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11 Lessons from

Bootstrapping a
Non-Tech Startup
The brutal journey of idea to reality

By Isaac Morehouse
For my wife Heather, my brother Levi, the Praxis team,
and all the Praxians out there.

(Cover design by Jackie Blum)

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Contents

Who’s writing this book? ------------------------------ 4
The Setup -------------------------------------------------- 6
The Lessons ----------------------------------------------- 8
Build yourself -------------------------------------------------- 9
It’s gotta pass the willing to fail test --------------------- 12
Go all the way or don’t even try -------------------------- 14
Do one thing every day ------------------------------------- 18
Social is the most valuable kind of capital ------------- 21
Obstacles are for others ------------------------------------ 24
Don’t look for money until you have to ----------------- 29
Focus on a single customer -------------------------------- 33
Sell stone soup ----------------------------------------------- 37
Taking a beating beats throwing the big punch ------- 40
Stop looking for a silver bullet ---------------------------- 44

Ending ---------------------------------------------------- 47

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Who’s writing this book?

I am. Nice to meet you.

I’m not a ‘serial entrepreneur’. I’m not even sure if I’m a


successful entrepreneur. I guess it depends on your
definition.

Most business books are written after success is a fact. I


always thought it would be cool to read one written in the
middle of the process of creating success. I couldn’t find
any, so I decided to write one.

I started a company called Praxis in 2013 with no previous


business experience to speak of. We began at zero, and
we’re now a real, growing, profitable company with
hundreds of customers and a team of employees.

Praxis is a startup apprenticeship program. It’s a


combination of professional boot camp plus coaching plus
community and paid work experience for top-notch young
people who want more than college. It’s radical and
practical all at once. You can learn more about it at
discoverpraxis.com if you like.

But this book isn’t about a specific company. It’s about the
earliest stages of starting one. It’s about my personal
experience of going from complete startup novice to

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founder and CEO, and what I learned in the process about
the process.

Praxis isn’t a tech company. Though we have some


proprietary tech, we’re more of a service company, so my
experience may have little in common with a pure software
founder. But I suspect these lessons and experiences, since
they’re mostly about the very beginning when the product
is just an idea, will overlap with a wide variety of startups.

Praxis isn’t VC backed, nor is it strictly bootstrapped (I


don’t do anything the normal way). I launched it with no
funding and ran it that way for a while, then took on a
small, non-traditional angel investment, then a year later,
another. It took us another year after that to break even. To
date, we’re running our own steam. I refer to it as
bootstrapped because it began that way, and because we
could have and would have continued that way had an
ideal angel not approach us. We have more in common
with a bootstrapped startup than a venture backed
company.

Enough boring stuff. Let’s get into it.

Isaac Morehouse, 2017

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The Setup

Launching a company is more like having a baby than


anything else I can compare it to.

When I had the idea, it was like being pregnant. A weird


mix of inevitability and scary hard work. You know this
thing is going to — must — come into the world. You also
know you’ve got a lot of really tough work to do to ensure
you properly nurture and birth it.

These eleven lessons are sort of like a, “What to Expect


When You’re Expecting” for startups. These are some of
the things I learned from the day the idea for Praxis was
conceived, through the newborn and early toddler years.

Today, we’re somewhere in the awkward early teen phase.


The lessons I’m learning now are very different, and I don’t
yet see them clearly enough to describe them. Babies and
teens are alike only in genetic material. Everything else
changes.

I don’t share these lessons as a guide to success. I have no


idea what you’ll need to do to succeed. Nor do I share them
as a retrospective on my own success. We haven’t had a
billion dollar exit, or raised tens of millions from celebrity
investors, or become a household name. We’re a young,

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growing company, but we’re still striving every day to
become a cliché and Change The World.

This is a look at the founding of the company and the key


lessons I learned. I don’t even know if they’re the right
takeaways, but they’re the ones that stuck with me.

I can’t tell you what it takes to get to the mountaintop


because we haven’t gotten there yet. But I can tell you what
it took me to get from idea to where we are now.

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The Lessons

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Lesson 1

“Can’t change the world unless we change ourselves”


—Notorious B.I.G. (probably not)

My colleague TK Coleman and I like to joke about this


quote from the trailer of what looks like a badly made
movie about one of the greatest rappers of all time. It
doesn’t seem like Biggy would’ve uttered such an empty
cliché, so we use it in situations that get too close to cheesy
inspiration as a way to playfully mock self-seriousness and
pretension. Never fails.

But like all fluffy clichés, it’s true. That’s the first lesson for
getting a company from idea to reality.

Lesson 1: You can’t build a company unless you


build yourself

TK was busy building a career in Hollywood, hustling to


act, produce, write, and launch an entertainment tech
startup. He decided to do something that had nothing to do
with his career goals and was not required for any job. He
started blogging every single day.

TK prioritizes personal growth over everything. He’s a


voracious reader, and he decided he needed to push
himself to do more than consume ideas. He needed to
create, and ship them out to the world. I watched him

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transform from an irresponsibly curious guy to a
disciplined, creative machine. Then he turned it on me.
He challenged me to blog every day for 6 months. I
committed, and that was the first step in the launch of
Praxis.

