eROI Days Email Agency

Guy Kawasaki bootstrapping image

Yesterday, Chanin Ballance (founder/CEO of viaLanguage), Mitch Daugherty (founder of Morange Design), and I (the eROI guy) got together to plan what we’d talk about for a webinar about Bootstrapping and our personal experiences with self-induced starvation and endurance thru the early days.  It was like catching up with old friends after a couple years – the instant bond entrepreneurs share in dredging up old stories that weren’t fun at the time, but are great memories in retrospect.  The OEN Webinar is set for June 17 (registration isn’t live yet, but will be shortly) and we’re going to use a different format than the usual put-your-audience-to-sleep-with-powerpoint.  We are going to try to re-create the casual, round-table discussion among entrepreneurs sharing candid stories.  Some of the topics will include:

– Risk vs Reward – How do you know if it makes sense to bootstrap your idea?
– Keep your Day Job – The stress of self funding with no income can sometimes lead to failure
– Cash Flow – How to get a handle on your most important business aspect
– How to market your business on a shoestring budget
– Why most business models don’t need funding as it can be a big distraction

Guy Kawasaki, in his old-school days before Alltop, delivers some awesome advice on this on his 2006 blog post titled “The Art of Bootstrapping”

This blog post isn’t an effort to toot our own horn, although I’m definitely proud of my team for this accomplishment. This entry is about sharing the feedback from the evening and showing my appreciation for organizations like OEN (Oregon Entrepreneurs Network) who provide the foundation for entrepreneurial learning, networking, and mentoring in this great, underappreciated (from a business standpoint) state.

eROI was chosen as 1 of 3 finalists for the OEN Company of the Year Award in the Working Capital category. This event celebrates Oregon entrepreneurs and businesses as if we were in Hollywood (which is a welcome change from the other 364 days of the year when we are in the trenches with very little recognition or pause for celebration). I was getting a little bit nervous as the time approached to lead up to the 3 finalists (eROI, AuctionPay, and Cayuse). On 3 huge video screens, videos of each of the 3 finalist CEOs played. The videos were shot 2 months prior and I was self-conscious watching the video from the audience (of 900 people), but fortunately the video editor chose the best of my rambling answers and focused on my primary point of truly listening one-on-one to my employees and transforming the process and the culture based on their input.

Many of the eROI employees at the table appreciated that I didn’t focus on sales or marketing success, but very candidly exposed a problem that became a strength. Here’s what a fellow business owner emailed me the following day:
“Hi Ryan,
Just a note to congratulate eROI on making the finalists for the OEN Awards! I enjoyed watching your interview video for the OEN Awards last week at the awards dinner… especially the part about asking each and every employee for direct feedback on how they were feeling. Very brave ;-)”

We didn’t win (AuctionPay was the deserving winner as they’ve built an amazingly scalable company), but eROI is doing a few things right to even be in the running.