August 2009 Archives

Here is my column from yesterday's Tennessean:

I still get asked what seems like an age-old question: Are entrepreneurs born or made?

Let me start by making it clear that entrepreneurship is not in our genes. While some have tried to demonstrate that there is something innate that leads people to pursue entrepreneurial careers, there has never been a study that has found any link between our nature and entrepreneurial risk-taking.

Life experience is what drives people to pursue entrepreneurship. For some of us it comes from our family upbringing. I caught the entrepreneurial bug at an early age by being involved in family businesses. I was fortunate to be able to play a role in several family businesses ranging from a marina on the lake in Wisconsin to a corrugated box company my father started with a partner.

For others, entrepreneurship is the result of a career crisis -- such as getting fired or laid off. As we are seeing in many people today, unemployment can be a powerful motivator. Many have no other option in the job market than trying to make it on their own.

For others, pursuing entrepreneurship may be the logical way out of a frustrating job or a career that is just not fulfilling.

Entrepreneurship can also be the result of an insatiable desire to pursue interests that develop throughout our lives. What starts out as a hobby or pastime can lead to a passion to pursue that interest full time.

A factor that we cannot ignore is the role of culture in forming entrepreneurs. As we see in so many studies, the culture in which we live is a powerful force in creating startups and fueling entrepreneurial economies.

Self-reliance, a dominant part of our culture for generations, has been attributed as a major force that leads so many Americans to become entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship is much more passion than personality. We are not born with passion. It comes from our experiences, our family, our work, our hobbies, those around us, the gifts we have been given and our culture.

Entrepreneurs feel that fire

I have learned over the years that I cannot make someone choose the entrepreneurial path in life. In fact, I really cannot even inspire someone to pursue a career in entrepreneurship if they are not already headed that way. The fire has to be in their belly.

Once in a while I have to stoke that fire, or help them see that the fire is there. And once they feel that entrepreneurial fire, my job becomes one of helping them have a better chance for success. By learning about the process of properly defining and aligning the opportunity, securing the necessary resources, planning the venture, and managing growth effectively, we can significantly increase someone's chance of financial success as an entrepreneur.

So the answer to the question is that entrepreneurs are not born nor made. They are formed. Entrepreneurship is a career that comes out of our life experiences.

Mark Cuban offers brutally honest tips on what not to do when sending out an e-mail pitch.

(Thanks to Bruce Schierstedt for sending this along).

I participated a while back in an economics blogger forum at the Kauffman Foundation.  They have published a documentary about this one day event, which you can view here.

Although I am not an economist, I was invited as someone who looks at economics from an entrepreneur's eye.

Gregory Go and Glen Stansberry have pulled together a list of 101 quotes from small business bloggers at American Express OPEN .  Well worth a read.

This week's question for Forbes magazine's America's Most Promising Companies initiative comes from Brett Nelson, Entrepreneurs Editor at Forbes:

The fear of Big Government is in the air. What are some of the most deleterious regulations hampering small business today? What would be a better approach?

I offer a modest and simple proposal to this question -- repeal a single act passed almost one hundred years ago.  It reads as follows:

ARTICLE XVI. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

If we did away with the federal income tax by repealing the 16th amendment to the constitution, we would do away with the Internal Revenue Code as we now know it -- all 70,000 pages of it.  No set of regulations hampers small business more than the red tape, cost, and complexity created by our income tax system.

How to replace it?  I still favor some form of consumption tax.

I will be giving a talk to our local chapter of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) this Friday on leadership.  Preparing for this talk has been like a walk down memory lane.

Back when I studied business as an undergrad in the 1970s we recently moved away from what was known as the Trait Theory of leadership.  This view held that we could identify common traits of leaders and use them to predict future leaders.  Although this is a simplification, we got to the point were we concluded that successful leaders were tall white men with really good heads of hair.  I like to call it the Ward Cleaver theory of leadership.  All leaders looked a lot like the father in the old Leave it to Beaver television show.  For those of you too young to remember this show, we decided that effective leaders looked something like this:

Franchising is still a viable entry strategy even in the current economy.

The downside is that franchises take capital to launch, and capital is tight right now.  But if you have a bucket of money and are an accidental entrepreneur in search of a business, it may be a good option.

