Whether your company is relatively young or you’ve been in business for awhile, you and most other small businesses need to be operating from a common assumption. That is, that at some eventual point in time, in order to keep growing, you’ll need to access cash from an outside source. The time to figure out your approach for getting financing is now, long before you need it.
Start by interviewing a small cross-section of those sources, ...
There’s no financial prerequisite for starting a small business. In fact, as many of us would admit, the financial side of managing the business is not our strong suit. At least, not in the beginning.
But like exercising a muscle, paying more attention to your numbers on a regular basis can actually strengthen your “financial IQ.” Not to mention help you avoid all kinds of (unavoidable) trouble—and take advantage of some real opportunities you could be ...
Here we concentrate mostly on small business. And one of the cardinal rules of small business is that not everyone wants to—or should—grow into a big business. So while larger businesses certainly have a lot to teach, often small business owners are more apt to learn more directly from other small businesses similar to themselves. But sometimes, a big company is so iconic, so inspiring and so universal in what it teaches, we just have to ...
It’s spring. We’re seeing signs of renewal, both in nature and in the economy. And not a moment too soon…hooray!
But in the midst of the country’s growing optimism, there’s still a group who seems intent on keeping the bad news coming, especially when it comes to financing for small businesses. That’s right, it’s banks! Sly foxes all, they’ve long forgotten their own struggles at the recession’s onset. But we just can’t quite figure out why ...
Last Thursday (April 5, 2012) President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups (JOBS) Act into law. Although the bill is described as complex and imperfect, there appears to be agreement that there are definite wins for small businesses. The big win (for investors, too) is crowd funding.
You may have already heard of two crowd funding sites in particular: Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Look for
more to launch now that this bill is law.
Similar to ‘crowd sourcing,’ ...
Tom and Sara had both worked in restaurants for years and finally achieved their dream by opening their own! Although they had painstakingly done their homework and tried to anticipate bumps in the road, steadily rising costs and a brief slow spell left them looking at a soon-to-arrive serious cash shortage. As successful has the restaurant was becoming, they knew they probably weren’t good candidates for a bank loan. Hmmmmmmm…
Maryann loved pets—her own, her friends’ ...
Where to begin?! There’s a lot happening in small business financing this year, despite the fact that it is still difficult to get traditional bank financing, especially from large banks.
But ‘can-do’ small business owners and providers of alternative sources of financing have been busy finding ways around the banks. Here’s a snapshot of what’s happening in the marketplace:
Business (or merchant) cash advance
This segment of the ‘alternative’ financing industry is booming, according to the Merchant Processing ...
We try to keep up. Honestly. But trying to stay current up with all the haggling in Washington, especially when it comes to the federal budget or proposed spending cuts, that’s something different altogether. So what are we all to make of the current proposed cuts and counter proposals back and forth across the aisle, specifically related to the Small Business Administration (SBA)? Will small businesses be better or worse off in the future? Like ...
When was the last time you thought about your business’s pricing? So you probably wouldn’t be that surprised to learn that a lot of small business owners don’t think about their pricing much at all, even in the beginning, when they were setting the prices for their products and services. In small businesses, pricing can be an afterthought or even based on gut feeling.
With so many irons in the fire, why wouldn’t small business owners ...
If you own a small business and you’ve survived the Great Recession (and it’s not over yet), you may find yourself with a business credit record that’s, em, less than ideal. You’re not alone, not by a long shot. And even though it helps to know that this mess was not your fault, it’s small comfort when you need financing and can’t get a loan.
Let’s face it. Banks aren’t even talking to a lot of ...
