I'm not quite sure why you're skeptical on my understanding of marketing. Before I worked for myself, I worked for marketing firms, I'm not concerned that there is some base confusion there, I'm just saying

a) I don't have a working budget for design work, branding, or sales staff

b) Some folks around here have been there before too, and found a way over the bootstrapping hump, I'm curious how.

My question is poorly-worded. It was written at a moment when I was frustrated, but I was hoping for a good story from someone about how they got past the stage where you don't have the capital to commit to scaling the business up but you have good tools ready.