Lesson #9 Business starts with the first dollar

Filed in archive Entrepreneurship on December 25, 2006

Link: What did your learn this year?

One of my favorite quotes on the bootstrapping ethic comes from RightNow Technologies founder Greg Gianforte when explaining the difference between being in business and trying to fund a business.

Greg says:

Bootstrapping ensures that you build your business on a legitimate, real-world value proposition. When you're Bootstrapping, you're forced to deal with customers and to fulfill their needs from Day One. If you have a lot of external funding, on the other hand, you can be fooled into thinking you've already created an actual business just because you're paying salaries and rent. But you haven't. You only have a business when you have paying customers. Bootstrappers know this instinctively, and never lose that customer focus.

In a way the last part of this describes where I was a year ago, still writing business plans with a small business administration advisor and trying to figure out who I could hit up for an investment.

I never got funding and thank God I didn't, because today I realize that back then the last thing on my mind was how my plan would actually make money if we did find investors.

I now firmly believe that business begins with the first dollar earned. Back when I was a freelance writer going from job to job or a mobile DJ going from gig to gig, I was much more in business than when I was writing those business plans.

I got paid with every publication and at the end of every night. When I launched The Upstart Entrepreneur it led to an opportunity to create this blog which does make money every month I assure you.

Looking back I realize that I never considered The Upstart Entrepreneur to be a business. Today I consider the newly launched n10ah Online Music Network a venture-only.

I do have high hopes that venture will become a business, but I now know the difference. Guess I've learned my lesson.