• Lon McGowan, who at age of twenty-two used a pocketful of credit cards, a low-cost publicity stunt, and a clever shift in marketing strategy to jump-start iClick, now a highly successful Seattle business selling low-cost digital cameras.
  
  
• Lurita Doan, who began her company New Technology Management Inc. in 1990 in Washington, D.C., after her employer turned her down for a project because she was “not management material”. Her company now has revenues of $200 million, employs more than 150 people, and is at the forefront of U.S border surveillance and IT services. Lurita is one of the most successful African-American businesswomen of her generation.
  
  
• Mark Peltier, from St. Paul, Minnesota, who designed and patented his own aroma machine. It was his sixth business venture. Starting out in 1983, his company Aromasys has now installed “sweet-air” units in most of the hotels and casinos in Las Vegas, and most recently at the giant new airport in Hong Kong, China.
  
  
• Jon Nordmark, founder of the online luggage business eBags.com in Denver, put everything he had on the line to found his company in 1998, and, after suffering through a deep downturn in 2001, bounced back to sell more than one million bags in 2003.
  
  
• Andrew Field, who decided to focus on what his customers really wanted and valued, changed the name of his business to the easy-to-grasp PrintingForLess.com, and was able to build the nation’s leading online printing business from the small rural town of Livingston, Montana.
  
  
• Sean Murphy, cofounder of Canvas Systems, a reseller of refurbished computer equipment in Atlanta, is “The King of Thrift.” He instills his penny-pinching strategies in a workforce that has grown from four to 250, with no outside financing.
  
  
• Joseph Lahoud, who started the engineering business LC Technologies in Fairfax, Virginia. During the rough early days, his staff once collectively walked into his office and said that their best advice was to close the business. He didn’t, and they stayed. Months later, after the business became a success, his staff told him they didn’t leave because “we just couldn’t leave you there working by yourself.”
  
  
• Tim Jenkins, cofounder of the consulting group Point B Solutions in Seattle, whose company treats its loyal and dedicated employees in a way that is a model of corporate HR practice.
  
  
• Paul Szydlowski, of Prime Valet Cleaners in Cincinnati, whose creative niche marketing campaigns and constant consideration of his customers’ needs have turned his company from one modest dry-cleaning establishment in 1990 into a five-store, $2-million business today.

These are just some of the successful Bootstrappers you will meet in the pagesof Bootstrapping Your Business.