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00:00Good morning. Good morning. How are you ladies this morning? Awesome. Well, welcome on in. I'm
00:14going to have a seat. Let's make sure this is working. Awesome. So she gave you a little bit
00:20of information about me, but currently I'm serving in what I would say is my most exciting role to
00:25date. And that would be as the CFO and CCO of the New Voices Fund. So I get the distinct
00:31pleasure of working with women of color, women and men of color now, to get funding for their
00:37businesses and to help be a coach and strategic partner as they grow and streamline their businesses.
00:42So my background is in accounting and finance, and I'll happily share this presentation with you
00:47later so you can read all of that. But let's just jump into it. So money, money, money. We're here
00:52for money, right? That's what we're all sitting in this audience for. So I would like one person
00:56because I'm all about us all participating. So one person to tell me if money was not an issue,
01:02what would you be doing with your time? Any one person. Doing hair? Growing your hair. Now that's
01:11beautiful. Sitting there drinking water and loving yourself. All right. So what's in it for me? This
01:17is a session where I want to make sure that you get the information that you need. And it's more than
01:22just figuring out how to get the money, but understanding what steps are needed to actually
01:25prepare for that. So you heard Daryl and Eric share a few minutes ago how the landscape is
01:31changing and how we need to actually change the way we approach it in our timelines and
01:35thoughts for how we actually secure funding. So our agenda today is going to cover calculating
01:41your funding needs, considering the timing of funding based on the stage of your business,
01:46also understanding funding options and preparing to actually secure funding. I will admit this
01:51presentation is probably longer than the time we have allotted. So at the end, I will give
01:55you the QR codes to be able to download this and takeaways from this presentation so that
02:00you'll have everything that you need. There are hyperlinks embedded in it as well. So I won't
02:03leave you hanging even if we get short on time. So when do you need to start a business? Dave
02:11Thomas, founder of Wendy's, said you need three simple things. You need to know your product better
02:15than anyone, know your customer and have a burning desire to succeed. And that sounds very
02:19like idealistic, right? It sounds like if I just know all the good things about my customer,
02:23I can get out here and just run a business. But what he left out is like every single one
02:27of us needs money. Like there's no way you're starting a business with no money. That's not
02:31happening. You need product, you need people, you need time, right? So those are the things
02:35I have to focus on today. Sorry for losing the mic. So first question, just by a show of hands,
02:43how many of you feel confident right now asking for funding or loans? Okay. How many of you think
02:51you know how much you need if you were to go ask? Okay. How many of you feel like you know where to go
02:57to ask? Okay. So there are a few people and I think that's why we're all here and this is typical
03:02and that a lot of people don't feel confident in what to ask for and how much to ask for.
03:09So where's the money? Minority-owned companies pay higher interest to get smaller loans.
03:14African-American entrepreneurs most often rely on their own personal credit cards. Despite all
03:20these gains over the past decades, minority business owners are still less likely or still more likely
03:24to receive smaller loans than their counterparts. So statistically, for a minority business with
03:30$500,000 in gross revenue, the average loan approval is $149, where a non-minority company of the same
03:37revenues gets more than double that. So that's saying something. There's still some systemic racism that
03:42we have to overcome that we don't need to just forget about. It underscores our journey a little bit.
03:47It doesn't change it, but it's just something that we need to have in the back of our minds as we go out
03:50and plan. And the last thing is that minority business owners typically feel like they're going to be
03:54rejected so they don't even try. And I want to make sure that when you leave this session that that
03:58mindset is gone. That when we walk out of here today that we have to, no matter how many times we
04:02might get rejected, no matter the fact that we might get less money, we cannot leave here today
04:07feeling like we can't ask. That's not okay. So show up in the room, ask the questions, but today I
04:12want to give you the tools to actually be prepared to ask the questions. So how much do you need?
