Today (Sunday, Dec. 20th) they are giving away a product which is perfect for Social Bootstrappers, Information Marketers, Thought Leaders, and probably all sorts of other people.

Cover Commander creates graphic images of books, CDs, DVDs, screen shots, etc. You know those pictures of a book with a CD next to it that they use on sales letters and conversion pages? That’s what this does! You can upload your own images for the cover, and then it puts it into a 3D picture with a shadow and a reflection and a picture of a CD. It’s Awesome.

Obviously, you could do this better in Photoshop, but you certainly couldn’t do it faster. And you can’t beat free. I’ve already downloaded and installed it.

You should, too.

If you missed the giveaway, you can buy Cover Commander here.
(Note: I am not an affiliate of Cover Commander)

Bootstrapping, of course!

I hang out with a lot of lawyers, VC types, serial entrepreneurs, tech people, etc… When I go to networking events or roundtable discussions, I often hear people ask about getting funding. Sometimes they mean SBA loans, usually they mean venture capital- always they mean, “How can I build this business with other people’s money?” I think, implicitly, they are saying, “How can I build this business without putting my personal lifestyle at risk? And, oh yeah- I’m broke.”

Too often, the VC experts in the room indulge the asker by talking about what the capitalists are looking for, and discussing terms and so forth. The “entrepreneurs” take notes. They go to networking/educational events to learn about business plan writing, term sheets, all that stuff…

Not often enough does someone say, “IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN FOR YOU!”

• You can’t get an SBA loan unless you’re mostly established, which you aren’t.
• You’re not going to get VC funding unless there’s a clear, multi-million dollar exit strategy, which you don’t have.
• Even if you could get either one of those thing (which you can’t), you shouldn’t anyway.

An infusion of cash is more likely to ruin your business than it is to help it. Think about what happens when people win the lottery. Same deal.

Bootstrap it!

Spend very little, reinvest, don’t hire, retain control. Ignore the motivational gurus who tell you to spend money you don’t need to spend. They are usually suggesting you spend money on them.

I’m not saying don’t spend anything, but think real hard: An online startup needs a great website design, but probably could forgo the fancy letterhead and branded notepads. Spending 100 hours to learn PHP so you can build a little function is probably a waste- hire someone. Hiring someone to do basic data entry because you “value your time too much” is probably a waste- skip CSI:Miami and do it yourself.

And learn how to sell for goodness sake. Remember, the one, single reason for a business to exist is to sell something to someone. Large infusions of cash are likely to remove that understanding. Worse, hanging around VC startups and VC people can also skew your thinking on this matter. Complicated business plans obscure the point, too.

Bootstrapping forces you to realize that if you aren’t selling something you aren’t in business.

So, what now?

Stop reading blogs for the day and go work. By work, I mean, “Sell something.”
Use the money from that sale to buy/build the next thing you can sell.

That’s bootstrapping.

PS- I was inspired to write this post after reading this excellent post about Bootstrapping. You should read it too. It’s short, and has several great Bootstrapping tips.

Viable.

If you have kids:
Stop all TV watching.
Stop all time wasting.
Stop all email checking except twice a day.
Stop all pointless Social Media interaction.
Stop drinking Starbucks.
Stop other pointless spending.

Use extra money and time to grow business without quitting your day job.

Quit your day job when your independent income is equal to your (lowered) living expenses.

Oh- BTW- That’s good advice if you have kids, too.

If you can’t figure out what “viable” means.
If you can’t give up TV watching or Starbucks.
Then…
You have neither the intelligence nor the discipline to be an entrepreneur.

Don’t quit your day job.

This post is part of the Brogan 100.
Learn more here and here.

The debate about Free rages on…

On the side of Free:

• Social Media, and its ridiculous valuations.
• Google, and its ridiculous revenue.
• Seth Godin, with the “Books are Souvenirs” publishing model
• Chris Anderson, the evangelist of Free

On the side of not-Free

• Traditional Publishers of Content
• 37 Signals
• Old-school businesses that can’t figure out what the hell to do
• Malcolm Gladwell

Whoa.

