Business Owners Toolbox Blog Discussions and articles to help the small business owner solve the challenges they face as they grow their business.

November 21, 2012

Crowdfunding for a business venture

Filed under: Finances — Tags: , , , , — Mike Van Horn @ 10:26 am

Q. Have you used crowdfunding sites to raise money for a business project. Asked on LinkedIn by Brandon Schaefer

I see potential problems with doing this. A business project is meant to make a profit, and earn a return for the investors. If the investors are crowdfunders, how do they ever benefit other than feeling good about supporting a business they like?

I see four ways to view such a contribution:

1. It’s a gift. I don’t expect to get it back. I’m giving it to you because I believe in what you’re doing.

2. It’s a loan, with no recourse. If you do well, I’d like my money back, with interest. If you go belly up, so be it.

3. It’s prepayment for services. I’ll put money into your business in the expectation that when you get going, you’ll provide me with product or services of comparable value. Perhaps a plaque with my name on one of your cafe tables.

4. It’s an equity investment. I expect to own a piece of your business, have a share of the profits as dividends, and to benefit on the upside if you sell it later at a premium. I want oversight on how you’re running the business.

If I’m a crowdfunder for you, several things would really irritate me, perhaps to the point of lawsuits:

1. You squander the money, just out of lousy planning and management

2. You divert the money to other uses, such as fancy offices or expensive travel

3. You make a bundle and ignore me. With my $1k investment (among others) you grow your company and Google buys you out, making you rich, then you won’t take my phone calls.

How are these potential situations handled on crowdfunding sites? What are the obligations of the person receiving the funds? What are the rights and recourse of the contributors? This is why we have contracts. The crowdfunding deals I’ve heard of sound kind of loosey goosey.  Fuzzy agreements now = lawsuits later.

If it’s for a good cause–say, you’re raising money to go plant trees to restore the rain forest–then I view my contribution as a gift, and expect nothing back.

But if I’m investing in a business that expects to make a profit, then I want some contractual accountability.

So when you look at Crowdfunding sites, see how they address all these questions and others

 

July 16, 2012

How to Finance a Second Location

Filed under: Finances,Planning — Tags: , , , , — Mike Van Horn @ 10:27 am

From a question on LinkedIn by Arthur Goldhaber

Q: What cost items get left out when store owners are figuring out what size loan they need to open a second location?

A: Here are some expensive items that owners often overlook. I have several small business clients that have recently gone through this—a restaurant, a bakery, and another company that moved to a larger facility. They were good at figuring the new operating costs, lease and facilities cost, and tenant improvements, but there were several ways they underestimated the cost of the expansion:

The cost of expanded inventory. Some owners try to purchase expanded inventory out of current cash flow rather than making that part of the new-facilities investment, and they soon go into cash crunch. Their cash reserves won’t carry them through the time between when they must pay for new inventory and when they get cash from selling it.

Hiring and training a top manager for the second facility. Assume the owner currently runs the first location, and has an assistant manager. If the assistant manager is not skilled or experienced enough to step into being manager of the second location, then a new and more expensive manager will have to be hired and groomed for some period of time. That is strictly an overhead cost.

Help for owner. Since the owner will be totally absorbed in getting the new place going, someone must take over many of his or her regular responsibilities. This may require hiring extra people. (But may be combined with hiring the new manager.)

The cost of getting needed approvals, negotiating a lease, designing the new interior, overseeing the tenant improvements. These things take a lot of the owner’s time, but they also may require hiring expensive professionals: engineer, consulting contractor, lawyer, architect.

Cost of changes in location #1. The original store may need an upgrade to bring it in line with the snazzy new place. May need changes in the back office to accommodate admin for two locations. They discover that their old systems are completely inadequate, and need an upgrade: POS, inventory control, employee time tracking, accounting, plus the computers and networking—all integrating multiple locations.

Hiring and training staff for the new location before it opens, and before it has positive cash flow.

“Stuff happens” funds, to cover delays, glitches, cost overruns. For example, “At the last moment, the city required us to upgrade our handicapped access.”

The cost of capital. They may neglect to factor in the cost of borrowing the capital they need, paying interest on the investment until the new location is profitable.

Get the right kind of loan. Some businesses try to finance expansion with their revolving line of credit, which must be repaid every year. This can actually force you out of business! You must get a term loan for 5 to 7 years, which allows you to repay out of the profits of the expanded operation.

Never finance long-term needs with short-term capital!

Don’t use revolving line of credit, credit cards, or vender credit–except for quick turnover items or as a receivables bridge.

Do use term loans (including a personal loan), equipment leasing, funds from second mortgage or your own savings.

