Dear Donna Financial Advice Column #3 Best Way to Get an SBA Loan and other Small Business Financing Tips 12/15/15

Dear Donna Financial Advice column #3
By Donna Lee
(I am not a certified financial planner but a financial coach and I cannot offer any investment advice by law.)

3Q—I’d like to start my own business and I’m seeking financing; where can I start?

3A—Businesses fail for many reasons and thrive for many reasons. About half of all businesses started survive for five years and about 1/3 survive for up to 10 years. See: http://www.bls.gov/bdm/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurship.htm

I have found that one of the reasons that any of my businesses did not succeed was undercapitalization, although my first business failed (or I failed it!) from ignorance, although I probably would have succeeded had I continued in the way I was going though, again, undercapitalization was a problem even with that first endeavor over 30 years ago!

There are many ways to fund a business these days, including a popular one, namely crowd-funding. My experiences with crowd-funding have been disappointing and I am not inclined to try again. I also did not have good experiences with helping to fund crowd-funding campaigns. I have found their sponsors singularly unresponsive for reasons ranging from severe ill health and others of these sponsors although I’ve contributed only small amounts.

In any case, I have decided after about two years of research, planning, and going down all kinds of “alleys” that led me invariably to others, to try to fund my next venture, which is to bring my super foods/iced teas lines/ brand containing some of the most nutrient dense foods known to man like chia, quinoa, and moringa, which are ancient foods that are now trending again, to grocery stores in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada by the end of 2016, with an SBA (Small Business Administration) guaranteed 7A loan. I hope to do this before the next Presidential administration arrives which may change the opportunities for this kind of funding dramatically as well as very many other possible changes, especially if the Republican party gets in this time no matter who is elected; I expect there will be great changes in our government and its edicts no matter which party’s candidate gets in then!

Even now these loans are not easy to get, though I didn’t see any statistics on acceptance/declination rates although there is no minimum amount and the maximum amount one can get is $5 million at a time. There is a service, www.sbaeasy.com however, that I plan to work with to help me that I have thoroughly vetted, including all the frequently asked questions on their website (and there are very many!) their BBB profile (Better Business Bureau profile; they are an accredited business there, which means that there are very stringent procedures that they have to follow to resolve any issues with their clients, and they’ve been in business some 11 or more years).

The cost of their services is $150 for each of four consecutive months, or $210 for each of two consecutive months, or $500 (the price has gone up!) if you pay the total amount up front, all of which is fully refundable in one lump sum if you follow the steps they provide including the paperwork and you don’t get an SBA loan after three tries! You can see their BBB listing at the link below, which profile I strongly suggest you vet on your own rather than just taking my word for it.

http://www.bbb.org/southern-nevada/business-reviews/computer-software-pu...

I will keep you posted of my progress with this process here. (After making a first payment on this program, I decided not to get involved with it because it is too involved for me to handle right now, including the fact that I would have needed to take out a loan for $3.5 million (!) according to SBAeasy.com's guidelines to have enough money to satisfy the needs of my business including paying back the loan for the first year. This was more debt than I was willing to take on. Also, if you default on an SBA loan, although the government repays a large percentage of the loan back to the lender, you must still repay the loan. If this situation happens to you, I suggest you secure the services of the following consultant at the following website, which website I think you should vet thoroughly BEFORE you even use the services of SBAeasy. Again, there is a lot of information there; please study and understand it before you take out an SBA loan!

http://www.jasontees.com/sba_loan_default_blog.htm )

You can find other tips on financing your business without going into debt here:

http://www.christianwomentoday.com/workplace/freemoney.html

I wish you all success with achieving your constructive financial goals!

Over the past thirty years, I have secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial benefits and cash and I believe that I can help you do so too! See a free preview, then buy and read my book, Guerrilla Financing Tipstm, for more tips, etc. for $7 anytime right from your computer at www.amazon.com ! Or you can send $7 directly to me if you prefer through Paypal to my e-mail address: avataress@msn.com and I’ll send it to you as a Word attachment by e-mail right away. Visit my website: www.justdonna.g2gm.com . Send your financial questions for this column to me at my e-mail above; I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can here.