Forced to Take the COVID-19 EIDL


We received an inquiry from a Small Business Owner with a COVID-19 EIDL. Her (unedited) inquiry reads as follows: 

“I was forced when I feel under duress during Covid to accept a loan from the SBA that I did not want to be forced into simply because the workers I had were independent contractors versus employees. The nature of my business is most of the instructors will not be employees. They are independent contractors so we are in a bind. If I did not accept the loan, my business would have immediately collapsed, and I would have lost all of my students and the instructors as well. Do you offer assistance with this to avoid bankruptcy.”

We’re passionate in our commitment to supporting Small Business. That’s why we give away a lot of free expert information and advice. It’s why we offer a one-hour paid consultation call where you can speak directly with Trevor, pick his brain, gain some clarity, and, sometimes, he’ll call the SBA with you on the line to help with challenging situations or questions.

The business owner quoted above never followed up with us to book the one-hour paid consultation call. It’s a shame because we would have done two things to help. 

First, we would’ve explained the process of remediation on the repayment of the COVID-19 EIDL, with a focus on avoiding default and bankruptcy. Second, as we’ve seen in many of our calls, we would have provided some relief and in fact, other business owners have often said at the end of the call, “I feel so much calmer now.

Trevor was a Mortgage Banker for 30 years. He learned a long time ago how to explain complicated financial procedural concepts to Clients, and how to remove emotion from the process. But let’s address something in the quoted message above about being “forced into” accepting the SBA’s COVID-19 EIDL.

First and foremost, no one forced anyone to take those funds. The application process was 100% voluntary based on need. If you needed the support immediately or thought you might need it soon, the funds were there for you to request.

Next, it appears the business was not eligible for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan(s) due to the nature of the employment relationship between the business and its workforce. 

The business owner states that the instructors for the business are not employees, they are independent contractors. She states that “…the nature of my business is most of the instructors will not be employees.

Let’s review and discuss these concepts and challenges.

The SBA’s PPP loan became available through approved Lenders as a result of legislation included by Congress in the COVID CARES Act. The PPP provided a low-interest rate of 1%. If the PPP loan was issued prior to June 5, 2020, it would have a two-year repayment term. After June 5, 2020, the repayment term is five years.

The program provided for 100% Forgiveness of the loan, essentially making this a “grant” of sorts. The purpose of the program was to keep people paid as employees, not needing to request Unemployment benefits. 

For example, if your business was required to close to the public or to staff due to state-mandated pandemic lockdowns, the Congress of the United States wanted your business to continue to pay your employees their salaries as if the business was open.

The loan solved two problems. 

First, avoiding the government process of Unemployment benefits both in terms of cost to the government and access to receive those benefits by the unemployed workers. In other words, the employee would still get their regular paycheck, and not have to go through the worry and wait for an approval of the unemployment benefits.

Second, the business could maintain its staffing so that, once lockdowns were lifted, the business wouldn’t have to go out to find new employees and replace departed employees.

While we worked to help our clients obtain approvals for the SBA’s COVID-19 EIDL program as paid consultants/preparers, we provided a courtesy service to many of those clients to process their PPP loan applications. We were not permitted by law to charge a fee for assisting. We processed several dozen PPP loans.

One issue that kept coming up during our review of the eligibility of a client’s PPP application was this misunderstanding of employee versus independent contractor. When we asked the question, “How many F/T employees does the business employ?” we would get an answer, for example, “9 employees, not including me (the business owner).” 

When we reviewed the business tax returns, under the line for “Salaries/Wages” we’d often see that line item blank. That means no W2 employees. That means the “9 employees” are not actually employees; they’re independent contractors. 

And, sure enough, on the line of the tax return for “Contract labor” there would be a dollar amount entered.

We’d have to call the business owner to explain the difference of employment classification and the reason why the business was not eligible for the PPP loan. We explained how the independent contractors working for the business would need to apply for their own, individual PPP loans because they were essentially small businesses.

