How can this be? Success in entrepreneurship is not necessarily a contest of having fattest wallets. Rather, it is an exercise of smart financial management, careful strategic planning, and yes, lots of luck. Successful entrepreneurs know how to stretch and maximize every single dollar.

Here are ten ways entrepreneurs on a tight budget can still come out a winner:

1. Set realistic goals. The first step every start-up entrepreneur must do is to determine right scope and size of your business. Many entrepreneurs simply jump into idea of starting a business, without understanding what business really entails - financial requirements, management know-how, and technological skills, human resource requirements. They eventually fall short of what they can really do. Review business you have in mind and determine if it is within a range that's both attainable and desirable.

2. Plan your costs properly. A lot of entrepreneurs start a business without faintest idea of what costs will be. They either overestimate cost, or worse, underestimate financial requirements needed to properly capitalize business. This is particularly evident in preparation of financial projections in business plan. Some entrepreneurs prepare financial projections with numbers that don't square with other sections of business plan (e.g. marketing section calls for local television advertising yet budget is only $200). Some do not even include a list of assumptions to explain their numbers. From out of blue, they feel that their business can grow from 20% in first year to 40% in second year, without explaining how increased growth can be achieved.

3. Smart financing for your business. Financing a small business is not a lock-stock-and-barrel proposition. For many entrepreneurs, there is no single source to finance their entire operation. The money provided by one source (e.g. your mom) may be enough to buy your raw materials, but you still need money for your working capital. Entrepreneurs need to look at financing as sum of parts of their business: what you finance are individual assets needed for your business. Your question should always be: "What's best way to finance this asset using least upfront dollars?" The ideal financing source is one that provides longest payback period, carry lowest interest rates, require little or no collateral and demand no personal liability. Alas, that may be fairy tale. The next best thing is to choose what makes best sense for you and your business, given your priorities

One thing that fascinates me about web entrepreneurs and marketers like Joe Vitale, Yanik Silver and Terry Dean is how incredibly productive they are. They seem to create a near constant stream of information products like e-books, special reports, courses, software and compact discs.

On top of that, they juggle all daily activities required by anyone running a small business.

If you have resources, you can hire employees or contract workers. But I think most web entrepreneurs prefer to keep their businesses as “solo operations.”

But handling everything yourself requires maximum efficiency.

I certainly have my own techniques for time management, but I asked for feedback from other entrepreneurs. Here’s some of their solutions.

”I always take about 30 minutes to an hour to look at my emails at beginning of day” says Stephanie Hetu (http://www.stephaniehetu.com) “Then, after that, I try to look at my emails again only every 2 hours or so.

“When I started online I used to look at my emails every 10 minutes, this was very time consuming and counter-productive because you end up spending more time reading than actually BUILDING your business.”

However, not everybody thinks checking email first thing is a good idea.

“I always devote first hour of day to revenue producing activities,” says Bill Hibbler of RudlReport (http://www.rudlreport.com) “I never check email or voice mail until after that hour is completed.

“If you open your email first and find a refund request or a customer with a big tech support problem, it tends to stay on your mind and distract you from task at hand.”

DETERMINE YOUR PEAK ENERGY PERIOD

One technique I used to help to me reach maximum efficiency was to figure out when my brain was most creative.

For me, that’s morning. During hours of 9 am to noon, I do most of my creative tasks, such as writing my articles, editing my ezine, working on sales copy, or coming up with new marketing ideas for my website.

My energy sags between noon and about 2:30pm. I use this time to do less mentally taxing activities. Answering email, fixing a typo on a web page or uploading pictures.