 

The good news is, once a company gets its #2 location up and running successfully, #3 and 4 are a lot easier. And since you’ve proven you can do it, it’s easier to attract capital.

May 14, 2012

Financing for soap making business

Filed under: Entrepreneurship,Finances — Tags: , , , — Mike Van Horn @ 11:10 pm

My wife needs financial help to restart her handmade soap business, hopefully a grant. We have the building, need to upgrade computer and software, get raw materials, build a web presence. Asked by Scott Coe on LinkedIn.

MVH: My first question: do people and stores want to buy her soaps? If so, can she hand-make some samples? Could she use the samples to make some sales, collect some deposits, then use that money to buy more raw materials and make the soap that was ordered? If she prices properly, she should have enough gross profit to buy the next batch of ingredients and make more soap.

This is customer financing and it’s not that unusual. It requires having buyers who believe in your products. But people may be more willing to do this than to loan or give her money.

This is pure bootstrapping, and you don’t want to do this if you can raise capital in any other way.

You didn’t say how much you need to raise, and that makes a big difference. But if you can’t even afford some raw materials, it seems premature to worry about upgrading your computer and software. Use pencil and paper. Spend no overhead before its time!

Websites can be put up very inexpensively–free here on WordPress, plus hosting for less than $100 per year. It just takes time and gumption. Or spend a few hundred on a virtual assistant to do the initial set up. Most internet and web things are time-intensive, not money-intensive, but hiring a dollop of skill helps a lot.

The more capital you raise, the faster you can grow.

The more you can demonstrate demand, the easier it is to attract capital.

So hit the pavement and make sales.

I’ve never seen anybody get enough money from a grant to launch a viable business. Just enough to go broke.

The likely sources of financing for this venture:

— Your own savings

— 2nd mortgage on your house

— Family, even though it’s very risky even asking them

— A bank loan with a personal guarantee

— A private backer who strongly believes in her skills and concept

A product like this might be a candidate for crowd funding. Google this.

Financing a new restaurant

Filed under: Entrepreneurship,Finances — Tags: , , , — Mike Van Horn @ 10:55 pm

Where can I get financing for my start-up restaurant? Asked on LinkedIn by Tom Leach.

MVH: Restaurants started by inexperienced restaurateurs have one of the highest mortality rates in business. Thus nobody wants to invest in them, not even your mother! Certainly not a bank.

financing fine diningOne of my clients who runs a very successful restaurant, and who now has financiers offering to invest in his new locations, got his start by buying the restaurant where he worked out of bankruptcy for a very small sum. So then he had a restaurant with a location and a lease, all furnishings and equipment and permits, an established clientele, and employees including a chef. Financed totally from his savings built up while working there. He made it work by improving operating efficiency and customer service.

The likely sources of financing for this venture:

— Your own savings

— 2nd mortgage on your house

— Family, even though it’s very risky even asking them

— A private backer who strongly believes in your skills and concept

— A bank loan with a personal guarantee

April 12, 2012

Do Small Businesses Fail for Lack of Money?

Filed under: Finances,Growth Management,Thrive in tough times — Tags: , , , , — Mike Van Horn @ 11:41 pm

I say it’s a myth.

cash management, cash flowBelieving this shifts attention away from the real problems. It’s like saying the leading cause of death is your heart stopping. Well, duh. But why did your heart stop? Most heart attacks hit people who haven’t been taking care of themselves for years.

Same with business. Running out of money is often the endpoint of years of bad decisions. For example:

• Not watching the numbers closely. Not having financial statements you can understand, and not getting or reviewing statements in time. You should tell your bookkeeper/accountant exactly what numbers you need to track, when, and how you want them displayed. If they don’t give you what you want, replace them.

• Not controlling costs. Keeping unnecessary payroll and other expenses. Some owners borrow money to avoid laying people off. During tough times, if you’re not ruthless with expenditures, you won’t have the reserves to take advantage of later opportunities.

• Focusing on revenue instead of profitability, therefore not paying attention to the margin of jobs or sales. Taking any work. “I’ll make it up on volume.” “Maybe they’ll grow to be a big customer.” Don’t bet your business on these beliefs. Insist that every job must make a profit. Make sure you have systems that allow you to allocate costs to profit centers, so you can know the profitability of each thing you sell.

• Under-pricing. Many small businesses try to meet the prices of large, well-capitalized competitors, rather than competing on unique services and features that set them apart and command higher prices. Set your prices to include your desired profit margin.

• Not anticipating needed growth capital, so that a growth spurt causes a cash flow squeeze. It’s very difficult to grow relying on current cash flow. People criticize companies like Apple for amassing a huge cash hoard, without realizing that this is necessary to fund growth, innovation, and keeping options open.