The blogging had nothing to do with startups or Praxis. It


had to do with pushing myself to become a better version
every day, even if I didn’t have to. I had a great job and
daily blogging added nothing to it. But it worked wonders
for my personal growth. I became a creative machine.

More ideas came, more energy, more confidence, and more


clarity. Finally, an idea a decade in the making came into
focus. An alternative to college. It seemed so simple, and
I’d been sniffing around the edges of something like it since
my own underwhelming university experience. Praxis was
born because TK continued to build himself when he didn’t
have to, and pushed me to do the same.

We built the company around this culture. Every member


of the team is inspiring. They are each committed to
relentless personal growth. That’s why it works. A person
who knows how to grow themselves and add value to their
own life can grow an idea and add value to a company.

I had a lot of entrepreneurial ideas prior to Praxis. Most


were pretty weak, some were good. But it didn’t matter. I
didn’t have what it takes to execute on any of them until I
pushed myself much, much harder on personal growth.
Monthly challenges, daily blogging, and a commitment to
doing one thing each day to add value to myself were
prerequisites to launching a company.

The idea matters. But ideas come and go and are


unpredictable. You can’t wait around for a great idea. Get

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busy building yourself so that if and when a great idea
comes, you’ll be ready and able to act.

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Lesson 2

“In some attempts, it is glorious even to fail.” 


—Longinus

Everyone is too scared of failure. But also, everyone


glorifies failure too much. ‘Failure porn’ is a real genre of
Medium articles and trendy startup swag. It’s pretty stupid.

Failure sucks. It’s awful. It should be avoided. You


shouldn’t feel weird for not liking failure. You should want
to win.

But some things are worth failing for. When you find one,
you need to act and fast.

Lesson 2: It’s gotta pass the willing to fail test

I had a lot of business ideas prior to Praxis. All of them


shared a common trait. They all required several things I
didn’t have if I were to pursue them.

“If I knew for sure about X, I could try this.”

“If I had X amount of money, I’d try this.”

“If I could find person X, I’d try this.”

I liked the ideas, but I needed less risk in order to take a


step. In other words, I was willing to launch any number of

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them, but only if I knew there was very little chance of
failure.

That’s a sign that I’m not the right person to launch that
company. If you’re in it because you think it’s a sure thing,
you will quit when it gets really, really hard. And it will.

Praxis, on the other hand, was so all-consuming and


captivating that none of those objections mattered. I didn’t
have money and I didn’t know how to get it. I didn’t have
the team, expertise, market knowledge, or any assurance
demand was real. I didn’t care though.

I was so obsessed with the question, “Is my theory about a


better way to build a career correct?” that I needed an
answer more than I needed the answer to be ‘yes’.

This was the first business idea I was willing to fail for.
When I thought about trying Praxis and failing, it felt ten
times better than the thought of not trying it at all. That
was the test. That was how I knew this was the one.

That’s when I cashed in all my chips. I don’t want to fail,


but I want my answer more than I want to not fail.

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Lesson 3

“I would go 0 for 30 before I would go 0 for 9.”


 —Kobe Bryant

Launching a startup takes some big, scary leaps. You can’t


leap tentatively. You can’t go in with an escape plan. You
need to burn the ships behind you when you reach the
shore in order to have the tenacity necessary for the attack.

Lesson 3: Go all the way or don’t even try

When I knew I wanted nothing more than to get Praxis off


the ground, there was one more hurdle before I got started.
My most important partner in every endeavor needed to be
on board. My wife.

I’m pretty persuasive and she’s pretty trusting of me, so


many times in our marriage I talk her into something.
She’s not an easy sell, but if I persist enough, I can usually
get at least a tepid ‘OK’. The problem with anything less
than full-hearted agreement is that if things go south, I’ve
got to pay later for pushing her further than she really
wanted to go.

Even if unspoken, the feeling that I dragged her into


something that turned out badly is awful, and a wedge in
the family. It puts me in a defensive position, irrationally
trying to justify the decision while she goes on the offense
and uses her original hesitancy as leverage against me.

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I knew that a startup was unlikely to succeed under these
conditions, and my family certainly wouldn’t. That wasn’t
an option. I needed her in on this 100% if I was going to be
able to go in 100%.

So I made a pitch. It might have been the weakest pitch I’ve


ever made to her.

I said, “I believe in this idea. I love it. It feels different than


other ideas. I am willing to commit to launching this thing
whatever it takes, win or lose. But I’m only willing to do
that if you are in too. I don’t want you to go along with it
just to make me happy and then later regret it. I don’t want
you to use it against me later if doing this means we have to
suffer. I can’t promise you anything. We might end up
living in my mom’s basement. I might be working all night.
I might be emotionally drained all the time. We might get
clobbered in the market. We might have haters. We might
succeed and get rich and have a lot of friends and family
resent us for it. I have no idea. All I know is that I’m willing
to go for it and live with the consequences, but only if you
are too. Take all the time you need to decide if you’re all in.
I won’t mention it again. Think really realistically about
what it might mean, and whether you will be bitter down
the road if it’s tough. If you say no, I will not pursue it.”
And I meant it.

She said nothing but, “OK, I’ll think about it.”

