Be Resourceful Without Resources — 21 business essentials by TOMS founder.

Paul Etor
Paul Etor
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read

In Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie, a book that I have earmarked and refer to from time to time, TOMS founder wrote:

“Even though they may have excellent ideas, many people still believe that they can’t start a business because they don’t have enough of everything else. But our lack of resources when we started TOMS is one of the reasons we’ve succeeded.”

https://amzn.to/2NMgSrI (If you are starting in business it’s important to do things that don’t scale in the early days. I highly recommend you picking Blake’s brain on this subject.)

There are also a myriad of free tools out there to help you with everything from Web development to public relations. Here are some that Blake Mycoskie have used productively and strongly recommend:

  • “One of the first things I did — and this was when TOMS’ entire workforce in America consisted of me — was to place an ad for interns on craigslist. The ad offered summer internships in design and marketing and referred people to the TOMS website, which was quite nice — nice enough to make it seem as if we were the real deal.” — Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie. www.craigslist.com
  • Read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (free at the library!); it has excellent practical information on stretching your resources.
  • Check out Lifehacker.com. The blog has tons of tips and tricks for increasing your productivity.
  • “Read Seth Godin’s blog, www.seth.blog. One of my marketing mentors, Seth is full of innovative ideas for using new media and other accessible, guerrilla techniques for marketing your work.” — Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie.
  • “Boost your serendipity by using Twitter. When it comes to getting a job or discovering new things, you might be surprised to learn how much you can gain by following friends of friends on Twitter. Our immediate friends already go to the same parties we do, know the same people, and listen to the same music. Not so with our weaker links (friends of friends of friends), who can turn us on to new things. “ — Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie. www.twitter.com

“ A lack of resources is no reason to avoid starting a company. If anything, it often inspires creativity and a competitive edge.” Blake Mycoskie #Quote from #SomethingThatMatters Tweet that

  • Compete (www.compete.com) and Quantcast (www.quantcast.com) can tell you how many monthly visitors your competitors’ websites are getting and the search terms that are generating the most traffic for them. If you know what’s working for your competitors, you can make it work for you too.
  • Similarly, SpyFu (www.spyfu.com) can help you find out competitors’ online advertising spending, plus keyword and ad-word details. If their strategies are working, it’s likely they’ll work for you too
  • Book trips through Kayak (www.kayak.com), the easiest site on which to find and buy plane tickets, car rentals, and hotel reservations. Kayak aggregates other travel search engines like Orbitz.com and CheapTickets.com, saving you both time and money. Another great new site in this space: www.hipmunk.com.
  • Do Doodle (www.doodle.com): This is a great tool for setting up meetings with multiple people who have busy schedules. Send a link with proposed times and dates to the people you need to meet; check back later and Doodle will tell you the ones that work for the most people.
  • Check out Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org), a digital library of more than 30,000 free eBooks to read on your computer or PDA.
  • Tap LibriVox (www.librivox.org), which lets you listen to thousands of audiobooks for free.
  • Look into iStockphoto (www.istockphoto.com), the Net’s largest source of royalty-free photos, vector illustrations, videos, and Flash files.
  • View Footage Firm (www.footagefirm.com), a great source of free and low-cost royalty-free stock video footage.

“Without resources, you will need a lot of other people’s help, and the best way to get that help is to stand for something bigger than just yourself and your business. Tweet That.
“ — Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie

  • With FreeConferenceCall.com, you can get a free, personalized conference-call number. The service offers inexpensive international numbers as well.
  • Try LegalZoom (www.legalzoom.com), an inexpensive resource providing documents for company formation, trademarks, patents, copyrights, and other legal issues.
  • Access Weebly (www.weebly.com), a platform similar to WordPress that allows you to quickly and easily create websites, even if you have no HTML experience.
  • Participate at 99designs (www.99designs.com), which provides a very inexpensive way to get logos, business cards, and websites designed. The service is based on a contest system in which you fill out a simple form about what you’re looking to design (e.g., “I want to create a logo for my company, with XYZ specifications”) and set a budget for what you’re willing to pay. Designers from around the world then submit concepts based on your requirements. As designs are being submitted, you rate the ones that you like the best and give feedback on how the designs can be improved. After a set amount of time (usually seven days), you choose the winning design and pay the designer the prize amount.

startupcolophon

Discover and share founder tools used to run some of today’s great startups and websites.

Paul Etor

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Paul Etor

Take a sneak peak into my startup toolbox as well recommended colophon from other entrepreneurs.

startupcolophon

Discover and share founder tools used to run some of today’s great startups and websites.

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