Starting a business is tough—and that goes double when you’re starting a business in an economic environment this challenging. If you’re bootstrapping (and chances are good that you’re using your own money to fund the company) it’s important to use your resources as efficiently as possible, You want to protect your capital but also invest where it counts most. I’ve been helping businesses for years, and here is what successful bootstrappers know:

Control fixed expenses

At some point—usually when you need to bring other people aboard to accommodate growth—you’ll probably need an office. Until then, work from home and use e-mail and cell phones to communicate, so you can minimize fixed expenses like office space and furniture.

Use contractors as much as possible

Avoid hiring people even when you need additional help. By using contractors you can save significant capital when compared to hiring employees (BusinessWeek.com, October/November, 2007). Your per-hour costs may be higher for projects, but you don’t have to deal with payroll taxes, benefits or workers’ comp, and you have a lot more spending flexibility because when there is no work, you don’t have to pay. Just beware of IRS rules differentiating employees vs. contractors – the government is cracking down on companies that treat contractors like employees.

Establish good record keeping habits

Getting it right from the start establishes the proper foundation as the business grows. Good record keeping helps you make good decisions because without good information you cannot make business decisions. Having your records in order not only helps you monitor successes and failures, you’ll need it should you get audited by the IRS, and may be required by states you do business with or perhaps even your insurance company looking to raise premiums.

Make sure you are adequately capitalized

I cannot overemphasize the importance of financial planning in the early stages of business life. Projecting cash flow requirements — how much money you will need and how much money you will make — is something all startup companies must do. This report will help you estimate how much cash you will need to start and where and when it will be spent.

Have business advisors

You may be the expert on your business, but you’re likely not an expert in law, accounting and banking. So it’s important in the early stages of business life is to establish relationships with qualified business advisors, who possess the vital information you lack. Examples include:

• Find a law firm that focuses on entrepreneurs.
• Hire an accountant who works with entrepreneurs and who understands the economic realities of a start-up. Along with your lawyer, he or she can help determine whether you should form a corporation for your business.
• Develop a relationship with a commercial bank and establish a small line of credit — even if they will only offer the company a small credit card line. This is the first step in establishing a credit history for the company for future borrowing.

Chris E. Talis is a CPA, MBA and senior partner at Hedgerow Mergers & Acquisitions, which delivers merger, acquisition and business consulting services targeted primarily to the middle market community of private business owners with annual sales of up to $100 million.

Start-up activity, which got a boost from the recession as millions of people looked for new work opportunities or rethought their careers, is on the slide. According to a new survey by executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, 3.7 percent of job seekers were looking to start something up in the first half of 2010. That’s a big drop from the 7.6 percent in the first half of 2009. That’s a low point since 1986, when the company began tracking this stuff.

What gives? It could be that more people are getting jobs and don’t feel like starting a business is necessary. “Then there is the fragility of the recovery and the uncertainty that comes with it,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray &
Christmas.. “Many small business owners are increasingly pessimistic about business conditions and still find it difficult to get a loan.”

That’s bad news for America, if we are to believe the many experts who say a recovery depends on a rebound for small businesses.

Every day, it gets cheaper and easier to start a business. Want to put up a website? Try the free, open source WordPress platform. Need to sell some stuff? There are free or cheap e-commerce engines that manage the front end of the process. Even fulfillment can be automated, depending on what you’re peddling. And advertising is a plug-in from Google.

But what doesn’t get easier despite disruptive technology is putting together a viable business idea and creating a solid plan for executing on it. I’m not familiar with them, but have no doubt there are websites that aim to automate the business-idea process. I can’t imagine the businesses created this way will last very long or get very big.

The good news is that even if there’s no Web shortcut for good ideas, there’s now a free option that takes you through the rigorous process, holding your hand every step of the way, and forcing you to work out your ideas, through tutorials and worksheets. Most times, these tools are not free, and are usually very expensive.

Rhonda Abrams and USA Today have posted a six-week business plan intensive workshop to help you slow down and think through every stage. Doing this in advance will help put you on a solid course to launching a company with great potential.

Here’s how it breaks down:

Week 1
Idea inspiration – Where did it come from? What are your influences? Abrams provides worksheets to think about role models and what you like about your idea. Additional worksheets focus on setting up business files, laying out the fundamentals of your business and establishing goals. She’s also got tips on naming your company, probably one of the most painful steps if you ask any entrepreneur. See Week 1 here.