I was champing at the bit. I could not wait to get started,


but I also prepared myself for the possible pain of her
saying no. There’s only one thing in the world that could
keep me from launching this thing, and that was my family.
That’s the one thing I couldn’t force and cajole. It had to be
real, genuine agreement.

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I waited.

I waited some more.

OK, now it’s just getting ridiculous. Did she forget? Is she
trying to torture me? Is she waiting for me to sweeten the
deal somehow? Maybe I should remind her? No. I told her
to take as long as she needed and I told her I’d say nothing
more.

So I waited.

We usually make decisions very fast. A few minutes is


normal. A few hours an exception. Days? Never.

Two weeks. The longest two weeks of my life.

After two weeks of silence, one day as I was grabbing a


snack and she was standing in the kitchen she looked up
and said, “OK. Let’s do this. I’m ready.”

That was one of the best moments of our marriage.


Probably because it’s one of the few times where I didn’t do
any talking. I knew she meant it. I knew it was her saying
yes to Praxis, not her saying yes to me. That meant
everything. I needed her on my side to go full throttle. She
gave me a blank check to pursue this thing come what may.
That was by far the most valuable investment in the
company. She was the first investor. The first person to
believe in the idea so strongly they were willing to put
tremendous personal resources at risk to make it a reality.

We’ve had hellish moments. Many. She’s never once held it


against me or asked me to stop or complained that Praxis
takes a toll. She gave me the go-ahead to keep shooting the
ball, even if I went 0–30.

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If I had partially pursued it while hoping to win her over
just enough to let me pursue it a little more, I would have
gotten crushed by the first big setback. I could always use
the excuse, “Well, I guess I have to stop for my wife’s sake.”
Destroying any excuse to retreat or any way to pin it on
someone else put me in a position of win or die. Best thing
I could have done.

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Lesson 4

“The most powerful force in the universe is compound


interest” 
—Albert Einstein (unverified)

Ever heard that riddle about whether you should take a


million dollars or a penny, doubled each day for a month?
Take the penny. You’ll end up with $1.3M if it’s a 28-day
month, and as much as $10.7M if it’s a 31-day month.

Doubling is extreme, but even growth of a fraction of a


percent compounded every single day can achieve mind-
boggling results. When you’re trying to go from idea to
inception, progress each day is crucial. You can’t get stuck
waiting for one big leap. You need to take at least one step
every single day.

Lesson 4: Do one thing every day to make your


company more valuable

I was in way over my head when I decided to make the idea


for Praxis a reality. How to file for incorporation? Do I
need to do that before I build a website? How to build a
website? Do I need money? Where to get it? Do I get
businesses lined up first, or start selling customers first?
What price-point makes the most sense? How to describe
the company? Do I need brochures? Do I need a formal
business plan? Do I need to build the curriculum first, or
get some market interest first? Do I need to setup a

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business bank account? Who could help me navigate all
this?

My brother, a seasoned entrepreneur already, told me to


chill out. He said none of that matters right now. “Just do
one thing to take the idea closer to reality. Just one thing.
Then after that, do one more thing. If you run out of things
and hit a wall that requires some kind of outside
assistance, get it. Until then, don’t worry about it.”

I was mentally trying to solve problems from the future. I


had a list of hurdles I imagined stopping me tomorrow,
and it was crippling my today.

His advice was freeing. I was still working full-time and


wasn’t able to devote all my time to Praxis anyway, so I
made a commitment. I would do at least one thing every
single day to make the company more valuable. That’s it.
Just one thing. No other deadlines or goals of having this
or that done by this or that date. Just every day, I had to
answer ‘yes’ to the question, “Is Praxis more valuable now
than it was yesterday?”

Some days, I couldn’t do anything but search the web for


ten minutes looking for similar programs in the market, or
buying a domain. Not massively valuable, but one thing
done.

Other days, I spent hours on end feverishly writing


marketing copy, contacting business owners, talking with
college students about whether they’d consider
alternatives, building spreadsheets to play with the
business model, talking with web designers, outlining the
curriculum content, and more.

I did as much as I could whenever possible, but what really


mattered was hitting my minimum of one thing done.

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What really mattered was not letting a single day go by
where this thing didn’t make progress. Time is the enemy
with a startup. A day without action means you’re going
backwards, losing value.

This approach worked wonders. The idea never lost


momentum. There wasn’t enough time to talk myself out of
it. Some days I was on fire with enthusiasm and faith in the
idea, other days I did my one thing with little excitement
and lots of doubt. But I committed to doing one thing every
day, so I had to act regardless of inspiration. It moved me
from the vulnerable sand of emotion to the unsexy concrete
of action.

And it did compound. I made it so much farther than I ever


imagined before I even needed to think about things like
raising money or addressing big, huge hurdles I imagined.

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Lesson 5

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by


this some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
—Hebrews 13:2

I had a lot to do, much of it outside my ability, much of it


costly, and I had a few grand I could put on my personal
credit card and that was it. The idea for Praxis wasn’t
fundable yet, and I didn’t even know what the letters “VC”
meant anyway, let alone how to go raise it.

But I didn’t need any of that, because I had something far


more valuable. I had dozens of accounts with positive
balances of social capital, and it was time to cash them in.

