Jason Fried, founder of 37Signals.com, the makers of some of our favorite tools, Basecamp for project management and Highrise for contact management, has written a fantastic column for Inc Magazine about how to get good at making money. The lessons he provides are in no way revolutionary or groundbreaking but, as Fried points out, they are lessons that need to be relearned.
- Understanding the buyer is the key to being a strong seller
- It’s all about passion
- How, and why, to charge real money for real products
- There are different pathways to the same dollar
- The true value of bootstrapping
- Practice
The fifth lesson is a good one that we take to heart over here. Fried points out the valuable lesson of bootstrapping your business. A business with no funding has to make money on day 1. A funded business spends money on day 1 while the making money part (the hard part) takes a back seat. Bootstrapping brings out the fight and the drive to make something work on day 1 because day 100 isn’t promised. As a testimonial to this lesson, we have never taken a loan on our part and hopefully will never have to. Our products and services have worked from day 1 and now we’re going on our 5th year.
Head on over to Inc Magazine to read How to Get Good at Making Money.
