Founding, and boot-strapping, a business in 2008 with no customers, no partners & economic uncertainty felt futile at times. I’m not going to lie, there were many junctures where I wanted to quit.

Quitting is the #1 reason people fail. Not actual failure, but giving up.

I was close.

You know that feeling when you are giving it your all but deep down inside you have that inkling that this isn’t going to end well?

I had lots of questions: Am I headed into a dead end? Maybe the world doesn’t need another marketing company? How can I compete with the existing 800lbs gorillas?

I was lucky to find tiny nuggets of inspiration that kept me going.

One of the most memorable ones was a TED Talk by Tony Robbins. The main punchline stuck with me which is why I kept re-watching it:

Everyone points to resources when they fail: not enough money, not enough time, not enough market share, but people don’t actually fail because of resources. They fail because of resourcefulness.

Wow, it turned my narrative about resources upside down.

This is the question that I began asking myself every day ever since: How can I be even more resourceful today than yesterday?

Being resourceful pushes you to get creative.

At around the time I watched this video I learned another lesson in resourcefulness when my business went into debt. My credit rating got slashed, and the limits on my credit cards went down. This forced me to hustle harder, manage cash flow more carefully, and negotiate more favorable terms with my suppliers.

You know what? Dealing with adversity, along with a lack of resources, might have been the best thing that ever happened to me because it forced me to run a zero debt business like I still do today. If I had funding I might have been able to run faster, but I wouldn’t have learned the same lessons I did about resourcefulness. I also would have been too busy burning through investors’ money instead of watching Tony Robbins video. Hey, put one in the point column for taking small breaks to look for inspiration.

Being resourceful = doing more with less!

This is also why I am a big fan of bootstrapping. When you’re a bootstrapped organization there’s a good chance you will probably not explode overnight, but you have a big chance of learning key lessons in building the bedrock of your business.

So, what are ways you can be more resourceful?

Start with eliminating your narrative about resources. If you’ve made it to the end of my post then that excuse isn’t going to fly with you anymore.