Bootstrapping Unscripted

We haven’t got the money, so we have to think. Like this Albert Einstein quotation, scientist-turned-entrepreneur, Dr Julia Charity is taking creative thinking to a new level to bootstrap her business into viability. Rotorua-based Julia launched a nationwide homestay network in July last year. Her Virtual Hotel, a ‘first’ for New Zealand, offers guest rooms all over the country, each as different as the hosts who look after them.

“I was completely naive about business,” Julia is the first to admit. “I imagined I would throw open the electronic doors of my hotel and people would ‘magic’ their way in. It’s harder than it looks.” This, even though Julia spent a year conducting market research and preparing a business plan, and has well-honed project management and research skills after 15 years at Crown Research Institute, Scion.

Solidifying a new concept in the market place is gruelling work, but taking that concept into a conservative market at the bottom of a recession heralds its own set of challenges. ‘Look After Me’ is currently a kitchen-table enterprise, kick-started from her personal savings. Single mother to six year old Alice, and without a salary for nearly a year, Julia digs pretty deep into her pockets of resourcefulness. Alongside her traditional Marketing Plan, Julia has invented a few of her own ‘Unconventional Bootstrapping Techniques.’ Bootstrapping is how businesses create their own success from leverageing themselves into cashflow, using little or no funding. “It’s not just thinking outside the square – it’s inventing whole new shapes,” she jokes.  

In what she considers her boldest move in bootstrapping, Julia has assembled a team of 12 staff who are working for Look After Me, essentially for free. Faced with 200 hours work to build a new website and re-populate it accurately with all of the hosts and properties, she created a Work Placement programme to pull together enough resources to complete the task by the end of July. Recruits work a minimum of 20 hours in exchange for a reference with the calibre of the reference, directly proportional to the calibre of the work. “Over the years I’ve employed at least 12 people –just never in less than a fortnight from the time of advertising, to the time of induction and delegating the first tasks.”

It’s been whirlwind to say the least, and with the clock ticking, Julia is urging the team to have the website finalised to celebrate the company’s first birthday. Twelve placements were made into positions of Personal Assistant, Publicist, Sales and Marketing, Financial Accountant, Web design, Web Shop developer, Database Manager and five Data Entry positions. “I want to create a win-work-win-for the recruits. They lend me their time in return for an opportunity to train and work in a real-life situation. It’s bootstrapping unscripted.”

Amongst the new recruits are stay at home Mums wanting to return to work, highly skilled and degree-qualified women, recent migrants, students studying IT at Waiariki and a high school school student, Layla Barker who has dreams of becoming a journalist or TV reporter.

Securing position of ‘Publicist’, Layla signed up for the Work Placement programme because she wanted a glimpse of what working with media is like in the real world. “It’s only my second week but so far I’ve created a mock-up of a potential website for Look After Me, attended an interview at the TV Rotorua News desk, designed a new business card for Julia and I’m just designing an invitation to our Birthday Launch Party to send to over two hundred people. Next week I’ve three blogs to write, a newspaper interview, a magazine article to edit and hopefully a bit more work with TV Rotorua. I’m totally loving it.”

Julia is planning to use the Birthday Launch Party as an opportunity to introduce the Work Placement Recruits to local business community in the hope that some of them get an invitation to apply for a job, once their capability has been revealed. The function will also double as a fundrasier for Dress for Success who will offer Look After Me’s top recruit a make-over and interview training.

Despite the challenges, Julia is adamant jumping from a corporate ship was a good move. “Being out of the lab has been good for me. I love being an Entrepreneur. The best bit about my job is meeting my new hosts – they’re the jewels in New Zealand’s gently aging crown and it’s their own personal brand of kiwi hospitality that makes Look After Me special.”

Julia is both realistic and optimistic about the future. She plans to solidify the Look After Me as an alternative to commercial accommodation in NZ, before taking the concept off shore under a different brand by the end of the year. She is also planning to either launch or licence a sister site for the Gay & Lesbian community (People Like Me) and another for Backpackers (Pack and Stay).

“Bootstrapping’s great, but imagine how creative I’d be if I actually did have some money!” Julia is actively seeking investment, which if secured, means she may be able to turn a recruit, into an employee. 

Version 2 of the Look After Me website successfully launched 4 days ahead of deadline on 27 July 2012. Well done team!