The bootstrap report is a month by month account of my efforts as a bootstrapping entrepreneur. It will include insights and lessons from the beginning of a bootstrapper’s adventure. My aim is to give up freelance or consultancy work to be my own boss and create a lifestyle business.

It has already been a month since my declaration about the start of my year of hustle and its been very busy. Unfortunately there has not been much bootstrapping going on.

I got back from travelling and spent most of the month finding a place to live and looking for work, as a bootstrapping entrepreneur I will initially need to freelance for a bit to fund my efforts.

All is not lost though.

I am currently writing this post from a hotel room in Rio. In two days I will be back home in Manchester, but this time I want things to be different.

This year things really started to change for me, I got married at the start of the year to the love of my life and we embarked on a 7 month honeymoon around South America, a trip I had always dreamed of doing.

This is the year I stopped talking or planning and started doing!

As my wife can tell you, I talk a lot about starting a business and the various new ideas I come up with, but I never actually do anything.

I actually got married this year and went on a 7 month trip round South America. (note highlighted verbs, I am doing stuff!) I am going to use this momentum to pursue and do things I just talk about.

Actions speak louder than words.

Such a classic quote!

Rewind..

A few years ago my thinking shifted quite radically after reading the book The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. Some of his ideas really struck a cord with me. Particularly creating muse businesses to fund you lifestyle then taking mini-retirements throughout your life.

I wanted the freedom to live my life as I wanted and create a lifestyle business. But I never acted on the books inspiration and advice.

Why? Because I am afraid.

I know I can build a great product with an amazing user experience, that is what I am good at. Marketing is my problem, I don’t know how! I am afraid that I will devote all my time to creating a product and no one will view it, let alone pay for it.

This year it changed. Fear of failure to launch a product has been superseded by another greater fear. I now fear doing nothing and being average. I don’t want to be a 9-5er like everyone else.

Life is too short, it needs to be lived. I want to continue to travel and when my children are growing up I want to be there. I have too many things I want to do in life to have a 9-5 job so I need to make my own money in my own way.

As I hinted above, the main driver for me to do this is my future family. When I got married it really pushed me to think about my future. I calculate roughly that I have about one and a half years before my first child is born. By then I need to:

1. Be free from the 9-5 rat race, so I can spend time with my wife and family.

2. I also need to be financially stable, ideally up to my current level of income or more, to provide for a new family. This should all be generated from passive income steams, so not to effect my time freedom.

Time to start hustling, wish me luck!

Recently I discovered Instagram. I love how you can take pictures, apply filters and share them really easily. It’s a service I will be using a lot more of.

I want to be able to show my lovely, arty, filtered pictures on my blog. A quick Google round and I couldn’t find a Javascript widget or badge to stick in my tumblr template so I decided to make my own.