Welcome to
Part 8 of my 9-part series -- “The Pathway to Your success” -- helping you to
discover the small business growth opportunity with the biggest companies in
the world. During this series, I have gone through various issues such as:
corporate contracts versus government contracts; how to use corporate contracts
for legacy business growth, and what that means; what large companies buy; why
the time is now for small business owners to get into this game; and what is
the mindset for success. For this segment, the topic is “The Corporate Opportunity
– Small Business Financing”. I am going to cover this in two parts.
There is a reality TV show pertinent to this topic right now on a US cable
channel that features a billionaire who believes that it's still possible to
start a successful business with no money. So, he's challenged himself to go
out with a camera crew -- with nothing more than a hundred dollars in his
pocket and a pickup truck --and figure out how to build a million-dollar
business. Now you might be laughing, like most of us that are cynical, thinking
this is all for show, but he has changed his name so that no one knows who he is and he's
representing that he's not using any of his vast resources. He just wants to
prove that if he can do it, then you can do it, and he has the camera crew to
walk you through exactly the steps he's taking and the challenges that he's encountering.
He's working with people who do not know his background or who he is, in a city
that he's never been in before.
It's
fascinating to watch his decision-making process; how he's putting various
things together; his flexibility; and the challenges and opportunities he
encounters -- basically everything that you have had to go through to build
your company, which encompasses the whole challenge of financing your business.
Let's just
go back a year or two ago. What are the ways that most business owners used to
finance their business? What types of financing have they used within the past
12, 24, 36 months? Below is a list of some of the financing
options available to you now. I don't really want you to go through this list thinking,
‘I can't do that, I can't do that’. What I want you to think of through this
list is “maybe I've tried that, maybe I will try that”. It's not about why
these won't work for you. It's more of which one of these makes the most sense
for you. And even if you've tried it and it didn't work out before, how might
you approach it differently?
·
The
first finance option is, clearly, earnings of the business -- and credit cards
if they are available. It's easy to finance your business if you have a
cashflow coming in.
·
Second,
there are a lot of big companies out there -- American Express, Goldman Sachs,
Wells Fargo, Citibank through their Costco program, and several banks actually
targeting small businesses because they know that globally small businesses are
the growth engine for most economies.
·
Third,
large bank loans - - most of us have had our issues with that. I have this
thing about banks because after the financial crisis of 2000 through 2005, and 2010,
banks have gone back to their old business model of loaning money to people who
have proven they don't need it. Although
if you actually are bankable with a bank, go for it. In some cases, if you
can't go for large banks, community banks are often very friendly to small
business owners.
·
Fourth,
there are always friends and family. You can look at private loans.
·
Fifth,
if you actually carry inventory or you work with a lot of vendors, there is
vendor credit. Oftentimes vendors will work with you to give you favorable
terms, whether you go net 30, net 60, net 90. Sometimes you can actually close
the sale and get the revenue from your customer before your bills are due for
your products.
·
Sixth,
leasing rather than paying cash, because you can often lease things at a much
lower cost.
·
Seventh,
SBA loans and small business association loans here in the U S are very good
sources.
·
Eighth,
online or non-bank lenders. This is actually a growing market that I don't
think people have really explored but can often be a pretty good option for
you.
Now, here are some of
the bigger financing options: venture capital and angel investors, (more often
than not technology attracts venture capital or angel investors, but they dabble
in other areas as well); private placement of debt; credit union loans; selling
and pledging accounts receivables - or factoring, as that's called; state and
regional loan and incentive programs; private placement of stock; crowdfunding;
and public issuance of stock if you're looking to actually do an initial public
offering. (Not that many small business owners do that quite frankly.)
If you are a
woman business owner, some of the more specific things available are small
business grants, which can be found on “grants.gov” for example; the
small business innovation research and technology transfer programs; the girl
boss foundation grant -- G, I. R. L. B. O. S. S; women's business centers; the
economic development administration; and small business development centers.
There is also the Amber Grant-Eileen Fisher women-owned business grant; the FedEx
small business grant; and the National Association for the Self-employed.