Lesson 5: Social is the most valuable kind


of capital

The first decade of my “professional” life was full of


meaningful connections. I went out of my way to meet
people, follow up with people, respond same-day to every
email, look for excuses to write thank you notes (physical
ones!), generously offer help without asking anything in
return, and connect people to each other whenever
possible.

Part of this is my personality. I’m a connector and a people


person. But part of it was a choice and it took a lot of
practice. I am not sentimental, I move on to the next thing

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quickly, and I’m forgetful. That made the practice of
writing thank you notes the furthest thing from natural. A
leader I respected wrote me a thank you note for
something small. I asked him why, and he passed on advice
someone had given to him, “Look for excuses to write
thank you notes.” It stuck with me. I bought a stack and
carried them with me everywhere, stamps and envelopes
too. I used them generously.

It’s not so much about thank you notes specifically, but the
mindset necessary to write lots of them. It
requires/develops an abundance mindset. You begin to see
win-wins everywhere. You become more grateful and
happy. You begin to see subtle ways people just doing their
job is helpful to you. This in turn makes you more able and
willing to help more people out.

Instead of a social spender, you become an investor in your


network. When you meet new people, instead of handing
them a business card and asking them to help you, you
default to genuine interest in them, a real connection, and
seeking any way in which their interests could be served by
something or someone you know. Every person you meet
has an invisible account with your name on it. Every
interaction is a deposit or a withdrawal.

I made deposits. Tons of them. For years and years with no


clear payoff at the end. I enjoyed it and it seemed like a
good idea. I didn’t have a clear and compelling reason to
spend any social capital, so why not keep investing and
saving unless and until I did?

When I went all-in on Praxis, I knew this was the time to


empty my accounts and even go into social capital debt.

I turned to friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and


acquaintances of acquaintances. I cashed in every ounce of

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social capital I had and got some lines of credit. I asked for
introductions, advice, lists of leads, design help, tech help,
legal help, strategic help, research help, product
development help, and most of all help spreading the word.
I traded some phantom stock and paid some cash, but I
mostly traded on goodwill and positive social capital I’d
built from helping lots of people, being kind and open
appreciative, and having a reputation as a guy who helps
lots of people.

Had I seen my professional life as a zero-sum game, where


I must exploit and best every threat and carve the biggest
slice of a fixed pie, Praxis never would have left the
launchpad. The fact that I chose to see it as a positive-sum
game, where helping as many people win as possible would
grow the size of the pie, meant that I had access to a lot
more of it when the time came.

The social capital I cashed in to get started was priceless.


I’m not being cute. There is no amount of money I could
have raised that could have accomplished what a deep,
wide, and rich social network did.

I’m so glad I had the patience and self-control to not get


spendy early in my career and trade tiny bits of social
capital for tiny promotions, pay raises, or prestige. I
needed a huge balance to build a company, and my long-
cultivated habit of generously depositing social capital
everywhere possible was the only way.

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Lesson 6

“The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t
want it badly enough.”
—Randy Pausch

There’s a fatal flaw in your plan. Your business model, or


market, or pricing, or something about your crazy idea is
going to stop you dead in your tracks. Of course. That’s
probably why no one else has done it yet.

Or maybe that’s why you’re going to succeed where they


failed.

Lesson 6: Obstacles are for others

I was thrilled. Things were really happening!

Every day, Praxis got closer to public launch. The


curriculum modules were under construction, a designer
was working on the logo, website, and collateral. I was
writing website copy, building relationships with business
partners, and building a list of students, events, blogs, and
other outlets to push at launch.

Then I revisited my brilliant business model for some


tweaks, stumbled upon a paragraph hidden on the
Department of Labor website, and damn near lost it.

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My goal from day one was a program that took one year or
less and cost $0 to participants who got accepted. They
would get awesome coaching, community, curriculum
resources and experience as a startup apprentice, and get
hired right out of the program. No debt, no lost time, no
boring BS make-work or memorization.

Business partners would get highly vetted raw talent to


work and learn under them. They took a chance on
younger, less experienced people, but on the flipside they
got low-cost talent with great attitude, upside, and ongoing
support and training from Praxis.

It was a win-win-win.

My model was simple. The program was free to participants


and the apprenticeship was unpaid. Business partners
would pay Praxis to find, filter, train, match, and support
the participants through the apprenticeship.

Everything I had built so far was around this simple


structure. I’d written tons of different copy for FAQ’s, social
media, blogs, and the Praxis website and program guides. It
was all focused on a zero cost program.

Then I ran smack into the heinous outcome of idiot


bureaucrats and corrupt special interests. Public Choice
Theory predicts and explains just this kind of thing
perfectly.

My model was maybe sorta kinda illegal.

Like most government policies, this one was full of weird


exemptions, and impossible to determine with certainty
whether I’d run afoul of the law, but it didn’t look good. In
typically absurd fashion, a young person could only work

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for free if they created no value for the company. In fact,
the DOL policy read,

The employer…derives no immediate advantage from the


activities of the intern and on occasion its operations may
actually be impeded.

Yes. Imagine that great pitch to a growing company. “Hey,


I’ll provide you an apprentice, but I promise they will not
help your business at all, and they may actually impede
your progress. Whaddaya say?”

Like all comfy sounding labor laws, this was created at the
behest of older, better off workers as a deliberate attempt
to shut out younger, lower skilled workers. Vested interests
don’t like free market competition.

