WHAT IT TAKES TO BOOTSTRAP

I apologize for not being able to post the last few weeks I've been super busy teaching and getting my start ups minimum viable product ready for investors to try out.

Anyways I wanted to share what it's been like bootstrapping a start up. As you know it's been a few years from when I wanted to build a mobile game company all the way to where I am now building a line of competitive multiplayer arcade games designed to interact with a social tournament style web application. That's a lot of words to write and it's a been a challenging and fun project to work on.

Anyways to get to this point I had to learn to bootstrap. That's means I've had to make sacrifices and live like a poor student and learn to survive on very little. It's a great thing to go through and experience because you learn what's important. Before this I valued materials and after a while you learn that it's a life that doesn't make you happy. Now I value family, education, innovation, religion, things that money cannot buy.

It's only when I started following my dream of building a game changing company that life really became different for me. My perspective had changed. I no longer cared about cars, buying the most expensive stuff. It forced me to be around good supporting people, family members, and forced me to learn to survive on very little. There are a lot of free resources in the city to help you survive if you actually looked.

I went to a lot of free events to get free food like pizza, chicken, wine, h'orderves. A lot of entrepreneur centers had workshops that gave things like battery chargers and notebooks. Any time I needed a book I would go to the library. I used as many beta programs and trial periods to get the software I needed for my start up. Once you learn a lot of these things, you start to understand that you don't need that much money to survive. At first it took time to get used to but I realized if your resourceful enough you can solve a lot of problems. Too many people take the easy way out. By also taking a part time job you love you can earn money to live while using those survival methods and still build your company. No matter what there is sacrifice involved.

I've barely spent anything and I have a team of 20 people and a lawyer from RIM. My start up team consists of people from Microsoft, IMAX, Mercury Filmworks, RIM, SEGA Amusement, Waterloo, Seneca College and OPSEU Pension Trust. I've been able to problem solve to build great teams. Not everything happened all at once and I did have to go through my ups and downs. Bootstrapping requires you to live smart but it doesn't mean you have to go hungry. Hope this advice helps!!!

Best,

A.

WHY MANAGING YOUR TIME IS EVERYTHING

We live in a world that is measured by 24 hours, 7 days a week, and we count 365 days a year. As the cycle of time resets after the 365 days hence New Years, another year begins. So why are some people successful and a lot of other people not successful? You ever see the guy who goes in to work for a few days a week, is invited to every party around you, and seems to make a crap load of money? Well after many years of study I found one of the key components of success is how you manage your time and what you do with it. If your going to spend time doing something, make sure that it gives a return on investment as time is a commodity that once when passed, you cannot get it back. It's simply gone.

Managing your time requires you to be nimble, and focused on what really matters. One thing I also noticed about very successful people is that they balance their time by dividing it so that they at least touch on all parts of their life within a week. For example even though a person might be a business man, he or she will spend an hour at Church for spirituality, 7 hours of exercise time per week (1 hour a day), a few hours for family and dinner time each day, and 4-6 hours a day on their career each day. I also noticed that the most successful people are the ones who socialize, create connections and valuable relationships, and they make damn sure that wherever they spend their time they remain present and laser focused. I always hated when I am around someone and they are not looking into  yours eyes and they remain in a dreamlike state thinking of being somewhere else just nodding their head like a bobble head toy. So the key things are this:

Do you think your spending your time wisely?

Can you take other actions that can yield you better results?

Are you balancing your time with the most important things in your life?

Spending your time, are you happy or stressed out? Do you have energy after your week or do you feel burnt out?

Do you look forward to the next day or are you dreading it?

Hopefully these thoughts and questions help you out and that you are able to re-calibrate the way you manage your time to do amazing things. Managing your time is one of the keys to living a fulfilling life. Thanks for checking the post out and don't forget to spread the word on my blog and feel free to follow or leave comments good or bad.