On both sides of this debate are incredible thinkers, incredibly smart and successful companies, and a lot of profits. Also, on both sides, are some real stinkers. Everyone is convinced that they are right, that history is on their side, that the laws of economics and psychology will win out in the end (vindicating their position).

Here’s the thing about all this…

You people keep forgetting that there is more than one way to make money.

The Case Against Anti-Free

The anti-free people keep pointing out that Twitter is free and doesn’t make any money, so therefore you shouldn’t give stuff away. The problem with Twitter (and all the other money-losing Social Media platforms) isn’t that they give stuff away. The problem is that they never (as far as we know) thought through how to make money.

Google gives away (almost) everything. Free search. Free email. Free maps. Free analytics. Free documents. Free everything. Oh… wait. You want to buy some ads? Awesome. Just pay, like, a nickel. Great.

WordPress, the most awesome blogging and CMS platform ever, is free. Free software, free support forums, free themes, free plugins. Automattic seems to be making a profit. Hmm…..

When I lived in Florida, I got to shop at the world’s most wonderful grocery store, Publix. They gave out a lot free samples, something almost every week. Around the holidays they threw in-store parties. Free food. Not just samples, either. Plates of turkey, ham, ice cream, pie, mashed potatoes, peanut brittle, cheese, sushi. Wine, egg nog, hot cocoa. Live music. All of it free. You didn’t have to buy anything. But you know, as long as you’re here…

The case against pro-Free

The anti-free people lambaste the free people with “shouldn’t you get paid for your time and effort?”

Yeah, yeah. Whatever.

The real problem with the “everything is free” people is that they talk (and think?) like we live in the matrix and everything is digital information. They talk about moving away from atoms and towards bits. They talk about how the cost of delivery approaches zero. They talk and talk.

Um… I can’t eat bits. I can’t fuel my car with bits. I can’t live under bits.

Free only works with media… information and entertainment.
You can give away free samples of food, but only for so long.

Writers, bloggers, Social Media gurus, computer nerds, and all the other people who lead this conversation (on both sides, really) mostly make their money in media, information, entertainment, and other bit-driven industries. That’s fine. Free movies? Great! Free news? Of course!

Free software? Well… maybe.

Free food? Sure… but here’s a coupon for that mustard you’re eating.

Free oil? Not on your life.

The digital economy of consumerist America is great and all, but it’s really just a way to move money around and keep everyone occupied. The essentials (food, shelter, heat) and the near-essentials (communication, transportation) will never- can never- be free. If you’re wondering why China is getting all rich and powerful- it’s because they make things. Actual real things. Things that have mass and displace water.

If China is the future (a lot of people think so), then clearly an economic model based on producing fake things that don’t cost anything to copy is not the way forward.

So, what then…

Macro

(That means the world.)
While the high-level emphasis on value-add, knowledge work seems forward thinking, the only way to reclaim/retain economic dominance is through making things we can export for money.

Make things. Export them for money.

Micro

(That means you.)
Free is, obviously, not a revenue model. Without revenue, you don’t have a business.

So, what does that mean?

Free has to be thought of as a Marketing tool. Like the free samples at Publix, only turbocharged.

But you have to have something to market. Whether it’s souvenir books, consulting services, advertisements, or speaking engagments, Free is only viable if there is a sensible monetization plan. You can market Nothing if you want, and market it quite effectively. But it’s impossible to build a business on that. At best, you have a hobby. At worst, you have a multi-billion dollar not-funny joke.

Don’t be scared of Free. Or suspicious.
Or in love.

Free is another tool. You can take out ads in the Yellow pages. You can hire a blimp to fly your logo. You can cold-call people at dinner time. You can sponsor a public radio show. You can make a funny YouTube video. You can get a celebrity to wear your stuff. You can…

There’s an almost infinite number of things you can do to market what you sell. Free is one of them. Use it if it works. Don’t use it if doesn’t.

Stop arguing.

Okay, wait-
Don’t stop arguing.

Please move your arguments to the comment section of this post.

It’s free!

This post is part of the Brogan 100.
Learn more here and here.

I love Revolve.

Revolve is “the largest community of entrepreneurs in Boston.” They are, at heart, a discussion and networking forum for entrepreneurs, business owners, venture capitalists, sales people, freelancers, service providers, and hopefuls.

