Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

There are many great ways to bootstrapping your business.  Please share your experiences on what worked for you!

Let me start by sharing my experience and I will get straight to the point.  When I launched my restaurant with a limited budget for advertising the grand opening. I had a postcard created from a local graphics design for around $100.  The offer was 10% the entire check.  Found a few out-of-state printers that had postcard printing specials for about $350 @ 5000 pieces full color including shipping (you can search online, there are always postcard printing specials).  I went around to all the non-restaurant business, introduced myself and ask if I can leave some postcards on their counter.  Most allow me to do so.

I also advertise with local coupon books and papers.  I received more postcards back during grand opening than the local coupon books and papers.

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Peter Nguyen Founder 2Keene Ventures, LLC. www.premiersaver.com "Even heaven has a rainy day"

Harness the power of the telephone. Believe it or not cold calling works.

My bootstrap is how to get free print advertising.

If your business lends itself to a good product photo ; burn that photograph to disc.
Make sure it`s print ready (high resolution) and nicely Photoshopped. Include a press release, story about you, or the product.
Send the CD off to newspapers  and magazines.
You may never get a response from most organizations, but I`ve seen the images printed over a year after the mailing.

There are all kinds of things that can be done to start or grow your business by "bootstrapping".

First, a little background.  In addition to being a start-up business owner (twice, and both successes) and starting up a third, I am a board member for a very interesting "bootstrapping" entity called an Enterprise Facilitation Project.  This is a group of interested individuals in a geographic region that have banded together to . . . . . (ready, its a toughy) . . . . .  facilitate enterprises!  We`re on the other side of the start-up process, we want to grow our local economic base, want to see new businesses established and therefore, exist to help individuals that may want to start a business, but don`t have the resources, contacts, skills,  knowlege or even the conviction or confidence, on how to proceed (Sounds a little like . . .um . . . Startup Nation?!)

There are several of these around the country and the world and more are coming on-line every month.  I belong to the North Texas Enterprise Project which serves Fannin County, Texas and the city of Muenster, Texas.  As a group, we don`t have money for lending or investing, but we have created a super-referral pool of resources that someone wanting to start a business in our geographic area can tap.  If you are fortunate enough to have one operating in your area, get in touch with the facilitator.  This will be an invaluable resource because they will have a pre-built network of local people and businesses that exists for the sole purpose of helping you get your business going. 

I bring all this up to point out the fact that a lot of times when someone is looking for "angel investors" or money, what they are really needing is the resources the money can obtain.  By getting creative, running your networks, creating networks, etc. you can often find the resources without requiring the immediate funds.  That in a nutshell is what we are doing to grow our own businesses in the county.  Instead of just chasing the "big" businesses and trying to get them to relocate, we are encouraging our own people to create more businesses for the area. 

If anyone has questions about this, please don`t hesitate to ask me.  I`m a big believer of 1) Free enterprise and 2) You get what you give.

Mike Michaud