I was irate and felt defeated by Leviathan. I’ve got no love


for government intervention already, so the economist and
political philosopher in me spent plenty of energy being
incensed.

To think, millions of young people are goaded and


pressured into going five figures in debt and staying out of
the market for half a decade in college, where they learn
near nothing and it’s considered normal. Yet if one of these
young people says, “Screw that. I’ll spend no money and go
learn by offering to work for free under someone who’s
already doing what I want to do!” Illegal. Because, of
course, being trained for free is exploitation, while paying
fifty grand to learn nothing is education.

I called my brother. I told him they did it. They killed my


dream with the dead hand of policy. I was despondent. I
began to realize that I had been naive all along. Of course
there’s some big obvious reason no one else is doing this.

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C’mon Isaac, you really think you’re that special? That no
one else had an idea like this?

My brother laughed.

At a time like this, he laughed.

I said, “How is this funny?!” He said, “Look, there’s always


some obstacle like this. That’s what keeps away everyone
who doesn’t want it as bad as you. Stop getting mad and
get creative. There’s always a way around it. Don’t give up.
Find it.”

That’s it. He was utterly unconcerned. To him, it was a


given that I could navigate around this law. He seemed to
think it’d be fun. That change of mindset changed
everything. I smiled and realized he was right. This was
going to be one more reason I would succeed, because it’d
be easy to stop now, and I wouldn’t.

Something amazing happened almost immediately after I


switched my mind from helpless victim of state oppression
to clever entrepreneur excited by a challenge. I found a way
around it. It was actually rather easy and obvious, but I was
too blinded by anger and defeat to see it at first.

Participants would pay tuition. Then they’d get paid by the


business during their apprenticeship. What they earned
would equal or exceed what they paid. The end result
(though a little less sexy marketing-wise) was the same.
Participants got all the same benefits and an
apprenticeship in less than a year for $0. Praxis earned the
same revenue, and business partners paid the same for
talent.

I felt dumb for missing such a simple fix. But I can’t


overstate the extent to which I thought my dream was

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dead. Mindset is everything. If you’re willing to take no for
an answer, you’ll get it. If you’re not, you’ll navigate a sea of
no’s until you find a yes.

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Lesson 7

“Maybe I destroyed the game. Or maybe you’re just


making excuses.” 
—Michael Jordan

They can do it because they got funding. You’re stuck


because you need money to do all the big things necessary
to grow your startup idea into a real company. If only you
had the advantages they do! Of course they have traction,
because some VC took a chance on them. You can’t get
customers without money!

Lies.

All lies. I had to learn and relearn this. I thought I needed


money. Nope, not yet. Maybe now? Nope. Still more I can
do. Now? Still no.

Lesson 7: Don’t look for money until you’ve tapped


out everything else

It takes a lot longer to exhaust all possible bootstrap


growth activities than you think. When money is not an
option, you get way, way more creative. Every time you
think you’ve reach a true stopping point, where nothing
more can be done without money, you discover a new
batch of things you can do to move forward.

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I’m not for or against raising money. What I’m against is
closing off your greatest asset — your work ethic and
imagination — because you’ve bought the, “I can only do X
with money” narrative. I’m wary of this narrative because I
had to fight it. It’s a tough opponent.

My brother bootstrapped a company for seven years with


no outside funding. When he went to throw gas on an
already growing fire, he was able to raise $10.2M in less
than a year on great terms. It was his sound advice that
tied me to the mast to resist the Siren song of fast funding.

I’m good at selling a vision. Raising money seemed an


easier task than grinding out some traction. I kept thinking
I’d better go raise so I could build the product the way I
really wanted to, market the way I really wanted to, etc. My
brother’s advice reeled me back in.

I’ll never forget it. We were sitting in my 2002 Saturn in an


Isle of Palms parking lot outside a hotel where he was
spending the weekend while visiting us. He said, “What are
you stressed about? You have an ideal situation. You have a
great job that allows you to build this thing on the side for
the time being. Just keep doing that. Do every single thing
you can before you even worry about the need to quit your
job, raise money, etc. Not only will everything you do now
improve terms for any future funding, but if you had a
million dollars right now, how would you use it? You’d
probably waste it. You can try stuff cheap now, experiment
at low risk, and figure out what efforts are worth more
money.”

I knew he was right. I didn’t want him to be right, because


the, “Imagine all we could do with money” narrative is
exciting and intoxicating. But I knew I could do a lot more
before I actually ran into walls that couldn’t be climbed
without money. I also knew he was right about wasting it.

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If I had a million dollars to start Praxis, I shudder now to
think of all the ways I would have misused it. I needed
small victories under my belt before I took any big swings.

Not only does bootstrapping as long as possible mean you


get more creative, figure out what gets traction, and
improve future terms, it also means you have more skin in
the game. This is an important incentive structure. The
more you are playing with your own resources, the sharper
your decisions. Milton Friedman famously described the
four ways to spend money, and the level of care with which
you’ll act in each case. You’re the most prudential spending
your own money on yourself, less spending your own
money on someone else, less spending someone else’s
money on yourself, and least of all spending someone else’s
money on someone else. The longer you can incentivize the
wisest form of spending, the better.

