Business bootstrapping

There was a short blurb in Crain's entitled How to Build a Business by Your Bootstraps that I thought had some nice tips that are very applicable to the business of law.

Some of my highlights:

1. Choose wisely. Essentially, the type of business is critcal. If there's steady and immediate cash flow, funding a business yourself is reasonable. If you can get customers to pay up front, your business can probably finance itself. These two factors do exist in the law biz and I've had little problem with cash-flow from our inception.

2. Come to terms. Work with vendors to stretch out the payment cycle. I certainly do this and like the article says, most of your vendors are small businesses too and just be truthful about the terms you need.

3. Hire smart. You can't afford to over-pay employees, but you also can't afford hire bad hires. There's a funny example in this item where an employer hired college theater majors as customer service reps for $10 an hour and they were great. I need to hire smart...like right now!