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. 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: by 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. ”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 that 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.

Bootstrapping my freelance writing career took (and takes) just as much genius, grit, gusto, and gumption as bootstrapping a business. In their upcoming book Get a Life, Rich and Ron call this having a “fire in the belly” and “nerves of steel.” Don’t worry if you weren’t born with those. I wasn’t. There’s no fire until you light it, and there’s no steel until you forge it. Once you get to work on a dream, genius, grit, gusto, and gumption are sure to follow.

Genius has nothing to do with your IQ, GPA, GMAT, or even the New York Times crossword puzzle. Genius is taking a good idea and creating something. Whether you came up with it, caught a wave, or picked a brain, having the idea and taking ownership of it is what makes it genius. Once you’re willing to work at it, time, effort and a little luck will allow it to fall into place. My genius was no different than yours. I had an idea. I owned that idea. It was my dream: pay my way through school as a writer.

Genius does you no good without grit. Simply having an idea is no excuse to quit your day job, so you have to buckle down and work. As a student, my “day job” involved not only classes but also a custodial position. I needed money. I was already working hard. In the face of all that had to be done, it might have been easy to give up on the dream, or at least shelve it for a more convenient time. That’s where determination came in.

More than just determination, though, bootstrapping takes a special fire. It takes gusto! This is your dream that we’re talking about; imagination is no good if it stays inside your head. You don’t buckle down to just stay put. No amount of resolve would have done me any good unless I moved forward with all my heart and soul. Building your idea is exciting! Enjoy it. True, dreams are a tender thing, and so is the heart. It may be safer to put only part of it in, but no half-hearted genius ever realized his dream. You’ve got to light the fire.

Forging nerves of steel is different from having grit. Grit gets you going, in spite of opposition; nerves of steel keep the momentum, in spite of fear. This is the gumption I mentioned. It’s not brainless courage or stark raving foaming-at-the-mouth valor. It’s okay to have a little fear. Bootstrapping will be terrifying. It will hurt. Your heart is on the line. Nerves of steel allow you to see the initiative, forget your fear, and take it anyway. It was scary for me to press “send” on my resume, but it would have been scarier just to leave my heart out there without gumption to back it up. Instead, I am living my dream. Genius, grit, gusto, and gumption grow your venture and they grow your soul. Go on—light the fire. Forge the steel.

One of the great discoveries that I have made while bootstrapping businesses for the past 20 years is what I refer to as the “Zig Zag” principle. Bootstrapping a business with limited financial resources requires business owners to “chase cash”. Conventional wisdom teaches that the shortest distance between startup and success is a straight line. I have found it is better to “zig zag” in pursuit of the ultimate destination.

“Zig Zagging” 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 “parallel entrepreneurship”. One of the outcomes of “zig-zagging” 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. “Zig Zagging” allows the entrepreneur to navigate into a business that is even better than the one originally imagined.

We used this “zig-zag” principle while creating the test business to prove the concepts in this book. After running a “Porter Model” 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 “zig”, doing SEO consulting for several large East Coast corporations. Why? We had to chase cash. A few months later, we “zagged.” 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 “zig, - 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 “zag”; the creation of several supportive viral websites. And what is the next “zig”? The book! Each business opportunity we have “zigged and zagged” 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.

This past year I have taken a bit of a sabbatical from my entrepreneurial efforts in order to join with my friend and colleague, Ron Porter, and write a book. We have changed the name of the book multiple times. It started as The Entrepreneur Recipe Cookbook , then Bootstrap Business and now we have narrowed down to the name of The $5,000 Millionaire. Although the name of the book has changed several times, the primary purpose of the book has remained the same. This book is about:

1) How to take $5,000 and turn it into a multi million dollar business.
2) How to balance your business and personal interests. We call this “human business”.
3) It focuses on actionable, proven steps and not just theory.

The book is a compilation of personal stories and examples. In fact we have gone so far as to test the principles of this book by starting a new company with just $5,000. We are now 7 months into the new company and have already grown it to have a $140,000 of revenue per month. The principles in this book work!