Many of the business owners pushed back on our assertions of the ineligibility for the PPP loan. “But they work for me” was a common response. Okay, well, by itself, that’s a violation of IRS and Department of Labor employee classification rules. Let’s set that aside for now. 

In that particular moment, we attempted to request PPP loan assistance, and it didn’t matter what the business owner thought about their relationship to the people who worked for the business. They were not employees, thus, no PPP loan.

The proceeds of the SBA’s COVID-19 EIDL could be used to pay employees. The program’s purpose is to provide the business with money to make up for revenue lost due to a disaster to be used to pay ordinary operating expenses.

This raises the question, “Can you use the COVID-19 EIDL funds to pay independent contractors working for the business?”  

If the funds were used to pay those contractors while the business was on lockdown, without the contractors actually doing any work, then the answer is most likely, “No, you cannot use the funds to pay independent contractors.”  

As previously mentioned, those independent contractors would have to apply for their own, individual PPP loans.

On the other hand, if the independent contractors were performing actual work services for the business at the time of the lockdown…and after…then, yes, the business could use the funds to pay those contractors as long as it matched previous operational standards of work and payment. 

Meaning, if your independent contractor provided, let’s say, 38 hours of billable work hours to your business before the pandemic, and continued to provide similar services during the pandemic, then, yes, you could pay those contractors as an “ordinary operating expense.”

As we’ve discussed so far, many small business owners had challenges with this misclassification of their working staff.  And those challenges became a horror-movie-level monster when these businesses were confronted with their need for the PPP loans, and the use of the EIDL funds.

We don’t know where the concept of misclassification of employees came about. 

However, we know it’s been happening for quite some time. And we don’t know how it came to be that so many small businesses jumped on the “independent contractor” bandwagon. 

What we do know is that too many small businesses treat their actual employees like independent contractors. From the employer side, the business saves on contributions to payroll taxes, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, and more. 

The business avoids uncomfortable situations revolving around the issues of employee benefits. And most of the time, the business treats the independent contractor like an employee with work rules, scheduling requirements, and more. 

The true definition of an independent contractor is that a person sets their own work schedules and standards. The small business can only provide basic guidance on the task to be achieved by the contractor. The independent contractor determines if, when, and how they will accomplish the result requested by the business.

Don’t believe us? You can read the classification rules on the IRS website for more information. 

But these misclassification issues are legendary around the United States. Employees are paid as independent contractors but are required to work under employment rules and standards.

For their part, we’ve seen how the “employee” who’s really an independent contractor thinks they’re doing great because they get more money in their paycheck. They’re not aware of two important features of their “misclassified” employment status.

First, they’re not employees. Their employer literally cannot tell them what to do, when to do it, and so much more. Secondly, the misclassified employee is responsible for their own payroll taxes, including paying a “self-employment” tax on their annual tax return. Those additional taxes they pay actually make their overall annual take-home pay LESS than if they were properly paid as a W2 employee.

Let’s return to the email from the business owner who was “forced” to take the EIDL.

While we never spoke with her because she didn’t book the paid consultation call, we’ll hazard the guess that she’s guilty of the misclassification of her staff like so many other business owners.  We’re confident because of her annoyance at being blocked from the PPP loan due to the employment classification of “independent contractors.” 

We make this fair assessment because of our previous experience during the pandemic of speaking to thousands of small business owners, and how so many of them misclassified their employees.

Somewhere along the way, this small business owner decided to pay her employees as independent contractors, probably as a result of a conversation with her tax professional or bookkeeper so that she could lower her payroll expenses and improve bottom-line cash flow.  We’ve seen this too often.

That strategic decision she made is the reason she was “forced into” the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan, not for any other reason, but a bad decision she made to operate her business.

But is it a bad thing to have received the COVID-19 EIDL? We don’t think so.

The program for the COVID-19 pandemic was a modified version of the SBA’s traditional natural disaster loan; a program created in 1953 to help small businesses recover from a natural disaster. The loan program helps to repair physical damage from the disaster and recoup lost revenue as a result of the disaster. 

The loans are low cost with terms as long as 30 years. That makes these loans very attractive from an affordability perspective. 

