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Do you ever worry about coming up with money to get what you need or want in life? Do you see money as an obstacle to your happiness? If you do, you can learn some powerful lessons from the business world by finding ways to bootstrap your life.

In business there are many ways to finance a new venture. Sometimes businesses borrow start-up cash, or find a venture capitalist or other investors to cover their operating expenses. However, one of the most powerful ways to start a business is to sustain it through bootstrapping, or without obtaining outside funding. Bootstrapped companies try to avoid external debt and often spend very small amounts of money until they become profitable.

Why Is Bootstrapping Powerful?

There are some people, such as Seth Godin and Yanik Silver who argue that bootstrapped companies are more creative, more resilient, and more competitive in the long term. As Yanik says:

“Bootstrap. Having too much capital leads to incredible waste and doing things using conventional means.”

When companies intentionally rule out borrowing to cover standard expenses, they often have to get very creative to get the resources they need. For example, a bootstrapped company might begin in a garage like Apple. They may pay employees with a share of the profits rather than a regular salary. Rather than having corporate travel accounts, bootstrappers might drive all night to a meeting and arrive hyped up on caffeine, adrenaline and hope.

All of this may sound challenging, and it is, but bootstrapping has the advantage of forcing creative thinking. Without extra money to spend, bootstrappers have to figure out new and creative ways to get what they need. This can lead to many innovations such as developing new software, inventing new work practices, and creating very innovative company cultures. Instead of automatically solving a problem by spending money, bootstrappers have to think in terms of obtaining the resources they need to complete a job.

How Can You Bootstrap in Your Life?

So, bootstrapping may be well and good for a business, but you might be wondering how all of this applies to you. I think that during times when many people are feeling strapped for cash, we can apply the mindset of the bootstrapper to find creative ways to meet our needs and the needs of our families.

How do you go about doing this? The key lies in focusing on your desired outcome first and figuring out how you are going to achieve it second. This is just the opposite of what we’re conditioned to do. In most situations, we figure out the means (acquiring a pile of money) before we are really clear about our desired ends.

As an example, imagine it’s the middle of the summer, your lawn is getting overgrown and your lawnmower just broke. If you’re like me, you live in a town that will give you a ticket if your lawn gets too long, then they’ll come and mow it for you, charging an exorbitant rate. To avoid this, your first instinct is probably to run out and buy a new lawn mower. That’s one possible solution to the problem, but it isn’t the only one.

When you instantly run out and buy a lawnmower, you are acting as if your desired end is to own a new lawnmower, but that’s incorrect. Your real desired end is to get your lawn mowed and avoid getting a ticket. There are many ways of doing this, and they all involve different amounts of money. Here a just a few ways you could get your lawn mowed in order from least expensive to most expensive:

1. Use a different tool you already own to mow the lawn, such as a weed eater, or a pair of clippers (if you have a very small lawn).
2. Borrow a neighbor’s mower, and fill it up with gas before you return it.
3. Find a young teenager to mow the lawn for a small fee.
4. Buy a used mower from the local small engine shop.
5. Run to the nearest home and garden center and immediately buy a new mower.

In the above example, it’s interesting to see that most people will choose the most expensive option. This is the opposite of what a bootstrapper would do in such a situation. The bootstrapper would look at all of the possible solutions, and pick the one that results in the most efficient solution for the least amount of cost. In this example, option 2 or 3 would probably be optimal because those are inexpensive choices, but not as labor intensive as option 1.

There are many other situations where you can call on the creativity and ingenuity of bootstrappers to find free and inexpensive solutions to your problems. The key is to think very carefully about what you actually want to get out of a situation. Here are a couple of situations, the assumed goal and the real goal.

• It’s Saturday night and you decide to go to a movie. With tickets and snacks for 2, it would be at least a $30 expense. You are assuming that your goal is to see a particular film, but actually your goal to relax and be entertained. Can you be just as entertained by inviting friends over to play games? By renting a DVD for $4?
• You want to advance in your career and need some additional training. You consider applying to graduate school, which will cost $30,000 over 3 years. In this case you are assuming that your goal is to have an advanced degree when it is actually to get a more challenging job at a higher rate of pay. How else could you do this? Could you attend training and certification courses that your employer will pay for? What about finding a mentor who is doing the job you want and asking for advice on self study material?

Resources are Abundant, Even When Money is Scarce

In both of the examples above, it is pretty easy to see that there are many possible resources for accomplishing the real goal. Some of these resources can be purchased, but many of them are only available through creativity, networking, and persistence. This is true in many situations. In fact, if you are convinced that a lack of money is keeping you from achieving your desired goal, you’re wrong. Take some time to think of all the resources that you have available to you such as relationships, skills, organizations, and of course your own creativity. If you make a list of all of these you’ll soon discover ways that you can at least get closer to your goal, even if you have no money available to you.

I’m not trying to call out anyone who is going through financial hardship. I’ve been in some pretty bad situations myself. In fact, when I was a kid my father went through several long layoffs. The last layoff began just as I was about to enter a very expensive private college.

My experiences taught me that if I was going to achieve anything in those circumstances, I had to find ways to do so with little or no money. I found ways to use the public library to educate myself beyond my formal schooling. I formed relationships with teachers and mentors that recommended me for advanced programs that made me a stronger college applicant. Eventually I was able to gain admission to a great school and secure enough scholarship and financial aid to graduate with less debt than I would have had at a public university. That resourcefulness continues to serve me well.

Learning to bootstrap is a way of increasing your freedom. If you can meet your needs with little money, suddenly you’re not trapped in a job you hate. You can explore interesting opportunities even if they don’t pay as well. You can leave bad relationships when you know how to form better ones. Bootstrapping isn’t really about frugality. It’s about creativity, self sufficiency, and personal power. I hope that you’ll find ways to bootstrap a few things in your own life, starting right now.

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Photo by Zsuzsanna Kilián.

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