When you're on the receiving end of advice on how to start a small business, you will receive endless advice about getting grants and SBA loans, hiring consultants and market research firms. People will tell you to wait to launch until you have a year's worth of operational start-up capital, and show you formulas that tell you the minimum amount you'll need to get started. For most entrepreneurs, those minimum amounts are simply out of reach, and that textbook advice is all but useless. That sort of advice is often written by people who have never actually run small businesses, and if you listen to it, you will never get started. That's when you switch gears and think about bootstrapping a business.

Embracing the concept of bootstrapping requires you to rethink conventional business school wisdom. It means launching your company out of your back pocket, working out of your home office, and taking advantage of smaller niches that a mainstream small business would never consider. A bootstrapped business usually doesn't operate out of a proper office or storefront, and if it does, it's in the low-rent part of town. More often, it is run out of the proprietor's home, or if it is retail, out of a flea market booth.

On the plus side, launching a bootstrapped business gives you an opportunity to go into a business that you wouldn't otherwise be able to if you were in mainstream "small business" mode. Your initial investment will be small so you have little to lose except your time. You will have a larger uphill battle to gain recognition and be taken seriously, and it will probably take you longer to get to a point of being self-sufficient and able to "quit your day job." However, at least you’ll be climbing up the hill!

Traditional small business avenues are not available to everyone, and for those with fewer resources, the bootstrapped business concept can be an excellent way to get started down the entrepreneurial track.

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