• Having the wrong kind of financing. Financing growth with a short-term line of credit that must be paid off each year, rather than with a 5- to 7-year term loan. And how many of us have financed growth on our credit card, thus saddling ourselves with interest payments that eat up the profit needed to repay the loan?

• Not saving during good times, so that you have a fund for tough times. Too many owners would rather spend than save because they don’t want to pay taxes on the profits.

• Not being “bankable.” For example, if you run your business to minimize taxable income, you’ll never get a bank loan. Try telling your banker that you really do have a profitable business, despite what your tax returns show. Take your banker to lunch, and ask what the bank will need from you in order to approve the loan you will need.

• Not refining your business model to stay competitive and to meet the emerging needs of your customers. Just staying the same because it’s the easy thing to do. The old cliché, “Work on your business, not just in your business,” means that you as owner need to keep looking at opportunities, challenges, alliances, and strategies.

• Ineffective marketing. If you don’t keep looking at what works, refining your offering and outreach, and dumping the rest, your business will slowly decline. Where can you get the most bang for your marketing buck? What ineffective things should you drop? How can you leverage your effort?

I’m sure you can think of others. If you address these problems in your business, you’ll never have to use “I ran out of money” as an excuse.

This is one of the lessons in How to Thrive in Tough Times—Lessons From Small Business Owners–my newest ebook, just posted on Amazon for Kindle, iPad, etc. for $2.99.

 

August 8, 2011

Alternatives to Bootstrap Financing

Filed under: Entrepreneurship — Tags: , , , , — Mike Van Horn @ 11:03 am

Bootstrap financing may be unavoidable initially, but it’s a huge barrier to healthy growth, and you should get outside growth capital as soon as possible. Besides bank loans, what other sources are there?

• Borrow from yourself, even from your retirement fund. To do this, you must be as hard on yourself as any banker would be. You’ve got to demonstrate to yourself just as you would to  a banker that your business plan is sound and profitable and will pay back this loan in a timely fashion.

• Friends and family. Same thing goes. Before taking your rich uncle’s money, be able to demonstrate convincingly that this is a good business to invest in. He won’t give it to you otherwise.

• Leasing equipment and fixtures. Leasing can be very expensive but it’s worthwhile to shop different options to see where you can get the best deal. It’s best to have the advice of someone who is familiar with this type of financing.

• Vendor financing. Companies that want to do business with you and are convinced you are a good credit risk will extend you terms that will allow you to purchase goods from them. Use them to make money and then pay for these goods out of the resulting sales revenue.

As a last resort . . .

• Credit card. Financing via our credit card is an expensive trap. You’re playing with fire–or dynamite. Yet, sometimes we must do it. There’s a way to make it work if you are an excellent manager. If you have a good credit score, you will get offers for low cost balance transfers into a new account. Sometimes at 0% for a time. If you manage very well, you can replace one loan with another loan before the interest rate increases to a higher level. This is a dangerous game to play but it can be done successfully.

Downsides of Bootstrap Financing

Filed under: Entrepreneurship — Tags: , , , — Mike Van Horn @ 10:57 am

Bootstrap financing means to fund your business launch or growth without outside capital, relying on internal savings or cash flow generated by operations. This severely limits their rate of growth.

Some entrepreneurs bootstrap out of necessity: they have access to no capital. But many rely on internal resources even when they could obtain capital. I see two main reasons:

• Fear of debt, perhaps out of prior bad experience. They don’t trust their own resolve to repay debt so that it doesn’t just pile up.

• Lack of trust in their own business model and acumen. They’re just not convinced they can make their business succeed so that it is a good investment.

Owners achieve a major leap in business maturity when they overcome these fears and become willing to invest in their own company—via loans or equity investors.

Many small companies that self-finance their launch or growth are chronically under-capitalized. They are always running on empty. This can lead to some very bad habits in the way you run your business.

• You take any work that comes along because you are so cash starved. Thus you take unprofitable work that can actually put you deeper in the hole.

• You’re more worried about revenue than about making a profit.

• You work all the time. If you bill by the hour, anything that is not billable is suspect, such as planning, marketing, developing strategic relationships. When you make commitments to yourself, to develop new products or service for example, you are always willing to break these commitments to take paying client work. You always bump your commitments to yourself—or your family.

• You operate as the “lone ranger.” You are reluctant to get outside advice and expertise because of the time and money it requires.

• You wear all the hats. You do everything yourself. You are reluctant to spend on outside services, even if it would allow you to use your own time more effectively.

• Thus, you use your time poorly.

No plan. No strategy. Just work. This is the route to burnout or bankruptcy. And staying tiny.

“Alternatives to bootstrap financing” are described in my next post.

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