The heart of the Revolve community is the bi-weekly discussion group, which draws an incredibly wide and deep group of people with an amazing range of talents, expertise, experience, passion, and ideas. They also have two industry specific discussion groups (Green and Entertainment), plus all sorts of additional events like film screenings, parties, educational seminars, panel discussions, award ceremonies…

Behind Revolve (the community) is Revolve (the company), part of the Exemplar Law family. It’s the coolest law firm in the country. No billable hours. No stodgy law firm crap. Tons of experience. Tons of expertise. Tons of love and passion.

My business wouldn’t exist without Revolve… and I’m not even a client of the law firm (yet). I started attending the weekly discussion groups back when I was in Financial Services, and just starting to figure out how to start my own firm. Revolve gave me inspiration, knowledge, and a friendly kick in the pants. After a few months of hanging around over there, I had launched Social Bootstrap. They gave me the push I needed.

Thank you.

This post is part of the Brogan 100.
Learn more here and here.

What is Bootstrapping?

Bootstrapping is using your limited amount of a resource to generate more of the same resource while fueling an endeavor that both requires and creates more of that resource.

The easiest example is the one you are familiar with: I have a little but of money, but not much. I specifically make choices with my money designed to create increase the amount of money I have, usually as quickly as possible. I do that by building a business that will consume more and more money, and generate even more and more money, as time goes on.

I use the limited resource (a little bit of money) to generate just a little bit more, and reinvest that little bit more. Over and over, while building something that will eventually generate ongoing revenue.

That is Financial Bootstrapping. It is the most commonly recognized and celebrated form of Bootstrapping, but it certainly isn’t the only variety.

Technical Bootstrapping

You probably have some amount of technical/computer skill. If you can read and use Google, you can leverage that minor skill into understanding how almost anything works. The number of Bootstrapped steps from “competence” to “Tech God” isn’t as many as you think.

Social Bootstrapping

This is what LinkedIn is all about (and Social Media in general). Surely you have a few friends. Rather than complaining that you only have a few friends, make it a point to use those few friends to make more friends. The more time you spend socializing, the better you become at it, so it becomes easier and easier to make more and more friends.

Time Bootstrapping

You only have one free half-hour a day? Instead of spending it on TV or reading stupid blogs, why not spend it doing something that will help free up more time in the future? Cleaning and organizing, automating certain tasks, creating email filters, meal planning. You’ll create extra time, and develop the habits that create even more time.

Wellness/Energy Bootstrapping

Too tired/lazy/fat/out-of-shape to exercise? What can you do that you’re not doing now? You can probably take a walk around the house. Then maybe in a few weeks a walk around the block. A lot of people understand the gradual nature of fitness, but they don’t usually connect it with Bootstrapping.

Bootstrapping is the way to go in almost any endeavor, because you have to constantly be on the right track. You can tell if things are working or not. The opposite of Bootstrapping is “Throw a lot of [other resource] at it.” Usually money, but it could be time or social capital as well. In that approach, it’s hard to tell if you’re on the right track because you’ll always get some kind of result if you throw a lot of resources at a problem, but you might just be creating a sink for resources.

There are certainly other types of Bootstrapping, and lots of examples of hybrids (usually time/money). How are you bootstrapping your business?

The comics in this post come from the funniest webcomic in the world, XKCD.

And so I thought- thank goodness, I was wondering where my next blog post would come from. This dude’s freakin’ awesome.

The business started as a business school project (-slash-) outgrowth of his parents’ florist business. Over the last six (I think) years, they’ve grown to over $12 million in sales. Mostly through organic search. That’s incredible.

For most of the time they have been in business they have ranked number one for 71 of their 72 desirable keywords: Easter Gift Baskets, gift baskets snacks, birthday gift baskets.

So naturally- everyone wants to know how they did it.

Well, at first- a bunch of things you can’t do anymore.

Early on, they were paying bloggers to link to them. (Don’t do that!) A bit black hat, yes- but the links were fairly high quality. Useful to the consumer. Informative. The relevance of the links was so high (in reality) that Gourmet Gift Baskets was one of the last sites to get penalized by Google for this sort of behavior (more on that in a minute).

