For those of you who have been avid readers of Bootstrapping Blog, thank you. For those who are just now coming around and finding the site, thank you too. I appreciate all of you.
I have recently been writing internet related marketing and social media marketing related articles over on my i am Mike Smith blog and wanted to share with you all a deal I’m giving all of my readers (and since you are all my readers here, that includes you as well).
Online business school is something very, very important. It is also the holy grail (in my opinion) for anyone looking into making money online. For anyone who purchases this course (more information at the following link) I am offering 1 hour of free consulting via E-Mail or Instant Messenger to help formulate a plan of action for you to maximize your chances of making some good money online and building a business for yourself.
Check out the article here and if you have any questions for me, drop me a comment or contact me through the contact page.
Fellow bootstrappers, visitors to the site and regular readers, have I got a treat for you! Gino from UPrinting.com is offering our readers 1,000 Free Business Cards for any one of my lucky readers. The rules are simple. Comment on this post and let us know why you’d like the 1,000 free business cards and what you would do with the cards. You can even link to the business card design that you’ll be getting printed if you’d like.
For those who don’t know about Gino’s high quality Business Cards Printing services, please visit here and read more about it. You are able to choose from a wide variety of stocks, including the eco-friendly cover stock (13pt. Cover Uncoated – Recycled) or the the 14 pt. family in Matte, AQ, or UV at any custom size we offer such as square cards, odd sizes like 3×3, 2×2
A fair word of warning though. Commenting with “I want to win” or something this quick will guarantee you are NOT chosen as the winner of this contest. I know the bootstrappers out there love a good deal and I know when one is in front of us, we capitalize on it. So write up a comment on this post and let us know why YOU should be the bootstrapper we choose to win the 1,000 business cards.
* shipping is free for anyone in the US and Canada
So what are you waiting for? Get your comments in!
If you haven’t heard already, today is Blog Action Day and this years theme is poverty. You can read more about this here. I chose to make my post about something that hits close to home while others cover the many needs in other countries. Homeless War Veterans.
For many Veterans, coming home after serving in the war is hard emotionally as well as physically and most of all, financially. For many of our brave soldiers, they cannot afford to pay rent and wind up homeless. According to USA Today in November of 2007, Veterans made up 1 in 4 homeless people roaming the streets of America. This number makes me sick. How can our country expect these men and women to risk their lives for us and then come home and not support them when they need us?
So, I put together 10 great ways our bootstrapping skills can help War Veterans in our local cities as well as around the entire country. Let me know if you can think of any more or how you’ve involved your business in any of these ten great bootstrapping skills to help our Soldiers.
- Gain some media attention – We’re no strangers to doing things to attract attention to our businesses right? So put it to good use. Try making a nice guerrilla marketing campaign that helps get the awareness levels up about the soldiers who are homeless in this country. For some guerrilla marketing inspiration, check out these posts: here, here and here.
- Donate a % of your profits – During certain months of the year business donate part of their profits to charities about breast cancer and other causes so why not pick a month and donate a percentage of your profits to a homeless veterans charity? With my Tennessee Web Design company I am donating 10% of all profits in November to the National Coalition for Homeless Veternas and I urge you to do something similar.
- Rent out a hotel for the evening – Find a hotel around your area that has 20-30 rooms and invite homeless veterans in your area to stop by and get a nice shower and a place to sleep for the evening. Yes, it may not be the biggest thing in the world to do, but I am sure they will appreciate it.
- Spare a few dollars – Every time I went to the dollar store by my home for about 2 months straight, a homeless veteran would be sitting outside asking for spare change. I would always give him money.
- Spare some of your time – With the same guy above, I would talk to him and have a conversation with him. This few minutes of my life helped this man get through his day (yes, he told me that he was happy I talked to him). I was the only person to take time and talk to him while others either walked grimly by or dropped change in but never looked at him.