Week 2
Competition – Who’s already doing something similar? How big is their market? What’s the potential for your idea compared to theirs? Is yours better, bigger, faster, smaller? This second week of business planning covers an essential component of launching a business: knowing your competition. Every prospective investor will ask you this and you had better have a good answer. The other question? Who you’re targeting. You need to understand their needs inside and out to craft a concept that appeals to them, and that they will pay for. Abrams provides worksheets on market size and customer profile, and some strategies for tapping your network and useful data sources. See Week 2 here.

Week 3
Business filings – Don’t yawn. Incorporation documents, patent filings and licenses and permits may be more painful than a root canal, but you will thank yourself later, especially if you know other folks who failed to do this, failed to get a lawyer, and found themselves in a sticky mess later on. An ounce of prevention, as they say. This third week helps you set up the administrative aspects of your business, as well as the company structure, employee considerations. It also features a worksheet to help you understand your leadership skills. See Week 3 here.

Week 4
Overhead – More of the boring fundamentals that will ensure your success includes determining a location for your business and negotiating the best deal for your needs. Abrams also walks you through determining your hardware and software needs, gets you to think through and lay out a plan for day-to-day operations and set up a production process. She doesn’t miss a thing. See Week 4 here.

Week 5
Money, money, money – First things first: meet with an accountant. Also, understand the taxes you will have to pay out. This is one of the most intense and valuable weeks in the process, as it focuses on setting prices for your product or service and working out financials (cash-flow projections, costs, income, etc.) so that you can present a cleaned up financial overview to potential investors. You often get one shot with those folks—you want to make sure you present them the best possible set of data you can, in the package they prefer. She’ll also walk you through what types of funding you might consider, whether it’s a bank loan, venture capital or a bootstrapped path. See Week 5 here.

Week 6
Opening day – This final week is about actually getting the business to market. One thing I’ll disagree with Abrams about is putting the “elevator pitch” in this week. You’ll need that much earlier in the process in order to speak succinctly to potential investors, corporate partners and customers about your business. Venture Hacks has a nice post on the topic. Otherwise, Abrams has great advice and worksheets on marketing your business and launching it into the world. See Week 6 here.

Which just leaves us with this: Best of luck!

Successful entrepreneurs need to have an outsized appetite for risk. They have to thrill to danger, relish the idea that they might lose it all with one roll of the dice.

Right?

Wrong, obviously, or we wouldn’t have written it that way. (Also, we probably would not have started a business.)

Many people have debunked those ideas, most recently Malcolm Gladwell, writing in the New Yorker. Using as examples Ted Turner and John Paulson, who famously made billions betting against the housing bubble, he argues that successful entrepreneurs are not braver than everyone else. Instead, they are very good at finding opportunities to minimize risk so they don’t have to be brave.

Take Paulson’s gamble against subprime mortgages, for example. He didn’t risk everything just because everyone was going in one direction and he liked the other. He and his employees bought huge databases showing the historic performance of millions of home loans around the country. They crunched and sifted and massaged the data, finally concluding that a small change in the market could result in a big mess. Which it did. And while everyone else was busy selling and bundling mortgages, he figured out ways to bet against them.

What’s the point? This is for all the people who are eying an entrepreneurial move–either because they got laid off or, well, just because–and are afraid they don’t have what it takes. You have a niche. You probably have insights into what’s undervalued and overvalued–insights that other people don’t have. So use that knowledge and experience to minimize your risk, and you won’t have to be brave to take a leap.

The Wall Street Journal is calling this the “age of going solo.” The reasons are obvious: more people are working independently, because they gave up on the corporate world or were chucked out. A startling 20-plus percent of US workers are freelancers, consultants, contractors or (my personal favorite) “micropreneurs.”

Are you one of them? Could you be? The Journal’s story by Richard Greenwald offers some powerful tips on how to succeed. Read the original article for more, like what to beware of in a professional network.

Think long term

You might see this as a temporary, in-between jobs situation. But it might not be. And if you think of it that way, you won’t be very good at it. And with competition for gigs fierce, your halfhearted approach won’t make you a pile of money.

Learn and teach

You need cutting-edge skills, both to justify your rates and improve your chances of getting a full-time gig, should you want one. Meanwhile, teaching boosts your income, expands your network and looks great on a resume.

