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Bootstrapping – What’s That?

Small Businesses 1

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Starting Your Business: It All Boils Down To Making Money and Saving Money – Entrepreneurialism -  AdvancingWomen.com

Bootstrapping in the context of business start-ups refers to the use of creative financing approaches such as leveraging personal savings, credit-card debt, loans from friends and family, bartering, and other means to launch a business. Some business founders use bootstrapping because they have no other choice. Just about anyone who has approached a bank has learned that “only established businesses need apply.” Bankers typically look for cash flow, assets, an established customer base, and a successful track record on the part of the business that is seeking a start-up loan. Obviously, this is a short list that is impossible to fulfill when you are just getting started.

Bootstrappers develop their knowledge and personal skill-sets and use their abilities as a substitute for cash. There’s also a certain satisfaction that comes from becoming more self-sufficient. After being confronted with a contractor’s very expensive building renovation estimate to convert a retail space and make it suitable for a bookstore, one start-up entrepreneur and her husband reacted by visiting a local home improvement store. A few home improvement books, a sledge hammer, and a reciprocating saw allowed these nascent entrepreneurs to save thousands, and she said it was actually fun knocking down walls! “It’s a great stress reducer.”

The entrepreneurial couple also acquired a set of simple plans for bookcases, courtesy of the book distributor who would become the store’s supplier, and built 100 bookcases themselves in production-line fashion for $40.00 each, as compared to an original estimate of over $200.00 each. Then the book distributor stocked their store and provided generous repayment terms. The savings the couple amassed through techniques such as those above allowed them to whittle down what had been a two hundred thousand dollar start-up estimate to the cost of a typical mid-priced car, an amount they could afford as a result of several years of saving to start their business.

Simply put, there are only two basic methods employed by bootstrappers: 1) finding ways to gain control of resources, and 2) using what they can get their hands on effectively. In other words, it all boils down to making money and saving money (inflows and outflows). There are some important considerations in choosing a business model that is amenable to bootstrapping. Start-up entrepreneurs without capital should think seriously about selecting a business that entails compensation prior to the delivery of a product or service. For example, consulting, mail order, or a niche oriented Internet business; all of these examples do not require a significant infrastructure or capital outlay. Other options could be an agency or brokerage-type business: if you can connect a party who needs to sell, with a party who needs to buy, with a profit margin for you as a go-between, you just might have a viable business model.

By trading on skills, bootstrappers can also band together to stretch limited dollars. For example, cohabitation could create a very logical arrangement: a desktop publisher, a photographer, a publicist, and a small ad agency might do well by sharing an office space. The possibilities are virtually endless for a creative thinker.

Author, Dr. Robert Lahm is the founder of several businesses and Web sites, an entrepreneurship professor, a public speaker, and a writer EntrepreneurshipClearinghouse.com.

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How Do I Do This? Easy Blogging For Blog Newbies

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Ok.  We get it. After posting Shall We Talk? Easy Blogging For Blog Newbies, we learned a thing or two about your needs.  Although we know there are bloggers galore on every topic imaginable out there, there are also a number of you who are just stopped cold at the thought of starting a blog.  You might like to, but it seems too complex, too involved, too frustrating, too….whatever.

You’ve probably heard that saying: “To anyone whose only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” (Kind of like tunnel vision or having blinders on when it comes to others’ perspectives.)  To those of us who’ve already taken the high dive off the cliff and into the warm and welcoming waters of the blogosphere, the whole process seems rather user friendly and simple.  We perhaps forget where we started from.

I remember the first time I ever looked at a WordPress page, with no training and no preparation.  I thought “What on earth is this and how am I supposed to learn it”?  ( I think mild panic sets in at the first glance of the unknown, particularly when we know we’re supposed to do something with it…….like produce a published page, but how do your do that?)

I know Arthur, one of our blog readers, commented that he liked the post, Shall We Talk? Easy Blogging For Blog Newbies, and thought it was great to challenge women to make their own blog and create a community but regretted that the process was too complicated and long:

“I wonder if a step by step approach wouldn’t have been easier to follow…In a perfect world there will be some videos made from actions on both main platforms (Blogger and WordPress).”

Well, this post is an attempt to make the process easier for Arthur and all the hopeful bloggers, many of them women, for whom he speaks.  If any of you can add to this or enrich it with your own expertise or experience please do. For now, let’s see if we can break this down into bite size pieces:

1.  Free WP installation

There are sites out there which specialize in WordPress and will install and set up or transfer your WordPress site free.  One such site is SiteGround.com You have to get hosting with them at $5.95 a month. But you also get Free WordPress themes and WordPress tutorial. That sounds to me like a good way to get your feet wet.  They say they are the #1 WordPress Host, but there are probably others who offer the same services.

2. Gettting Started With WordPress tutorials

When you sit down, shake off that little twinge of “beginner’s anxiety”, and start to use it, WordPress has extremely intuitive administration: you will be able to compose a post and publish it on your website with just one click! The following are 2 different tutorials, both using screen shots, but the second is video, so also has a guide talking you through the process.

SiteGround.com offers an Easy Start tutorial with screen shots of every action telling you exactly where to go and what to click, step by step. It very clearly explains and shows a graphic of each of the following:

If you prefer to learn using video goto Ithemes.com Tutorials

NEW! WORDPRESS 2.6 BASICS

I was going to share with you how to start writing posts, the quickest and simplest way I know, again, just to get your feet wet.  But since I promised this would be in simple, bite size pieces, I’m going to save that for the next post : How Do I Do This Faster & Easier?  Easy Blogging For Blog Newbies

I hope this post has helped Arthur and all of you get started with your own blog.  Write and let me know how it’s going and what your experiences have been.  If there’s something specific you want to know, just tell me.  Our goal is to get you up on the Net, blogging your heart out, sharing all your stories with us.  Just remember: You make the path by walking on it.

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