Do you know Jim Rohn?
They called him the “gentleman farmer”. He was also one of the best speakers, authors and self-improvement gurus of the 20th century.
Rohn said something that really stuck with me.
“Don’t earn a million dollars for the money. Earn them for the person you must become to earn that million dollars,”.
Sounds like a feel good, inspirational advice right?
No, it’s not. It’s one of the most important lessons you can learn in business. My greatest wealth is my ability to generate wealth. If someone just gave me the money, I would have spent it and be no better off. But since I had to learn how to first earn $1 and then $100 and then $100.000 and beyond, I’ve built something more valuable than numbers in a bank account.
I’ve built what Stephen Covey calls PC. Production Capability.
So my mom never gave me money to start any business. It’s not because she did not believe in me. It’s because she knows you don’t build wealth on unearned money and that if you want to earn a million dollars, you’d better get to learn how to find your first $1.000 to start your journey towards that goal.
And sure. I was mad. I couldn’t understand. I thought all she wanted was to discourage me from pursuing my vision for a better life. But in time, I’ve understood that it was wisdom. If I couldn’t even get over the first step, finding the start-up capital myself, then how could have I faced everything being an entrepreneur would throw at me?
It’s like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar.
A caterpillar becomes a beautiful butterfly. But to do this, it must struggle to leave its cocoon. It’s painful to see a small being trying to hard to escape. And you’d be tempted to even want to help, to make a hole inside the cocoon.
But you’d not help.
You’d just curse it.
The caterpillar will become a butterfly but it will be too weak to fly. It will slowly die. The struggle is required for this being to develop into what it needs to be.
And this is true with all animals… and with humans.
Don’t take the easy way when starting a business. Don’t look for venture capital. Don’t borrow money from the bank. Instead, bootstrap.
This will help you achieve two things.
First, experienced entrepreneurs and investors LOVE those who bootstrap. This is because you’re showing the world you’re not afraid to get dirty and that any results you get, are yours to claim.
It’s easy to build a business when you have $100.000 to spend. Only an idiot would spend $100.000 or $250.000 and not make at least a few sales. But this doesn’t say much.
It’s art to get customers with no upfront investment or to figure it all out. To have to face your problems and solve them instead of just paying for them to go away. This is because each time you face such a problem, you build a new skill. You learn something. You become better. You’re more competent in your own business.
And if you do this enough, business becomes smooth sailing.
You know, when I was just starting out in Internet Marketing, I did not have $5000 to pay for a copywriter. So I had to learn how to write my emails myself.
I did not have $1500 for a website designer. So I had to learn how to use WordPress and paid themes to create professional websites. And I did not have the funds to hire a professional PPC manager.
I had to learn how to make my campaigns work alone because it was my money in the game. A poorly targeted campaign or a high CPL would mean losing hundreds or even thousands of dollars in a single day.
So looking back at my entrepreneurial journey, starting with my art gallery and up to a new exciting program I’ll launch soon, it has been tricky sometimes. I’ve faced challenges I’ve thought too hard to overcome. Some surprised me and I never expected.
And in that moment, I could have taken the easy way out.
Let someone else deal with the problems.
But I preferred to solve them NOT to save money, NOT to do everything myself but because of the person it helped me become. And this is how I’ve built my business – by facing problems head-on and solving them at least once before delegating.
Why am I telling you this?
Because you may think you don’t have enough money to start your own thing. You think if only a bank would lend you $50.000 or $100.000 you’d be set.
But that’d be the WORST thing you could do for yourself.
Getting money apart from a few industries in which fast growth is essential (as software development) is not a blessing. It is a curse. It disables the feedback loop of challenge – thinking – solution that’s required to become a great entrepreneur. It’s like taking steroids to build muscle instead of going to the gym.
And while spending money and hiring people is a must, it’s not in the beginning.
You don’t need employees in the first 6 to 12 months.
You don’t need a fancy office.
You don’t need a fancy computer.
You don’t need a state-of-the-art website.
You don’t need a logo.
You need a few systems around getting customers, converting them and increasing customer lifetime value – which is a fancy way of saying selling them again and again.
Sure, when you’re just starting out, bootstrapping, you’ll not get from $0 to $100.000/month right away. But you can get from $0 to $1000. And then from $1.000 to $10.000. And then go beyond where sky is the limit.
The stories of people spending millions of dollars to earn fortunes are limited to Silicon Valley. Being first in the marketplace is what’s important and that investors will spend huge amounts of money to have that advantage.
This means that a start-up can hire the best people and build huge offices and offer amazing perks. But unless you’re a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, this has nothing to do with main-street entrepreneurship.
So be happy that you don’t have a lot of money.
Invest in your education, invest in learning how to get things done, into your PC capability and bootstrap. Your ability to generate wealth, no matter if it’s $10.000 per month or $250.000 / month will not come from spending money that’s not yours. It will come from figuring creative solutions to problems
Best regards,
Imran