We know from our experience of speaking to so many business owners during the pandemic, that many business owners had never taken on any debt for their businesses. Borrowing money to manage their business was a new, and often, unwelcomed concept for them. 

We argue that had business owners, like the person in this example cited above, made better quality, strategic decisions for their business, they would have fared better in so many ways, not only by having access to the PPP loan.

We also encountered so many businesses with tax returns that zapped all their revenue with mountains of expenses, all with a view towards lowering net income and ultimately paying a lower income tax bill. 

However, that lower net income could harm the business when trying to obtain financing because lenders often determine the maximum loan amount based on the net income.

We digress.  Again, was it a “bad thing” to have taken a COVID-19 EIDL? In our humble, professional opinion, NO, not at all.

The program has some basic features that make this financing package very attractive indeed.

First, is the low-interest rate. As a for-profit business during the pandemic, the interest rate is 3.75%. For non-profits, the rate is 2.75%. Even at the time of the pandemic, those rates were far below market rates for business financing. Even more so today with the recent increases in interest rates.

Next, the loan is a fixed-rate loan. The rate…and the payment…never change!  This is unusual in commercial financing because many business loans feature a variable rate feature.

The SBA’s COVID-19 EIDL is a 30-year loan.  With the combination of low-interest rates and extremely long-term (most commercial loans are substantially lesser terms of repayment period), the money is, as one of our colleagues and financial services professionals recently said, “free money!”

But wait, there’s more.

There’s no prepayment penalty. If a business owner truly despises the idea of carrying debt on the books, they can create an aggressive repayment plan to pay off the 30-year loan earlier with no penalty. Again, unusual! 

Many commercial lenders charge a penalty for paying off their loans early, and those penalties can be hefty.

Because the loan is a debt for the business, in most all cases, the interest is going to be tax deductible against business income. That lowers the overall income tax bill every year. NOTE: confirm with your tax professional if this is true for your business

Therefore, if do the math: 

  • Low-interest rate
  • Long-term repayment period
  • Tax deductible interest

It probably does work out to be, quite literally, FREE money

We encourage you to consider this before you rail against the fact that your business was “forced into” taking on this burden of debt.  In fact, we don’t think it’s a burden at all for other reasons besides the litany of amazingness we’ve outlined so far.

If your business faces challenges making the monthly payments due to economic conditions, you can request a hardship accommodation to lower the monthly payment by as much as 90% (to a minimum of $25.00) for a six-month period! This is an incredible benefit of the program. 

We don’t know of commercial lenders offering anything even close to this feature of the SBA EIDL. And, yes, you can request an extension of the six-month period.  

Once cashflow is back on its feet, if you experience difficulties again in the future, at any time during the 30-year term of the loan, you can request another hardship accommodation!

There is one other “intangible” benefit that so many people avoid thinking about or talking about.  

During the pandemic, whether your business was on lockdown restrictions, or experiencing pain due the depleted economy, where folks may not have been buying your goods or services, or you couldn’t access important components in the supply chain to create your product or service, you probably experienced a severe downturn in revenue. 

We know this isn’t true for everyone, but it is true for many small businesses. So much so that, since it was the only true business-saving benefit at the time, the SBA’s COVID-19 EIDL may very well have saved your business!  

If no other feature of this program has value to you, certainly this single intangible benefit must. We encourage you to take the time to do the math on what you lost compared to how the funds saved your business.

At the time of this writing, we’re encountering hundreds of small business owners having difficulty with the SBA’s COVID-19 EIDL. From challenges in their own business to find revenue, to challenges of making payments on the loan, and other considerations as well. 

We see a lot of complaints about this program. And we also see a lot of folks trying to gain information on how to avoid repaying the loan. As a result, in place of embracing the good things about the program, we see business owners, such as the person who inspired this blog, complaining about how they were “forced into” taking the loan, or complaining about how student loans are being forgiven but not these loans, and on and on.

Focus on the positive, as they say. Use those features as a basis to feel more encouraged about how the program helped you, use those features to help you cease complaining, and instead, find positive ways to focus on the problems at hand that are causing you distress in your business.