Make space

Clearing a spot at the dining room table is not a recipe for long-term professional success. Check out our stories on setting up a home office with $100 and finding outside office space at a discount for tips.

Think like an entrepreneur

Great advice. Don’t just drift around–have a business plan, a focus, a direction.

Of all the year-ahead prediction lists we’ve seen out there, one caught our eye for its thoughtfulness and perception. Small Business Labs, the blog of Emergent Research, a trend analysis and forecasting firm, sees a coming year of going one’s own way, from individuals to businesses. The theme for this year may be “solo.”

1.  The Shift to Contingent Workers Turns Employees into Entrepreneurs: Employers large and small are shifting from full-time employees to part-timers, freelancers, outsourced services, partnership arrangements and other forms of contingent workers.  They are doing this to save money and increase business flexibility.  Despite the economic recovery, 2010 will see the contingent workforce grow as companies continue to limit hiring of full time staff.  Many of these contingent workers will create or work for small businesses.

2.  Personal Businesses on the Rise: Enabled by the Internet and low-cost information technology, the number of personal businesses (one employee businesses) has grown twice as fast as the overall economy over the last decade and exceeds 22 million.  With the unemployment rate remaining high and traditional employment options limited, 2010 will be another year of strong growth in the number of personal businesses.  The growth in personal businesses will also result in an increase in overall small business formation and numbers in 2010.

They see a coming landscape of creativity in the way small businesses fund themselves, too. These companies have had a tough time getting the same bailout treatment that Detroit and Wall Street, and the folks at Emergent don’t expect much change there. As a result, they forecast the rise of alternative credit sources such as micro-lending, factoring and such. The bottom line: companies and individuals will need to go it on their own in order to survive, and thrive.

The list also notes that businesses will see growth in demand for green and locally-focused initiatives, and that social and mobile platforms will gain in strength and effectiveness this year.

Read the full list here: Top 10 Small Business Trends for 2010.

This may be the year everyone wants to forget. Layoffs ruled, credit cut off our breath, and small businesses couldn’t catch a break. While the colossal banks on Wall Street got a bailout, many small businesses couldn’t get a loan.

Even so, the tough times can make us stronger — or at least point out what we might not want to do again. Here’s a look back at the year that was and what we learned:

You don’t need your office as much as you once thought you did. If the overhead is overwhelming—ditch it. Michael M., a small business owner in New Jersey, went virtual: Everyone worked from home, and the overhead costs were limited to warehouse space for his products.

You know what you know. So, the customers are spending less. Or there are fewer of them. That doesn’t mean you’re not good at what you do—it means the market isn’t good at what it’s supposed to do to boost your business. So if the market changes, you can change, too. Amy Lechelt-Basta, a clothing store owner near Chicago, closed her store and redirected her expertise and resources in a new way: she advises people on their wardrobes.

Customer psychology is everything. One of the big debates earlier this year was over pricing strategies: lower them as a way to keep sales going; or hold or raise them, because raising them from a lower point later on would be so much more work. Understanding who will pay what became your focus. You looked at pricing at a point when it really mattered, and you learned more about it than you ever had before.

There’s no time like the present. Sure, it hasn’t been the best time to hire, but there were plenty of good candidates out there. Just as some of those folks were “pre-fired,” you can also anticipate, by “pre-poaching.” If you played things right, you used this time to get to know strong future candidates and keep them in your orbit. When conditions clear up, you’ll know exactly who can help drive your business to further success.

You learned a lot about the end. At some point, you considered closing up shop and getting out of the business. Many of you did (bankruptcies and business closings were way up this year), no doubt attempting to sell first. Going through a business closing or sale holds a wealth of lessons, including getting your house in order, understanding your worth, and the fact that it ain’t over till it’s over: if you don’t keep working on your business to the very end, why should anyone else?

That nothing is certain—including your key client contact. The sharp sickle of layoffs spared few companies and some of your best business sources may have been let go. So you did the tough work of rebuilding relationships with that company, and learned a little about living with uncertainty.

Good lessons to have—too bad they came at such a cost. Here’s to a stronger 2010.

When Amy Lechelt-Basta opened her clothing boutique on Chicago’s north side in 2006, sales were strong and business was bustling. But by this past summer, things had deteriorated so rapidly that she had to close up shop. However, all was not lost, because she transitioned her skills and expertise selling clothes into a consulting business that advises individuals on their wardrobes. Take a lesson from Lechelt-Basta: When life throws you lemons, make lemonade.

