Cobble-Together Business Loan Strategies

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When Linda Rey was building her Independent Insurance Agency, she had a mantra that goes back 20 years ago. We think it still applies: “There’s no immediate gratification in a long term Strategy.“

Different Solutions Cobbled Together.

When confronted with challenging circumstances for our clients to find a business loan, one of the creative solutions we lean towards is to bring together different financing solutions. What do we mean?

We cobble together financing solutions to come up with a higher number. 

Maybe that number meets their original request, or maybe it only comes close, but maybe it gives the client sufficient capital to get started on a short term, “cobbled together” solution for our longer term financing strategy. 

Our thinking is that it is better to start somewhere. Follow the yellow brick road.

What it is about us that allows us to cobble financing solutions together? No, we’re not talking about shoe repair! We’re Brokers and we work for the client, not the bank. That’s first and foremost.

Secondly, as a Broker, we have access to multiple products with different lenders.

An important consideration we’re mindful of when cobbling together the financing is to be mindful of the client’s longer term horizon. Depending on what’s on that horizon, there may be risks and challenges with certain types of short term solutions today, especially with something like seasoning.

When we talk about seasoning with cobbled-together-financing, we mean if you have a short term solution today that gets you over the hump and gets you started with your financing strategy, that short term solution may have to be seasoned for at least a year and showing on tax returns and other financial documents if you want to come in with a certain type of financing product on the other end of it. 

So this is an important consideration because what solution we find today could affect your ability to access other finance products tomorrow.

We’ve discussed previously about how you should be preparing your financials with the thinking ahead of time that you may be securing financing. We think of ourselves as brokers but with a very long-term focus for our clients because we love business success stories.

Sometimes you have think short-term to achieve long-term goals. ~ Linda Rey

For example, we have a client who just purchased a commercial property recently with our assistance and our advice based upon cobbling together a short term solution on a long-term strategy. 

This client did not have sufficient down payment to qualify for a commercial mortgage to purchase the commercial property. We referred that client to a colleague of ours who does residential mortgages. That colleague refinanced the client’s house and the client paid cash for the commercial property. Now we’re working on a smaller financing package to provide some working capital to decorate the new office space and do some much needed improvements and renovations on the property including a new roof. This is a good example of a successful cobble-together-financing solution.

In the longer-term, we’re going to to find a way to finance their commercial property to take out the short-term financing, and return the client’s primary residence back to a zero mortgage replacing everything with financing on the commercial property because tax wise, it’s a smarter move for the client’s business.

When you think something isn’t possible, call us or email us and make sure because you don’t want to wait too long for something that can be done RIGHT NOW.

Email us at Solutions@AuroraConsulting.biz.

5 Mistakes Business Owners Make

Let’s get it out of the way right now. We say 5 mistakes, but there are more. Don’t shoot the messenger. Part of the reason we post our blogs & vlogs is to raise awareness that financing doesn’t have to be as difficult. Don’t get us wrong, it can be a long process, but you have more control than you think.

These are the top 5 mistakes we’ve experienced with business owners when they are seeking financing.

1. Thinking the Bank knows everything about you.  You have all, or most, of your accounts with your local bank, including your operating account, savings, personal account, maybe even merchant services & payroll. It’s easier to bank in one place.  You think the bank maintains a detailed file on your financials, that they know how much revenue passes through your accounts every month.  This would be an incorrect assumption. The bank will still ask you for your full set of financial statements and much, much more.

2. Old Financials.  A business plan that’s five years old won’t fly. If you’re updating your Accounts Receivable aging report or your Profit and Loss statement on an infrequent basis, you will have some work to do and this most certainly will delay the process. You control the timeline when you apply for credit financing. Having updated documents at the ready lets you submit them with all speed and alacrity to move your financing request along.

3. Incomplete Financials.  No business plan? Many businesses don’t have one whether it’s a new business or an existing business. There are many, MANY financial forms that a lender will require. It will be your responsibility to provide complete, comprehensive information that many businesses, unfortunately, do not have easily accessible. Lender’s will have a debt schedule form and if this is inaccurate, it will slow down the process and delay your approval.

