Thats right. Forget to think big. You are bootstrapping your business after-all, so remove the dreams of external funding, and high dollar loans. You don’t need them in order to succeed! Toss out that whole “THINK BIG” idea for a while, and focus on the fundamentals of your business and the core structure that is going to fuel your success.
Bootstrapping your business is about getting into the mud and doing whatever possible to get your business off the ground with as little money as possible. We are all guilty of dreaming the life of Donald Trump or Steve Jobs for a while where you are the poster boy for a huge multinational company. It is fine to believe you can get to that point, but starting your business by focusing solely on that, you will lose track of the smaller things that are the building blocks of your business and get lost in the haze of the bright lights.
When starting your business, or putting together a product, don’t aim for the laundry list of features, or the largest inventory, but aim for getting your name out there, and making sure you even have something that people want. The WANT has to be there in order for your business to succeed, or you have to have the power to make people BELIEVE THEY WANT AND NEED your product / service. Starting small will also give you more time to work on other aspects of your business like customer service, which is key in any successful business.
Thinking Big in the beginning will just leave you with analysis paralysis over the smallest details, that really, get in the way of taking action in the early stage of a business. Get your product or service running, and get feedback from your clients. The feedback from them will give you all of the things you need to work on in the future. Rely on their feedback, because after-all, if you like your product and the customers don’t, you have a crap, period!.
If you are having trouble putting this in perspective for your business here are 4 thoughts to keep in mind.
- Think small – You can make all the money you need solving a small problem well instead of trying to tackle the world’s issues.
- Close your mouth – If need to draw your line in the sand at some point. Once you do, stick to it!
- Open your ears – Now find out if it is sticky now that you are stuck, Feedback and testing, they will let you know if you have the next post-it-note or if it is just a generic gum wrapper.
- Get out there – My friend John Assaraf said that if you sit on your couch planning and meditating all the time eventually people will come and take your house from around you and all that is left is you and a couch.