™s. Not only was the cat site approaching authenticity, but I had mastered my brain-picking abilities. I discovered that people will talk if they have a passion for your subject. Their ideas will feed the process youâ€™ve begun and you can keep checking sources until it all falls into place. I started with my idea and got everyone I could to talk to me. Cameron and my ex didnâ€™t grant me full insider access, but thatâ€™s okay. I had that in my own brain; their advice just greased my mental gears. It doesnâ€™t really matter, then, that my brainâ€™s the only one Iâ€™ve got. There are others out there to be picked.

Posted in Art of Entrepreneurship, Bootstrap Business, Peter V. Hilton, Personality, Cat | No Comments »

The â€œZig Zagâ€ Principle

Monday, February 4th, 2008

One of the great discoveries that I have made while bootstrapping businesses for the past 20 years is what I refer to as the â€œZig Zagâ€ principle. Bootstrapping a business with limited financial resources requires business owners to â€œchase cashâ€. Conventional wisdom teaches that the shortest distance between startup and success is a straight line. I have found it is better to â€œzig zagâ€ in pursuit of the ultimate destination.

â€œZig Zaggingâ€ provides three very distinct benefits: First, it slows you down and allows you to carefully assess progress as you build the business. Second, taking the longer route leads to unexpected opportunities that otherwise would have been missed. Third, this approach creates multiple business opportunities which diversifies the business and adds a level of security.

Many business owners call themselves serial entrepreneurs. Ron and I engage in â€œparallel entrepreneurshipâ€. One of the outcomes of â€œzig-zaggingâ€ is the creation of multiple business opportunities. In short, we milk our cows to fund our racehorses.

Bootstrapping allows freedom from the restrictive path of venture capital or debt financing. It permits the entrepreneur to allocate revenue where it has the best opportunity to build success. â€œZig Zaggingâ€ allows the entrepreneur to navigate into a business that is even better than the one originally imagined.

We used this â€œzig-zagâ€ principle while creating the test business to prove the concepts in this book. After running a â€œPorter Modelâ€ on various opportunities, we set as our target business to create an online entrepreneurs social network. We started down the path by creating revision 1 of the website www.bootstrapbussiness.org. Once created however, we immediately took a â€œzigâ€, doing SEO consulting for several large East Coast corporations. Why? We had to chase cash. A few months later, we â€œzagged.â€ We hired some engineers to do contract jobs for several new clients. We now had at our disposal engineers who could also work on the Website. Then another â€œzig, - web link building which turned out to be another critical building-block for promoting the bootstrapbusiness.org website. The beginning of 2008 we took our latest â€œzagâ€; the creation of several supportive viral websites. And what is the next â€œzigâ€? The book! Each business opportunity we have â€œzigged and zaggedâ€ to has been complimentary, helping us progress toward our ultimate destination. The path has been slower than a bee-line to the initial objective of our entrepreneurial social network website. However, the path we followed has been profitable from day one. Along the way we have discovered numerous, unexpected gems that will make the business not only more viable, but also more successful.

Posted in Bootstrapping, Bootstrap Business, The Zig Zag Principle | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Bootstrap Business’ Category

Rolling It off the Giants’ Shoulders

No News Is Bad News

Tonight, on 80/20 . . .

Pick a Brain, Any Brain . . .

The â€œZig Zagâ€ Principle

Pages

Archives

Categories

Archive for the ‘Bootstrap Business’ Category

Rolling It off the Giants’ Shoulders

No News Is Bad News

Tonight, on 80/20 . . .

Pick a Brain, Any Brain . . .

The â€œZig Zagâ€ Principle

Pages

Archives

Categories

The â€œZig Zagâ€ Principle