I was just at the REIA of Macomb last night, Michigan’s Premier Real Estate Investment Association, and heard national business credit expert, Tom Kish, speak about unsecured lines of business credit and how they can be used to fund your business.
I found Tom’s message to be compelling, and it got me thinking about the subject of financing for entrepreneurs. Money is always a big question mark for anybody that is looking at starting or expanding their business.
There are a lot of different theories on business financing out there. The fact of the matter remains that most entrepreneurs are continually operating under capital constraints; seeming to be forever in bootstrap mode. I know that for me, personally, bootstrap mode means continually evaluating the viability of projects. Questions like: “does this initiative deserve more money than another one?” are always circling around in my brain. I know the textbooks say that this is how you are supposed to operate, that you are supposed to have to make these ‘rationing’ choices all the time. This might be o.k. for large companies to swallow, but for entrepreneurs we are often talking about survival, or growth necessary to get to a more sustainable level.
As an entrepreneur, I think one of the hardest things to reconcile my self to is the fact that I can’t implement all of my ideas. You see, I just see problems that come up in my life and in the world that I want to solve. Solving problems effectively, for large numbers of people = money made. Not being able to address these problems is hard, but if I am honest with myself I understand that I can’t always do everything.
The bottom line is that only the best ideas and initiatives will get funded. Whether you are trying to get your business off of the ground with angel funding or working with your personal savings to get started, or you are raising institutional funding, only the best ideas get the money necessary to get off the ground. The same rule applies to your own internal business funding; only the most promising marketing initiatives will get funded.
All of this might seem like a hindrance to growth, but it is a necessary aspect of business development. Our job as entrepreneurs is to make sure that we are continually coming up with new ideas for improving and starting companies and continually pushing the growth envelope. As they old saying goes: “the cream always rises to the top.”
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