This book was written to help people like you find money to start or grow a small business. It’s not about free money, and it’s not written for dummies or idiots despite the popularity of such titles. It’s also not a book filled with feel-good stories but no real substance. It’s not about knitting, cake decorating, e-bay sales, or multilevel marketing. This book was written to help entrepreneurs and small business owners find the money they need to take a product or service to market or grow an existing business.
With the unique economic situation today, and with lending tight, you’d think we wouldn’t have much hope to offer. But finding money today isn’t impossible. As we finished editing, businesses with bad credit, unproven new business ideas, and companies in troubled industries such as construction and auto parts are having a hard time borrowing. But, banks still want to lend to people and companies with a good credit history and collateral. That is, after all, how they make money. . .the old fashioned way.
We’ve been helping business owners (including ourselves) find financing for over three decades. Kate worked as a banker, venture capitalist, private investor and financial advisor, so she has experience finding money. Tom ran several successful and not-so-successful high-tech entrepreneurial efforts, and together we started and ran a decidedly low-tech barnstorming business flying vintage airplanes that became the largest in the country.
We’ve learned from finding millions of dollars, for ourselves and others, that finding money is an art.
While business financing may sound like it’s all about numbers, getting to ‘yes’ is as much art as it is science. Entrepreneurial hopes are dashed every day when lenders and investors decide to pass on “opportunities.” Many of those rejections could have succeeded had the entrepreneur done two simple things differently: approached the right lender or investor, and gone about making their pitch in the right way. Even successful companies can grow themselves broke if they’re not careful.
We wrote this book to provide you with insights and insider secrets about when, where, and how to look for capital, who the players are, what they want or need from you, and how to persuade them to lend to or invest in your business
