The icy wind is past tickling your nose, now. It starts to bite and to sting at your cheeks. The mountain looms ahead and you know this: you are minutes away from doing something amazing. These are the Himalayas. Glory awaits.
Or, the little voice at the back of your head (and your mother) would remind […]

Small businesses have a tendency to grow a little. The founders move out of the garage and into an office. Part-time and then full-time employees start to appear. Business goes well–and then it hits an almost invisible hump. Well before bootstrapping is over, the business is too big for the founders to run on their […]

In war, the primary objective is to knock out communication. Your job gets that much easier once lines are broken, powers supplies are cut, radio frequencies are jammed, or towers are taken down. You throw all of your energy into disrupting the enemy’s communication–except for the energy you spend in protecting yours. In business, you […]

True to the company culture at CastleWave, when time came for Rich and Ron to give me the next round of assignments, we sat down and planned. That said, there were no battles fought with flying memos, no flurries of emails, and no two-hour meetings. What we did–what has to be done–was to sit with a […]

Bootstrapping my freelance writing career took (and takes) just as much genius, grit, gusto, and gumption as bootstrapping a business. In their upcoming book Get a Life, Rich and Ron call this having a “fire in the belly” and “nerves of steel.” Don’t worry if you weren’t born with those. I wasn’t. There’s no fire […]