They also paid some sketchy SEO company to do… well, they didn’t really know. Stuff that would get you banned today (link farms, cross-linking subdomains, dummy sites with auto-content). It didn’t get them banned (back then), but it was expensive and didn’t really help at all.

They started creating useful, informative content- well linked articles with unbiased information. That worked really well. Ryan described it as, “pretty gray hat stuff.” The content was good, the links were unbiased (he linked to competitors where appropriate, to educational resources, and so on)- he was able to get high-trust sites to link to this content: dot-edu and dot-gov sites linked to some of his stuff. It worked great!

Trouble was, they were being a little (or completely) manipulative in the way this content was published and controlled, and how he got people to link to it.

Ryan checks his Google rank on all major keywords every morning. One day- they just disappeared. Google got wind of what they were doing, and how they were manipulating content, and they got slammed. After a few weeks in the Google confessional known as resubmission request, Gourmet Gift Baskets pulled back onto page one (near the bottom) in time for the holiday buying season.

The strategy since then has been two pronged:

• Be less evil.
• Diversify

Be less evil.
Step one was less black and gray, more solid white hat SEO stuff. Deep in the site are these fantastic educational articles about gifts, gift baskets, food, holidays. A boatload of content that a regular visitor doesn’t see (there’s no navigation to them). The only one he mentioned was Ukrainian Easter Eggs.
They produce all this fantastic deep content, which links back to their home page. They then attempt to find people to link to that content. This creates indirect links back to the homepage- a sort of SEO funnel of goodness.
Expensive, time consuming, slow.
But effective.

Diversify
At its peak, over 80% of their business was coming from organic search on Google. While lots of people would kill for results like that, any good business person will tell you that you shouldn’t be so incredibly dependent on a single source of income. What if the algorithm changes? What if they get banned or penalized? Ryan estimates they lost about $2 million of sales the holiday season they were at the bottom of page one instead of the top.

Additionally- they’re maxed out. How do you grow an online business when everyone who looks for your product finds you? They can’t think of any more keyword phrases to optimize for. They have more or less hit the wall with revenue from organic search- and they’re spending $90,000 a year to keep it that way.

So the company is starting to move backwards into traditional media, forward into Social media, and sideways into a whole new way to generate SEO goodness.

The coolest SEO strategy I’ve ever heard of
When Ryan first said, “We’re gonna break world records!” I thought he was speaking in that overly-enthusiastic sales guru hyperbole I’ve grown accustomed to in the last few years. I was wrong.

Gourmet Gift Baskets is going to bake the World’s Largest Cupcake!

How big do you think the current world’s largest cupcake is? You’d probably think in terms of a Volkswagon, right? No, sadly- the current record holder is an embarrassingly small footstool of a cupcake.
151 pounds.
Lame.

Ryan’s cupcake is going to be 7,151 pounds! Now we’re talking. Custom fabricated cupcake mold. The world’s largest electric oven. A cupcake the size of a car. This dude is serious.

With a little bit of wheeling and dealing, a bit of creativity, and a whole lot of bootstrapping, this whole thing is going to cost around $20,000. Much less than the $90,000 a year he’s been paying. And what higher quality links they’ll get. This is beyond white-hat/black-hat. This is Wizard’s Hat SEO.

To Do
You there. Entrepreneur. Internet marketer. SEO guru.

Stop trying to game the system. Gourmet Gift Baskets is a great case study in SEO trickery- what used to work, why it worked, and why it doesn’t work anymore. If you’ve been doing SEO for more than two years, you probably need to forget everything you know.

Do something different. Something ridiculous. Something at least the size of a Volkswagon.

And don’t put all your Ukrainian Easter Eggs in one Gourmet Gift Basket.

I’m in the process of adding service menus to the Social Bootstrap website, so that people can look and see what it is we sell and how much it would cost to hire us. Over on the left hand sidebar of each menu page, I wrote a short, compelling (in my opinion) description of that page’s services area (Web, Print Books, Seminars, etc.). The left sidebar column, though, is a little small, so sometimes lines break in places that look a little unattractive. Here is a screen shot of the “Book Services” sidebar from earlier this morning, right after I wrote the copy:

Notice the line breaks after the words “meant,” and “book,” on the sixth and seventh line. This happens because “convincing” and “publishers” are both too long.