Once you do, you might find that your business improves because you’re paying attention to the core issues causing problems and striving to find solutions to those problems. This leads to thriving in your business instead of simply “surviving.”

If you want expert guidance on your COVID-19 EIDL, our Post-Closing Blueprint is the solution you need!  We cover every aspect of this program from your responsibilities to restrictions on your business to problem-solving advice, even a chapter dedicated to “How to Speak to the SBA!

The Problem with Crowdsourced Knowledge

We believe crowdsourced knowledge can be useful for two reasons ONLY.

    1. Ascertaining general knowledge on a topic with which you’re unfamiliar.  An example is changing a tire on a car.  If you’ve never changed a tire on a car and you either ignore the instruction manual in the glove compartment or don’t have one (you can download it online in most cases), then crowd-sourcing other people’s experiences with changing tires can be useful to the extent that you’ll learn special tips or come to understand the general concepts: jack, bolts, tire pressure, etc.
    2. Obtaining referrals to experts.  After learning of other people’s experiences with changing a tire, you may decide there’s too much at stake—such as the car falling off the jack. For this reason, you may decide to not undertake the job yourself.  You seek out advice from expert providers of tire-changing services.

Both of these concepts are valuable, but should only be used as a starting point if you have absolutely no knowledge or experience of the task or information you’re researching.  Or, if the task is complicated and requires true expert knowledge of the subtleties and nuance of the information.

The starting point of using crowdsourced knowledge can become a “fork in the road” to move forward with the activity you’ve been researching.

You can choose to take the knowledge and seek out an instruction manual for the car you wish to change the tire on.  You can then do the work yourself, guided by the instructions created by an expert—in our example, the vehicle manufacturer.

Or you can choose to conduct additional research on the experts you’ve seen recommended:

    1. You might look up each expert’s online reviews through other platforms.
    2. You might seek out the expert’s professional credentials through government regulatory authorities or check out the professional biography of the expert.
    3. You might ask your trusted circle of friends, family and colleagues if they have used any of the recommended experts to obtain further information and enhance your research.

Using these additional activities, the crowdsourced research can lead you to find a high-quality expert in the area you’re researching.

But there’s a small alleyway off the side of the road where the “fork” in the road lies. We call that “shortcut alley” because too many people don’t want to take on the extra work necessary to find the best results for the information they seek.  Instead, they want the shortest way to solve their problem. 

They’ll take the crowdsourced information they’ve obtained at face value as the be-all and end-all of expertise.

They fail to use the crowdsourced knowledge solely as a starting point, and then do the extra work necessary to gather data and inform the ultimate decision with comprehensive research.

In our opinion, this is a disaster in the making more often than not.  Yes, the crowdsourced information can often be very useful, such as learning to add a dollop of butter to your oatmeal at breakfast.  But when it comes to more complicated topics, the crowdsourced expertise is anything but expert.

We learned this through the pandemic as we sought to provide free expert information to small business owners trying to navigate the United States Small Business Administration’s COVID-19 disaster loan program.  Often, we’d encounter business owners telling us that our information was wrong. They would challenge us with the information they’d crowdsourced.  Our pushback was to say that the experience of one person was unique to that person and that the loan program was too complicated to rely on the one experience of one business owner with their particular scenario.

We continue to encounter these crowdsourced-fake experts as many small businesses fail or continue to face challenges repaying these COVID-19 disaster loans.  The crowdsourced-fake experts would have people believe they can simply walk away from the loan, to either ignore the consequences or, worse, to go about their days thinking, “The government will never come after me.

Because we rail against this terrible advice, we’re sometimes accused of being fear-mongers so we can sell our products and services.

While it’s true that we’re a small business and we have products to sell and services for hire to earn a living, we also give away volumes of free expert advice through our YouTube videos, free downloadable guides, and responses to video comments. Our expertise is derived from our respective careers in the financial services field, from the work we did during the pandemic, and from the ongoing work we do to assist small business owners with their interactions with the SBA post-pandemic.

