Bootstrap your business – Ask Evan

as an entrepreneur you need the
bootstrap if you want to maximize your
chances of success the best way to do it
is to bootstrap you build your company
slowly customer by customer put the
profits back into the business and see
your growth hi I’m Evan Carmichael your
friend and all things entrepreneurship
and today mention a question from one of
my readers Bernard who is asking me how
can i prevent suffering when things go
bad for my business and my answer here
Bernard is bootstrap I don’t know how
you built your business so far but if
you’re taking out loans if you owe
people money then unless things go
according to plan exactly you’re going
to lose your business and maybe
something more you know if you put a
personal guarantee on that you might
lose your house you might lose your
savings and this happens all the time to
entrepreneurs I hate spending money till
I’m making money I hate owing people
money because it puts the pressure on
you’ve got to deliver immediate results
if you don’t you could lose your whole
business or worse the answer is the
bootstrap if you look at most companies
that take on investors venture capital
most of them fail you hear about the big
wins and the big success stories but
only one in ten if that hit it big with
a venture capitalist and they expect
that they expect the one company that
hits it big to find all the other ones
that fail when you take on a lot of
money and you owe people money you
dramatically increase your chances of
failure the best way to do it is not
sexy it’s not romantic it’s not
glamorous it’s a lot of hard work but
it’s a bootstrap your business get your
first customer bring money in invest it
go get another customer build yourself
up slowly if you do it then you’re
building a solid foundation so something
bad happens you’re on a solid foundation
you can survive you can keep going with
your leverage and the oh a lot of people
money and have investors who are calling
down your neck freaking out on you
you’re going to make bad decisions
you’re going to be forced to do things
that may not be in the best interest of
the business long term and you
dramatically increase your chance of
failure so if you’re just getting
started we were thinking of expanding
your business my best advice still is
the bootstrap it don’t go take on loans
don’t go take on investors do it
yourself slowly one by one put it back
into the business and reap the rewards
that will come it may take you longer to
get there but your chances of getting
there are much much higher good luck I
hope you apply it for those of you
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you or you to think if you want to leave
a comment on the video thank you and
I’ll see you on the next episode
you