While bootstrapping is not for everyone, I developed a strategy that allowed me to scale my business in a way that fit my limited resources at the time. I started selling before there was anything to sell. I started creating a brand. Even at the time, I didn’t know what exactly branding was. I already was selling real estate and have received the rookie of the year award in my first year. I mean, I was making 100 calls a day for 10+hours.
I invested everything I made in real estate sales in the company’s foundation for five years without not paying myself. Full Transparency: Our margins were garbage for the first five years. Part of the reason I invested in is that I invested in people rather than building reserves. I also invested in myself and the content I had planned to reuse later. I also learned more about it as I created and bathed content for years.
It wasn’t always rainbows 🌈 and unicorns 🦄, they were periods when I would consult for free, create for free and sell nothing at all, but I kept going. After taking everything wholeheartedly, I started to learn early what digital marketing is, following mentors, hiring people in my agency, then started to host free events to meet people and connect. I gained a couple of clients, hired more, and invested in more training and education, courses and partnerships. It costs over $50,000 to access elite and advanced training and strategies that can help me understand and apply to my clients. I paid myself almost nothing for the first 5 Years.
Nobody wants to start a business and be broke, but you choose when you bootstrap. It’s simple math: When you reinvest everything back into the business, paying people to do their job, you don’t have money left to pay yourself. I didn’t quite realize what I was signing up for, and it was rough for several years, but I am glad I did it.
