Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t bootstrap your business.
I think there is a lot to be learned from when we look to successful businesses that were built outside of major city areas where funding isn’t plentiful. And these businesses won’t be amongst the big names that you instantly think of.
For example, when I started my digital marketing agency back in early 2016, I needed a proven model to follow. Everyone around me was securing funding left and right for their tech startups. And I was even told by investors that I had a slim to none chance of an investor ever funding my digital marketing agency.
They told me this right to my face.
So I looked to my hometown of Syracuse, NY to see where I could find some proper guidance. I found a guy by the name of Jeff Kanus, Co-Founder of The Digital Hyve. A marketing agency in Central New York that works with some of Upstate, NY’s biggest companies. Destiny USA, Byrne Dairy, and the YMCA to name a few.
When I messaged him and asked him if he had any tips or words of wisdom for a young agency in a different market, he responded with a simple phrase.
“As our business grew, our clients grew”
So simple, yet true.
And guess what, I proved to those investors that I didn’t need investing. And 2 years later we are doing better than ever all on our own. Working with our clients who are between $1M-5M in revenue yearly.
Now, I don’t want to make it sound like this feat is an easy thing to accomplish, my partners and I worked our a*ses off to get to where we are today in order to see our agency hit this high growth period so quickly thanks to bootstrapping, but the next time you are feeling like a “chicken with it’s head cut off” looking for funding, think of these 3 tips (principles if you will) that helped me get out of this vicious cycle and helped me focus on how to set up my business to sustain itself through its own revenue and ROI, without needing a cash investment upfront.
1.Create a high ticket sales offer.
I know a startup personally in NYC that is working on making their own freelancing platform specifically for Non-Profits. A great cause. So they secured a little over $1M in funding and got to work building out their platform, getting a workplace, and hiring in-house people.
Their goal was to bring lots of freelancers on to their platform and get lots and lots of smaller nonprofits on board to use their platform. Fighting for the little guy.
Even though they were able to achieve this goal for a great amount of smaller nonprofits, they simply weren’t bringing in enough revenue per month in order to sustain their overhead.
Let’s say 100 jobs a month by nonprofits at a rate of $100 revenue per job. They would pay the freelancer around 85% of that and end up making $15 profit for each job. Between $1,000 and $2,000 in profit per month.
So now, they are in the deep end and have been forced to create a high ticket sales offer and sell it to larger nonprofits and organizations who can actually afford their services and give them some sustainable monthly overhead that they can use to grow.
But this was a lesson learned that caused a lot of money to be burned.
The point is that they could have found this pain point within their business during the beginning stages where they could have failed cheaply with a lot less at stake.
Creating a high ticket sales offer could help save your business and provide you with the overhead and resources you need to grow and scale. These types of offers can be created in any industry. You just have to be creative.
2. Study internet marketing.
There is a lot that we can learn when we look to internet marketers. Russell Brunson, Alex Becker, even Tai Lopez, in his garage or not.
Some Founders are quick to look at the marketing efforts of big tech companies like Apple and Facebook and try to copy them during the marketing phase of their startup. But those companies have multi-million dollar marketing budgets and can just throw money at non-trackable branding efforts, while you might have even less than $500,000.
Your focus should be to spend that smartly and be able to measure every dollar that goes into your campaigns. And that is what those aforementioned internet marketers do for a living.
Learn how they are building their CTAs, their landing pages, their OTOs, their direct response marketing campaigns. Study all of there funnels. These guys and gals are able to make a little happen with a lot less and build a sustainable business making between $1-10 million dollars a year. Making every dollar act like a dime.
I would even advise you research Russell Brunson’s videos on YouTube and learn how to start making trackable marketing funnels around your startup.
You might think that building internet marketing funnels around your startup is a lowly thing to do when your aim is to become the next unicorn. But a well managed funnel will provide you with the building blocks and metrics needed to get you to the next level. Whether you end up being bootstrapped or funded.
Giving you a solid foundation for these next metrics…
3. CAC, LTV, and ROI. The only metrics that matter.
Your CAC – Customer Acquisition Costs
Your LTV – The Long Term Value of a Customer
Your ROI – Return On Investment
The next step for you is to learn how to measure these simple 3 metrics. You might have to do some digging in order to find these metrics if you haven’t been keeping track from the start.
But these are the only 3 metrics you essentially need in business in order to scale and grow.
Putting $2 in, and $6 comes out. While being able to track the process.
Simplification at it’s finest.
At Creative Minds Media Group we have a process that helps simplify this puzzle for you. It’s called our “Umbrella”.
It helps eliminate your headaches as a startup c-suite executive, and frees up your time to focus on much higher level thinking.
Learn more about our unique approach at www.creativemindsmediagroup.co