If you’re one of the many business owners whose companies have been pummeled by the economy this year, you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water. Even if you think you’ve hit the end of your resources and are considering bankruptcy as the only option, you probably still have some tricks up your sleeve; find the hidden strengths in your business and needs of your clients and you’ll find a new market opportunity.

Small business expert Denise O’Berry offered these three tips on turning your ship in a new direction to avoid letting it sink: following the direction your clients’ feedback takes you; find creative ways to (profitably) unload excess business; and stress testing your new direction to make sure it will work.

Use client feedback to tweak your business model. “Explore which issues clients are encountering as you communicate with them during the regular course of doing business. When you hear something come up in discussion, ask probing, open-ended questions such as ‘Why is that the case?’ or ‘How well is that working for you?’ or ‘What method might work better for your business?’ From the feedback your client has provided, assess your current products and services to see if they will meet the client’s needs. If not, determine whether it’s feasible for you to develop new products or services. If developing new products or services is not feasible, consider whether you can partner with another business or outsource the work. They might comment they want something a bit different than what you are offering. For example, a Web development company might hear their clients comment that they have trouble keeping fresh content on their site. The Web company could start offering content services. Another example could be an accountant who hears his customers frequently ask for good ways to keep their books up to date. The accountant could explore the need and potentially offer a bookkeeping service.”

Consider the value in your excess business. Of course, if you are able to change your product and service offerings, you will potentially be staring down some leftovers that won’t be useful to your new business. While services can often be phased out, physical products are a bit trickier to unload. Chances are, because you are probably moving into a related industry, potential partners might be able to use remaining goods in other parts of their business, and you can unload them at a discount. If you own a clothing store or another retail shop like Lechelt-Basta, for example and are moving into a related industry – like fashion consultation – you can also have a “going-out-of-business” sale but with an emphasis on your transition to help put money into your new venture and get the word out to the community about the new shape of your company.

Give your new idea a stress test to make sure it will work. “In any economy there are no absolutes, but if you are listening to your client’s ‘pain’ and probing for the type of solutions they are seeking, you’ll have a pretty good chance at staying afloat. Just remember, this is not a one-time activity. You must continuously be improving your business by responding to clients if you wish to stay in business. Try the service out with a client in a small way. The Web company that adds content development could offer a small package – or a range of packages – to test what might interest the client. The accountant could do the same by offering different service options at different price points.” Keep track of your stress tests and write down results so you can provide services and products clients need … and not what they don’t.

You laid off a bunch of people this year. You’d love to staff back up, but you believe you can’t even think about that … not until the business improves. Right? Wrong. Now – instead of when you’re under pressure to hire – is the best time to identify and build relationships with talent.

Business expert, headhunter and founder of AskTheHeadHunter.com, Nick Corcodilos stresses that in order to effectively recruit great employees, you need to make a connection with them long before you actually need them. You need to seek out those interested in what your company offers and build relationships with those that have common interests and goals when neither you nor they are desperate. The following tips can help you attract and maintain relationships with key talent now.

Commit to quality leadership, from the ground, up. It might seem stunningly obvious, but ensuring your company is attractive to strong candidates is job number one—and no small task at that. Mike Myatt, chief strategy officer of coaching and personal branding firm N2Growth, recommends taking a look at your company values and making sure everything you do upholds them. If you succeed at this, your organization will become a leader in its community and you will be able to attract great talent with very little effort. Strong executive leadership will attract quality employees on all levels that are committed to working hard and helping create great products and services that will contribute to a very strong company identity.

Align their goals with yours. When all is said and done, great potential hires are not out looking to satisfy the needs of their potential employers. They are focused on their own career tracks and feeling satisfied and fulfilled in their daily work lives. To get the best of the crop, you’ll need to tap into their career patterns and aspirations and articulate how that positioning lines up with your own.

Enter their world. When you are building relationships with job candidates, you may think of it as them ingratiating themselves with you. With top talent, you need to think of it as you ingratiating yourself with them. To really get their interest and commitment, you need to get to know them in their native habitat – on the street, at their jobs and when they are talking to their peers. Find out where they hang out and what they talk about so you can understand what makes them tick, speak their language and help them get to know your company.