Make sure that you temper any projections to the current economic conditions.  Also, look for franchise opportunities that create value for the customer.  I believe that this will be the best business model for some time to come.

There are some sticky contracting issues with buying any franchise.  Make sure to work with an attorney who has experience with franchising.

But, beyond the contractual issues that arise in franchising, there are some fundamental business and personal concerns that many franchisees experience after it is too late.

One of the biggest sources of frustration among franchisees is that they perceive that the value added from association with their franchisor diminishes over time. A franchise will charge a significant monthly percentage fee (this can average about 7% of sales) associated with all that they offer in terms of systems, marketing, purchasing power, and so forth. Over time, many franchisors realize that they can be just, if not more effective on their own without paying the monthly percentage of sales to the franchisor. This on-going monthly fee is often glossed over by franchisees during start-up planning, as they tend to think only about the initial fees and capital expenditures in their planning.

Another concern expressed by franchisees is that with all of the rules and standardized procedures, they tend to feel more like an employee than a business owner. Those who try to break away from the predetermined model and processes can face the wrath of the franchisor. Larger franchisors have entire staff dedicated to franchisee compliance.

A financial risk to consider is that many first time entrepreneurs can only afford newer franchised concepts, since well established franchises can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy in. These start-up franchisors can begin to experience their own growing pains. Some don't survive. In some cases they may take the franchisees down with them.

It is critical to understand all of the ins and outs of franchising as a general business strategy first. Then if the idea of a buying a franchise still makes sense, do your homework on the company and its concept. All franchise opportunities are not created equal.

Maureen Farrell at Forbes offers their top choices for franchises in this article.  These types of rankings can offer some good insight into the ins and outs of various business models.

It now appears that the folks in Washington can't even manage a tax increase.  From the Tax Foundation:

The actual economic costs of the proposed health care surtax and the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts will be twice the amount of revenue the government intends to collect. According to a new analysis from the Tax Foundation, the higher tax rates are estimated to raise $88 billion in 2011, but the economy will incur an additional burden of $76 billion--or "deadweight loss"--as a result, which raises the total cost of the tax increases to $164 billion, roughly double what lawmakers intend to raise.

Tax Foundation Special Report No. 170, "The Excess Burden of Taxes and the Economic Cost of High Tax Rates," attempts to put a price tag on the cost of pending rollbacks of the Bush tax cuts (which would raise the top tax rate to 39.6%) as well as the proposed health care surtax (ranging from 1% to 5.4%). This loss in economic efficiency is also known as the "excess burden" or "deadweight loss" of taxes--the income that would need to be given to people to compensate them for the resources that are lost due to the distorting effect of taxes.

The outcome of this will be an even greater drag on entrepreneurial activity over the years to come.

Twenty entrepreneurs have advanced to the second stage of Forbes.com's third annual "Boost Your Business" editorial contest. Vote for the five companies most poised for growth among the 20 semi-finalists at www.forbes.com/byb.  Their submissions, including self-recorded 30-second "elevator-pitch" videos, are available for review at www.forbes.com/byb.  Voting for this round runs through September 30.  

From Fast Company:

[N]ow there's news Richard Branson is accepting "micropitches" via Twitter for new startup ideas.

It's all part of a new startup conference dubbed PerfectBusiness that the billionaire entrepreneur is helping to get going, and it's pretty simple. All you have to do is Tweet your business idea to @PerfectBusiness and add the hashtag #micropitch... which means your business idea has to be compressed down to just 111 characters to fit into the available space of a Tweet. Winners will get two tickets to the conference, airfare to L.A. included, and business coaching to turn the Tweet into a meaningful, complete company plan. There's even the chance Branson and team will choose your idea and get some VC funding on board.

(Thanks to Belmont alum Tyler Seymour, co-founder of Just Kidding Productions, for passing this along).

"Overall lending to small businesses is down 33%, the unemployment rate is nearly 10% and today we mark the six month anniversary since the President signed the so-called "stimulus" package into law. All of the signs are clear that the wasteful spending of the stimulus is not helping our economy.  Speaker Pelosi and President Obama gave us a stimulus package allocating less than one percent to small businesses, the job creators of our nation.  This simply does not make sense."  (House Small Business Committee Ranking Member Sam Graves (R-MO))

This week's question for Forbes magazine's America's Most Promising Companies initiative once again comes from Brett Nelson, Entrepreneurs Editor at Forbes:

Like it or not, leading the troops means keeping them happy and motivated. How do you do that while cutting their salaries and benefits to stay alive?

