Bartering for a better bootstrapped business

Written on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 | Bootstrapping, Bootstrapping Tips | 5 Comments

Have you ever heard the phrase “Two heads are better then one”? I have and I assume 95% of you have as well. This is a definite statement that any business owner should believe, and is the key to bartering with great benefit. There is no doubt in my mind that bartering works. I’ve done it and have seen others do it with great success. Oftentimes though, bartering is overlooked because most small business owners do not see the value in it. They’re looking at it from a “Well, the big companies don’t do it, so why should I?”. When bartering is not fully understood, this is how it’s conceived, but for those of us who really understand the value of networking and business growth, bartering is a logical stepping stone to growing your small business.

Bartering your time and resources can be very beneficial to you, not only as a way to connect with businesses but as a way of free advertisements and word of mouth marketing. For instance, if you’re company deals directly with copywriting and you lack the design skills to really put forth the same professional look on your marketing materials (website, business cards, flyers, ect) as your writing does, you might want to barter some copywriting to a design company in exchange for some of their design skills. You could write up some great articles concerning the need for a great website/business card design, and in it, casually mention the design companies name and link and in exchange, they can design your website and business cards.

But what do I get out of it

Going into any bartering situation, you’ve got to weigh your options. Does what I am getting from the other company really benefit me? Is the time I spend working on something for them taking too much time away from my own business? Is it a good connection? These are some of the things you’ve got to ask yourself. In most cases, as long as you’re saving time by having them help you out, you’re able to give some of that time back. But why would you do that instead of just working out the problems for yourself if in the long run it doesn’t save time anyways?

Networking with other businesses

If you’re a small business owner, odds are that any helping hand you can get is much appreciated. The same goes for the other side. When you’re able to help another company out with an issue they’re having, they’re more then happy to help you. This can prove to be very rewarding because you never know who you’re going to make friends with that might end up bragging about your kindness (and in turn, your business) to another friend of theirs that ends up becoming a customer. This brings me to the next positive point in bartering your bootstrapped company.

Bartering is great marketing

If you’re bartering with a company, offer to exchange some promotional materials as well in the exchange. If you pass out monthly newsletters, offer them an advertising spot in the newsletter in exchange for some business cards on their cashier counter. After you’ve networked with the business owner across from you, and you’ve built a solid report with each other, now is the time to start milking it. No, I don’t mean to take advantage of the other person, but give each other equal benefits.

As you might have noticed, I have a newsletter sign up on the top left of the site here, and in the upcoming month, the first issue will be coming out. As of right now, I have 1 person I am exchanging some free advertising with in exchange for an article written by them in the newsletter. To explain it a bit better, I am publishing an article they wrote in my newsletter with their byline at the end of it with links to their website, ect. in exchange for some free advertising on their site for my blog design company. We’re both benefiting because I get the free advertising, and he gets the free exposure to people that his company and website targets.

Make your win/win situation today

Lets try a little exercise; take out a piece of paper (or open notepad, google docs, ect) and write down a list of any businesses that you purchase goods from, advertise with (or would advertise with) or are a direct side business to what yours is (for instance, website design and website hosting companies).

Once you’ve done this, think of 2-3 ways you could benefit each company, and 2-3 ways they could benefit you. If the time/money values are close in each, send them an email or call them and discuss how you can benefit their company in exchange for a little help from their end. You’ll be surprised at the response you get, and with a little bit of time and effort, bartering can help your bootstrapped business grow quicker then you could imagine.

 

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Word of Mouth Marketing: Thank your referrers

Written on Monday, May 12th, 2008 | Bootstrapping Tips, Entrepreneurship | 3 Comments

Never bite the hand that feeds you. Thats what they say right? Well, they are right; especially in business. If you’re a small business owner and are looking for a quick way to kill any chance you have at growing, by all means, bite that hand. But I believe it’s safe to say that all of us here have a little more sense then that right?

Word of mouth advertising is the very best form of marketing your company can have. There’s nothing like a happy client who is ready to tell their friends and family about your services or products. If you’ve been hired for a job or you just shipped out $1,000 worth of product to a client and they’re so excited that they actually bring in business for you, how is that not a good thing? It costs you ZERO dollars, which is awesome for all of us who bootstrap on a daily basis, and it is achieved by doing the most simple task imaginable; PROVIDE TOP QUALITY SERVICE!

How to gain your word of mouth momentum

As stated above, top quality service is the best way to make sure your name is spoke in many conversations your current client or customer will have. This is the easiest thing to do, yet so many people overlook it. If you’ve got a client who you know has a lot of friends who are in a similar field and would make for great customers, why would it be so hard to answer emails quicker or make a couple extra phone calls giving progress reports on your project.

