Wikipedia’s definition of “Bootstrapping.” Bootstrapping in business means starting a business without external help or capital. Such startups fund the development of their company through internal cash flow and are cautious with their expenses.

No matter what stage your business is in, if you don’t have a venture capitalist throwing money at you, then you’re bootstrapping.  Heck, we’re all bootstrapping!  Whether you are finding new customers, launching new products or services, or buying equipment, you’ll need resources to fund these activities.  If you’re anything like us, we spend our money and our time wisely.  As a matter of fact, we would prefer not to spend any money at all!  Yet, we all know that’s not realistic.

Spending a little bit wisely and strategically can make all the difference.  If you don’t have more time, you won’t make more money.  A Deloitte survey found businesses who outsource grow 26% faster than their peers who try to do everything themselves.

Here are some examples of how we helped some clients last year. Each one unique, yet all of them are bootstrapping!  The important message is that you spend your money and your time on things that generate ROI.  Hiring a bookkeeper or a customer care person won’t generate revenue, but it will produce some extra time that must be used finding revenue to cover those costs.

FIND WASTE

Recently we helped a successful E-Commerce operation.   As always, we’ll start with a deep analysis of where people’s time and company money is being spent. Almost always we find thousands of dollars being wasted.  It’s fact, no business is perfectly lean, no process is perfect and no employee does their job perfectly efficient.  There’s no one to blame, it happens naturally.  Leaders and teams execute on objectives, goals, and plans but never think about HOW.  It’s rare to see leadership take a step back and really understand the time cost or lost opportunity cost of any given activity.

In this case, we analyzed the processes and found two in particular that was an expense not only in time but cost too.  The team helped us map out the process and agreed to perform a few time studies.  We were able to shave 3 minutes from a billing process that totaled about 5 hours a month.  In the shipping area, we found something even bigger, an entire process that could be completely eliminated from the workflow of the shipping area, this saved about 9 hours a month.  In just those two processes, we uncovered 14 hours a month.

Conveniently, the billing and shipping areas were managed by the same supervisor (this was an E-Commerce business) so he was able to reorganize responsibilities and position someone to spend those hours every month on outreach to current customers up-selling products via email.  In the first quarter of the year, they were on track to generate an additional 11k in profit.

Guess what? That 11k can be allocated to lead generation and marketing.   Over the course of this year, if they continue on this path, they will generate over 40k for growth initiatives.  They eventually hired us for SEO but without those changes, they would have not had the budget to make an SEO investment. This investment will pay off in the form of more traffic to their site and an increase in conversions.

FIND TIME

Here’s another example.  Last year we worked with an electrical contractor.  Very small business, just himself and one other employee. A typical scenario, wife at home taking care of the bookkeeping and the owner doing all the work in the field.  He was working 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week, there was no time to think about growing or developing his business.   As a matter of fact, he was turning business down left and right because he just didn’t have the bandwidth to take it on.  He had such a clear vision of where he wanted to take his company and a well thought out plan, but he just couldn’t execute.  We convinced him to hire two part-time apprentices and outsource his accounting to a professional so his wife could perform more meaningful activities.

While these apprentices weren’t journeymen, they knew enough to hit the ground running and be very valuable in the field.   With the time his wife gained giving up the record-keeping, she was able to answers those requests for work and put them on the calendar.  Essentially, he is spending about 6k a month to gain another 17k a month in work.   This year he and his wife are on track to grow sales 30%. The transformation happens in the transaction

HUNT

And the last example.  The startup.  Ah yes, the new business owner who has all kinds of enthusiasm, goals, and dreams, but NO customers. While in start-up mode, you'll need to become a wild animal and hunt all the time. I'm not talking about being an aggressive seller, that's a turn off to most people. I'm talking about spending 85% of your time trying to find opportunities. Stop tinkering with the back end and start talking to folks online and offline. Network, build rapport, give your time and advice, and establish trust with people so they refer you!

THE MESSAGE

Restated: The important message is that you spend your money and your time on things that generate ROI.  Hiring a bookkeeper or a customer care person won’t generate revenue, but it will produce some extra time that must be used finding revenue to cover those costs.

So get growing!