Train, motivate and mentor potential employees … even before they work for you. Myatt also says that a potential employee of your company needs to want to work for you more than you want them to work for you. A lot of business owners spend too much time and energy selling their company and still don’t end up getting any interest. To maximize time spent recruiting potential employees and leave more time to focus on your business, you need to talk to the right people and make sure those people really understand the key components of your company. If you’ve built a quality business, you won’t have to give huge, expensive incentives to the talented people you want to hire when you are ready to hire them. Even more importantly, Myatt believes that once you recruit someone perfect, you won’t keep them for very long unless you are willing and able to train, motivate and mentor that individual. You need to spend time really courting potential employees using regular, meaningful contact and give them important information about your company’s mission and its present and future goals so they will be able to thrive in your company environment. This open communication is what creates long-term loyalty.

You may not be able to imagine a time when you will be able to hire new employees to continue to grow your company, but you need to believe that many of your competitors have already started the process of building relationships.  Consider pre-poaching as a must for any business that wants to get to the best talent …before someone else does.

There are just days left in the holiday shopping season, and that means your marketing efforts are getting a lot more intense. But the new rules for the changed economy say no business owners should have to unload a huge chunk of their earnings into a holiday season marketing program, even though they might have spent this way in the old days … and even if their businesses lean a lot on this time of year. So which low-cost marketing strategies yield the best results?

The following strategies represent some recession-friendly, creative ways to market your company over the next few holiday weeks.

Bring your customers together. We’re talking about social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. According to Dan Klaus, a marketing specialist at Cheap TV Spots, while simply having a Facebook page will not instantly bring in new clients, not having one at all can be a turn-off to potential customers. Personalize your page and put an actual face on your company by adding photos of your offices or employees. During the holidays, advertise any special promotions, sales or deals you have through your status updates and any photos from special holiday events. You can also tap the seasonal creativity of your customers: The Gap, for one, has set up a site at CheerFactory.com where customers can create their own holiday cheers to share on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It’s like a free, extended sales force. If you’re leery of the time involved, know this: Most of these applications, promotions and widgets take minutes to set up.

Ask your prospects and clients what’s on their holiday wish list through surveys … and give yourself the gift of case studies and testimonials from satisfied clients. A savvy business owner will survey his/her clients and prospective customers several times per year to gauge their needs. The holidays provide a chance to check in with those in your sales funnel by sending out holiday messages… with surveys, so you can build marketing campaigns that will speak to the real needs of your customer and client base. MoreBusiness.com stresses that any marketing campaign will have more impact if you have a deep understanding of both your customers and our business. Surveys can reveal changing industry trends as well as any gaps in your own services, and provide leads on some useful case studies and testimonials for the new year.

To ease the process of drafting testimonials and case studies, guide clients with specific questions or draft suggested testimonials and case studies and e-mail them to your clients for review, then offer a reward – perhaps breakfast or a discount. To save money, send out surveys and questions through e-mail. Set a deadline for responses and offer a valuable reward – a white paper, a discount on products or services or a special holiday giveaway – to those that return surveys promptly.

Create a “12 days of different products and services” promotion. Last year, SmallBizTrends recommended this clever idea: Holiday-themed marketing strategies, such as a “12 Days of …” campaign during which you put a different product or service on sale for twelve days during the holidays or every week during the holidays. This strategy can be an excellent way to drum up new business or keep your current customers and clients happy. According to Ivan Taylor of SmallBizTrends.com, a lot of your customers probably aren’t aware of all the products and services you offer, so this type of campaign can help raise awareness about lesser-known items on your company’s menu and get more revenue.

Emphasize family in your marketing campaigns. Because holidays – Christmas especially – are often about family, stressing this unit in all your holiday marketing campaigns can help attract high-quality customers and clients. Jeff Wuorio of the Microsoft Small Business Center acknowledges that family is the ultimate common ground of holidays because they represent a time for families to gather, and that smart business owners will keep this in mind when thinking about special holiday marketing and sales programs.

Most importantly, this year and every year, make a list and check it twice and thrice; a well thought-out plan will be the best strategy to get just what you wished for.

Quen Ton, owner of a manicure shop White Daisy Nail Spa in San Francisco, Calif., took advantage of lowered rent prices during the recession to start the business after working for years in others’ shops. Even so, she has found the process of growing her business very challenging, is operating at a loss and surviving on her husband’s income. If business does not pick up by the holidays, she will have to sell.