What about reminding him or her that you’re thankful for their business and hope that you’re living up to their expectations? This sentence has gained me many referrals due to the fact that people LOVE to be appreciated. And once again for all of us bootstrappers, it’s free! Never underestimate the power of going the extra mile for someone you know has connections or could possibly benefit you in the future. Some business relationships are meant to build upon farther then others, so make sure you can spot the positive ones and grow with it; your bank account will thank you

You’re getting referrals; now what?

So you’ve got some referrals coming in from past clients and you’re business is starting to do very well. What do you do now? Most people I’ve talked to seem to just sit back, enjoy the business and keep moving forward. I do NOT recommend doing this. You’re overlooking another GREAT avenue to keep the word of mouth going; thanking your referrers.

There’s many different options you can go with when you’re thanking your referrers; hand written thank you letters, percentage of the sale, gift basket, personal gifts, and so on. No matter what you do, your referrer will be happy and will end up telling everyone about the gift they’re getting as well. When this happens, the clients they’re referring might get excited and want to refer you more customers so they can also get the free perks. It’s a chain reaction at this point and from one referral could potentially spawn 100 referrals and a small army of energetic people who are passionate about your product and love the perks they receive when they’re referring you clients.

I want to thank my readers

I wanted to take the last bit of this article to thank all of you; not for referring me clients or anything like that, but just for reading this website and commenting on my articles. It lets me know that I’m doing something worth while and helping at least one person grow their business with just that much less stress. So, thank you

 

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Simple bootstrapping tip that costs you nothing

Written on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 | Bootstrapping, Bootstrapping Tips | Be the first to comment

Any winner knows the secret to success. Anyone whoever finished a marathon, lasted 20 years or more in a relationship or even built a company from the ground up knows what the “secret” ingredient is. The simple one word answer is “Commitment”. However, many people will hear that word and assume it is “just too easy” and decide that it won’t work before they even try to become committed to their product, service, marketing plan or networking. Little do they know that they have failed ‘being committed to commitment’.

Bootstrapping & Commitment

Any bootstrapper knows that the goal is to get the highest return of investment from your business with minimal costs. but what will you do when your marketing plan or your various advertisements are just not producing the instant results you’re after? Do you tuck your tail between your legs and run or do you stand tall like a true bootstrapper and hold your ground? I hope you will do as I have and many others have and stick it out for the long haul. Many marketing plans fail in comparison to what your optimistic goals are within the first weeks or months. Sticking it out and being committed to your marketing is what will cause the tide to change in your favor.

Real life example

In the book Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson talks about when he was hired on by a cigarette company in the 1960’s to boost their branding and help raise their profits. The main goal was to become one of, if not, the most influential cigarette companies out. They were currently ranked #31. Jay explained to the owner of the company that it would take time and the owner agreed and followed through with the plans and was committed to the marketing. A year after the campaigns started, they were still ranked #31. The owner was not shaken and stayed committed to the marketing and when you look today, they are they #1 most recognizable cigarette company out. One out of every five cigarettes come from this company; Marlboro. Without commitment it Marlboro would not be where it is today.

Remember next time you set out to create goals for your business or your life, commitment is what will make or break your accomplishments. If Thomas Edison can try 10,000 ways to develop a storage battery and keep going, why can’t we show some commitment to our goals and business plans? Bootstrapping is, after all, finding ways to grow your business with little to no money, and what better way to do that (for free) then by showing some commitment.

 

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The art of the email: Long emails are better for business

Written on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 | Bootstrapping Resources, Bootstrapping Tips | 6 Comments

So many people have talked recently about how to keep emails to a minimum and ’stop the distractions’ that emails give you. But they are wrong. Yes, for some people, they LIVE in their inbox, but if you’re running a business, a short 5 line email response will NOT work and will not cut it most of the time. Bootstrapping your business is all about finding inexpensive ways to grow your business with little to no cost, so why is email overlooked all of the time? It’s free; It’s quick (especially if you can type a lot of words per minute) and it gives you a personal connection with your clients and customers.

Below you will find two real life examples of emails that were recently sent to me while I was searching for some potential employees for a business venture I am starting. After looking them over, we’ll discuss why the longer, more in detail email is better and in the long run, faster for business. I also am going to link you to an add-on for firefox that will help keep things long, but speedy at the same time.

Email One: The short version

My name is **** and I have created many websites over the past 2 years. My portfolio can be seen here www.********.com I hope to be chosen for the job. Thank you.

Email Two: The extended version

Hello Mike,

My name is ***** and I have recently come across your Blog Design and would like to talk to you about becoming a part of your coding team.