- Open up some jobs in your company – Does your company have a few openings? Why not fill these spots with the War Veterans who need jobs? If they don’t understand a certain aspect of the job, train them. They’re good listeners and follow instructions very well
- Donate some of your items – Do you run a computer store? why not donate some computers to a local homeless shelter or to a hospital for Veterans? What about those of you who run a clothing line? Why not donate some clothing to a charity for War Veterans? You could even give the homeless Veterans in your area some clothing right out of your car. What can your business donate to help homeless War Veterans?
So as you can see, there are many ways your business and bootstrapping skills can benefit the homeless War Veterans in this country, so get out there and do your part. I know I am.
Well, there’s not much you can do, but press forward and try to figure the problem out. Which is exactly what I’ve been doing the past couple days. Not only have I hit a few financial road blocks that have had me scrambling to get some new business plans into motion that I had been working on, I was recently emailed by a reader of this blog that told me my rss feed is currently down. 500+ readers subscribed and noone can see my feed, and no new readers can subscribe (sorry to the new readers that cannot subscribe yet. I promise I am working on that now).
Bootstrapping is all about jumping in and getting things going, so when you bootstrap your business and hit these road blocks, it would be nice to have a set plan of action in mind on how to dodge bullets or jump over burning bridges. So, what do you do when trouble hits? Do you hide and curl up into a ball, or do you fight back? If you’ve got an interesting story on a time you hit a road block and got through it, please share it. It will help inspire all of us who are in the same boat you were once in.
Editors note: I have a brand new series coming up on The 17 Principles of Success according to Napoleon Hill. It’s going to be a must read and will definitely answer a lot of questions on what is needed to be successful in business.
Hello everyone. I wanted to take a minute to re-introduce myself for those of you who are new to the blog or do not know much about the owner (me) of this website yet. I also would like to point out some of the greater articles I’ve written in the past that you might not be aware of unless you’ve looked through all of our websites pages or searched the archives.
My name is Mike Smith and I am a small business owner. I have owned and operated a couple very small (I mean so small you’d never even know they existed unless I told you) businesses in the past. After struggling for many years (about 4 to be exact) I started reading some great material and really focusing in on running a successful small business. I started my blog design company, Blog Theme Machine back in October 2007 and am looking forward to hitting my 1 year mark with it very soon! It has been very successful and has allowed me to live with it as my only source of income which is great.
I started this blog about the same time to share my ideas and tips on what I’ve learned over the past few years, from reading books like “Bootstrapping Your Business” and “Guerrilla Marketing” to reading blogs like Freelance Switch and Zen Habits. All I hope for is that someone reading this blog finds the proper tools to grow their small business into something they are proud of without having to go through the heartache that I have.
I am very easy to get in contact with and love hearing from my readers. It lets me know that I’ve done something right and that means a lot to me. I also love seeing comments (so comment! – really, I love it and I comment back) If you need to get in touch with me, the contact form on the bootstrapping blog contact page sends mail directly to me and I will write you back as soon as possible. If you’d like to chat via AIM or another form of Instant Messenger, just let me know in the email and I’ll send you my details.
So, enough about me
Below are some links to some of the earliest articles written on this blog that I think you will really enjoy. Definitely something to look over when you have some spare time. If you see something you like or have a question about, leave a comment and I’ll comment back (See, I told you I love comments) You can also request further discussion in new articles that grow on an old article if you’d like. I’m always open to suggestions.
- What is Bootstrapping?
- Legalizing Your New Company
- Enlisting Friends and Family
- How NOT To Run A Business
- Bootstrapping And Your Gut Feeling
- Ten Steps To Making That First Sale
- 30 Local Resources You Can’t Live Without
- How To Lose A Potential Customer In One Easy Step
- Building An Optimistic Business
- Enlisting Your Friends And Family
Thank you for taking the time to read this post and getting to know me, what I do and why I do it a little bit better. I hope the above articles bring some light into your days as a small business owner. Remember, bootstrapping isn’t for everyone but it sure is for YOU! Drive, Dedication and Determination can get you anything so please don’t ever forget that!
If you’re enjoying the content I’m providing, why not subscribe so you can get email updates or feed reader updates? It’s free and every time I post on this website, you’ll be notified (I only post once every other day so don’t worry about being flooded with emails/feed notifications).