Just returned from the beach and wanted to post these fresh impressions.

Standing by the seaside with my eight year old squealing his excitement as he romped in the choppy surf a few things occurred to me.

The first afternoon a gusty breeze blew from the south along the coastline bringing with it streams of tiny sand grains that ebbed and flowed like the tide which throughout the day encroached on the beach only to retreat again as night approached.

I remembered an e-mail from Creative Weblogging executive editor Anita Campbell about another such ebb and flow, the decrease in traffic bloggers and other web creators see during the summer months which always seems to pick-up again by fall.

Actually, I have only seen a steady increase with this blog which is still quite new and still gaining readership and have no figures earlier than June to compare with my current stats.

However, I realized how unreasonable it would be to write a detailed analysis of the ebb and flow of the waves on the shoreline or to calculate the number of grains of sand that might be caught on a coastline breeze before seeing either of the events take place.

It would seem just as unreasonable to predict the amount of traffic a blog might experience on the worldwide web before posting the first entry or making any effort to promote it by simple networking means.

Yet, this is exactly what many entrepreneurs are encouraged to do when developing elaborate business plans that make detailed and often exaggerated and unreasonable guesstimates about earnings and expenses in the first three years of an enterprise.

The contrast between this approach and the bootstrapping model could not be more apparent. As RightNow Technologies founder and CEO Greg Gianforte observes:

Bootstrappers don't write lengthy business plans, chase deep-pocketed investors, or indulge in overly academic market research exercises. Instead, they focus all of their considerable energy, brainpower, determination and skills on creating a business that can actually succeed in the real world.

Naturally, this translates to a fair amount of adjustment to market conditions as you find them not as you wished them to be. All the wishing in the world will not make the sea exceed its high tide for the day no matter how reasonable you made it sound on paper that it should.

As Gianforte further observed:

Bootstrappers have more freedom and flexibility. When you take external funding, you become a slave to your business plan and you have to constantly answer to third parties: banks, private investors, grant agencies, etc...Bootstrappers, on the other hand, aren't hampered by these forces. They can change direction overnight if that's what circumstances call for. This adaptability significantly increases their likelihood of near- and long-term success.