My portfolio of work can be found at www.*******.com I have been designing websites for almost 10 years and make sure the websites you hire me for are up to web standards and usability. This means that your website will function and display properly on various web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and others. All of my coding is valid xhtml/css tableless.

I would love to discuss this in more detail with you and work with you on any projects you have lined up. If possible, could you let me know of a time that I can call to discuss this in more detail with you, or if it would be ok to send a copy of my resume and business card directly to you?

Any questions you might have, feel free to let me know. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Thank you,
******

Now there are a lot of you who might be looking at this and going “why would I sit and write up the long email when all I am doing is sending a quick note to someone about a potential job when it’s not a guarantee that I’ll even get the job?” Trust me, I’ve been there before and thought the exact same way. But look at it from a business standpoint. Who would you rather hand your money over to in this situation? The short email does not tell me much about the persons skills or what they can provide me with and also seems very hit & run. Alternately, if you look at the longer email, the candidate makes sure to explain why they would be the right person for the job, they give me an in depth detail of what they’ve done and what they can provide me with as well as make me feel comfortable by telling me that any questions I have, they’d love to answer them. Again I ask you; who would get your money in this situation?

Your answer is the same as any business or potential client you contact. They want to feel comfortable, they want to know that you understand their needs and know what you are doing and they want to make sure you’re not there just to rip them off.

With many bloggers and large names in the blogging industry recently pointing out how to keep emails short, I was sucked in at first too. Not anymore. Here are two reasons why longer emails are better, and overall quicker then a short email.

1. More personal - keeps your potential client or the person hiring you comfortable with you and helps them to not look at you as a ‘quick, fly by night’ company. If you write a small 100 word email to a potential client, it keeps you distant and feeling unattached to the person behind the other side of the screen.
2. Overall Faster - In the long run when dealing with clients, if you’re writing a 1,000 word email instead of a 100 word email, the odds are in your favor of answering most, if not ALL of the client’s questions in the one email. If you’re writing the quick 100 email, then this brings forth 5-10 extra questions from the client and thus keeps you in your inbox, keeps a large amount of separate emails attached to the one specific job that you have to sift through, and keeps the resolution period farther away due to 5-10 emails needing to be sent back and forth. I’ve made it a point to write longer, more detailed emails to my clients recently and the payback has been tremendous. The work process goes so much quicker because I answer all of their questions right up front and left only a small amount left to be discussed.

Here is an add-on that I use with the Firefox browser that will definitely speed up your writing time when talking to potential clients.

Signature - This add-on gives you the option to create pre-written bodies of text that you right click and select the name of the message you’re sending. I have three that I currently use. 1 for responses to potential clients that I find on job boards, 1 that I use when I write to bloggers and one that I write to various other companies. I leave little sections that have “PERSONAL NOTES ABOUT THE JOB HERE” inside the email that I edit, but for those repetitive tasks like writing out what experience you have, what your prices are for jobs, what websites you own, ect. this tool comes in handy. What used to take me 15-20 minutes to type up (5 or six times a day!) now only takes me 10-15 minutes TOTAL throughout the day to write.

 

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Bootstrapping Your Business part one

Written on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 | Bootstrapping Tips, Entrepreneurship, How-To | 3 Comments

This is a series I am going to be putting on here for the next couple days, regarding bootstrapping your business. The main focus of this series is going to be strategies for the bootstrapper and how to do it successfully. For those who do not know, Bootstrapping is the act of starting a business with little to no external funding. Many people have gone through the process of bootstrapping and now run multi-million dollar companies like:

1. Printingforless.com
2. iClick
3. Aromasys
4. eBags.com

There are many more to list; too many to name her actually. So, with all of that out of the way, here is part 1 of 2 in my Bootstrapping Your Business course. The second part will be posted soon, so make sure you subscribe to the feed to be informed instantly when it’s posted.

Find the Right Product or Service

Before any bootstrapper starts his journey to success, he has to ask himself/herself a question:

How are you going to make the BIG money thats out there?

The internet and world alike are full of small time money making endeavors but a real bootstrapper will know how to pick his way through those and find the gem that will put himself/herself over the top in business. Can you come up with a million ideas for different business models, but can never decide which one you want to do? Well, its a harsh truth, but you will probably never become successful if the hardest thing for you to do is decide what to do.

A bootstrapper will only find out what business is successful by doing this: Talking to customers to discover what the industry REALLY NEEDS, and not what you WANT TO GIVE. Understanding this will put you at a huge advantage in generating a successful business.

Think about it like this, if you are selling a product that NOONE WANTS, what is the probability that your company will succeed? Very low. Now, think about KNOWING what the customers want, before you even step foot into the business. You will have one leg up on everyone competing against you because you will know the exact needs of the customers.

