The Death of an Entrepreneur

Here we are coming to the end of a hard, dirty, bullet ridden road. Blood has spilled and the last breath of air enters our lungs. Guess what? This is not the end of the story.

An entrepreneur never dies. They just some how continue to rise from the dead. I know this first hand because I died yet here I am. I am taking yet another breath of air and blood is some how getting to my brain, at least enough to write this post.

What I would like to do is describe the things that lead up to my death so you can avoid following in my path.

1) Your family is #1, #2, and #3. If what you are doing is putting their well being or roof over their head in jeopardy, do not do it. You must be ready well beyond any doubt before you risk the financial pressure and struggles of being an entrepreneur. If I ever strike out again, I will have more money than myself or my family knows what to do with.. with that being said...#4

4) Have so much money in your back pocket that you can not sit down. You better freaking have a mint saved up. Either that or an extremely low requirement for money each month. I had no business starting my last venture. I had no business starting my first venture for that matter because then I had no money and no experience. At least this last time I had one of those two things. One extremely important factor is money. You have to live, eat, and have shelter. You need money for that. Either have a source of revenue prior to starting your venture or have it saved up. Your run way will end if you don't way way too soon. The key and secret to success is runway. You must allow yourself the time you and your business requires to grow and develop into what it was meant to become. A short runway equates to the stress of having to grow fast or die. This pressure is not good or healthy for anyone.

5) Get someone with some sense of finances on your core team. If that person can not dedicate the time or resources to you find someone else. This person needs to watch your money like a hawk and own your ever changing business plan and financial docs. If you are going to require outside funding at some point this (#5) is an absolute requirement for success. I do not care if you have a CPA from Harvard (if that is even possible) you have to build a business and the last thing you need to do is worry about accounting or financial documents until you need them to present to an investor. I had found an ace with sales and accounting skills to help me start BigLeapGPS but his runway was shorter than mine. Looking back, I knew I had to replace him with someone to help in those aspects I was not strong and I didn't. Shame on me!

6) Yes, for the most part, means Hell no screw off. DO NOT listen to the vast majority of people because they are full of shit and are not willing to back anything they say with anything but more shit. I wasted 98.99% of my time on dung spewers. Imagine if I had just stuck to the few that were actually for real in their intentions to work with me and allow us to grow our businesses together. Problem is it is tough to weed out the crap because they are the ones that always sound so good. Keep in mind that 1 out of every 25-30 discussions you have will turn into anything worth your time. People for the most part want to tell you what you want to hear with no intention of ever doing what they say they will do or what you think they will do.

There are more points to address but this is all I can muster tonight.

I have mulled over this post for I know 4-5 months. My intention is not to send future or potential entrepreneurs for the hills. All I want to do is make clear what I learned through dying you can change and adapt to while you still have blood left in your body.

I wanted to make sure I hit home as best I could that it may be exotic thought to start a business and make it successful but the absolute truth is we hear much more about successes then we do of the failures. The successes are those who find their non-shit blower(s) before the runway ends and who have time to still grow their business before an even better funded, more experienced start up doing the same thing eats their lunch. The process is a challenge. It was one of the greatest challenges of my life.

I do want to end this post with something positive... If an entrepreneur dies, they come back stronger.

So worst case, at least you have that to look forward to... Good luck and don't die!!! Get it right the first time....

Hello, I am Joe. I am a bootstrapper.

I wrote this blog as if I were walking into a treatment facility. I am committing myself for the reason of being a bootstrapper. I walk in and everyone says, "Hey Joe, what are you in for?" And I say, Hello I am Joe. I am a bootstrapper. Well what does that really mean? Let's talk about the meaning of "bootstrap" first: "to help oneself, often through improvised means." Every time I read that definition I have to laugh a little to myself because it is so prefect, particularly the bit about improvised means. If you are bootstrapping a business, you are living improvisation firsthand. The only way for a business to not be considered bootstrapped is for it to bring in enough revenue to cover its costs and the costs of the (now very simple) lives of its owners/entrepreneurs.

