Page 18 - The Bootstrapper Bible

ChangeThis 6 LOW OVERHEAD. You work out of your house, with a simple phone system, no business affairs department, very little insurance, no company car, and volunteer labor. If you canʼt make it much more cheaply than the big guys, youʼve either picked the wrong product (hey, donʼt go into the computer chip business!) Or youʼre going about it the wrong way. Use this power and flexibility to make yourself irresistible to demanding customers. Even though big companies are big in scale, they still have to turn a profit on each and every product they sell or pay the consequences sooner or later. The guy whoʼs losing money on every order shipped and trying to make it up in volume is in for a rude awakening. By leveraging your smallness, you can often undercut bigger competitors, especially if the product or service you create doesnʼt require a lot of fancy machinery. 7 TIME. The big companies donʼt have a lot of freedom in the way they deal with time. When you have to pay off the bankers every month, please the stock market, and grow according to schedule, there isnʼt always the flexibility to do things on the right schedule. Sometimes theyʼve got to rush things, and other times they hold things back. You, on the other hand, are a stealth marketer. No one is watching you. Sometimes, when it counts, youʼll be ten times faster than the big guys. But when you can make a difference by taking your time, you will—and itʼll show. | iss. 6.01 | i | U | X | + | h 18/103 f