In today’s New York Times, an article about a basketball player’s dream of owning a home in Canada provides probably the most succinct insight into the reasons why simply “crowdsourcing” your expert knowledge is a failed concept if you don’t do the additional work. This is a tale of the worst aspects of bad crowdsourced experience, and the shortcut mentality that led to a financial disaster.

In the article, the basketball player must vacate the house he purchased because nefarious characters continually show up at the house looking for the previous occupant.  The previous occupant is a person named Aiden Pleterski, a self-styled “crypto king” who declared bankruptcy in 2022, while owing 26.8 million Canadian dollars to more than 150 investment clients.

He’s under investigation for the massive financial fraud involving monies that he is alleged to have stolen from investors.

Pleterski had no professional or educational experience or expertise. In this quote from the article, you can see where Pleterski learned how to become a financial whiz: “Mr. Pleterski said he first became interested in cryptocurrency after using it to make purchases for video games and began trading it when he was still in high school. He started out with money from his family and his earnings as a part-time baseball umpire. His knowledge of trading and financial markets, he said, came from “YouTube videos, Google, quick Google searches.”

“The business, Mr. Pleterski said, operated through his personal bank accounts until December 2021, when he set up his company at the suggestion of a former landlord. His only record-keeping, he said, consisted of his texts and WhatsApp messages with customers. While Mr. Pleterski did create spreadsheets for a handful of customers who demanded them, he acknowledged that the investment return they showed was just “a general ballpark figure” he came up with after looking at his bank accounts.”

We understand that the nuances of some activities, such as interacting with a complicated program such as the SBA’s COVID-19 loan program can make the search for expert knowledge more challenging.  But we’ve too often heard from people—as recently as yesterday, in fact—how they wish they’d found us sooner.

The small business owners we spoke to yesterday are not “shortcut” people by any stretch of the imagination. They had a question during the pandemic about how to properly use the funds their business received from the COVID-19 EIDL program. They sought out expert advice and received a referral to an expert.  But that professional ultimately gave them bad advice, so bad in fact, their business might be in legal jeopardy should the US Government investigate the use of the funds and then discover the improper utilization.

Based on our conversation, we know these business owners were so desperate to get an answer to their question, that they failed to go to the next step of taking their crowdsourced referral to investigate further the background of the expert. They did not read online reviews of that expert’s professional services or acumen.  They did not research the expert’s professional credentials or professional biography.  They simply accepted the crowdsourced recommendation, contacted the expert, and followed his bad advice.

Too often the desperation to resolve a problem quickly can lead to taking shortcuts.

When it comes to your COVID-19 EIDL, there are no shortcuts. The program is complicated and there are substantial real consequences to making bad choices and bad decisions. Whether you need to make a simple change to your business or if you’re facing challenges in repaying the loan, take the time to thoroughly research and locate the expertise you need to make the best decisions possible.

If you don’t invest the time to thoroughly research, if you take a “shortcut” and accept the crowdsourced knowledge as the ultimate expertise, you may discover the car falling on top of you as you try to change the tire with the badly sourced fake expert advice.  

And it’s going to hurt. A lot.

3 Key Issues with the SBA Natural Disaster EIDL Loan

YouTube Playlist
YouTube Playlist

An article recently published by Louisville Public Media, shares how homeowners and business owners are working on their recovery from a natural disaster, notably, the Kentucky floods of July, 2022.  We learned so much about the SBA and its disaster loan program during COVID by assisting thousands of Small Business Owners.  There’s good news, and there’s bad news. We reflect on both.

We summarize several key points from the article to help you better understand three things about SBA natural disaster loans:

  1. SBA is the lending processing “infrastructure.” That’s why FEMA refers you to SBA for the loan. But, the lending process can be complicated, lengthy, confusing, and bureaucratically rigid.
  2. You must apply for the SBA natural disaster loan and receive a decision before you can request most other FEMA assistance.
  3. SBA sees its natural disaster loan mission as making your Small Business “100% whole to cover uninsured losses.”

One homeowner interviewed refused to accept an approved SBA loan because “The strings that are attached and all the things that go along with an SBA loan is quite extraordinary.”