We know that there are two reference points that employees use to determine if their pay and benefits are fair.  First there is the internal equity of the compensation -- how it compares to people around them at work.  If everyone is feeling the pain, they may not like it, but it tends to not effect motivation as much as if the cut-backs are selective.  If the employees see that everyone -- hourly workers, managers, and owners -- are taking their share of the cut, the impact on morale and performance can often be minimized.

The other reference is people with similar jobs in other companies. Is their pay equitable when looking at other people in the community or in other companies in their industry?  Since times are tough all over, there may be a sense that they are just happy to have a job.

Remember that both of these references -- internal and external to where they work -- will be used by employees to determine relative fairness of their current compensation.

Small businesses have always had other means of non-salary rewards and compensation that are not always used in larger businesses.  More than ever, these can be used to help increase the morale and motivation. 

Small businesses have more flexibility in how they structure compensation.  To leverage this entrepreneurs should listen to what the employee really wants.  There may be opportunity to meet their needs in ways that do not cost money.

An example comes to mind from my days as an entrepreneur in the healthcare industry.  There was a manager I wanted to hire to run a new program we were starting, as he was one of the best in our industry. He worked for a large, national company. I knew I could not match his salary, but I did not give up.

I got to know him and found out what he was really looking for in his career and in a job. He wanted to have more control over his department. That was easy as we were small and our structure was quite decentralized. He could run the new program like it was his own business.

He wanted to have some real ownership in the business he worked in. We could do that, too, as we set up separate corporations for each new program we started and we had already planned to offer a small ownership stake for the right manager. Equity or equity-like incentives can be a way to defer compensation until you can afford it, and create an incentive that gets everyone pursuing the same goals.

There was one more thing he wanted, however, and it was clear it was a deal breaker for him. His current employer had very strict rules on vacations and holidays. He was a Viet Nam veteran and had wanted to go to Washington, DC each Veterans Day to remember his fallen comrades. His current employer's rules did not make it possible to guarantee that, and he had missed the last two Veterans Day observances. So, in my offer I promised him that he would be guaranteed Veterans Day and one work day on either side of it off each and every year (they were counted as vacation days). That was all it took to convince him that we were the best place for him to work. He came to work for us taking a significant cut in base salary from what he had been making before.

First, let me say that I agree with at least part of the premise being used to rationalize nationalization of healthcare.  The current system of employer-based, income tax driven, highly regulated, government-mandated health insurance system is a mess.

I also agree with the progressive-liberal founder of Whole Foods John Mackey when he said in the Wall Street Journal:

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Mackey proposed market solutions, not a government take-over of healthcare.  (Note to Mr. Mackey -- you may be losing your progressive customers, but you are going to gain all sorts of libertarian customers). 

Finally, I agree with former Carter administration adviser and Democrat Patrick Caddell when he raises alarm bells about the power grab taking place in Washington right now that is driven by money and not by sound policy making to say nothing about respect for the Constitution.  It certainly explains the level of lobbying as all sides of the healthcare industry enter the frenzy of rent seeking going on in the halls of Congress right now.  From the LA Times:

Every one of those 534 members of Congress now has six (6!) lobbyists working on them -- and that's just for healthcare.

A total of 3,300 lobbyists have registered to drive the sizzling healthcare issue in Washington -- three times the brigade of lobbyists representing the entire defense industry.

And three more healthcare lobbyists join the ongoing fray every day.

They reported spending more than $234 million massaging and informing and persuading those legislators during the first six months of this year, way more than a million bucks a day, seven days a week.

No wonder the public is turning sour on this whole greedy mess.

My goodness, these are interesting times.  I guess I better get back to my time off and play some more golf.....

Chambers Williams of the Tennessean gathered a variety of perspectives on the employment outlook:

The worst recession since the Great Depression may be easing, and that gives most small-business owners in Middle Tennessee a little optimism. But most say they're still reluctant to add to payrolls until an upswing takes even deeper hold.

"Very few are hiring, and the mood with our membership is still damp," said Jim Brown, Tennessee president of the http://www.nfib.com/">National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business trade group. "In some areas, the balloon is slowly refilling, but in others there remains significant softness."

