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Rolling It off the Giants’ Shoulders

Peter V. Hilton — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:01:45 +0000

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.

No News Is Bad News

Peter V. Hilton — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:09:31 +0000

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.

Tonight, on 80/20 . . .

Peter V. Hilton — Sat, 10 May 2008 04:58:37 +0000

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.

Light the Fire and Forge the Steel

Peter V. Hilton — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:46:24 +0000

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 â€œfire in the bellyâ€ and â€œnerves of steel.â€ Donâ€™t worry if you werenâ€™t born with those. I wasnâ€™t. Thereâ€™s no fire until you light it, and thereâ€™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 youâ€™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 â€œday jobâ€ 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. Thatâ€™s where determination came in.

More than just determination, though, bootstrapping takes a special fire. It takes gusto! This is your dream that weâ€™re talking about; imagination is no good if it stays inside your head. You donâ€™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. Youâ€™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. Itâ€™s not brainless courage or stark raving foaming-at-the-mouth valor. Itâ€™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 â€œsendâ€ 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 onâ€”light the fire. Forge the steel.

Pick a Brain, Any Brain . . .

Peter V. Hilton — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:23:11 +0000

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.

The â€œZig Zagâ€ Principle

admin — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:36:20 +0000

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.

Does Your Work Really Matter?

Ron E. Porter — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:01:53 +0000

Connecting intrigues me. And connecting in a way that really matters compels me.

Throughout my career it is the one question that, well, uh, mattered. Peeling back the layers of time (not so easy for an old guy like me) it becomes clear itâ€™s what my parents attempted to teach me by not just giving me work, but giving me work that mattered and explaining to me why it mattered. Itâ€™s what Bill Wallace tried to ingrain in my head as I lounged in his Current Events class. â€œYouâ€™re not a bump on a log so stop acting like one! Do something that matters!â€ he continually chanted. The image of him stalking the classroom aisles, demanding participation, expecting excellence, extolling the virtues of knowing what was going on in the world so we could make a difference in the world is imprinted on my mind.

Our ability to connect the dots as business owners is one of our greatest challenges. Take a moment and reflect on your work. Can you clearly make a connection between the work you are doing today with your defined strategic objectives? What about everyone else in the company? If you canâ€™t connect those dots then your daily tasks likely donâ€™t really matter. The connection appears to be an elusive one for most companies to make!

The following statistics are presented by Ascent Global in their booklet â€œExecuting The Work Itself.â€

100% of workers need a systematic process to help them execute strategy.
73% of workers do NOT think their organizations goals are translated into specific work tasks they can execute.
56% of workers do NOT clearly understand their companyâ€™s most important goals.
69% of workers do NOT think employees should be trained on how to execute organizational goals.
87% of workers are NOT satisfied with the results of their work.

Creating & communicating your company objectives is important but ensuring every workerâ€™s daily tasks are aligned with objectives is critical!

Growl At It

Erin Hattaway — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:22:28 +0000

I was on some entrepreneurial forums this morning reading over some concerns that people have as they maintain a full-time â€œjobâ€ while startinâ€™ up a startup on the side. Most of them spoke to sleep (or lack thereof), commitment and effort they are able to give their day job, and enough focus and energy for their venture.

As I was perusing the comments and wondering what my experience offered by way of an answer I overheard Rich telling Shanna a story about his kids. Rich has always encouraged his children to become business minded. As a response to their Dadâ€™s success with websites Richâ€™s sons started 2tieatie.com with the intent to learn how to generate a profitable website. The profits will go to a couple of places, mainly their college funds and their familyâ€™s humanitarian effort in Nepal. As they reviewed their traffic this weekend they were a bit disappointed by the results. When Rich asked them what to do his eleven year old said,

â€œLetâ€™s growl at it!â€

Well, in Christiansen language â€œgrowling at itâ€ means buckling down, gritting your teeth, and MAKING something happen. And thatâ€™s what they did. They had a meeting to discuss strategy. Richâ€™s sons came up with things that Rich would never had thought of, include chain emails and youtube and every other internet related option at a teenagers disposal. The traffic has more than doubled.

So many people are right on the cusp of starting their own business or finally being free from their corporate ties- but how do you make sure that your plans come to fruition? Well- growl at it! There are solutions! One post I read said that a man moved closer to work, saving him about 3 hours every day. Now that might not seem like a lot to you- but when you work a 9-5 and then go home to your venture to find a full inbox- 3 extra hours is looking pretty good.

Look at the resources available to you- maybe it really is as simple as going viral on the internet. Maybe you need to schedule a lunch with a solid contact. Maybe you just need to put in a little more time. There are more opportunities waiting for you than you realize. You just need to hunker down and give it a good growl.

Learning to Love our Limits

Shanna Gale — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:44:09 +0000

The last few weeks have been chaotic here in the office, and with things in life. In addition to working hard here, Erin and I are both about to face our last finals week of our undergraduate education. All of us are getting ready for the holidays, and I will be leaving town on Friday to be with my family in Washington. On top of all of this, I just got engaged and am now in the throes of stressful wedding planning. Now, typically I deal well with a busy life, I even enjoy it. But I am also a stress case. I get sick at least every couple of months from wearing myself out with worry and concern. Last Thursday the stresses of recent weeks seemed to be evident on mine and Erin’s face. As he often does, Rich took us to the white board and decided to teach us an important concept.
He said that for everyone there is an area of concern, and an area of influence. In our area of concern are things we cannot control, like the weather, or traffic, or others’ actions. People typically spend 80% of their time in this area of concern, a place we can do nothing about. What we need to do is focus on our area of influence, and not just right in the middle of it, but right on the perimeter. As we utilize our influence in this way, it will actually grow. Rich emphasized this point more on Friday when he asked me to take on a task that is somewhat outside my comfort zone, pushing me to use my area of influence further than I normally do. He again explained to me that if I push through these sometimes awkward tasks, they’ll eventually become natural, and my area of influence has grown.
This has been extremely helpful in my life the last few days. As I studied for finals this weekend, I started to do the normal overreacting thing I do. I began to think about when my finals were scheduled, wondering if I would have time to study in between. I learned that one of my take-home finals is due sooner than I thought. And I began to stress out about whether my flight home would be delayed, and I couldn’t shake images of sleeping on the airport floor for days. But as I thought about Rich’s wonderful lesson to me, I decided to stop wasting my time in this area of concern. All my energy has been focused on doing what I can do to prepare for finals, and today on getting caught up in the office before I leave for home. By leaving behind that area concern, I have been more productive than I ever would be in my area of influence. Learning to love our limits can actually help us to expand them.

The $5,000 Millionaire

admin — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 00:30:52 +0000

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.