Do you need to start or grow your business but have little money? Before you look to banks and similar sources of financing, why not bootstrap your way to business success?
A bootstrap is a small loop of leather or other material that is found on the top rear or sides of a boot. The purpose of the bootstrap is to help you pull your boot on.
In business, bootstrapping has come to mean helping oneself without seeking outside help. It means using your own resources to finance, promote, and develop your business.
Here, then, are some ways of financing your own business by using your own initiative and depending less on outside bank financing.
1. Operate a Home-Based Business
Operating your business from home could save you a fortune. First of all, you eliminate the costs of expensive commercial rent, commuting, et cetera.
As well, your business use of home expenses would be deductible for income tax purposes. Since your home is your base of operations, your travel and automotive expenses from your home to clients would be deductible.
2. Accept Credit Cards
Rather than financing receivables and assuming the risk for bad debts, why not accept credit card payments?
3. Drop Ship Products
Rather than financing and stocking inventory yourself, consider drop shipping.
With drop shipping, when you make a sale you contact the manufacturer or authorized distributor who ships the product to the customer with your invoice and shipping label. Advantages include no warehousing, shipping, or inventory costs.
4. Use Your Customer`s Money
Selling memberships, subscriptions, gift certificates, and coupon books are just a few ways of getting your clients to pay upfront. Obtaining advance deposits and retainers from your customers can help finance your business operations and reduce or eliminate the need for bank financing.
5. Licensing
Instead of trying to finance the manufacturing and marketing of your invention, which could cost millions of dollars before you have your first sale, why not license it to a company with the necessary expertise and capital? You will then receive royalties in return for your idea.
6. Other Bootstrap Financing Methods
Aggressively control costs, barter, get extended terms from suppliers, establish strict credit and collection policies and procedures, rent (or lease) instead of buying equipment, buy used equipment instead of new, sell off excess inventory and equipment, obtain free publicity instead of paying for advertising, and do whatever else is necessary to generate cashflow and profits.
In these ways and many others not listed here, you may be able to start and grow your business successfully with very limited capital. Thus, you will avoid having to obtain expensive debt or equity financing.
Many who were unable to obtain financing from any other source have successfully bootstrapped their way to business success.
Bootstrap Financing Your Way To Business Success
Are you a Freight Broker? Learn How to Grow by Financing your Freight Bills through Factoring
Running a freight brokerage can be very profitable. Although being a freight broker can be very rewarding, financially speaking, it can also be very challenging. Especially since drivers depend on you to pay them quickly. And many times, your clients make you wait 30 to 60 days before they pay you.
So you have a challenge. Your drivers want to get paid quickly but your clients want to pay slowly. The math doesn’t work. Unless you have a nice cash cushion in the bank, paying your drivers will be a problem. And trying to get bank financing will get you nowhere. Banks always provide financing based on your past history. What if you are a new or expanding freight broker?
A better solution is to finance your freight bills through freight broker factoring. Freight factoring provides you with immediate money for your freight bills, giving you the necessary funds to pay your business expenses and most importantly – your drivers. And, as opposed to business loans, freight factoring is easy to obtain. While banks usually look at your past history to make their credit decisions, factoring companies look at your future potential. The main qualification requirement is that you do business with credit worthy clients that pay on time.
If you are a freight broker, factoring your freight bills may be a little bit different from traditional factoring. Most factors will team up with you to find a solution to pay your drivers on time, since this is essential. Others may even pay your drivers on your behalf, helping you handle back office tasks.
Freight broker factoring works as follows:
1. Once the freight has been delivered, you send copies of the documents to the factor
2. The factor advances you up to 100% (less fee) of the freight bill
3. You get immediate use of funds, while the factor waits to get paid
4. Once the client has paid, the transaction is settled
One of the big advantages of factoring is that it is easier to get than a business loan. And, as opposed to business loans, factoring financing grows with your business. The more you invoice, the more financing you qualify for.
A Successful Business Financial Projection Can Be The Key To Securing Financing
A business seeking capital can’t afford to underestimate the importance of business financial projections. A business financial projection is simply forecasting your sales and revenue to the lender. This information is important because it is a key indicator to your ability to repay a loan.
If you are unsure about financial forecasting and how it relates to your business it is best to hire someone who does know. Most lenders will want to see a three or five year projection. There are 14 different items to include and fully support in your financial projections. With these different items it is best to give a month-by-month breakdown for the first year, a quarterly breakdown for the next two years, and an annual breakdown for the final two years you are projecting.
The different items to include in your projections are; sales revenue estimates, administrative costs, production costs, sales costs, capital expenditures, gross margin by product line, sales increase by product line, interest rates on debts, income tax rate, accounts receivable collection plan, accounts payable schedule, inventory turnover, depreciation schedules, and the usefulness or depreciation of assets.
The income projection enables the owner/manager to develop a preview of the amount of income generated each month and for the business year, based on industry supportable predictions of monthly levels of sales, costs, and expenses. When determining the total net sales you will be finding out how many units of products and services you expect to sell at the prices you are projecting. Make sure to think of what returns, allowances, and markdowns can be expected. The sales costs needs to be calculated for all products and services used. Ensure that when determining the costs of sale that you don’t forget anything such as commission paid to sales representatives, transportation costs, or any direct labor costs.
For the gross profit you would subtract the total cost of sale from the total net sales. To get your gross profit margin you will divide the gross profits from the total net sales. This will be expressed as a percentage of total sales or revenues.
When formulating your business financial projections there are five items that will ruin the accuracy of your projections, and hurt your chances of being approved for business financing. The first one is wishful thinking or being over-optimistic about your sales potential. Ask yourself: “Is it possible to achieve the sales levels you’re forecasting?”. A good example is that a sales team can only visit a certain number of customers each week or a factory can only manufacture a given amount of products on each shift. Make sure to keep your projections realistic and even more important to be based on supportable evidence. It is imperative to also make sure that your sales assumptions are linked directly to your sales forecast or your information will contradict itself. Most lenders are “by the numbers”, so if your numbers don’t add up, you will get declined. A good example of this is to say that you expect increased sales in a market that is declining. That just does not add up.
Another thing not to do when projecting your business finances is to spend a lot of time refining the forecast. Try to avoid tinkering with the target numbers once they are set. Many business owners neglect to ask the opinions of the sales people who know the buyer’s intentions about what they think the projected sales should be. It is important to make sure your sales team agrees on any sales targets that will be set. One other fatal mistake made by business owners when working on financial projections is not getting feedback on the projections from an accountant.