04:18That's always the first question, right? If you come and ask me for a loan, my first question is
04:21going to be, how much do you need? And when I asked that question earlier, several people, only one person
04:27really raised their hand and said they knew exactly how much they need. So the first thing
04:30we're going to go over is startup costs, which is one of the most important pieces of starting your
04:35business. How much money do you need up front? Do you need an office? Do you need equipment? Do you
04:40need supplies? And how do you plan for those things? The one thing that I tell all small business owners
04:45when you're getting started is to make sure that you price this two or three or four times. Ask people in
04:51your network who have done this before how much they paid for it. Ask somebody sitting next to you
04:56today, exchange information. And when you guys are going out and pricing things and trying to
05:00understand the rates for things, talk to one another, because there's always someone getting
05:04a better deal somehow than you. And there's also strength in numbers and economies of scale. So if
05:09you can reach out to a supplier or vendor and be able to couple your services together or couple your
05:15purchases together, you get more buying power together. So price it out more than once, more than
05:20twice, more than three times, be very clear exactly how much you need and save those quotes.
05:27Then you go on after you start up, you're going to get into ongoing costs and growth costs. So fixed
05:32costs such as your rent and storage, flat rate costs such as subscriptions. A lot of what we do these
05:37days are subscription based. So those subscriptions and how the cost changes as you have more and more
05:44volume, right? One of the things that people often run into is picking a solution or a software and not
05:49realizing that the more they use that software, the more it costs, not fully understanding the cost
05:54structure of the software before you get started. So you got to really take the time and look at that. If
05:58they're going to charge you, you know, a dollar once you exceed a thousand transactions, you need to know
06:02that and you need to kind of plan for that almost in a worst case. Like if I got the best case scenario is
06:08that I'm going to sell a thousand of these on day one, then plan like that and see how much that's going to
06:12cost you so that you understand that and don't run into a situation where you have a solution
06:17that's costing you too much to sustain in the long term. The other thing that you need to look at is
06:22payroll. A lot of people don't necessarily think about that, but at some point you've got to strive
06:27to start paying yourself and paying the individuals around you and that could include like contractors.
06:31So it may not be payroll in a traditional sense, but you've got to pay some people to help you do
06:36things. The biggest thing you can do to shoot yourself in the foot is to try to do everything by
06:39yourself. I'm gonna say that again. The biggest thing you can do to kill your business on day one is to try to do
06:46everything by yourself. Say that with me. The biggest thing you can do to kill your business on day one is to try
06:53to do everything by yourself. You're not alone. Figure out the right team you need. Don't waste money, obviously.
07:00Be savvy. You know, don't pay idiots. That's just reality, right? Be clear. Be diligent in what you need.
07:05Talk to people. Check their resumes. Check references. Do your diligence, but understand that you should not be on an island.
07:12You cannot operate a loan. It will not work. My gift, my ministry is finance accounting. What's not my gift?
07:17Marketing. I can't go market my business. I don't know anything about that. So I'm gonna find someone who that is their
07:23gift. And if I can offer them accounting and exchange, then no money happened. We're helping each other succeed.
07:29So don't be out here alone. The other variable costs include advertising and marketing, shipping and delivery.
07:37If you have a product that you need to actually provide physically. Commissions that you may need to pay to salespeople or
07:43brokerage houses, depending on what your business structure is. Inventory, which is a cost but more about a cash need.
07:50Because generally, if you can get your minimum order quantities or MOQs to a certain level, you can actually reduce the overall cost of your product.
07:57So you have to start planning for like how much cash do I really need to have to get to the most profitable space. Like the space that gets me the lowest cost for my business at this moment.
08:07And then when you transition from kind of ongoing base needs, you go into growth oriented costs. And so growth oriented costs are new product development.
08:14If you have one product now that works for one group of individuals, develop something that works for a different group of individuals, there's money involved in that.
08:22Research development, prototypes, testing it, beta testing. There's a lot of money involved in that. If you want to expand into a new sales channel, you want to go into Target or Walmart right now, they operate very differently.
08:34So the cost of getting scaled up, making sure that your product is skewed correctly for that store costs money.
08:40Yes, you might have that same lotion or cream or whatever that you're selling in the same store in different stores, but the packaging is usually different.
08:48Their peg styles are different. What they expect to see on shelf is different. And that's cost involved to actually be able to make those transitions from one supplier to another.
08:56And then the other things you want to get into is do you need to change suppliers? How much is that going to cost? Hiring now more skilled workers and getting into some of the really fun stuff, legal and accounting.