Once you come up with your business idea, you will want to contact as many potential clients as possible. Even before you have your product or service ready. What? That sounds crazy? NO! Its not crazy, its SMART! There is a difference. If you contact 50 people, and no one wants your product, the most you wasted was a little time, and some phone bills. Compare that to the 1,000+ you might have spent in creating everything needed for your company to start, and you will have saved yourself a big headache.

Immerse Yourself

This strategy is pretty simple and straight forward for anyone who knows anything about getting a business off the ground. In the beginning of your business, doing the many phone calls and emails might seem too time consuming, but they are all worth it. They might cost a little on the time side as well as a small phone bill, but they are all well worth doing.

You will also want to take the time to figure out what companies in your field are currently doing right and also doing wrong. Knowing what companies are doing right is self explanatory; you can follow in their footsteps. The process of finding out what they are doing wrong is where the real key is. By figuring out what their current clients do not like about their services, customer service, website look and user interaction, you can then capitalize on this and create your business model to become better then the competitors.

Trial and error is a big part of immersing yourself in your business. You need to learn how to run a successful business in order to make money, and in order to learn what will work and what will not, you need to work. If you want to know how well your meals are that you are preparing for the local hospital staff after their cafeteria closes, then you need to sell some of those meals to get the customers reactions. Hell, offer them their first meal for free. (Who knows, they might like it and since you already have given them a meal for free, they will be more willing to buy a second meal) If they do not like the first meal, well, you wasted 10-20 bucks on the meal.

Become the Expert Yourself

The title means what it says; become the expert yourself. In too many cases, people will fall victim to someone claiming to be the smartest person in business and life in general. You’ve seen all of the e-books floating around claiming to make you rich while sitting on your couch and so on. These are a reason why becoming the expert yourself is key in bootstrapping your business.

There are many people who will claim to be experts in their business field, but the majority of the time, these guys/girls are fresh out of high school or college and only follow google trends, or other trends that makes them believe they know what is hot. The beauty of being a bootstrapper is that you can look past what is hot now, and look forward to what WILL BE hot in the future and capitalize on it now before the competition gets too large.

Even with a marketing expert or business expert and all of the knowledge they claim they can sell you, or sell their time to give you, you can find online or locally for free. Doing research is what will put you ahead of the game and make you the expert in your field. I would never pay someone to give me a consultation unless I knew for sure they were millionaires, and even then I would be skeptical because what works for them might not work for you.

Perfect example of an expert who blows smoke up your ass: THE RICH JERK! We all know about his e-book and his asshole attitude, but what you might not know is that he is currently being sued by a lot of people. Not the people who bought his e-book though. Remember the cars and planes and mansions on his main page? The rightful owners of those images are suing him. He owns none of what he portrays. He just made people believe he was an expert and so many people bought it.

I am not saying to become and expert in the field of business you are going into and then blow smoke up other peoples asses about what you can do for them, but just learn it for yourself. You might spend more time on it, but never more money. Bootstrappers know why saving money and not spending it unless you have to is key.

Think in Black and White

When I say this, I do not mean to think racially so get that out of the way right now. Thinking in black in white is the basic idea that the world can be filled with a lot of hazy lines and gray areas, but thinking in black in white is a huge time saver. In the past strategies, I have mentioned some things that require some time and effort, so anything you can do to save time, is good.

Think in black and white and you will weed out a lot of the dumb ideas that get tossed at you from people who know nothing about what you are doing, or want to do. It will also help you realize the great ideas in the midst of those that are not as great. Myself, I get caught up in a lot of things when I am working, and I know I shouldn’t. I watch videos, I listen to music, read message boards, and so on, but as of right now, I am taking a Think Black and White Stance on everything.

If it doesn’t make money, then it probably isn’t worth it. Remember that when you are surfing myspace, or looking at dumb kids on youtube when you should be creating another website for your portfolio, or writing up your business plan. You will thank me later.

Distractions will come up in any part of your life, but learning how to balance your time and not be distracted by the middle area of the color spectrum will help you profit a lot sooner then you would if you were playing with your playstation 3 and drinking beer all day. Theres a time and place for those things, and if you cannot figure out the time, then time might just come back to haunt you. Its not really that complicated:

Do what you need to, when you need to. Do what you want to, when you have time.

The bootstrapper should know how to judge what is good for business and bad for business really quick. Its something you are either born with, or you work really hard to obtain. If you do not want it or do not think it is important, then do not worry about being a millionaire like the rest of us are doing!

* Please remember to stick around and subscribe to our feed to keep up to date on the sites articles and to make sure you don’t miss part two to this series which will touch on 4 more major points of Bootstrapping Your Business

 

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