10 shoestring principles for business

Filed in archive How-to on June 18, 2006

Managing editor Isabel M. Isidro's story entitled 10 lessons for every "shoestring" entrepreneur at PowerHomeBiz.com includes some important points for any business.

However, some of the principles followed out of necessity by companies with little or no start-up funding help explain why bootstrap--or as Isidro calls them "shoestring"--entrepreneurs may sometimes have the edge. She writes:

Success in entrepreneurship is not necessarily a contest of having the fattest wallets...Successful entrepreneurs know how to stretch and maximize every single dollar.

Among the more important points observed by any good bootstrapper, but which should be part of the play book of even companies with significant starting capital, are:

• Put your money where it will bear fruit


• Control the cash(as in flow)


• Push the sales(again this is a cash flow thing)


• Be 'lean and mean'(Forget the plush office suite and big conference table if you can work from your kitchen table)


• Master the financial tools(This goes back to Seth Godin's thing about being key to every department of your business-including financial-in The Bootstrapper's Bible. See the previous post and the one from June 14)