09:07One of the things that people neglect to really look into is you want to take on investment, right? You want VC, you want angel investors.
09:14You can't get there without legal or accounting because what you're going to end up with is numbers you can't validate, don't support. So people are now no longer interested in talking because your numbers don't make any sense.
09:25Or you're going to sign a deal or sign away your business because you don't have the right legal support involved, right?
09:32So we all see her in the news right now trying to get herself out of this deal that she signed where her manager is her power of attorney and can sign all these deals on her behalf.
09:40Now she can't access her own items. And that story happens not just in the music industry, but in small business as well, where people sign over the rights to their business, the rights to their product, the formulas to their business because they don't have the right legal team in place.
09:53And an investor won't want to deal with anybody who hasn't done the due diligence to protect themselves. So this is where you have to start that before you go ask anybody for money, make sure you protected yourself and you know exactly what your business is capable of doing financially.
10:10Go into estimating sales revenue and cash receipts. And I put this first bullet as the first bullet for a reason because oftentimes I have people tell me I haven't sold one thing, but next year I'm going to sell 11 million dollars worth of it.
10:25Like literally I hear that in pitch competitions all the time and I'm always like the math don't math. How we get there? Like sometimes it's real. I'm not going to tell you that your dream is not real.
10:35Your dream is real and in some cases you can really get there, but make it make sense. How does that sale funnel come to be? How much of that do you already have guaranteed?
10:43Target has already said they're going to buy X. Walmart has already said they're going to buy Y. How much of that is real versus how much of that have you kind of made up in your mind is your dream?
10:52So first bullet in estimating is really going to be. Can you also hear me? Okay. So some of the questions to ask and being realistic is how many customers target market analysis and understanding like how many people are in your market? How much revenue is in your market? Okay.
11:16So that's one kind of band or control point for you to know. That's the max that I can potentially get. That's assuming I get 100% of the market share, right?
11:24So if the number that you've planned exceeds 100% of the market share, it's an impossible number. It's just not statistically relevant. It doesn't make any sense to start there.
11:34How much competition does your product have? You know, are you selling slices of bread? Not to say that you shouldn't go out and sell slices of bread, but be realistic about how many bread makers there already are in that space and plan accordingly and make sure that if you're going to do that, you're clearly differentiating yourself in order to succeed in that space.
11:51Are your prices on par? Can customers actually continue to afford this? In this current market, and I wasn't here for all of Derek and Eric's presentation, Daryl and Eric's presentation, but I don't know if they went into like discretionary income spend versus like primary and needing to spend. So I'm going to buy milk and bread every day. I may or may not buy this new outfit. I may or may not buy this new lipstick, right? So understanding where your product is in the marketplace when you're planning out your revenue.
12:19And then is there a lag between timing of sales and cash receipts? So this is one of the most pivotal points, especially for like wholesale or going into retail. A lot of people say, you know, I'm going to ship my product to Walmart on December 31st, you know, to make it in their set for January 1.
12:36Anybody want to take a guess on when you're going to get paid for those December products that you shipped? Anybody? June. That's a good guess. Who said June? I like it.
12:47That's probably semi-realistic depending on what your terms are. So a lot of times people make the mistake of assuming like I shipped it in December. Even if they gave me 30 day terms, people are like, oh, on the 30th day, I'm going to put that cash receipt in my book.
13:01No, that's not realistic, right? You have to get some traction to kind of understand how quickly are they going to pay you. And Walmart, unfortunately, may not pay you on the 30th day.
13:09They may cut the check on or around that time, but when are you actually going to receive it? So the same way that we would budget for our individual households and knowing like when we get our paycheck, which might be on Friday, but I bank with a credit union, so I get mine on Thursday.
13:22You got to literally take it to that level and know exactly when you're going to receive that cash.
13:25So one of the things that you do after you've kind of done all of your startup costs, your ongoing costs, monthly costs, and now you have your top layer, which is revenue, you put it all together and create your budget.
13:39So I won't go into this link here, but you'll have it. It's a cash flow tool planner. So what it does, what's slightly different is that, you know, your budget is based on accounting principles, which is like when you actually sold the product.
