Bootstrap Financing Your Way to Business Success

J. Stephen Pope

by J. Stephen Pope

Do you need to start or grow your business but have little money? Before you look to banks and similar sources of financing, why not bootstrap your way to business success?

A bootstrap is a small loop of leather or other material that is found on the top rear or sides of a boot. The purpose of the bootstrap is to help you pull your boot on.

In business, bootstrapping has come to mean helping oneself without seeking outside help. It means using your own resources to finance, promote, and develop your business.

Here, then, are some ways of financing your own business by using your own initiative and depending less on outside bank financing.

Read more

How To Avoid Double The Trouble: Why A Partnership Can Be Twice As Dangerous

Wayne M. Davies
by Wayne M. Davies

Let me introduce you to another client of mine, let’s call him Tony.

Tony is a computer programmer who always wanted to be “on his own.” One of his co-workers, Kevin, felt the same way. On their lunch breaks they often talked of the day when they’d be calling the shots and making all the money.

Before long, they got the guts to tell their employer they were quitting to start their own business. They didn’t know much about paperwork, but Tony’s brother-in-law, Kyle, who worked for an insurance company, always seemed to know a lot about “how things worked” in the business world.

Kyle told Tony that the business didn’t need to do anything fancy to operate as a business. They could just run things as an informal partnership — they each contributed 50% of the start-up funds and they agreed to share equally in the profits.

Read more