ANDERSON, Ind. — Kimberly Harris and Deborah Weatherly opened a coffee shop locally because they wanted to help their central Indiana community.

The two first-time business owners pooled their savings and solicited donations from their church to raise the capital needed to rent a spot and purchase equipment.

This was done in an effort to ensure the two could build the business themselves, instead of being beholden to investors or a bank.

Harris and Weatherly’s Has & Has Not Bistro is just one in a series where new business owners are dipping into life savings or retirement funds to open their doors without taking on debt or investors.

Almost 40 percent of all new startups get funding from personal savings or donations from friends and family, according to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, a national entrepreneurship resource center.

That number goes up to 67 percent when looking at businesses that have grown to be worth more than $1 million. The study notes that clearly being able to have full control over a business can help it become successful.

Although their small bistro may never grow to be that large, Harris said it was important to start the business without the threat of debt hanging over her head. Even if she substituted that stress for worrying about losing her savings.

“We are just stepping out on faith,” she said.

Sometimes it can take more than just hard work and the right attitude to really get a business to take off, Kyle Morey, president and CEO of the Madison County (Indiana) Chamber of Commerce, said.

Oftentimes businesses will need that little bit of extra cash flow, either to hire a new employee or purchase a much-needed equipment upgrade, which is where the county’s many micro-loan providers can come in.

“Especially when you are in that growth mode… (A loan) can help those who have started out on their own who want to take it to the next level,” he said.

Morey has experience starting his own business and, just like Harris and Weatherly, he didn’t want to take a loan because “the obvious positive is I don’t owe anyone and they don’t own me.”

But that doesn’t mean he is opposed to loans, in fact a loan can often help make a business plan make sense.

He pointed to a local company he worked with recently, Element 212, a marketing firm in Anderson, that was just on the cusp of growth. Owners took the plunge with a loan and “that’s what it took to grow and to bring in an employee and now they are growing like gang busters,” he said.

Jo Havens and Brandy Delaplane, a mother and daughter duo, are looking for that same type of success, but they too decided to go it alone. The duo opened That Place Creations, using money raided from their own savings.

Havens has a history of doing things herself.

She has been making her own way since the age of 10 when she took an old bed off the street and rebuilt it for herself. Now she is taking that same can-do attitude to her business selling retooled antiques.

This type of determined self-reliance is common among entrepreneurs across the world, according to a study conducted by the School of Business and Engineering at Halmstad University in Sweden.

Every single bootstrapper who was a part of the study mentioned several motives behind their choice to self-fund, showing that it wasn’t just a lack of interest by investors that led them to the decision.

While it’s true that a loan-less business means the owner isn’t indebted to anyone it also means if it fails the owner could lose the savings put into the business.

Havens isn’t worried, at least not too much, because the only money she can’t refund is a six-month lease of the space.

 “Yeah, it’s scary to think about, but if it doesn’t work out, so be it,” she said.

Stephens writes for the Anderson, Indiana Herald Bulletin.