This project has turned out to be one of the most challenging projects of my life. I am pleased to announce that we have now completed the entire first draft of The $5,000 Millionaire. We are now in the process of finding an agent and a publisher. Our team has shifted into a new phase. Up to this point, we have remained very quiet and have not actively promoted the book. As of the weekend, we are beginning to actively and aggressively highlight and promote both the book and the web site.

One of the fun things that we have on the web is an Entrepreneurial Appetite Test (EAT). This is a 39 question test that gives you direct feedback on your strengths and weaknesses in relation to becoming an entrepreneur. It then points you to the chapters in the book that focus on the attributes or challenges you may have in becoming an entrepreneur. It is a powerful tool that can help you overcome your weakness and steer clear of painful obstacles as well as reinforce your strengths.

So far, Erin and Shanna have done a great job of offering some tidbits of things that they have learned while working on the book. However, starting this week we are going to change our blogging format. Each week we will send out a powerful blog that gives practical tips and correlates with the principles of the book. These blogs will rotate between myself, Ron, Erin and Shanna. .

There are several authors and books that I have found invaluable to the way in which I have done business. The following books have had significant impact on me:

Seth Godin’s thoughts on permission Marketing
Victor Frankle’s Mans Search for Meaning
Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Jim Collins Good To Great
Robert Kawasaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad

The $5,000 Millionaire will be released this coming year. Just as I have found the above books valuable in starting and sustaining my businesses, I am confident that readers will find The $5,000 Millionaire to be an equally valuable resource in your business endeavors.

It is our intent within the next year to turn this website into an online entrepreneur community where networking can take place and ideas can be generated. We hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity and become a part of our community.

I invite and welcome any comments and feedback from you. Please bookmark, share and promote the key information from this website and book. Our goal is the help as many up and coming entrepreneurs as we can.

A special emphasis is given throughout the book, and here in the office, on priorities. Rich and Ron believe whole-heartedly in the idea of always keeping priorities straight throughout the entrepreneurial roller coaster. Life is not constant, and never will be. But our priorities should be. There will always be something else that we could do, another opportunity or responsibility that can come up, that can cause us to push the important people and things into the background. Often we think it is just temporary, but many times it can become a permanent negligence. Especially in the world of entrepreneurship where so many sacrifices have to be made, it is so important that there are certain things we are never willing to sacrifice. For Rich and Ron, these things include the safety and security of their families, their relationships with their spouses, and very importantly, and frequently neglected in our world today, their relationships with their children. They are both so intimately involved in their family’s lives, and no matter what happens at work, continue to keep those relationships strong.
I learned personally the importance of this concept this last week, as I lost my cousin in a tragic car accident. She was only twenty-two years old, and was returning to Utah after spending Thanksgiving with her family in Seattle. The loss of someone we love seems to always cause us to re-evaluate our lives and our priorities. Seeing a life cut short so unexpectedly has made me reflect on my life, and truly face the fact that I may have neglected relationships, goals, and many things I enjoy. And what do I sacrifice these things for? It seems always to be something that is only temporarily important, but that takes priority. Maybe I don’t see an old friend because I have to study for a test. Or I have put off spending time with my brother and sister because I feel too stressed with work. As I have reflected over the last few days, the most important thing I have realized is that it should not take a loss so great for us to see the important things more clearly. We should not regret that we did not spend more time with someone only after we have lost them.
As Rich and Ron discuss in the book, the goal of entrepreneurship should not just be making money. In life we need to have a drive for the things we do. When we have pure motives for our actions, such as desiring to be successful in order to provide security to our family, or in order to participate in humanitarian causes, our most important relationships will not be sacrificed, because they are the reason we work so hard. The death of someone so close to me will never be easy to understand, but it has helped me to think about my motives for doing the things I put my time into. I have learned how important it is that I commit to keeping my priorities, no matter what comes up. The right priorities shouldn’t just be important when we have time for them to be.