Although I am a bootstrapper, I have had help along the way. I have received some funds from friends and family to get my business to 2009. In January 2009, I hoped to bring in additional funding from other sources, but the economy's nose dive had other plans for us. That other plan was continued improvisation. But here we are in July, and we are still doing it! We are not just surviving; we are driving! We are going out and developing other markets; we are getting more players involved; we are not stopping. You stop, you die. We believe way too much in what we are doing at this point to die. We believe in our hearts, souls, and minds that our product will make a difference, be successful, and (in our case) save lives. You don't bootstrap if you don't believe. We believe!

So what does it look like? Bootstrapping means no vacations to the beach when everyone else on Facebook is going and snapping pictures. Bootstrapping is living well under whatever means you were used to. So instead of a dinner at Lattitude you have dinner at home, $1 rentals from your local supermarket vs. going to the movies. Bootstrapping is really just living more simple lives then you were probably used to living. And I ask you, is that so bad? Imagine applying the rules of bootstrapping to a family that currently has a good income. Imagine for a second if you acted as if you were improvised by saving vs. spending. WOW! I know I would be in a different place if I followed my own advice today.

The craziest thing of all is that bootstrappers bootstrap by choice. Most of us left paying jobs with normal hours to pursue our dreams, and most of us brought others along for the ride. Our passion propels us out of our comfort and into improv-land. It's an odd place to be; the air seems thinner, like it's hard to get a full, deep breath. It's a steep climb, but we know in our hearts that when we unfasten our bootstaps at the summit, the view will be phenomenal.

Are you a bootstrapper? Please share your story and pictures with us...

I have included a picture of my running shoes which are also my grass cutting shoes and pretty much everything else shoes, for the simply reason that they are my boots, they represent the number of miles I need to get out of every single investment I make.

A Business Case for Connecting

I believe it is going to take a mixture of unique methods to kick start our economy. I am not an economist and do not know how to better spend money none of us have. What I do know is the power of making connections to help our community and yourself down the road. This act may very well be one of the strongest things we can do to boost our economy.

For example, you know someone who makes socks and you know someone who distributes socks well invite them both to lunch or send out an introduction e-mail. There may be nothing there or it could turn into the type relationship that transforms both their businesses. It is not up for you to decide. It is up for them and what can come from them getting together. I bet right now if you think about it there are at least two or three sets of people either in your industry or not that you have thought of to connect together. Do it. Get these people together.

I recently called a lunch meeting with two of the premier wireless leaders in the Upstate. The result of that meeting was two gentlemen who have been in the same industry and in the same geography for more than 10 years coming together on a business idea that could end up being huge for both companies. Prior to this meeting they had never met face to face but when the introduction lunch was called, there was no hesitation.

I did not get anything directly out of the lunch introduction. But I might down the road. I believe that for every good thing you do you are rewarded by 100 virgins, no really, I believe everything comes back around in multiples of three. For every good thing you do, you get it back x3. Plus it just feels good to do something positive in business when everything else around us is so negative.

Please, take a few moments right now to introduce at least two people together who you have been thinking needed to meet. Use Swampfox use Linkedin, you whatever you have, heck... maybe an e-mail or phone call.

Please share your successes in this post of when either someone connected you with someone that had a fundamental change in your business or a connection you made between two individuals or companies that resulted in something very positive.

Fear vs. Belief

While I was out running the other night I realized something seismic: belief conquers fear. More specifically, I had conquered my fear of entrepreneurship through belief. While there are many important steps to building a successful start-up business, none is more important than this: the day you realize that your belief in your idea, product, or service is bigger than your fears and anxiety about the business and its future. The day you realize that is a good day.

