Hi! I’m Arvid. I empower founders & creators who want to build calm & sustainable businesses in public.
The Bootstrapped Founder is the home of my Twitter course Find your Following, the books 📗Zero to Sold and 📘The Embedded Entrepreneur, which is an audience-driven book teaching you how to build an audience-driven business.
You will also find the Bootstrapper’s Bookshelf, the Bootstrapped Founder Podcast, YouTube channel, and the Bootstrapped Founder Newsletter.
Here are my most recent blog posts:
Consulting in Public
Reading Time: 5 minutes Building in public is becoming a popular way to build a business. But how about consulting in public? Can entrepreneurs go beyond talking about their business? Can they conduct their business out in the open? Rand Fishkin recently asked Patrick Campbell —who just sold ProfitWell for $200 million— to help him with their pricing. Immediately, … Continue reading Consulting in Public
Founder Stories are Powerful Assets
Reading Time: 6 minutes Your founder story is much more valuable than being reduced to a slide in a pitch deck. Your story is a unique and unclonable asset that can turn from a mere list of accomplishments into an opportunity generator through the power of compounding and public expertise-building. When you share your story not only after the … Continue reading Founder Stories are Powerful Assets
The Forever Transaction
Reading Time: 8 minutes Next time you’re at a gas station or a convenience store, and you’re ready to pay, look at all the things they shove in front of you, hoping to sell you yet another high-margin product: sugary snacks, soft drinks, processed foods, lottery tickets. They call this the “impulse sales zone:” every single item is a … Continue reading The Forever Transaction
Building in Public and Legacy
Reading Time: 4 minutes Philip Larkin, the renowned British poet, famously decreed on his death bed that all his diaries should be destroyed. During his life, he even wrote five full-length novels and burned every single one of them right after completion. Larkin allowed for nothing but perfection. Meanwhile, I regularly share the crudest drafts of my work on … Continue reading Building in Public and Legacy
Parasocial Relationships: Imaginary Friends of the Social Network Age
Reading Time: 8 minutes There are a lot of one-sided relationships on social media. They have many names: superfans, otakus, and stans. When you intimately know the personality, likes, dislikes, and the entire personal history of a person you’ve never met and never had any one-on-one interaction with, you’re likely in a parasocial relationship. These are the imaginary friends … Continue reading Parasocial Relationships: Imaginary Friends of the Social Network Age
Should Freelancers Offer Free Trials?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Recently, I have gotten a lot of offers from freelancers and consultants to do some work for me for free. In an ideal world, we’d offer our services to a prospect, and they’d gladly pay for them. But the reality is quite different: many freelancers have a hard time finding clients, and some have come … Continue reading Should Freelancers Offer Free Trials?
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