So as a small business owner, how can you know when it’s time to sell? Well, here are a few signs: being too far behind in expenses to catch up; facing competitors that are way too far ahead of you in the marketplace; insurmountable conflicts between you and a business partner or business partners; the inability to manage unexpected business growth.

If you are seeing critical signs that point to selling your small business as the only viable option, the following four tips can help you navigate a sale.

Don’t wait until the last minute to decide to sell. According to Harvey L. Gardner of BusinessKnowHow.com, you can’t wait until you’re desperate to sell your small business. Even though the downturn may have caused your company to go south faster than it would have in healthier economic times, staying level-headed is crucial. Deciding to sell a business is a difficult decision, and if you wait too long you may be pressured by bad health, financial dire straits or emotional stress. Prepare yourself for the time it takes to sell your business – anywhere from 120-180 days – and know that it will probably take even longer than this, especially during a recession.

Get a neutral party to assess your company’s value. When you decide to sell, make sure y get a realistic picture of your company’s worth from a neutral party. When you professionally valuate your company, you will have a solid foundation for fielding buyer offers and know what to expect from a sale. You will also be able to gauge your business’ market position, real financial situation as well as its strengths and weaknesses as perceived by potential buyers. You can ask for valuations from a variety of sources, including local accounting firms, regional business brokers and investment banking firms.

Get organized. According to Entrepreneur.com, potential buyers of your small business will need financial information from at least the past three years. Formal statements will make a better impression and make selling easier for the buyer, so make sure you get an accountant-reviewed/prepared statement instead of one that has been internally generated. Often tax returns are enough.

Keep working … hard. Entrepreneur.com also advises not to let your business fall into disrepair by turning too much of your attention on the sale of your company. A small business that is in total disarray because the owner is completely out to lunch when it comes to daily operations will be unappealing to buyers and give them leverage to lower their offers.

If you find yourself facing the sale of your beloved small business in the current economic climate, stay calm. By following an organized process and facing the facts about your company, you can navigate a successful sale and come out on top.

Matthew and Marnie Brannon, co-owners of Midwest Fiat in Columbus, Ohio borrowed $110,000 earlier this year to help them expand the vintage Italian car parts and service shop they have run for five years. The process took six months of  diligent work, but the Brannons learned some valuable lessons about what it takes for small business owners to beat the odds and get funding during a downturn.

Two of their most important tactics for securing a coveted business expansion loan included making their plight known by publicizing their loan search through the press and other outlets as they were struggling through the process. They also worked on building relationships with potential funders by using contacts within their business network with ties to the banking industry. Combining different tactics helped them eventually attract investors and fulfill their dream of expansion.

Maybe you are a small business owner who was rejected for a loan in the past year; or perhaps you want to approach a lender for the first time; or you may simply have aspirations of launching a new business. Regardless of your loan goals, the following tips can help you achieve the Brannons’ success by navigating the current economic climate and getting the money you need to thrive.

Never stop networking. Join and become active in a couple different types of organizations where you can meet other small business owners and managers who can potentially introduce you to their trusted business advisors, as well as financial organizations. Targeted business organizations or trade groups can help you really fine-tune your focus because they will introduce you to those with financial interest in your industry that might be able to help you with funding. Regardless of the actual organizations you join, make sure they are good fits for your type of business and that you don’t join more than one of each type so you’re not spreading your time too thinly.

Make your funding and expansion plights known. One thing the Brannons learned is that publicizing your search for funding can potentially bring interested parties and potential investors out of the woodwork. According to Laurel Delaney of Small Business Trends, a recession can be a great opportunity for small business owners to attract investors and clients alike because it presents an opportunity for these owners to show they have the “guts to press on, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles” (Small Business Trends). Keeping a public profile can help anyone seeking funding look very attractive to lenders and approach them from a position of great strength.

In the end, building a profitable business is about building key relationships. Ultimately, the products or services you provide to clients or how great you are at your job are not going to make or break your business or increase your chances of being successful at getting a loan, starting or expanding your company. As with marketing your business to potential clients, you need to focus on building relationships with key contacts in industries related to finance that can actually bring you closer to those that can and will give you a loan.

Good times or bad, small businesses must fund their growth if they want to stay healthy and competitive. Continue to build important relationships with other small business owners, stay diligent about networking, and approach those that can help you secure funding from a position of strength.