This post was inspired by a question from a member of our newly established Bootstrapper's Group on Yahoo!

And it occurred to me that a refresher on what bootstrapping means, at least within the context of this blog, is probably in order even though I've posted some definitions previously.

Bootstrapping a business:

• Means starting a business with little or no outside investment

• Does not necessarily imply starting a business on the cheap. Greg Gianforte has suggested that it is a business process allowing the entrepreneur to invest whatever he/she feels comfortable with in the venture

• May involve using cash flow from a business's first clients, advance orders, a larger customer interested in the product or an operating business to establish and grow the new venture as an alternative to outside financing

• Often involves some level of cooperation with customers, fellow entrepreneurs or a team of founders, as Bijoy Goswami suggests, who borrow, barter and use social networking to find customers and develop a workable business model

• Requires focus on sale of a product or service to generate cash needed for survival and growth over creation of lengthy business plans or the seeking of outside capital (See the Gianforte link above or this one from Guy Kawasaki)

• Often requires a single minded focus on creating a business out of available resources while always seeking the best opportunities to create value as articulated in the bootstrapping principle.

Kelly B. of Lawrenceburg, TN who goes by the handle SpiralButterfly first posed the question of what bootstrapping is after joining the group not realizing she's already instinctively pursuing the bootstrapping path.

Kelly maintains a growing fleet of sites including Spiral Journal, Anomaly Blog, Frontiers of Wonder, The Cerebral WaterCooler, Curiosity Shelf, Spiral Sensuality, her MySpace profile page and a new adult social community (I miss anything Kelly?) all using free online tools.

She's meanwhile on a constant lookout, as her Spiral Journal chronicles, to develop cash flow via her on line adventures.