Outside funding isn’t evil. It’s wonderful and can be


necessary. I ended up raising an Angel investment just nine
months after deciding to build the company. Paradoxically,
it was only after I firmly committed to build the company
without funding that people began to take notice. I didn’t
seek the Angel investor, he sought me. Why? Because I had
a bit of buzz and traction. Buzz and traction I wouldn’t
have if I’d spent those months chasing funding instead of
trying to get my first customer. I was building the
company, with or without money, which made the prospect
of investing attractive. People want to invest in
momentum, not just ideas. I wasn’t bluffing. Praxis was
going to keep moving, money or not. That commitment
was necessary.

Every time I thought I was out of steps and needed money,


I refused to let myself give in to the narrative that money
was my only move. I’d ask myself, “If money wasn’t an

31
option and would never be an option, what would I do?”
There was always something.

Maybe well-funded startups destroyed the game. Or maybe


you’re just making excuses.

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Lesson 8

“Everything I do, I do it for you.” 


—Bryan Adams

You’ve got a dynamite idea and a great product. There are


so many angles to market it, and so many verticals to sell.
You see a future where your customer base is massive, and
you don’t want to exclude anyone in your early efforts. You
struggle to define your target market, because you want it
so big. You struggle to define your pitch, because it can
alleviate so many pain points for different people.

I feel you. But if your market includes everyone, it includes


no one. I knew I’d do better with a tighter market. Ideally,
as Peter Thiel describes in Zero to One, a tiny niche I could
monopolize.

But even this was broad enough for me to lose focus. The
real break-through for choosing actions to get traction
came when I got down to the smallest unit possible.

Lesson 8: Focus on a single customer

No company serves “society”, or, “consumers”, or,


“Millennials”. These aggregate abstractions are useful in a
pitch deck to describe the macro landscape, but when the
rubber meets the road, a company can only serve real,
individual human beings.

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When I was bootstrapping Praxis and trying to exploit
every low-cost marketing and PR opportunity possible, I
realized the message was only potent when highly targeted.
“Hey, ambitious young people, check this out!” is pretty
weak compared to, “Hey Jane Doe, let me show you how
this can help you achieve your specific goals.”

Whether targeting Jane Doe is scalable doesn’t matter.


Common (and very good) advice about startups is to do
things that don’t scale at first. Worry about scale after you
have traction. But I think a target market of one is more
scalable than it seems.

In marketing, it’s sometimes called a customer Persona or


Avatar. You create a fictional person with a background
and bio, and you tailor your message and medium to them.
It’s often more effective than tailoring it to a big lump like,
“18–25 year olds interested in business and
entrepreneurship.” When you market to a collective, it feels
that way to your market. No one likes to feel like an
interchangeable member of a homogeneous blob.

I didn’t know the marketing mumbo-jumbo or research it.


I just realized that a thousand fans or ten potential
customers were worth nothing compared to one actual,
paying customer. Especially when doing something totally
new, where social proof is key.

I created a hypothetical customer in my head. I asked


myself, “What kind of person would love Praxis, and what
kind of person would Praxis love?” I defined this person in
detail.

I pictured a guy who had a few semesters of college he paid


for himself and hated it. He’d attend a specific conference
where I was speaking, and have specific intellectual
interests and life experiences. I wanted a raging

34
individualist from the Midwest who mixes practical, not-
to-good for anything work ethic with wild Silicon Valley
dreaming and lots of swagger. When I wrote and spoke
about Praxis, I spoke to that person directly. It was a
certain type of individual within a small niche of young
people I already knew well.

Then I met him.

I was speaking at a conference in Michigan when a guy


came up to me brimming with confidence and restlessness
and asked several direct questions about Praxis. I decided
then and there this would be my first customer. I didn’t
care about anything as much as getting him into the
program. He was the customer I needed to prove the
model. If it couldn’t work for him, it was doomed anyway.
If it could, it opened up the possibility of so many more
customers in so many more niches.

He started his application on the spot. But it took several


weeks and lots of emails and calls before he decided to
make the leap, quit his job, drop his schooling for good,
move away from loved ones, and go all-in. His name was
Mitchell Broderick, and he turned out to be a smashing
success story that has helped pave the way for many more
customers. He proved what’s possible for a Praxis
participant.

I never would have sold Mitch had I tried to sell his entire
demographic. I never would have sold him had I tried to do
it in a scalable way. My choice to channel all my efforts to
one specific, imagined customer led me to one specific, real
customer for whom I targeted everything.

Lots of people will tell you they like your company or


would buy your product. This means absolutely nothing
until you get one to pay for it. Forget about tweaking and

35
optimizing your approach to fit some conglomerate of
opinion from people with no skin in the game. Instead,
define down to the last detail your ideal first customer.
Target one single person, real or imagined, until you make
a sale. Get someone to pay you. Only then is your idea real,
and market-proven.

Then do it again. Then again.

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Lesson 9

“I sold some stuff.”


—Lloyd Christmas

Alright, the company is real now. But your product


requires some resources that only come when you have
commitments from customers… and customers require a
product before they’ll commit to anything.

It might be time to sell something you don’t yet have so you


can get the resources necessary to build it.