Also, the line break at “self-publishing,” is rather unfortunate.

So- what to do, what to do?

I could try to rewrite the line around, “that meant convincing book publishers,” but there’s got to be a better way. I briefly consider widening the column. I mean, really- I’m going to keep having problems like this with a sidebar so skinny. But, alas- the column is the width that it is because we want it to line up with the “buckle” of the Social Bootstrap logo, and we like the size of the logo.

So then I notice the break between the third and fourth lines:
as an expert than to
literally have “written the

Surely the word “have” could fit on the previous line, if I rewrote to:
as an expert than to have
literally “written the

Natually, that change would adjust that line, and it would affect all the subsequent lines.

So, after making sure I got a screen capture for comparitive “before-and-after” pictures, I switched two words in the copy.

Here’s the result:

Notice that removing “have” from the fourth line made enough room for the word “book.” That pulled everything back, leaving enough room for “convincing” and “publishers” before the line break. The changes cascade down the column, eventually bringing “self-” closer to the end of the line, which is much more attractive and readable.

Much better.

Of course, I’m not quite done. I also notice that without full line breaks between paragraphs, the whole column looks a little crowded and hard to read. To see the result of that, and of any other changes I make, you’ll have to actually look at the Book Services page.

So- Why bother?

Well, mostly it’s about taking pride in your own work. There are a lot of cheesy, poorly designed, hackified websites out there in the world. I don’t want that for my site. It’s possible that the change may even increase my conversion rate (who knows?). But not everything about design should be about conversion rate.

My wife and I were recently at a very nice Taco Bell (well designed, clean, interesting) and I was wondering about ROI (return on investment). That is- does having a nicer Taco Bell dining room attact enough additional sales to be worth the expense of design and renovation. We thought maybe it would, but we also said that we would probably have spent the money even if it didn’t, because that’s the kind of business we like to run.

Perhaps some of you are ROI junkies. Don’t spend an extra moment or an extra nickel on something unless it returns measurable increase in profits. If that’s you, you probably can’t imagine why someone would spend a half-hour on Monday morning smooshing words back and forth on a sidebar column.

But I’m not in business primarily to get a high ROI. Yes, yes- it’s important. I do have bills to pay. But I started Social Bootstrap so that I could build the kind of business I’ve always wanted to be a part of- a business that cares about things like details and quality and text-layout.

And though I’ll never be able to prove that the ROI for a half-hour of text-editing made it a profitable use of my time, I believe it is one more thing a potential customer may notice, one more detail that says, “Yes, we believe in quality and we believe in service, and we believe in details.”

Risk Reward Graph from Seth's Blog

Minor quibble- Traditionally, Risk is charted on the x-axis, reward (return) on the y-axis.

Risk reward graphs were developed originally for Financial Analysis. Of course, lots of armchair economists have lighted on the idea of applying the graph to other things, especially business endeavors. That’s fine, except people usually think of it the wrong way:

Most people think that the line on the graph represents progress made through time, and that their risk/reward timeline goes like this (as viewed entirely from someone at point A):
A – “This is where I am. Everything is more or less safe.”
B – “If I started this crazy idea, there would be a lot of risk up front, and not much return for a long time. That scares me. I’ll do nothing.”
C – “Off in the distance, if I survive all that risk, the rewards will be phenomenal! I’ll be a millionaire.
D – “People who are successful continue to get a lot of reward, and they risk less and less.”
The problem with that is… well, it isn’t true. And it isn’t what risk/reward graphs were intended to show.
First of all, there is no time axis on a risk/reward graph. The graph isn’t showing a progression, but rather the risk-reward relationships of a number of discreet courses of action. The line, called the “Efficient Horizon” is the leading of edge of “highest possible amount of reward for any particular amount of risk.” What it shows is, basically, that if you are only willing to take on a certain amount of risk, you are limiting your potential for return. That graph looks something like this:

All possible courses of action are on or under the line on the graph. People who are under the line are not getting the maximum amount of return for the level of risk they are taking on. People who are on the line have optimized their risk/reward profile. When we look at where certain types of income-generation/entrepreneurship fall on the graph, there are four areas on the horizon.

