Page 49 - The Bootstrapper Bible

ChangeThis hassles of dealing with outsiders. Theyʼre not overflowing with happy, Tom Hanks–like lumi- naries, looking for the next Big Idea. The toy industry is a business, and a cutthroat one. Spend an extra month to figure out what your business model feels like and save yourself some headaches later. She had made a mistake. She built a business without a business model. She tried to invent a process that could turn into a living, to become a freelancer with a royalty stream in an industry where there were very, very few role models. She could still design her clothes and bags as a hobby, but she knew it wouldnʼt give her enough income to make a living. She had to find another way. She took a look around and realized that the book business publishes 50,000 new ideas every year, relies 100 percent on outsiders, and hires editors who look for ideas from the outside. Armed with this knowledge, she spent some time getting to know her customer base. Here were thirty major publishers, all with money, all eager to buy something, all willing to pay money in advance. Here was a totally different industry in which the process she had worked on for four years would work. The system of meeting people, inventing products, licensing them, and earning a profit—the system she had tried to build in the toy business—was working every day in the book business. Different products, same job. | iss. 6.01 | i | U | X | + | Want to find the most buzzworthy manifestos? DISCOVER them here. h 49/103 f