Lesson 9: Sell stone soup

There’s a children’s story about three hungry soldiers who


wander into a small village. They go around asking for
food, but the villagers say they don’t have any to spare.
Undaunted, the soldiers decide to capture the imagination
of the villagers. They announce they will make stone soup.

Everyone’s curious. They bring a pot and water and some


stones. As it begins to boil, the soldiers describe how
delicious stone soup is, and how they’ve made it for very
important people. The villagers are excited to see how they
can possibly make soup from stones. The soldiers comment
that it’d be better with a few carrots, and an excited villager
brings them some. Same for potatoes, barley, cream,
meat… you get the idea. Soon the whole village has a great

37
feast with soup, bread, beer, and dancing. Everyone loves
it. All from three stones!

The take-away from the story helped me get Praxis off the
ground.

The soldiers knew if they had the resources, they could feed
themselves and deliver an end product the entire village
would love. Just asking for ingredients wouldn’t do. They
had to sell the end product before they were capable of
delivering it. They needed to paint a picture of the possible
as if it already existed. They took a gamble on themselves.
They knew if they could sell the vision, they’d be able to
deliver in the end. Had they produced a bad soup, or kept it
all for themselves, they’d be run out of town on a rail.

Whether a pre-sale, KickStarter campaign, or straight-up


commitment to deliver what you don’t yet have, some early
stage businesses need to solve the customer-product catch-
22.

I needed good businesses that would host apprentices. I


needed good apprentices who would create value for
businesses. I had to sell stone soup.

I went to my personal network of business owners, and


asked them to introduce me to other business owners, and
presented a theoretical proposition: If we had great young
people who were highly vetted and trained by Praxis,
would you host them in your company for a paid
apprenticeship? I described the customers I hoped to
attract, even though I didn’t yet have them. I got about 20–
30 businesses to say, “Yeah, probably.” Good enough.
Those were our first business partners.

I listed them on the website and used them as examples of


the BP’s in our network when recruiting applicants. I knew

38
if I had good people, I could place them at these and other
businesses, even though no company had given me a firm
commitment to host.

We got applications and accepted our first 6 participants


into the first class of the program. Now the real work began
of delivering on the promise. Participants in hand, I went
back to the theoretical business partners and made it real.
“Take a look at this person. You up for bringing them on as
an apprentice? We’ll provide X, Y, and Z, and you just need
to provide a great experience with Z, B, and C.” It took a lot
of shopping to find the right fit. But I did, and now we were
real. We had real business partners and real customers.

The business partner network today is dramatically


different than it was then. In fact, of those first 20–30
BP’s, probably only 4–5 of them even meet our criteria
anymore. We got a lot tighter, clearer, and more
demanding in what we expect. With a track record of
quality talent, we can afford to.

Now when we say we have businesses in nearly every major


city, we have actual businesses that have explicitly agreed
to host apprentices or are doing so now. When we started,
we just had belief in the ability to make it happen.

Selling stone soup is scary. If you can get all the resources
and build the full product before selling, do. But often you
can’t, and you have to decide if you’re going to let it stop
you, or if you’re going to bet on your ability to deliver and
sell a product that doesn’t yet exist.

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Lesson 10

“It ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you
can get hit and keep moving forward.”
—Rocky Balboa

When your company is a newborn, all you can think about


is throwing that knockout uppercut on the status quo.
You’re here to disrupt. You’re here to claim the belt. You’re
here to posterize the stale old industry with a down-for-
the-count sledgehammer.

You’re one punch away from hoisting the heavyweight title.

Problem is, you don’t have enough time to throw that big
punch because you’re taking jab after jab after jab before
you can gather yourself.

That’s when you realize that staying on your feet to go the


distance might be more important than that one big blow.

Lesson 10: Taking a beating beats throwing the


big punch

About a year in to Praxis, we started to get pounded. The


excitement of launch faded, so too the excitement of getting
the first customers, launching the first class, and seeing
them graduate with success. The big firsts were over. Now
we had to do it all again, but more, bigger, and better. And

40
we had to generate our own buzz because we weren’t
inherently cool for being brand new anymore.

Not only that, there were all kinds of problems revealing


themselves. Our application process was in need of
improvement. Our business partner on-boarding process
too. Our website was getting stale. Our spreadsheet “CRM”
was pushed to capacity. We had no real marketing funnel,
and though we produced tons of excellent content, we
weren’t effectively using it to capture leads. We knew how
to broadcast our message, but not to connect and engage
those intrigued by it.

It got worse. We had a few bad experiences with


participants flaking at their business partners, burning
bridges and costing us revenue. Year two growth was
slowing. Then the worst of all imaginable things happened.
We lost one of our participants. Nothing grinds you to a halt
like the death of someone close to you. Nothing.

I was overwhelmed. It felt like a flurry of punches from


nowhere.

On the long car ride home from a Future Business Leaders


of America conference in Nashville, I turned on one of my
favorite podcasts, EconTalk, to hear a conversation between
host Russ Roberts and WSJ’s Gregory Zuckerman about the
energy boom in the middle United States.

One of the things that struck me from the stories of wildly


successful oil and natural gas “frackers” and investors was
how often, how big, and how long they failed. The ones
who succeeded in the end owed (at least) as much to

41
persistence and outlasting the competition as they did to
special insight or entrepreneurial genius.

