The Bootstrapper’s Bible

There has never been a better time to start a business with no money. And this manifesto will show you how. This manifesto is based on The Bootstrapper’s Bible, a book I wrote a few years ago. What I’ve done is divided it into short sections, so you can find the little kernel of insight you need, when you need it. (I hope!)

The Joy of Small

What’s a Bootstrapper?

Well, since you bought this manifesto, chances are that you qualify! For me, a bootstrapper is not a particular demographic or even a certain financial situation. Instead, it is a state of mind. Bootstrappers run billion-dollar companies, nonprofit organizations, and start-ups in their basements. A bootstrapper is determined to build a business that pays for itself every day. In many ways, it is easiest to define a bootstrapper by what she is not: a money-raising bureaucrat who specializes in using other peoples money to take big risks in growing a business. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

You can use the information in this manifesto to make any company more focused, more efficient, and more grassroots. Throughout this manifesto, though, I’ll be primarily addressing the classic bootstrapper: entrepreneurs who are working their butts off to start a great business from scratch with no (or almost no) money.

At last count, there were several million bootstrappers in this country, with another few million wannabes, just waiting for the opportunity. My goal is to give you enough insight and confidence that you’ll get off the bench and make it happen.

The Bootstrapper’s Manifesto

Tape This to your Bathroom Mirror and Read it Out Loud Every Night before you go to Bed

I am a bootstrapper. I have initiative and insight and guts, but not much money. I will succeed because my efforts and my focus will defeat bigger and better-funded competitors. I am fearless. I keep my focus on growing the business - not on politics, career advancement, or other wasteful distractions. I will leverage my skills to become the key to every department of my company yet realize that hiring experts can be the secret to my success. I will be a fervent and intelligent user of technology, to conserve my two most precious assets: time and money. My secret weapon is knowing how to cut through bureaucracy. My size makes me faster and nimbler than any company could ever be. I am a laser beam. Opportunities will try to cloud my focus, but I will not waver from my stated goal and plan - until I change it. And I know that plans were made to be changed. I’m in it for the long haul. Building a business that will last separates me from the opportunist and is an investment in my brand and my future. Surviving is succeeding, and each day that goes by makes it easier still for me to reach my goals.

I pledge to know more about my field than anyone else. I will read and learn and teach. My greatest asset is the value I can add to my clients through my efforts. I realize that treating people well on the way up will make it nicer for me on the way back down. I will be scrupulously honest and overt in my dealings and won’t use my position as a fearless bootstrapper to gain unfair advantage. My reputation will follow me wherever I go, and I will invest in it daily and protect it fiercely. I am the underdog. I realize that others are rooting for me to succeed, and I will gratefully accept their help when offered. I also understand the power of favors and will offer them and grant them whenever I can. I have less to lose than most - a fact I can turn into a significant competitive advantage. I am a salesperson. Sooner or later, my income will depend on sales, and those sales can be made only by me, not by an emissary, not by a rep. I will sell by helping others get what they want, by identifying needs and filling them. I am a guerrilla. I will be persistent, consistent, and willing to invest in the marketing of myself and my business. I will measure what I do and won’t lie about it to myself or my spouse. I will set strict financial goals and honestly evaluate my performance. I’ll set limits on time and money and won’t exceed either. Most of all, I’ll remember that the journey is the reward. I will learn and grow and enjoy every single day.

True Story 1: I am a Laser Beam

The big call came just a few months after Michael Joaquin Grey and Matthew Brown had started up their toy company. Would the two San Francisco bootstrappers like their product included in the movie marketing blitz for The Lost World? Nope, said Grey and Brown, who preferred to stick with their vision of gradually building a market for Zoob, their plastic DNAlike building toy.

What the bootstrappers feared was a loss of identity. If they hooked up with the celluloid dinosaurs, they’d be seen as just another Jurassic spinoff. On their own, they could create a separate brand and not only avoid extinction but create their own world. Eventually, the two even hope to have their own Zoob movies.

True Story 2: The Bootstrapper is Here for the Long Haul

Jheri Redding started not one, but four companies. And when the renowned bootstrapper died at 91 in 1998, all four - including the first, Jheri Redding Products, begun in 1956 - were still in operation. How’d he do it? Redding created lasting businesses through the combination of a gift for spotting long-term opportunity and his relentless drive to create significant competitive advantages in product features and distribution clout. The Illinois farm boy became a cosmetologist during the Great Depression because he saw hairdressers prospering and farmers failing. He soon began experimenting with shampoo formulas and showed remarkable flair for innovation.

True Story 3: I Will Know More about My Field Than Anyone Else

When Yves Chouinard starting scaling mountains, rock climbers used soft cast-iron pitons that had to be discarded after a single use. Chouinard, who was as passionate about climbing peaks as he was about his work as a blacksmith, designed a new piton of aircraft-quality chrome-molybdenum steel. The tougher, reusable piton met climbers needs much better and became an instant success.

As piton sales climbed, Chouinard himself kept climbing too, as much or more than ever. He recalls, “Every time I returned from the mountains, my head was spinning with ideas for improving the carabiners, crampons, ice axes, and other tools of climbing.” It’s been 40 years since the blacksmith-climber hammered out his first steel piton. Since then, it and his many other designs have become the foundation for Patagonia Inc., a $100 million outdoor apparel company based in Ventura, California. Although he’s now a highly successful businessman, Chouinard still climbs regularly, testing his company’s new products while honing its most important tool: his own matchless knowledge of climbersʼ needs.

True Story 4: I Am a Salesperson

Shereé Thomas had a personal question in mind when she called the customer service line of the company that makes Breathe Right nasal strips. But when she found herself talking to the company’s medical director, she went beyond her question and revved up a sales pitch for a liquid she had invented that neutralizes the smell of cigarette smoke on clothes and hair.

A couple of switchboard clicks later, Thomas was on the line with the company’s president. And three weeks after that, the company had signed a licensing agreement to invest $4million to manufacture, market, and distribute Banish, the product Thomas mixed up in her chemist-grandfathers’ garage. Through the licensing deal, this Cedar Park, Texas, bootstrapper will rack up around six figures in annual royalty payments. Her investment in the sale: a phone call to the company’s toll-free line - and a personal commitment never to stop selling.

True Story 5: The Journey is the Reward

Charles Foley was 18 when he told his mother he expected to invent things that would be used everywhere. At 67, the inventor has 130 patents to his credit, including one for the venerable party game Twister, which he invented in the 1960s and still sells today. But Foley, of Charlotte, North Carolina, is still at the inventing game. He recently revived ai dscovery of his from the 1960s, an adhesive-removing liquid, and sold the rights to makeand market it to a company headed by his son. Heʼs also working on new designs for fishingfloats and a home security system.

Driven to search for success? Hardly. Foleyʼs just following his bootstrapping nature on a journey thatʼs lasted a lifetime. “I was born with a gift,” he shrugs. “Ideas pop into my head.”

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