13:50The cash flow planner is the difference between when you sold the product and when you actually received the cash or paid the bill. Those are the differences, right?
13:57So in this template, it's going to walk you through putting in when you'll actually receive the money, when you'll actually need to pay these expenses, and at the bottom, it's going to calculate for you what is called gross and net burn rates.
14:08Does anybody know what burn rate is? It's pretty much what it sounds like. You're just going to burn money. That's how businesses start.
14:14Daryl alluded to it earlier. Most people don't want to invest in businesses that are currently just burning cash all the time.
14:19So you need to be able to calculate this and determine how much and when are you going to burn through your cash.
14:25So this is a really good tool. So gross and net burn rate, right, both are in the spreadsheet.
14:31So gross burn rate is going to be more conservative as it only considers outflows.
14:36Net burn rate considers both in and outflows.
14:39I tend to lean more towards the gross because to me it's like if I don't sell one product, how much money would I need to continue to sustain my business until I do?
14:48That's the way I look at it. I put both in there so you can see like if you make all the sales that you project, when would you need cash?
14:55But the opposite is if you make none of the sales that you project, when would you need cash?
14:58And you need both numbers. This tool is set up to take you out, I think, 24 months.
15:03That's the benchmark I like to use. At least 18 to 24 months to know like when you're going to need more capital.
15:08So, uh-oh. Something's happening back there. Thanks.
15:18Okay. I won't go over these but I added these links here because this is some of the helpful metrics that you can use to be able to calculate any of the things that your investors are going to ask you for.
15:28Things you need to know for your own business. I put them kind of in order of importance in each category.
15:32So, profitability, how do you know exactly how profitable your business is? Generally, that's gross margin, operating margin, net profit margin, EBITDA margin.
15:40When you click on these, it actually takes you to a screen that shows you how to calculate it.
15:44So, I won't go into all of these because there are a lot of them but these are some of the things that you're going to be asked if you're seeking investment
15:50and there's things you need to know about your business and how profitable you are, how liquid you are, how solvent you are,
15:56and when you get into asking investors to invest in you for equity, what the pricing and valuation of your business should be.
16:04So, for the next two minutes, everybody take out your phone.
16:10I want you to take a picture of this.
16:11I want you to find somebody next to you, close to you, and spend two minutes and discuss like what you had previously determined your cash needs were
16:18and do you still feel like they're accurate today?
16:21What, if anything, do you feel you want to reconsider?
16:24What would make you feel more comfortable now that we've talked about this?
16:28You had a question?
16:30Go for it.
16:30It's two different things, your accounting firm and it really depends on what you've engaged your accountant to do, right?
16:56So, you have accountants that are more focused on bookkeeping and transactional functions
17:00and then you have kind of more finance, CFO services, which is forward-looking.
17:04Finance is always forward-looking, accounting is always looking backwards.
17:07So, you want to make sure that you've engaged them to actually be a finance person, a CFO of sorts,
17:14to help you look forward and not just accounting, which is looking back.
17:18They're really two different sets of services.
17:20Now, I love being the accountant that comes to you and says, you need to do all these things,
17:25but not every accountant is going to do that and I'm going to be honest with you right now,
17:28the market is crazy busy, it's very hard to find staff in accounting right now.
17:32So, a lot of people aren't, you know, going the extra mile if you don't ask them to,
17:36just being transparent, because they don't have the staffing to do so,
17:39but they are functionally two separate services.
17:42So, I wouldn't necessarily say that that's the right group of people even.
17:46Sometimes you may have just a bookkeeper who that is not their skill set to be able to help you forecast
17:51and be strategic about your finances.
17:52So, and it might be worth, if you've been with the same accountant for a while,
17:57I tell people it might be worth having someone do a review,
18:00having someone other than them look into it.
18:01No offense, no, you know, to me it's all about we're all working together for your business to grow
18:06and that's the easiest way to do that is to separate finance from accounting
18:10so that nobody feels like you're stepping on my toes.
18:13No, you're my accountant and I want you to continue to be my accountant and do bookkeeping,
18:17but I now need someone to help me focus on strategic finance and that's going to be a different role as I grow.
