Entrepreneurship | wealthymatters

How To Bootstrap Your Business ?

June 13, 2014 Leave a comment

wealthymatters Here’s a five-step process you can follow to give you the best chance of success while bootstrapping your business:

Step 1: Prove Your Concept

With limited funds, it’s more crucial than ever to prove your business concept before investing your valuable resources. If you’re reselling an existing product, this step is a bit easier given the existing demand. But make sure you’re very clear on how you’ll be adding value — and don’t say via low pricing! Will you be offering a unique branded experience or adding informational value?

If you’re creating a new product, make sure you’re able to validate that people want — and are willing to pay for — your product before you invest heavily in mass manufacturing. Get your prototypes in front of as many people as possible, take pre-orders or even launch a Kickstarter campaign. Nothing is worse than manufacturing 5,000 new items that nobody wants.

Step 2: Do/Learn as Much as Possible Read more of this post

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Tool Kit Tagged with Bootstrapping, No Man’s Land: Where Growing Companies Fail by Doug Tatum, postaday, successful bootstrapping, The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, Work the System by Sam Carpenter

Why Bootstrap Your Business ?

June 13, 2014 Leave a comment

wealthymatters These days, it’s very fashionable to have a business “funded” by an investor or venture capital firm.But this is almost always a bad idea. Bootstrapping your business is usually the better alternative.

Bootstrapping is starting and growing a business using your existing resources.

Bootstrapping doesn’t mean you’re excluded from investing any of your own cash. It also doesn’t mean that you must remain a one-person company for eternity, or that you have to settle for meager revenues and profits.It simply means growing your business using your existing resources instead of going out and raising a bunch of money from other people. It means growing organically.

If your #1 goal is to build something enormous and world-changing as quickly as possible, bootstrapping may not be a good choice. But if your primary goal is to build a profitable business that you will ultimately control, bootstrapping is almost always your best option. Here’s why:

Cash Alone Rarely Solves Problems Read more of this post

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Theory Tagged with Bootstrapping, control, postaday, prioritize, profitability, the advantages of bootstrapping

Kurt Heinrich’s Story

June 13, 2014 Leave a comment

“You should definitely start a drop-ship business and sell things online. That’s what I did. I started an online shop for iPod accessories and made $17,500 during my first Christmas season. That was in middle school, then I kept the business throughout high school and grew it from there. Here’s the long story:

When I was in middle school, I used to look forward to getting my monthly issue of Popular Science magazine. In one particular issue, they had a how-to guide on how to turn an Altoids tin into an iPod charger. I thought this was awesome, so I went to RadioShack, got all the parts, then built it. I then took it to school to show all my friends. Before I knew it, all my friends wanted one too, so I started selling them for $20 each. Read more of this post

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Tool Kit Tagged with drop-ship business, e-commerce business, Ebay, ecommercefuel.com, eCommHub, ezVision glasses, iPod accessories, Kurt Heinrich, Magento, marketing, PayPal, postaday, PPC ads, practicalecommerce.com, Reselling, SEO, Shopify, Zappos

Entrepreneurs ! Build Teams Not Streams

June 12, 2014 Leave a comment

MYTH: The more income streams you can start, the wealthier you will become.

TRUTH: Starting many streams at the same time is like trying to push many balls up a hill at the same time: You may get started, but you end up losing your focus and your time. Success comes from growing teams, not streams: multiple teams of income.