4. Too Busy, Too Rushed, Too Overwhelmed…Too Late. Bad decision-making often arises from lack of time and a local preparation. However, it happens that then you’re faced with a sudden, unexpected need for working capital. This sounds like opportunity, but if you’ve not been minding the store in the meantime, you will be faced with a high probability that you could be without options or very few options if any at all.

Bad decision-making begets more bad decisions by way of choosing financing options that is super expensive and over priced such as Merchant Account Financing (Merchant Cash Advance – MCA), hard money, equity investors, refinancing a personal residence and/or hitting the credit cards. This leaves you vulnerable to a lack of income & profit taking away any joy in running your business. We bet that you didn’t get into business to be broke and stressed out.

5. Failure to Fight.  Your Banker wants to make the loan work for you, because they truly value your relationship with the Bank.  When you get bad news, don’t take it lying down.  Dig in with your Banker—in person whenever possible—and get to the solution-seeking.  What do you need to do to flip this decision from a negative to a positive?

We have seen good people who own good businesses make bad decisions. We are truly fortunate and grateful that we have forged many valuable relationships with Bankers & Lenders. They know that sometimes they can’t do the deal, but they value the relationship with their client. If the Bank doesn’t make a decision favorable to your business, that doesn’t mean you should make a subsequent bad decision.

The more proactive and prepared you are, the more options you will have.

The Deal Closes When It Closes

Trevor worked many years ago with a top producing loan officer at a mortgage Bank. This top-producer brought in a lot of business and Trevor was the new kid on the block climbing the ladder, building his business. In his travels, Trevor met a local real estate attorney who could potentially refer business. Trevor had been working with that attorney on a home purchase transaction. The attorney said, “Oh, no, that’s where you work? I’ll never do business with your company because so-and-so is a nightmare and your company is a nightmare.” That other top-producing loan officer had a terrible reputation. This loan officer had a bad habit of not responding to anybody’s phone calls inquiring asking, “What’s going on with the deal? When is it closing?”  He simply did not answer phone calls. This was in the days before email, the days of beepers and telephones and he simply did not respond to anyone. The attorney told Trevor, “I beep this guy all the time, he never calls me back. I guess your company is just slow to get things done that’s why he doesn’t respond. Why should I expect you’d be any different?” So when Trevor confronted his fellow loan officer about this complaint, his response was very laid back.  He said, “I have one philosophy. The deal closes when it closes.” WOW. He made Trevor and the entire company look bad. On the positive side of the story, he kind of wasn’t wrong because there is a process to getting a loan approved and closed. The fact that he was a terrible communicator is a different issue entirely; he never spent any time communicating to manage expectations. We did a video on managing expectations, emphasizing follow up. Sometimes the timeline to close can really be a bit much, and especially with how many people are involved in the loan process. We’re working now on a business acquisition deal, and the sellers were involved. They just could not get their head around what was needed, even after the loan was approved, and they knew the Lender was going to do this deal. Their responses to requests for documents through the entire process were, “Why this? Why that?”  Week after week, all they did was push back. The Seller’s  attitude was constantly to fight the process.  Then, when they’d actually submit a document at 10 a.m. in the morning, they’d follow up by sending an email at 1:30 in the afternoon, “So when are we closing?” This is not really understanding the loan process either. So, to take that “top-producer-bad-communicator’s” phrase and reconfigure it,  “The deal closes when it closes.” There is a real process to achieving the loan approval and getting to the closing. As  long as all parties are communicating and cooperating, it will close in a reasonable time, but it doesn’t mean it’s closing in 10 minutes.  Communication and cooperation, those are key elements. For our part, we maintain clear communications. As often as this particular seller was impatient, we still kept a clear head and kept our communications positive, responded accordingly.  Ultimately, we got what we wanted from the seller in the way of documents we needed. We did another video describing how the lender reviews everything. If you spend so much time asking, “Why?” And spending so much energy fighting the process when you could have gotten what was needed to expedite the process. With this particular seller it was constantly “When are we closing?” and, “Where’s my money?” We understand how financial professionals can get jaded. Someone like the former colleague in the industry can say to themselves, “Okay, I’m kind of exhausted with these calls.”  And they shut down because they know the deal will close when it closes. People can get upset about the process, but when all is said and done, if there’s clear communication, you have to understand the process and you have to be patient.