A – Safe. Dependent. Traditional employment. Comfortable.
B – Independent. Entrepreneurs, sales people, small business owners.
C – Maverick. Deal makers, big business builders, venture capitalists.
D – Crazy. Gamblers, get-rich-quick, schemers, criminals.

The people at D are taking on way more risk than the people at C or B, but they’re potential of reward is not much higher (assuming they even get any reward- remember, risk means “It might not happen for you”).

The D people are nuts, so forget about them for a minute. The people that really concern me are the people at A. They (mostly) aren’t there because they love traditional employment and are happy with the level of reward they are getting. A lot of these people want to be at B or C, but are so risk adverse that they won’t ever take the big jump and quit their job or start a business or whatever.

Unfortunately for all those people, that graph isn’t quite accurate. A better way to look at it is:

This way of thinking about it points out that once you get below a certain level of reward in your activity, your risk actually begins to increase. Think about it. How many small business owners have been laid off in the last year? How many employees have been laid off? While the B and C people may look like they are taking on risk, it’s the A people who are really in a risky situation. Partly because of that perception problem- they can’t see their risks, and have no way of managing them.

Also notice that the B and C people have approximately the same amount of risk. I believe that’s about right. They are both risking bankruptcy, failure, loss of confidence, embarrassment… but neither one of them will starve. Neither one of them is going to die if they don’t “make it.” But a lot of Bs (and all the As) think that it is so much more risky and difficult to be a deal-maker.

What should make the difference between the Bs and the Cs isn’t risk tolerance but vocation. I, for example, want to live about a third of the way between B and C. It’s where I’m happiest (which I could show you on another chart).

What I’m getting at is this- A is nuts. D is nuts. Everything from low-level B (sales people) to high level C (Donald Trump) is fine, but what’s important is that you do what you love, as opposed to avoiding what you’re scared of.

1. People have always bought newspapers, we should keep selling them the same way we always have.
2. People love music… what if we made a little device that played music, but we make it look really cool… cooler than anybody else’s little music playing device.
3. Let’s give away for free the thing we are most known for, and then- as a sort-of side thought- make billions of dollars by reinventing the way people advertise.
4. Let’s give away for free the thing we are most known for… and then… you know… we’ll get rich. Somehow…

I don’t have the time to think about that more- so maybe someone else could cogently build their own post about it.
OR
If anybody has thoughts about it that I could steal for a future post, I’d love to hear them.

To wit:
Adam Purcell of Hungry Dog Media has just posted this video, showing how to create an ecommerce site with a product for sale up and running in five minutes!
Ridiculous! Awesome! Fantastic! Scary as all get-out!

Few thoughts:

• Anyone out there thinking that it is too hard to start a business just got pwned.
• Anyone out there thinking that there won’t be any competetion for whatever goofy thing they’ve decided to sell (this includes me, you, and everyone you know)… we just got pwned, too.

More interesting, though (because it’s what I care about) is how easy to use the WP e-commerce plug-in is for selling downloads (ebooks, people; info-products). You don’t have to mess with payloads or anything else.

Now… Trying to actually make a living selling digital products and ebooks is tough, BUT… for all you consultants, service providers, professional experts, and (hooray) Social Bootstrappers… Ebooks, and other digital info-products, are KEY to your success as a thought leader.
Thought Leaders do a few key things:

• Innovate their industry. That is, have a unique point of view or way of doing things.
• Give away a lot of information, so that people start to use them as the “go-to” reference.
• Charge for additional (or simply repackaged) information, so that people see the value of their expertise. (The extra money is nice, but that usually isn’t the point.)

Number one is hard… very hard, and no one can do that for you. But WP has made it easier and easier to distribute your information, both for free and at a premium.

If you can learn how to harness Word Press for thought leadership, you can make a fortune! You have two options:

• If you are a service provider, a consultant, or a business owner who is INNOVATIVE and a has UNIQUE point of view, you can become a thought leader.
• If can find people who want to become thought leaders (they are everywhere), you can become a Social Bootstrapper, and help them reach their goals (and they will pay you… oh, how they will pay you).

Happy Bootstrapping!