18:23So, back to the breakout, I'm going to give you now one minute to chat with the person next to you
18:29or somebody close to you really quickly and just say, like, what do you feel more comfortable with now,
18:33what questions do you have now, and what tools and templates you've been using that have worked for you.
18:38Like, just share, because one of the things we have to realize is we're not in this by ourselves.
18:41So, take one minute and share.
19:17Okay, I'm going to bring us all back together.
19:29Minutes go by super quickly.
19:30Anyone want to share a tool, a tip, tool, template they've been using that works really well?
19:39No, nobody?
19:42Okay.
19:43Well, I shared some tools and templates in here, so we'll keep rolling, but there are plenty of tools,
19:49templates out there that you can use that cross over from, like, personal finance to business finance.
19:56So, so far we've gone over discussing and calculating the amount of funding you need and determining when you'll need it.
20:02The next step is to understand what stage your business is in.
20:05So, how many of you have actually made your first sale?
20:08Okay.
20:09How many of you are still developing your product or idea?
20:14Awesome.
20:15So, anybody further than that?
20:17In the growth stage, exit stage?
20:19Okay.
20:20Okay.
20:21We'll go through it real quick.
20:23So, a lot of people in the room said they were in the development stage.
20:26Did you know you were in the development stage as a formal word?
20:30Okay.
20:31Well, that's the formal stage that your business is in is understanding everything you need to do to create and develop your product and service up until the point you make your first sale, which then is when you go into officially becoming a startup.
20:42And then once a company becomes cash flow positive, you're in kind of early growth, choosing what to do to reinvest your profits, and then rapid growth when you're really, like, increasing your presence in the market, new sales channels, distribution channels, and then monetization by selling is the exit.
20:58A lot of people are aiming for that kind of last step when they start their business.
21:02Not everybody, though.
21:03That wasn't my desire.
21:05So, this is just a helpful tool.
21:07We can take a picture of it that kind of shows you the different funding that is generally available to you or most aligned to your business stage.
21:15And it's kind of broken into what your primary source should be versus what your secondary source should be.
21:22And if you see, like, VC is not at the top of my list and it's not available or the concern in some of these stages.
21:30I think that's the one we hear about the most, and we don't hear a lot of other discussions about how to raise funding.
21:35We also don't hear about the timelines and the due diligence required to secure VC funding.
21:39So, you might hear the announcement of such and such just got, you know, $2 million.
21:43What you don't hear is that such and such took two years to get that funding and had to keep their business viable with some other kind of money for two years.
21:52So, you cannot be focused linearly on one type of funding because that funding is not going to come in tomorrow.
21:58You've got to figure out how to get there with all these other things first.
22:05So, traditional versus non-traditional funding.
22:07I would normally stop and ask the difference, but I'm being told we've got to make sure we stay on time.
22:11So, I'm going to do it myself.
22:13So, primarily traditional funding is just funding you obtain from a bank or a credit union by definition.
22:19Non-traditional funding is options that are non-banking.
22:22That's the simplest definition I can give you.
22:25There are a lot of evolving options in the non-traditional space.
22:28There are even some evolving options in what we would consider the traditional space.
22:32So, I'm going to jump into some of them.
22:34Hopefully, we get to the end.
22:35If not, I will jump to the end where the QR code is for you to get the whole presentation.
22:40So, traditional funding.
22:42Formal traditional funding includes bank loans, line of credits, credit cards.
22:46Some of the key things you want to remember is like a credit card cannot be used to pay for certain things.
22:51You may not be able to give your supplier your credit card.
22:54You may actually have to give them a wire or something else that actually is cash or hard cash for them.
22:59So, you want to be strategic in getting the funding that you need based on who you need to pay.
23:03Right?
23:04A credit card could be good for travel expenses and you can find the right credit card for you to do that.
23:09Whereas, a line of credit may be utilized in the middle.
23:13So, and you only pay for what you've used on the line of credit.
23:16So, you might have a line of credit facility available to you, but you're only paying for the portion of it that you use.
23:21I always caution people to really read the terms on their line of credit because there are some that charge you fees even if you're not utilizing it.