In many past recessions, entrepreneurs and small businesses have played a major role in taking risks and hiring new employees to fuel recovery. Don't count on it this time, says Jeff Cornwall, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Belmont University business school.

"Most of the small-business folks are being very cautious about creating jobs," he said. "They are uncertain about the government increasing taxes and about where this economy is heading, and they are taking a very prudent course."

You can read the entire column here.

My column in this week's Tennessean is on the need for boundaries between the entrepreneur and his or her employees:

There is a risk in going into business with friends -- if the business relationship sours, the friendship almost certainly will end.

But what if you find yourself becoming friends with employees you hire in your business?

This is the question that one of our student entrepreneurs asked while we were chatting in my office the other day. He had observed other young entrepreneurs becoming buddies with their employees and wasn't so sure that was a good practice.

In a small business, becoming friends with employees is a natural occurrence. A small group of people working closely toward common goals often develops friendships with each other. You all suffer together through the trials and travails of start-up and early growth, which can create strong bonds.

We know that facing common adversity is powerful for building teams. Such camaraderie can be a critical element in building a strong culture in the business and in creating loyalty among your staff.

But, it is important for the entrepreneur to keep certain boundaries as such friendships develop.

No matter how strong the team becomes, the entrepreneur is the one person who is ultimately responsible for the outcomes of the business -- the one who personally has everything on the line.

Hard decisions will have to be made at crucial points in the growth of the business. And no matter how hard it may be, the entrepreneur must make the best decision for the future of the business even if it may not be in the best personal interest of all the individual employees.

Be the 'shock absorber'

As the business owner, there are certain things you should never share with your employees.

If they have become your friends, you may feel that you can share your deepest fears about the business with them. This is a mistake.

First and foremost you are their leader. It is your job to communicate confidence and commitment to the vision, even when times are tough.

You need to be what I call their "emotional shock absorber." Your confidence and commitment will be what keeps them on task and doing what needs to get done to survive rocky times.

If you share your fears and doubts, as you might with a good friend, you run a real risk of creating a climate of hopelessness and defeat in your company.

At the end of our discussion my advice to the student entrepreneur was that it was OK to become friendly with employees, but to maintain certain limits. It is fine to socialize, but remember that you are the owner and the boss 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It is not unlike the parent/child relationship as the child moves into early adulthood. While parent and child find their relationship can evolve more and more into one of friendship, there remains a certain boundary based on their familial relationship.

Friendships with your employees need to also have these boundaries.

This week's question for Forbes magazine's America's Most Promising Companies initiative comes from Brett Nelson, Entrepreneurs Editor at Forbes:

Small companies must get creative to survive the recession---even going so far as to branch into new lines of business (assuming they have the cash to do it). But mission creep comes with serious risk. What are some tangible do's and don'ts about expanding your product line?

Why should a small company change their product line?  For only one compelling reason -- the market is taking them there. 

Entrepreneurs typically rely heavily on their business plans when the time comes to launch their new venture. It is a plan that they may have agonized over for weeks, months or years. They have done their research, creating a carefully thought-out business that justifies their financial forecasts. But then a funny thing happens. They assumed in their business plan that the market wanted "A." But if they listen carefully to the customer, they often find out that the customer really wants "B."

I call this learning to "dance with the market." And you should be ready to let your customers lead in this dance.

The need to listen to the market never really ends. Markets are dynamic, so you need to be ready to follow where they lead, particularly during times of rapid change and turmoil in the market as we are experiencing with the recession.

What should you be cautious about when it comes to adjusting your mission?

Don't move so far off of what you are known for that you lose your customer base.  There may be opportunity beyond the boundaries defined by your mission, but these opportunities may end up redefining your business so much that you confuse the market.

My blogging will be a bit spotty this week and next.  I am taking a few days off here and there before the fall semester kicks off.  

Just thought I should pass along the National Federation of Independent Business monthly Small Business Economic Trends survey that came out this week.  

This month's survey reports small business owner optimism fell 1.3 points to 86.5, producing the second monthly decline in a row (but still above the March reading of 81.0, the lowest reading of this recession).  

The main cause was a decline in expectations that business conditions during this prolonged recession would improve any time soon.  The percent of owners expecting business conditions to deteriorate lost 10 percentage points from June, 15 points from May.

