5 Steps to Business Funding

As a small business owner you might agree that coming up with the idea for your business was a piece of cake. . .  Financing the business, however, is an entirely different story!  Sometimes you may only have very few opportunities to present your business for funding, so it's your job to make sure they count! 

Here are five strategic steps to help you fund your business and get to the next level BEFORE you start pitching to potential investors and lenders.

1. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is – You have a great idea, product or service that everyone will love, huh? So how much of your personal funds have you invested in it?  Expecting a bank or investor to come in and save the day when you haven’t spent all that you can to make it happen is a bit naïve. If you haven’t bet the farm on your idea, then don’t anticipate anyone else to.

Last year I attended a White House forum on entrepreneurship where Tyler Perry gave the keynote address.  During the Q & A, participants lined up to ask about how to find investors or receive access to capital. Without a blink, Perry reminded the audience very firmly that he was his first investor.  The early part of Perry’s career was riddled with one failure after another. Luckily, however, he didn’t fail on anyone else’s dime. Imagine flopping in a business you truly believed in and then having someone else breathing down your neck and demanding their money back. Perry also brought up the point that putting up his own money allowed him to ensure that the business wasn’t so financed to death by outsiders that when his opportunity to get true buy-in came, he no longer controlled any of the rights. 

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2. Understand Your Options – Bank loans and angel investors are not the only options for financing a business, but its hard to tell until you are first clear about a few things. Make sure you can answer questions like “For what specific purposes will any capital be used?,” or “What is the current economic state of your industry as a whole?” You can find a complete list of sample questions on the Small Business Association's site under "Determining Your Financing Needs." Without knowing fundamental questions such as these, you could be wasting time in all the wrong places. For example, you may find that you qualify for additional resources, such as grants. While grants are often seen as “free money,” many of them come at a price. You may be required to match the funds which you can hold as leverage with other investors or you may have to combine the funds with a business loan.  But that great possibility is worth the effort of truly knowing your business well enough for you to search for additional creative financing opportunities.

5 Business Lessons from Tyler Perry

Love him or hate him, Tyler Perry is not just a Black man; he’s a household name who has created an international brand in less than 20 years. A little over a week ago, I attended the White House’s Atlanta Urban Entrepreneurship Forum where the actor, producer, playwright and media mogul delivered the opening speech to a sea of would-be black and brown entrepreneurs, giving a candid account of his rise to success and journey from being virtually unknown to visibly renown. Between the Forum and Ebony magazine’s amazing cover story on the “$350 Million Dollar Man,” let’s just say Tyler Perry is my new inspiration.

Here are 5 business lessons I recently learned from my new mentor . . .in my head, that is. 

      1.      Focus on one thing. We’re all blessed with unique, gifts, talents and abilities. You may be blessed with ten. The thing is you can’t focus on all ten at the same time and 1) Expect success or 2) Expect us to buy it.  Perry encouraged one bewildered entrepreneur during the Q & A session to simply narrow her focus and master one thing, allowing that to become her feeder for future opportunities.  He shared that television and the big screen were always a goal of his, but he created his niche and built his following around plays first.  Let’s be real; No one trusts the woman who’s business card states that she’s a match-making relationship coach who sells real estate and braids hair on the weekends. Even if you can do all of those things, choose what you want to be known for and roll with it.  Let all of your other hidden talents come out once a relationship is built – not on your business card. We, the general public, won’t take you or your business sensibilities seriously.

2.  Learn the gift of good-bye.  Know up front that people will come and go on the journey to success and that is their job.  Perry calls them boosters.  Some people are only there to help get your rocket off the ground.  Once you’ve launched, it may be time for a few folk to fall off. Everyone can’t handle where God is taking you and that’s okay. You just have to be willing to accept that some people come into our lives for a reason and a season.  When their time is up, we have to be content with letting them go.  If they are leaving to pursue their own thing, let them go and wish them the best of luck.  If you have to kick them to the curb for being underhanded, let them go and wish them the best of luck. Either way it goes, understand the gift of good-bye and just let them go.  Business will thrive once you do.

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How To Hustle While You Work

Every day I coach women who are waiting for more time, waiting for children to grow up, waiting to get married or waiting for some person, place or thing outside of themselves to make their dreams come to fruition. When I ask why not go after their dreams NOW, the number one answer is that they work full time.

Well, I guess this depends on how you look at things; it’s the glass half full or half empty scenario. Maybe your job is in the way OR maybe it could be a blessing to test out the inconsistency of a new business while you have the consistency of a steady job. In the book, Hustle While You Work, the author Hotep, asserts that “Your job is not an obstacle in the way of your entrepreneurial dream; your job is THE WAY to your entrepreneurial dream.” Now, there’s something we don’t hear much of!

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I am a firm believer that had we all been taught how to hustle while we worked, the economy may have undergone the same large setbacks, but many of us would not have been affected the same. Far more people could have perhaps sustained mortgages, car notes and college tuition just a little longer had their dependence not been on just one stream of income. Maybe if we were taught more about creating passive income (income that does not come from active participation in a business) or multiple streams of income (income from more than one source) instead of this “go to college, get a job” nonsense, we’d be much further along as a country.

In addition to already having a full-time job, here are the remaining excuses, eh, reasons, many won’t hustle while they work:

1. The NO time excuse. Remember the last time someone broke up with you because of your “time” issues. Didn’t that conversation start out with, “You make time for the things you want to make time for?” Well, BOOM! Here it is again! Yes, when you really want to make something happen, you MAKE time, you don’t “find” time as if it were hiding behind a corner or under a mattress somewhere. Most of us could “find” time if we’d turn off the Real Housewives of (fill in your pleasure), limit our Facebook and internet surfing and stopped complaining and whining about all the stuff we wish we had time to do.

If you’d get focused and organize and prioritize your daily activities, you could easily begin to hustle while you work!

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Can't Find a Job? . . . Create One.

It's no secret that finding a job in today's economy has become a daunting task at best.  After revising your resume a dozen times and dry cleaning clothes for interviews that end with you being irritatingly underqualified, overqualified, or even unqualified, it may be time to create a job instead of just searching for one!

This week, President Obama signed into law The Small Business Jobs and Credit Act, recognizing that small businesses drive our economy and produce most of the new jobs in the country.  If you've thought about starting a business in the past, but thought it would be too difficult, it's time to reconsider!  What's more difficult than knowing you have a gift to offer the world and not having the outlet to do so? It's your time!

Here are a few tips to get you on the path to creating your own job and building your empire:

1.  Assess your talents, skills and gifts.  What do you do better than anyone around you and with the least amount of effort?  Your in a time of transition and, for many, despair.  This is not a time to do something just to make money.  This is the time to go after something you are passionate about.  At the minimum, doing something you love will rejuvenate your spirit, give you energy and take your mind off of the woes of the world.   If you run into a difficult time brainstorming, ask friends and family members to help you figure out what you've been doing for free all these years anyway.

2.  Do your research. Who are the competitors in your area?  What are they charging for their product or service?  How can you add your own touch and build your own niche?  Remember that you don't have to reinvent the wheel, but maybe you can figure out away to make it more durable or even roll a little better.