Some of these people just kept taking failures the way


Rocky took headshots and body blows, and staggered back
up to attempt another wild punch. At times it seems almost
sad. Rocky evoked pity in round after round, face bloodied.
Yet he became a champion.

What made him great was not his powerful knockout


punches, quick footwork, graceful dodges, or lightning jabs.
What made Rocky great was his ridiculous ability to absorb
punch after grueling punch, in body and in spirit. He just
kept getting back up. At some point, the punches slowed a
bit and his opponent ran out of steam or made a mistake.

The more I studied entrepreneurs, the more I realized the


big closers or lucky long shots are the rarest of exceptions.
The real winners are the persistent ones, not necessarily
those with the best ideas, salesmanship, funding, or
operations. All these things matter. A lot. Yet no matter how
good you are at them, you are going to take some big hits.

At all stages in the process, major disappointment or


surprise will blindside you like a mouthguard-flinging left
hook. Not just one at a time. Several in succession. And just
when you think you’ve steadied yourself, one more. The
great ones keep going. They take the hits and fight on.

I felt like crap. But I realized something. We were still


standing. We were still standing. We weathered the
shitstorm, and we weren’t done yet. Every day that we kept
going increased the odds that’d we’d pull out a win. I

42
started whispering to myself regularly, “Just keep standing.
Just keep standing.”

We did. We made it through a really, really rough six


months or so. It felt like an eternity. We made changes to
every aspect of the business. Things began to pick up, and
we started to land more punches than we took. A year later,
we hit an incredible groove and started stacking wins fast
(followed, of course, but another series of gut-busters).

I take tremendous pride in our resilience. A lot of teams can


rock it when the world’s complying. Few can stay glued
when the haymakers come.

Others advise that big hits are the market’s way of telling
you to throw the towel before you drop for good at the
hands of an unstoppable force, Apollo Creed style. But I
don’t think most of us are in danger of staying in the ring
too long, and in this country, it’s pretty hard to hit
unrecoverable rock-bottom as an entrepreneur. I say stand.

For me the lesson on that long car ride was simple and
uplifting: When it comes to long-term success, it’s more
important to take punches than to throw the big one.

Someone else can always hit bigger than your best. Not
many can survive the full twelve rounds.

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Lesson 11

“There is no silver bullet that’s going to fix that. No, we


are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets.”
—Bill Turpin (quoted by Ben Horowitz)

There’s always that one hurdle that won’t give. It’s the
bottleneck slowing growth. There’s got to be some big,
clever tactic that vaults you over in one swift motion.

You start banging your head against the wall, hoping to


have a eureka moment that solves it. I did. Then I picked
up The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
and confirmed a depressing, freeing suspicion.

You probably won’t find a silver bullet. You probably have


to destroy that hurdle with thousands of lead bullets.

Lesson 11: Stop looking for a silver bullet and start


spraying lead

In the first year of Praxis, there were several desperate-for-


a-silver-bullet moments. Bewildering circum-stances
where the gum in the works couldn’t be pinpointed. Just a
tough slog. Every step forward took Herculean effort.

This can’t continue if we’re going to grow like we want to!

The temptation to find a silver bullet crept in. I’d lay awake
at night wondering what the one breakthrough was that

44
would free us from the relentless grind. I’d fantasize about
a big PR hit out of nowhere, a new vertical that would sell
itself, an investment that would magically grow everything,
or a new employee who had all the secrets.

Silver bullets are rare, and probably can’t be found on


purpose. For me, even the desire for one was (and is)
dangerous.

The desire for a silver bullet shifts energy and attention


away from what’s in my control to a series of delightful
hypotheticals about what might happen if lightning struck.
It slowly dragged me into a passive, victim mindset, away
from an ownership, action bias.

This happened many times and I had to fight it every time.


Whenever I caught myself saying, “If only we had…” I
administered a figurative slap on the wrist.

Consistent firing of lead bullets isn’t glorious. It’s ugly.


Even when stuff starts to hit the target, you’ve got so much
ballistic material flying everywhere it’s hard to isolate the
accurate shots and repeat them.

This is not an argument in favor of wild inefficiency. The


more you can narrow it down to the most effective and
repeatable tactics, the better. But continuing the salvo is
more important early on than putting the action on hold
while you try to guess the perfect attack.

Every time I think we’ve finally outgrown the chaotic lead


bullet phase and become deadly silver bullet snipers, I’m
wrong. There are areas of the business that mature into
tighter tactics for sure, but there is always some frontier
somewhere with no silver bullet that demands a pistol-
packed posse to recklessly drain lead.

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A lot of people go down in search of a silver bullet. I
decided that wouldn’t be me, and if I went down, I’d go
down firing whatever I had, silver or lead.

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Ending

If you’re looking for a nice wrap-up, summary, key take-


away, or call to action, sorry. I don’t have one.

I’ve found what helps me the most are other people’s


stories, and the lessons they took. You’ve read some of
mine. It’d be presumptuous and probably ineffective if I
tried to put a bow on it for you.

It’s up to you to apply anything here to your own situation.


Go out there and do your thing boldly and bravely.

(Oh, and I’d love to hear about it! @isaacmorehouse on


Twitter. isaacmorehouse.com to find more stuff from me).

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