Lethargic expectations, not much faith in a future dominated by lawmakers in Washington, D.C. and trillion-dollar deficits all contribute to small business owners' deteriorating expectations.

"It's not enough that small business produce half the private GDP, employ the bulk of the private sector workforce and generate most of the new jobs created, now they are expected to finance the new experiments of Congress and the president such as healthcare reform, auto industry bailouts and union pension fund bailouts," said Bill Dunkelberg, NFIB's chief economist.

Indeed!  It is time to stop punishing entrepreneurs for their success by confiscating more and more of the fruits of their risk-taking to fund bailouts and growing entitlements.

William C. Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business, issued the following statement on July job numbers based on NFIB's monthly economic survey that will be released on Tuesday, August 11:
 

"Seasonally adjusted, there was a decline in average employment per firm of 0.81 workers reported during the last three months among small business owners in July. Seven percent of owners increased employment by an average of 3.4 workers per firm, but 24 percent reduced employment an average of 4.1 workers per firm, seasonally adjusted.  
 
"What's more, over the next three months, 14 percent plan to reduce employment (up four points), and 8 percent plan to create new jobs--down two points--yielding a seasonally adjusted net negative 3 percent of owners planning to create new jobs, a two-point deterioration. Not seasonally adjusted, net job creation plans were zero or negative in all industry groups and negative in all nine Census regions.
 
"Clearly, the employment picture being painted by small business owners is not pretty. The little that was in the stimulus package for small businesses is not having the intended effect--creating jobs. This is just more evidence that now is not the time to be slapping new taxes or expensive mandates on small businesses, which is exactly what H.R. 3200, the House healthcare reform bill, would do."

 

Any type of word of mouth promotion demands action -- it rarely just happens.

The same holds true when using social media as a vehicle for word of mouth. 

The USA Today has a great example of how a night club is actively using Facebook to get the word out:

Bartender Beau Dieda does more than mix and serve drinks every night at popular nightspot Baja Sharkeez: He is also instructed to sign up friends and fans for his company's Facebook page, as well as his own. Before he leaves the restaurant, he sends bulletins to his collective fan base inviting them back in for specials, discounts or events.

Just setting your business up in a social media site is not enough.  It does not work like a more passive media like web pages or craigslist.  You need to find ways to continuously reach out when using Facebook and Twitter. 

Today, the ADP Small Business Report showed that 138,000 small business jobs were lost in July - 80,000 jobs in the service sector and 58,000 in goods-producing firms. 

According the July report:

This month's employment decline was the smallest in eight months continuing the notable improvement between the first and second quarters of 2009.  Employment among small-size businesses is likely to decline for at least several more months, albeit at a diminishing rate.

These findings echo the overall job statistics, which seem to show a slowing of the decline in jobs.

We still don't know where the bottom of this will be.  I believe the most likely scenario is a long period of sluggishness in the economy, maintaining current unemployment levels with a  lack of economic growth.  This may become our norm, certainly for several quarters and mavbe even for several years.  I believe this is the most likely scenario because we are not doing what we need to if we want to spur entrepreneurial growth -- cut taxes and preserve property rights.

The other scenarios I see cause me even greater concern. 

One is that we will experience another steep drop in jobs and highly negative growth.  This will most likely be the case if we have some unforeseen economic or political shock.

The other worst case is that we will begin to rebound, which given how we have stacked the deck with deficits, will lead to very high inflation -- potentially hyper-inflation.  The long term outlook if this happens would be quite bleak. 

My post from yesterday has created some great discussion at the blog, via e-mail and among business owners I have talked with.

Several folks told me that the high cost of healthcare is keeping them, or people they know of, from starting a business.  Let me offer a couple of things to think about on this.

First, when I advise entrepreneurs I tell them that they need to build a business that takes care of their needs.  This includes income needs, wealth needs and lifestyle needs. Income needs includes the cost of your total lifestyle.  If your business model is unable to give you adequate income to cover your expenses -- including healthcare -- then the model is not right for you to pursue.  And for goodness sake make sure you can cover these expenses until your business is profitable through other income and personal savings.