23:28So, just be cautious of that.
23:30But in traditional cases, you should not be getting charged fees on a line that you haven't deployed or taken any capital from.
23:35And then bank loans.
23:38The, sorry, the sliding scale from left to right is ease to harder.
23:42So, credit cards are easier to get, line of credit kind of medium of the way.
23:45Bank loans are going to require more documentation.
23:47And that goes back to you having legal and accounting in place.
23:50You need less of that to get a credit card.
23:52A little more of it to get a line of credit.
23:54You for sure need legal and accounting in the bank loan space.
23:57Because they're going to ask you.
23:58I can get a bank loan in about five days with accounting records set up, legal already ready to go, done.
24:04If you don't have that, the bank is then looking at you like if you don't have your numbers available to me, what else don't you have?
24:10You know, what else is hiding under this sheet?
24:12So, I don't want to give money to somebody who's not even in a position to tell me how much money their business makes.
24:17And so, a lot of it is perception.
24:19Even if you have it but you are delayed in providing it, it's perception.
24:23Like what are you doing that's taking three, four, five days to provide a P&L to me?
24:28You don't know how much money your business makes?
24:30That's my perception.
24:31When somebody comes to me to ask for money and it takes me seven, eight, ten, twenty, thirty days to get their financials,
24:37I'm not interested anymore.
24:38Because something's going on over there that's taking you thirty days to figure out how much money you need
24:43or how much money you have or have made.
24:45So, go back one.
24:49Yeah, characteristics, formal application process, sometimes can be very lengthy, often may need collateral.
24:54And sometimes there's even control over how you use the funds in traditional space.
24:59And there is a repayment, sometimes repayment costs associated if you pay it back early
25:04or other things that you need to be concerned with.
25:08Informal traditional funding which is becoming more popular in small business.
25:12Using your own personal savings, family and friends and our wonderful friend the bootstrap.
25:17So, these are more popular now because they're fully in your control.
25:20You can go to your own bank account and get money whenever you want.
25:23You can ask family and friends whenever you want, although I would tell you to be very strategic in doing so
25:28and make sure that you have the right legal and accounting in place before you ask even family or friends for a dollar
25:34because people want to know when they're going to get their money back.
25:36And then bootstrapping, I'll go ahead and kind of jump forward.
25:40There's some very simple ways to bootstrap and that's strategic credit terms, getting operational really quick and really cheap.
25:45So, operating lean, necessities only, do it yourself if you can.
25:50This is like if you can.
25:52Otherwise, go seek a resource, don't waste your time.
25:55Virtual offices, use the free versions of things if you can at least to get started.
25:59Look for equity in exchange for expertise so that you're not necessarily giving out cash on day one.
26:05But very, very, very, very small portions of equity.
26:08And you need legal and accounting to tell you what that represents for your business.
26:11So, go back to making sure you have the right team.
26:13Look for discount codes.
26:15There are plenty of businesses.
26:16One is an example GitHub that literally started and bootstrapped its way into being a $7.5 billion acquisition.
26:23So, it's not a bad idea, just got to make sure you do it strategically.
26:28Non-traditional funding.
26:30Characteristics are usually a simpler application process, quicker, does not usually require collateral.
26:36Pre-payment can save you money.
26:37There are actually some times where they'll actually cut your fees or charge you less interest if you actually pay early.
26:43And there are an ever-evolving number of options in this space.
26:46You have, you know, ClearCo, you have QuickBooks now offering funding.
26:50So, there's a lot of different options out here to actually get non-traditional funding.
26:55We probably are not going to have time to go through all of them.
26:58So, I'm just going to speak about them quickly here and then jump to where you can get the QR code for the presentation.
27:04So, some of the things that you can do if you're centered around building community for your brand,
27:08you can start with crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, and pre-sales.
27:12All of those are good ways to get cash on the front end and then be able to provide a product on the back end.
27:17The caution there is making sure that you actually can fulfill the orders and don't do anything to damage your brand.
27:22For crowdfunding, making sure that you actually are crowdfunding for the right amount of money.
