To count the number of entrepreneurs who leveraged personal savings as opposed to equity funding at an early stage in their business would be a mammoth-sized task.

 However, all of them followed the same set of rules allowing them to pull off their businesses and will enable them to rise. 

As an entrepreneur remember::

1. Patience is critical – Bootstrapping is akin to a marathon. The goal of participating in a marathon is to complete it. However, what most entrepreneurs do, is that they treat the building of a company like a sprint. In their zest to overachieve, they often burn themselves as well as their company out. This mainly occurs in the cases of equity-funded startups that need to rush in order to grow their business. 

2. Become an expert in scarce resource utilization – A lot of people think that creativity and ingenuity lie only with those who create. However, they fail to release that bootstrapping is, actually one of the most effective means of channeling the inner creativity of entrepreneurs. Bootstrapping allows entrepreneurs to find methods to maximize the value of every resource they own. By enabling the optimum utilization of resources, entrepreneurs can creatively keep their businesses running. 

3. Utilize Your  Independence and self-autonomy – Entrepreneurs who choose equity funding at the very start of their business are often shackled by the choices of the investors. With the help of bootstrapping, entrepreneurs have the freedom to run their businesses in whatever way they want without needing to answer to someone on the chain of command. Also, with the help of this freedom, you can make big decisions without being accountable to anybody other than your employees, customers, and yourself. 

4. Hire only the best – Be ruthless. If possible, be extremely ruthless while hiring people for your team. Now, you may argue, that this is a strategy that all companies implement, be it equity-fueled or bootstrapped. However, bootstrapping companies have a shorter fuse than that equity-fueled companies. Due to this, they are presented with very limited time before they can blow on a large scale. While hiring members for your team, make sure that you research the best researching techniques and don’t take any shortcuts while hiring people for your team. And certainly, don't settle for people who are good enough. Go only for the best people who own the relevant skill sets for your business to flourish. 

5. Don’t waste your time or energy on expenditure channels on non-essential projects – When you’re at the start of your business, make sure to not take any unnecessary actions that you don’t explicitly require. That marketing channel you have been eyeing for a while might be a worthwhile investment. However, unless and until you can afford to invest your money and get a positive return on that investment, don’t waste your time or money investing in it at all.