Second, there is no such thing as free healthcare.  Socialized healthcare is going to cost money.  We will need to raise this money as a country through either increasing taxes or borrowing more money.  If we increase taxes that will decrease your income as an entrepreneur.  If we run up the federal deficit even further to pay for healthcare, we will at some point very soon stoke the flames of inflation.  That will squeeze your operating profits as a small business owner.  Entrepreneurs get hit hardest during inflation due to their lack of market power -- their costs go up faster than they can increase prices.

So, once again I have to be the dream-killer for those who want to assume that if they could only get "free" healthcare they could start their businesses.  It sounds to me like these aspiring business owners need to get a better business model before they take the entrepreneurial plunge.

Now that corporate America is down and out and venture capital seems to be dormant, the free market critics have turned their focus to discrediting the impact small business in our economy.

The latest comes from the progressives at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.  They cite biased statistics to claim that US small business is not what we think it is.  They say the US has a low percentage of self-employed compared to the rest of the world.  The problem is that due to differences in legal requirements and tax law countries count "self-employed" quite differently -- they are comparing apples to liver sausage.  Then they say that we have a small base of employment in small business, but only look at our manufacturing companies under 20 employees, and not at the overall employment in small firms -- statistical cherry picking at its finest.  Finally, they say that we are weak in small business technology firms, but again cite only selected statistics that support their attempt to conclude that America is not small business friendly.

And why do they argue all of this?  It is because we don't have socialized healthcare, of course.  From a news release they sent out this week:

"In the rest of the world, entrepreneurs who want to start a new business don't have to think twice about where they and their employees will get health insurance," said Schmitt. "In the United States, talented people thinking about starting a new business often have to choose between following their dream or going without health insurance."

First of all, their statistics are biased.  In addition, survey after survey, study after study, show that tax rates, regulation and property rights are what predict overall entrepreneurial activity.

What I fear most is that this will become part of an attempt to discredit the overall importance of small business.  After all, it is small business that now offers the only hope of escape from encroaching socialism and progressivism.

In my column for the Tennessean yesterday, I gave an overview of a new bootstrapping group here in Nashville.  It is a good learning model to try in any city to help bring entrepreneurs together to talk about their challenges and successes with bootstrapping:

Bootstrapping -- the collection of tools and tactics that entrepreneurs use when they have limited resources -- has become a crucial skill in today's tough economic climate, with its tight credit and shrinking pools of venture capital.

Now there is a group in Nashville that hopes to help entrepreneurs become better at bootstrapping -- Better Bootstrap.

Its goal is to provide bootstrapping entrepreneurs, or the 99.962 percent of business owners who never see venture capital, with practical tools and encouragement to help build more viable businesses.

Meetings have three main features.

First, a successful entrepreneur visits the group to offer on-the-ground examples of what it takes to get a business cranking when resources are limited. One founder spoke of polishing the tops of his shoes before important presentations, while carefully concealing the duct tape that covered the holes underneath. (His firm now has thousands of prominent clients.)

A second feature of each meeting is a brief of a business fundamental that will help entrepreneurs realistically tie their day-to-day activities in marketing, operations or finance to a long-term strategic goal.

Finally, entrepreneurs practice marketing their enterprises by perfecting and presenting 15-second "elevator pitches." (The elevator pitch must fit into the time it takes to travel between floors.)

It is the first exposure some business owners have to the idea that a sharp, compelling message about "not what you do, but what you can do for me" creates the biggest impact possible with a limited budget.

Management consultant David Ledgerwood, chief executive of ALOC Group, says, "The real-life stories at Better Bootstrap really help me realize how similar entrepreneurial experiences are. ...

"I get validation for what I'm already doing at times and get to see the end-game success of people who are trying (to do) exactly what I'm trying. Plus, there is real value in fellowship with others who are facing the same questions I grapple with in my businesses."

Bootstrappers and soon-to-be bootstrappers from any industry are welcome. However, the group is limited to actual bootstrappers of a business anticipated to grow beyond a single-person operation.

Consultants, vendors and professionals who hope to network with and market to entrepreneurs can, in fact, expect to be "booted" out.

Otherwise, the group is free, requesting only that participants buy something from the restaurant where they meet to ensure that they will be welcome again.

The next meeting is 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Logan's Roadhouse, 2400 Elliston Place. Jane Ferrell and Joyce McDaniel of community and government relations and PAC consultation firm Ferrell McDaniel will speak.