27:26We've had some crowdfunding faux pas where people raised a million dollars and it turns out they actually needed two to launch their product.
27:32So, now they've got to give that whole million back and all those people are upset and don't want the product anymore.
27:37So, it can backfire and it actually takes a little bit of marketing and SEO optimization to truly crowdfund successfully.
27:44Social impact, which is microfinance and CDFIs, which have the common goal of kind of lifting up your community.
27:51So, depending on what your product is, you can seek out those institutions that are looking to invest in people of color or in communities of color.
27:58Even if your business is not .
28:01The process can be a little lengthy.
28:03So, you kind of have to prepare and layer these sources.
28:07Specific use funding, which is like marketing-based funding.
28:10So, like ClearCo will sometimes fund all of your marketing budget.
28:14It basically can only be used for marketing.
28:16So, it has to go directly to Facebook.
28:17It has to go directly to Google.
28:19You don't get the money yourself.
28:21So, that has to be something that you know exactly what you need and you're going to deploy it in that area and not need it for anything else.
28:27There's factoring and PO financing, which is when you reach out to your suppliers or a third party to actually finance a specific PO.
28:35The way to do that is Walmart has signed this agreement with me.
28:38They're going to buy X amount of product on this date.
28:41I can't afford to produce it.
28:43But here is my collateral, which is my agreement with Walmart.
28:46So, you know it's going to happen.
28:47And please fund this order for me.
28:50Same situation that most likely they're going to send that money directly to the supplier on your behalf.
28:54And then they're going to in most cases ask for access to your bank account or ask that Walmart pay them first and then they'll pay you.
29:03So, you got to be cautious in your cash flow there because to make sure they're protected they're going to want to either have direct access or somehow get paid first and then you get the residual.
29:12So, that's one way to get there.
29:14And then other thing leveraging loans such as QuickBooks, leveraging relationships such as revenue based financing such as Shopify.
29:22So, if you have a Shopify website you've seen those ads that say like do you want to get a loan.
29:27You can click the button and actually see how much they're going to give you.
29:31Generally the percentages of their loans are like 8, 11, 13 percent.
29:34I tell everybody don't accept any of those.
29:37There's another button there that says like get help or more options.
29:40Click that always and ask them what's the better interest rate that I can get.
29:45Not that any of the things they're offering are wrong or bad but literally by clicking that button you can save 1 or 2 percent on interest.
29:51Just on that.
29:52So, literally go to your Shopify site.
29:54If it's available to you they're looking at your sales on your Shopify site to determine how much money they're going to give you.
29:59They've already done the math.
30:01You don't have to do anything.
30:02Just click the button to say you need help or have more questions and tell the person hey what's the best interest rate you can give me for these amounts of money.
30:09Guarantee you at least a half a percent.
30:12And then pitch perfect which really just goes into accelerators, grants, pitch competitions and things like that.
30:18The only thing in this space is that you don't ever know you're going to get the money and it can be a really time consuming process to prep for a pitch.
30:25A good process to do anyway.
30:27You still need to be prepared but just know that like you can jump through all those hoops, prepare all these things and be on point and still not get a dime.
30:34And there may be some ramifications to how you use the funds once you get them.
30:38Like you can only use it to facilitate programs with black male youth.
30:41Not necessarily a problem but you've got to plan for that in your cash flow because there may be specific ways that you have to use the capital.
30:48So I'm going to skip ahead.
30:50So all the details of all the different types are in here and links to get to those.
30:55They're all here.
30:56I'm just going to go to the end slide where you can actually get.
31:00Uh oh.
31:01Well that's great.
31:03All right.
31:04I'll pull it up.
31:06One second.
31:07I'll pull up the QR code.
31:08So there's a link here to SBA planning for your funding business.
31:11And so there's some links that will take you to an actual step by step planning site.
31:15There we go.
31:16And there's a listing of small business funding options available to you.
31:21And then this presentation there's a QR code and then there's a takeaway sheet from this presentation that's on the other QR code.
31:27Well thank you ladies.
31:32I'll take any questions if you have any but I know they're trying to like nope no questions we're going to go.
31:37All right.
31:38I tried.
31:39But I'll be here if you have any questions.
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