Link: What did you learn this year?

I borrowed this one from a commenter on my MyBlogLog message board, but it aptly reflects my sentiment now having launched one venture, the n10ah Online Music Network, a couple of weeks ago with two more ideas in the pipeline.

When Creative Weblogging executive editor Anita Campbell suggested it to me as a topic for a blog, all I really knew about the strategy of bootstrap start-up was something I'd read in an Inc.com article about RightNow Technologies founder Greg Gianforte.

But it turns out I'd been following basic bootstrap strategies all of my life.

--When I launched my little indie record label using nothing but savings for studio and duplication costs
--When I talked that volunteer fire company into supplying me with spare equipment and money for tape duplication up front so that I could make the documentary for them and sell it back to their members (most of the money went to the fire company as a fund raiser, but I charged for my expertise to get the job done)
--When I convinced some local diner's to buy apples from trees my brother had pruned in the back yard allowing us to cover costs of upkeep and increase our yield

Some of those efforts were more successful then others.

And at some point I lost my way, becoming convinced by local chamber of commerce and Small Business Administration folks that the only way to make any real money is to write an elaborate business plan and seek investors.

Or by listening to that old saying "You've got to spend money to make money" often uttered by scam artists wanting to sell you a get rich quick packet or by people who have never really started a business themselves.

But I'm back now and ready to live by that comment left by that Boostrapper's Club visitor. This website, the result of an earlier unpaid blog I started on my own with no particular plan in mind, is only the first example.

Bootstrapping is where it's at.