Finding Ideal Funding For Your Business – Intro
You see it all the time in the finance news – a fledgling business finally grasping enough cash to meet their start-up target. And yet, you think to yourself, every bank or investor I turn to spurns my request for cash like a jealous lover blocking my advances.
You are not in an uncommon position – there are an almost endless number of businesses clutching at start-up straws, reduced to sniveling wrecks as they try to gain enough cash to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true.
The truth is that despite increased reticence from banks to lend to businesses, a failure to secure finance usually has more to do with flaws in the way you present your ideas to the world.
Most companies trying to secure finance are like half a person – while they have a great idea, they do not have the business acumen to back it up.
That’s why we have put together a few tips to turn you from a half a business into a full-flowing entrepreneurial cash machine.
Finding Ideal Funding For Your Business – Try other avenues
Despite banks seeming like the first choice for business capital, they have become less inclined to hand out money since the economic meltdown of 2008.
But since banks have become pickier, alternative finance models have stepped in to plug the monetary gaps leaking from business boats.
Now a multi-million dollar enterprise – it’s grown as an industry by 91 per cent since 2012. According to innovation charity Nesta – alternative funding is essentially an umbrella term consisting of crowdfunding, invoice discounting, and factoring, among others.
No matter which option you choose, you will be able to find the finance option that suit you, and will not be tied to a major banking institution.
Finding Ideal Funding For Your Business – Don’t dream of pies in the sky
You have probably got plenty of dreams for your business one day – perhaps you will want to meet Richard Branson face-to-face and tear his beard off as part of a business deal. Or, like a level-headed individual, you might just want to expand and turn a profit.
However, if you’re like any other business failing to win over financiers, you are probably moving about five steps ahead of the game, spouting pie in the sky ambition,s and citing unrealistic goals in your plan.
Instead, anchor your business plan in cold, hard facts and make your ideas for expansion realistic and effectively laid out. After which, you will find your pies in the sky are not as unrealistic as you first thought.
Finding Ideal Funding For Your Business – Find a partner who can talk the talk
Are you the shy, introverted type? Then here is some bad news for you – you probably will not do very well in business. Confident people hold the keys to entrepreneurial success, and they can present their ideas in a more captivating way.
Think Don Draper in Mad Men. The man is not exactly a fading wallflower, is he? But, if you cannot muster enough confidence in yourself to present a business plan effectively, find a partner who will. Do all this and you will be certain to find a swift injection of cash in no time.
Martin says
Good review and thanks for the tips. I wanted my investing to become a business as I gain more and more confidence in what I am doing and struggled to find investors crazy enough to trust me. Maybe I am moving 5 steps ahead when describing what I can do and how my investors can trust me… I’ll try your link to Guardian and see how it can help me to be more hard cold 🙂
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Derek Chamberlain says
Martin,
Good luck with your pursuit. I find that this is so often the case – we know exactly what we want/can do, but we have difficulty conveying that to others. Most business funding is 80% communication on what you’re going to do and how you will use the money and 20% the actual idea 🙂 Investors are investing in the person, not really the idea.