Bootstrapping Your Business

One of the most exciting and yet challenging things that you can do is to start your own business. It requires a significant amount of resources, energy, and mental load. In fact, as a business owner you will spend a lot of time wondering whether you have done the right thing entirely, and it may surprise you to learn that there are plenty of business leaders who end up closing their businesses because they can’t understand why they started one in the first place! One of the other resources that entrepreneurs really do need to rely on is money. 

It takes money to start a business, build a business and grow a business from scratch, from the products and services that you plan to offer, to marketing them to other people, there is a lot of money in a business. Bootstrapping is a strategy that plenty of business leaders used to launch and scale their businesses using their own resources, which is why you will often find ex-music players using music catalog valuation to be able to bootstrap a new business idea. Here are some of the ways that you can bootstrap your businesses, even if you’re not a music player or any kind of celebrity, and some strategies that can help you to launch and grow your business.

• Consider your resources. What does your business need to succeed? Do you need to hire or buy an office and fill it with staff? Probably not. The pandemic did teach many business leaders they don’t actually need an office space to be successful. Instead, you can choose to outsource rather than hire an entire team, or if you do want to hire an entire team you could offer remote learning, remote working and everything to be done from home. Not only will you be competitive in the eyes of anybody looking for work, but you will be able to save money. Leverage free marketing channels where you can. You can also avoid unnecessary marketing expenses by simply using free or low-cost marketing channels like social media, email marketing or content marketing. Marketing doesn’t have to be something that you spend thousands of dollars on. Social media has created a space for people to be able to drum up brand awareness and conversation without having to spend a penny. Of course, as the money does come into your business you can use it to reinvest in yourself and start paying for Amazon or online campaigns, but it’s not necessary.

• Use technology solutions that don’t cost the earth. From website builders such as Shopify to cloud based tools like Google Docs, you can minimize how much money you spend on technology simply by using what’s already out there. You could even use open source software such as WordPress which can help you to build your website.

Take down your overheads. You don’t have to spend all that much money on equipment especially if you are just a one man band. Think about what your business really does need to grow and succeed and just build it slowly. You might have to bootstrap your business temporarily, by paying out of your own pocket if you don’t have the finance, but it’s not always the case.