How I Would Bootstrap a Business From Scratch

Welcome to the Letters of Wonder, where I explore insights on wealth, fulfillment, growth, and mastery.

Building a bootstrapped business is hard as shit.

I've been doing it for about 8 years now.

Here are a few things I’d tell myself before I started to go a lot faster.

1) Learn Skills

If you want to work for yourself, you need skills.

You probably hate hearing it. But there’s no secret.

There’s no way in hell we would’ve gotten business traction without:

• My brother’s marketing and product knowledge

• My sales and operational knowledge

Business is a game of selling things to people.

How do you expect to sell something if no one wants it?

If you’re bootstrapping, you are the builder and the seller.

So, you need to know:

1. How to build

2. How to sell

Learn how to do those things, and you can build a solid business.

But there’s a lot more to it than it seems.

To be honest, I don’t know if I could have built a business alone.

Maybe I could. But if I did, I would’ve moved a lot slower.

Cheat code: Bring on someone that can sell and/or build

How do you attract this person?

You become super skilled at building or selling.

My brother and I work well because we complement each other.

We both know how to build. He knows how to launch (aka market), and I know how to sell.

How did we learn those things?

From trying to build businesses for years.

Here’s a list of the businesses I’ve tried since I was 15 (a few with my brother):

• Garage Sales

• Door-to-Door Sales

• Bracelet Store

• Theme Page Business

• YouTube Channel

• Writing a “Book”

• Custom Hoodies and T-Shirts

• 8+ Drop-shipping Stores

• Recruiting/Training Business

• Web3 Business

• Coaching Business

• Agency Business

Out of 12, only 4 were profitable.
Out of those 4, 2 were viable for the long run.
And finally, 1 made me full-time self-employed.

There’s really no way around it:

• If you’re lazy and push things off, building a business isn’t for you.

• If you have no skills and don’t care to learn any, building a business isn’t for you.

2) Create Content

Out of all the businesses I’ve started, content is the one I’d recommend first.

Why?

It’s the best ratio of low input : high output.

It takes basically $0 to start (unless you don’t have a phone/camera) and can get you in the eyes of millions of potential customers.

But what if you care what people might think?

In that case, this path might not be the best fit for you. There are other types of businesses that don’t require putting yourself out there as much. However, keep in mind that content remains one of the fastest ways to achieve virality and build momentum.

Building a business is going against the grain.

To succeed, you will have to go against everyone else.

People will see it as strange. They might make fun of you. They might not get it.

But eventually, they will.

That’s the point.

Alright, back to content creation.

Here’s what I would do:

• Spend a few days learning how to record content (shouldn’t take more than seven dedicated days).

• Pick 3-5 topics:

  1. That you love creating content on

  2. That have proven to work with other creators

• Find 10 videos that meet the above criteria and have gone ultra-viral (1M+ views consistently).

• Take a few hours to analyze them, send them to a friend, and get feedback on why they were great.

• Use phone to record making those exact videos for practice.

• Be able to replicate those videos exactly (this might take time).

• Start making own content by experimenting with ideas.

• Eventually find a format that is fun and can go viral.

• Keep getting feedback from someone who understands content to improve and avoid missteps.

• Stick to it for a LONG time.

If you follow this plan, you will land on something that goes viral. Unless you’re just not cut out for content (in which case, the person from Step 9 should let you know).

Now, repeat.

Keep making content until it can consistently go viral.

Now you have an edge.

By the way: Content isn’t the only way. It’s just one of the fastest ways. And it’s what worked for me after 10 failed business models.

3) Build Your Personal Brand

Your personal brand is your digital resume.

You want it to stand out wherever you go.

How?

Build stuff. Post content. Publish things.

I started building my personal brand in 2018. It took six years to get to where it is today.

Here’s how I’d restart:

• Make content first (refer to Step 2).

• Scale the content to at least 10k followers.

• Great. Now scale to 100k followers.

• Reach out to journalists. Go on LinkedIn and search “Forbes, Business Insider, Entrepreneur,” etc.

• Write a compelling story for them to publish about that relates to their style of writing. It should focus on your content (your edge) and have a great story.

  • If confused, look at other articles this journalists posted. See how you can do something similar.

4) Reach Out to Successful People

The key is to connect with people you look up to.

Reach out to people who inspire you and are where you want to be.

I recommend doing the previous steps first.

Why? Because you need to offer value.

The most successful people have thousands of people reaching out to them.

What separates you?

Think about that.

For me, I sent messages to the most inspiring people I could think of.

But I waited until I had something to offer.

Even something as small as a decent personal brand.

Here’s what worked for me:

• Offering value.

• Letting them know how much I admire them.

• A genuine wish to learn from them.

Networking for Business:
My first three clients came from a startup house I lived in for a week. That created the snowball effect.

Another few clients came from cold DMs. I wasn’t even trying to pitch them. I reached out to people I admired, and they asked to work with me.

Build yourself. Then put yourself out there with no expectations.

5) Work on Your Inner World

This sounds cliche, but it’s true:

Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world.

And it’s especially true for business.

The more I worked on my habits and mindset, the more the business started growing.

Here’s the formula:

• Structured routine → Focused on needle-moving activities.

• Daily journaling → Learned lessons faster and stayed calm amidst chaos.

• Daily meditation → Leaned into energy, reached out to the right people, and knew who I should surround myself with.

That’s all for today—hope you found this helpful!

Feel free to reply directly to this email. I’d love to hear your reflections.

Thanks for reading!