Learn How To Succeed in Bootstrapping

So first of all, in order to do the bootstrapping, you need to really write down your financial plan and understand how much money you need to raise, what are your cost. And here I’m really talking about going as detailed as you can into writing, even the small things like, for example, your website is gonna cost 30 euros, 30 dollars a month to a, you have to pay to Shopify. Still, write it down, the small things, costs that might seem small at the beginning. If you have several of them, it will turn out to be something like 400, 300 euros that you have to spend every month. So, really, make sure that you go as detailed as you can in your financial plan and your cost estimates. I spend a month of just sitting in front of the excel file and reading it and adding more and more. And every time I thought “Oh, do I really need to add this other expense?” And the answer is always yes, yes you do. Do that! First of all, do your financial plan. And decide how you’re gonna get the money. How much can you personally put into the business? If that’s not enough, think about who you can ask. Is it your family? Some of your friends? Whoever you are comfortable with taking to them, pitch them your idea. Once you actually start off and you are still in this bootstrapping phase, most importantly, try to save as much money as you can. My major advice is to work from home. Of course, there are some people who cannot work from home. They feel uncomfortable. Luckily there are a lot of coworking spaces nowadays, where you can work, maybe not every day, but every other day to also lower the costs. To be honest in the beginning was also, very very tough for me to work at home all the time. I was distracted. I would stay in pajamas all day and it was not really in a productive mode many days, but, in order to save money and that would be around 400 euros a month or more, I actually pushed myself to improve this and improve my productivity, learn some, you know, got some into routines of how and what and set up my table and etc, etc to actually make it work for me. After a year of working on it, I’m fully comfortable at the moment and I have saved a lot of money by actually working from home. Another advice would be to do as much as you can yourself. Really there is nothing that you cannot do. Unfortunately external services cost a lot usually. There is some affordable help you can get from freelancers. My major recommendation is to do as much as you can. You really will save and you will need that money for something else that you really cannot do. For example, to print your marketing postcards, your brochures, etc. I’ve even learned how to Photoshop recently to edit a little bit pictures. So, I based the, I created the website fully myself as well with Shopify, but you can do everything. So, my advice would be, in the beginning, to do as much as you can yourself.