Jason's Business By Bootstraps

Category: Entrepreneurship

  • Job security

    This week I met a guy who’d recently been laid off from the tech industry.  He was pretty much taking it in stride, enjoying a bit of time off between gigs, basically. At least, that was the air he was pulling off.  I’m pretty sure I believed him. And about a month ago, a former […]

  • Discoveries from the long run

    I managed to put in ten miles on the treadmill this weekend.  In a single session, minus the reset time in the middle because the machine doesn’t let you plug in more than an hour at a go. Yes, it’s as exciting as it sounds. That said, it was interesting.  My lungs held up.  My […]

  • Pushbutton businesses

    Things I did on a Sunday afternoon: ordered and provisioned a few domain names, a VOIP 1-800 number, and shot 15 videos.  If I’d hustled a little more, or spent the whole day on it, I could have had a mostly viable business up and running in a day, and it’s worth noting that it […]

  • My two biggest lessons from 2011

    When I refer to my biggest lessons, there’s a reason I don’t call them insights or learnings.  No, these were lessons, the kind of training one gets on the battlefield, and on a battlefield, you don’t emerge unscathed. To that point, I’m a little hesitant to share these with two weeks remaining in the year, […]

  • My three words for 2012 (preview)

    I’ve been working with Chris Brogan‘s idea about three words that define what I want my upcoming year to be about (you can see his for 2011, 2010, and if you follow the links in those pages, back much further than that.) Basically, you pick the three words that you’ll be building around for the […]

  • Innovation is the enemy of systems

    I’ve been thinking more about systems, but this time it’s other people’s systems – why are they so hard to implement?  Is entrepreneurship really a thinly veiled desire to do things your own way as much as possible?  It seems like it sometimes. I’ve tested countless techniques, courses and systems, and I can’t really tell […]

  • The post-game systems ritual

    I’ve been thinking a lot about systems lately, and how I can create them in a way that takes the “me” out of the equation in my business. Part of this is because I’ve been meaning to re-read The E-Myth, and the other part is an increasing awareness that I have so few hours in […]

  • Defining entrepreneurship

    Here’s one thing I’ve learned: it’s hard to define an entrepreneur objectively and meaningfully. Want to be 100% objective?  Use the dictionary and give the words no further thought.  “A person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.” Wow, that was useful. Want to be 100% meaningful?  Usually […]

  • Copying what works

    There’s an old adage in business that if you see something being done long enough, it’s probably because it’s profitable, even if you can’t understand it right away. And that’s probably true, in a lot of markets.  Infomercials, for example, contain dozens (if not hundreds) of tactics that have been individually tested, so even if […]

  • The two worst (and maybe most common) reasons to start a business

    Reasons matter, folks.  It’s true in sales (the whole “reason why” thing and all that) and it’s equally true in your motivations.  If you start your own show, you will be tested.  There will be days where you won’t want to get out of bed, and you’ll trick yourself into just taking a break, and […]