If you are a
minority business owner, you also have some options: “grants.gov” again; the U
S Department of Agriculture; and - interestingly enough – the USDA rural
business enterprise grant program (I
suspect that, in agricultural communities around the world, there are grants available);
small business innovation research and small business technology transfer
programs; the minority business development agency (the MBTA); and the national
minority supplier development council. Also, in the U S once again, the SBA - a
business development program - has grants available; and Operation Hope - a
small business empowerment program. Also, If you're just starting and you have
some money -- you can take it out of
savings, or a home equity loan which is another source that people use.
As you can
see, these are pretty exhaustive lists. I'm sure there are other options for the disabled; veterans; service-disabled veterans; and LGBTQ as well.
If you happen to work for a company and you have a 401k and you're using that to
get you going, what everybody will tell you is the best time to seek financing
is when you don't need it. The idea being that when times get tight,
then you actually have already planned for that. You have a working capital
line of credit available to you. You have a relationship with a banker just in
general - somebody that understands your business might be going through a downturn
but knows enough about you to work with you - who knows enough about your
industry and what it looks like in your market and is willing to take the risk. You want to make sure you establish a relationship with a banker as soon
as you possibly can.
Now I'll
bring you back to the undercover billionaire show that I was watching, because this
guy started with no money. He didn't actually talk about credit or anything
else, but he talked about having just a hundred bucks and his pickup truck. And
5 episodes in, he's done some really fascinating things. He started off with a
simple premise -- which was he'd given himself six months to get this business
going -- to get it up and running. And he knew that he needed at least three
months of capital just to pay his expenses. He knew it would be hard to go out
there and build a business if he didn't know where he was going to lay his head
and didn't know how he would get food.
So, the
first thing he did in getting started was make sure he had three months of
living expenses covered. Check this out. He flipped a used car. He had to do it
twice. He flipped two cars. He went to a used car lot and negotiated a good
deal on a car. He then took the car and went through the car wash, put a for
sale sign in it, and sold it for more than he bought it. And then he turned
around and did the exact same thing again on a slightly bigger car where he had
more money, and he was able to net about six or $7,000 flipping two cars. He was
then able to pull out $3,000 to cover an inexpensive hotel for rent; food; and
gas for his truck. The point here is
that he was awfully creative. One of the other things he did was look for scrap
metal that he could take and sell to recyclers. So, he went to an abandoned
construction yard or someplace where there were some warehouses and sure enough,
he found some copper and other metal, and he was able to pick up a couple of
hundred bucks by selling that.
I'm watching this and thinking this is a guy that is committed to success. He's
going to do what it takes. And he's being awfully creative and thinking “what
has value? What can I sell? How can I generate cash”? And he's laser-focused
because he knows within six months’ time “X” has to happen. Otherwise, he's
going to be humiliated and embarrassed. He's going to have to “out” himself in
front of all these people and he's going to have to admit that he was wrong: that
the average person can't build a $1 million business.
The most creative thing that I saw him do was -- once he figured out how he was
going to take care of living expenses -- he went to a small business
development center, which is found in most cities within the USA. It may be co-located
with the SBA. It may be a part of some university, but there's typically a
small business development center. The center provided a whole host of
resources for him -- helped him to do
his market research; helped him to get
in touch with people, and just provided a tremendous number of resources. They
actually gave him an office space with a board room so that he could have
meetings, and a telephone and other kinds of things.
The most
amazing thing that I saw him do was he created a team. He was able to find
about five or six people that bought into the vision of what he was trying to
do. He told them point blank that he did not have money to pay them right now,
but he noted the timeframe with which he was working and that he was going to
make it worth everyone's while once the business was successful. They were all
a part of building something from the ground level, from the very beginning.
I've done
that. I personally have been on teams where there was no money to pay salaries.
And I believed in what we were trying to do and I gifted my time to the
business until we got it across the finish line. I've done it twice as a matter
of fact. And so, it's not a weird thing. It's not out of the ordinary. You may
have done it to the extent that you really and truly had something you were
passionate about -- something that you knew you could get across the finish
line.
With the
resources that I've listed for you: both the traditional ones and some of the
nontraditional ones (the undercover billionaire), you can see that there is a
plethora of possibilities available for obtaining financing for your business. Some
of the ways to raise capital I mentioned will work in other countries. All of
them will work in the United States. You just have to figure out how to make it
happen. Small business financing is available[FM1] . So, the question becomes “what are
you really prepared to do”?
Stay tuned
for my last post of this Pathway to Your Success series: “Part 9 -- The Corporate
Opportunity -- How to Get Into the Game”.
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