Leading up to this moment I remember feeling and even saying to some of you that I felt like you could punch me, stab me, shoot me with whatever you had, and everything would bounce off. This feeling was me overcoming fear and believing more and more in what I was doing and the direction we were heading.

In this path I have traveled for nearly 2 years, there have been the highest highs and the lowest lows. And by lows, I mean stress so intense it resulted in temporary loss of vision in one eye. That's scary. And that's it, really - the lowest lows were fueled by fear. The highest highs were fueled by my belief being validated that things were going to be alright.

I am not going to sit here and tell you I am not going to have more lows. I know I will, and I know they could happen any day. But I also know when they do happen, I will pull through and get on top again.

Belief is easier when you start getting external validation. One such validation of our business and overall business model is the fact that we are slowly growing while other much larger competitors are failing. Much larger, better funded, "better lead" companies are fizzling out of gas, and we are just sitting there watching them fall from the sky like bugs hitting the zapper. Why?

It is not because we have a better product or a better portal or a better idea. It is our model. Our approach to getting business done. Talk about validation of belief! Hiding behind patents seems to be worthless. We have patents, but your only true defense in this global market is execution. No start up has funding to protect its patents against a bigger player, and the time wasted in the courts is time wasted focused on your market.

When you have no money things are tough, but when you have no belief, things are impossible.

TechCrunch50 or not, we are getting ready to Launch!

Here we are.... 1 1/2 years later, we are almost ready to announce to the world our ideas and products on how to effectively reduce the number of missing, lost, and injured children worldwide. I really want this to be drilled home with anyone who reads about or knows anything about BigLeapGPS. We want to bring lost, missing, injured, and kidnapped children home quickly and safely with the world's smallest GPS protection technology that most everyone will be able to afford. We are excited and you should be as well... more coming soon... very very soon!

We were close but no cigar, this year...

Hello everyone... I had to remove all press related to BigLeapGPS and our magic sauce to the GPS market last month because we were on the short list for this year's TechCrunch50 in San Francisco. We ended up not making the cut this year but it has done nothing but motivate us to get it done next year. Here is the website, we were up against some fantastic companies... www.techcrunch50.com. There were over 1000 submissions from 49 different countries. Again, I feel it was a great honor to have made it as far as we did.

So with that being said, BigLeapGPS is moving forward at quite a tick right now... we have our prototype under development as we speak... should be ready to demo in November of this year. Our website is being put together by Orangecoat ... www.orangecoat.com and is going to be a showstopper... not to build it up or anything. But we should be releasing the website, our press release on our official launch, and other things very very soon so please stay tuned....

This has been an amazing trip so far. Thank you to everyone who has been apart of this and I look forward to us all celebrating the success of BigLeapGPS for years to come....

BigLeapGPS LLC. receives investment from private source and SCLaunch!

Submitted by: Joe Milam on Aug 08, 2008 at 3:12 pm Tagged with: Investment, start up Source: BigLeapGPS LLC.

BigLeapGPS LLC., a disruptive GPS technology start up focused on the licensing, engineering and delivery of the world's smallest personal GPS device, is pleased to announce receiving seed investment from a private source as well as a product development grant from SCLaunch!

“We are excited that after a year of hard work we are finally on our way,” said Joe Milam, the founder of BigLeapGPS, LLC.

BigLeapGPS LLC. is a company that is focused on delivering safety and peace-of-mind through the application of wireless networks, GPS location and software technology.

The BigLeapGPS device is a non-obtrusive, easy to use, and highly customizable solution for use in multiple markets from asset tracking to personal protection. All BigLeapGPS devices are tied to a 24/7 web portal for accurate, real time and historical device location anywhere in the GSM cellular world.

The BigLeapGPS story started nearly one year ago after an unsuccessful search for a small GPS device for protecting children. The passion for child protection translated into some amazing innovation that will change the way manufacturers build personal GPS devices.

For details on their technology please contact Joe at jmilam@bigleapgps.com

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