Why it has been difficult for you to get it and what you can do
You can get all the money you need for your business. Every cent of it. But you need to know where to look for it, what to say to those who will give it to you and how to say it. Unless you know these things, getting the money you require for your business may be a long-drawn battle that, unfortunately, may become a nightmare.
How did I know?
I know because I am an entrepreneur. And any entrepreneur worth his salt knows that he has only two major battles to fight in business: the battle to raise capital and the battle to sell his products or services.
Of course, there are other battles. But these are the major ones. Win these two and you can win the rest. Lose these two and you don’t have a business to call your own. This is why you have so many would-be entrepreneurs and those who are already in business clamoring for an easier access to start-up and working capital.
If you have an idea, and the idea looks really good on paper, only one thing can stop you from taking the idea from the drawing board and implementing it, reaping the rich financial rewards it promises to bring. THAT THING IS CAPITAL!
So capital is the magic wand for creating any business. The question is, how can you lay your hands on that magic wand?
After 17years of playing the entrepreneur game, starting with a shoe-string budget, a starting point that makes it inevitable for me to constantly require money to build my business, I have found myself in every imaginable situation that anyone in need of cash for their business will ever find themselves. Perhaps more!
I had woken up once, believing that my business career had come to an end. I was about one year or so old in business then and I discovered that all my working capital had dried up. There were several bills to pay and I had exhausted the goodwill extended to me by suppliers.
I was pretty certain that I had come to the end of the road. Depressed and dejected, I had retreated to my room and for two days, I was doing nothing. Then on the third day, after reading a few books during the time, I began to receive ideas of the steps I could take to get things going again.
A name of a friend flashed through my mind for no reason that I could immediately recognize. Later, it occurred to me to go to the friend and discuss my business with him. After the visit, I clung to a check of $5,000. It was all that I needed at that point in time to kick-start my business again.
I recall the experience I had when my business was just an idea in my head. As a Business Columnist, I had interacted with many men of means. Each of these men and women had the financial muscle to bankroll my business ideas, but they would not touch it with a long pole. WHY? I was not to find out until several years later when I was now occupying the same position they were in back then.
Instead of knocking on doors of people whom I believe could back my ideas with their money, I was the one being looked upon by other people to do the same for them. As I found myself saying “NO” to one business proposal to another, I recall how I had been turned down several times in the past.
As they say, experience is the best teacher; each project I say “No” to (and they were in the majority), I have a very good reason for turning them down. Looking back, I was able to find out why my proposals were being turned down by those I had banked on to support my dream.
What about getting a bank loan? I could fill a book with my experience with the bank. One problem that constantly ruled me out of their favor was the fact that I didn’t have a collateral. Until I was lucky to get my mentors to co-sign for me, the answer from the bank was “No”, “No” and “No”.
Back then, if you called entrepreneurs who were turned down by banks for a protest march from New York to California, making the journey on foot, I would be in the fore-front. Today, I won’t respond to such call. WHY?
I won’t because I have all the money I could ever need. It is simply this: over the years, I have come to develop sympathy for the position bankers take when they are appraising your loan request and you don’t have what they can fall back on if the loan turns out to be a non-performing one.
I can go on and on, but I don’t want us to lose track of my reason for telling these stories. What I am trying to establish is the fact that you can get the capital to start your business once you know where to look, how to look at it and what you should do to lay your hands on the money you require.
Look at it this way, every Dick and Harry that I know, and they are in the vast majority, didn’t have lots of money when they started. In fact, many of them were like me: big on ideas, short on money. But, somehow, they all got to start their business. Many of them got to make it to the top.
So, does it not make sense to agree with me that if all these people made it to the top, you too can make it, if only you know how to go about it? YES, YOU CAN!
YOUR STARTING POINT IS YOUR IDEA. Ideas are non-cash capital that can be translated into a huge capital in the long run.
There are Business Angels out there on the street of Chicago and in all the streets of cities and town around the world including your country. Package your idea into a written document that can be absorbed by others, approach BUSINESS ANGELS or VENTURE CAPITALISTS who are ever ready to invest in a worthy idea, because they know it will make them rich as well as you the originator of the idea.
A loan from a financial house is not ideal for a start-up capital. Because it put a burden on you as well as your business. It is only good for an existing business that knows its financial needs, its source of profit, that has the full understanding of the market and has established a credit rating history.
Mentors are good source of capital. Mentors are established people in your line of business who are ready to share their experiences with you or have already been mentoring you.
Partnership could be a reliable source of capital where you don’t have the complete required amount for starting a business. Somebody out there who you know and trust will be ready to put in money to argument the shortfall if the business has good prospect.
Note that ideas know no boundary. What one entrepreneur does in the United States of America to get start-up capital can be duplicated anywhere in the world successfully. The notion that those ideas are good only for Americans is false.
There is no doubting the fact that it is sometimes hard to come by money to launch your own business. But one thing is clear: nearly everyone in business has one story or the other to tell about how difficult it was for them to get capital to fund their business.
Yet, many of them ended up building fabulously successful businesses. IF THEY CAN DO IT, YOU TOO CAN.
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