An SBA public affairs specialist is quoted in the article saying, “Our job is to try to make someone whole as near as possible. We cover up to 100% of their uninsured losses.”

Our experience with SBA is this: while these SBA intentions are noble, SBA’s internal workings often present many obstacles to the goal of approval, notably with poor communications between SBA and applicants and with inconsistent underwriting standards applied by SBA staff.

Investigators from other governmental organizations have previously determined the FEMA-SBA process is overly complicated and poorly communicated. Many people in a disaster situation simply cannot understand why they must apply for a loan, nevertheless a loan through the Small Business Administration.

These same investigations uncovered the fact that many people “leave money on the table” by failing to apply for loans or turning down loan offers. Many others are frustrated by slow response times.

In our work during COVID-19, we often advised people to follow “Trevor’s Golden Rule: Always Apply.”   The SBA natural disaster loan can provide a much-needed lifeline to recovery at very low-interest rates.  And applicants do not need to accept the loan even when finally approved.

Small Business Owners should note that “FEMA does not offer grants to businesses. SBA loans are the primary federal resource available for…businesses…(damaged) in a disaster.

A researcher who is an Assistant Professor at a University, interviewed, provides the following feedback based on her research on how communities, including businesses, recover from disasters. Her research “shows that businesses whose owners receive SBA loans are more likely to survive after a disaster.”

A business owner interviewed in the article stated that she applied for an SBA natural disaster loan but was “declined…because of credit.”

We learned that SBA’s declinations for credit are misleading.  First, SBA’s own underwriting guidelines for Loan Officers state that an applicant for a natural disaster loan does not have to be denied due to credit.

Second, we know from experience that SBA loan officers often don’t know how to read a credit report, relying solely on the credit score, which is addressed in the underwriting guidelines as “not the only reason” for denying the application. SBA’s guidelines encourage their loan officers to delve deeper into credit history and ask questions about credit rather than rely solely on credit scores.  But we know from experience that SBA loan officers very often ignore these guidelines and base their application decisions solely on credit score.

thumbnail for the video about credit score Linda Rey and trevor sitting on chairs with curious facial expressionsTrevor has discussed credit scores extensively on our YouTube channel.  We have a playlist dedicated to credit score inquiries, low credit scores when applying for a loan and how to write a credit explanation letter. Watch this video on the myth of running credit and the common question about “hard vs. soft hits.”

Lastly, regarding credit, many applicants have identity protections including locked credit reports.  We have seen many, many times where SBA will decline an applicant for “credit” due solely to the reason that the credit report was locked and SBA could not access the report.  SBA representatives consistently fail to disclose this pertinent fact to applicants and SBA’s declination letter makes no mention of a locked credit report stating only that the application was declined “due to credit.”

We have stated repeatedly in our YouTube videos that you must request Reconsideration to fight when your SBA natural disaster application is declined.  This brings your application to a higher level of scrutiny that can get the negative decision overturned for a positive result in your favor: approval.

Our final observation on this excellent article from Louisville Public Media. Based on this quote from a disaster resource attorney who works with an organization that provides free legal assistance:  “…she tells clients who do qualify for an SBA loan to take it because not taking it may disqualify them from additional assistance and the other financial option will most likely be a personal or bank loan.  If a disaster survivor doesn’t use financial assistance, they might leave the area…”

During the pandemic, we assisted thousands of Small Business Owners with the SBA program.  We know the complaints and anxieties by Small Business Owners, about the program, are legendary.  But we also know that, without that assistance, so many more businesses would have failed due to the pandemic.  

That’s why we provide these YouTube videos and our expert advice: we know the value of these programs. That’s why we often say, “Stop complaining and start submitting!”  

  1. Get your SBA natural disaster application submitted.
  2. Follow up and respond in a timely manner with documents.
  3. Set your frustrations about SBA’s process aside; do the work.  

The benefit you receive on the other side is tremendous and will help your business recover from the natural disaster. 

You can visit our EIDL Natural Disaster Consulting service page where you can complete a survey if you’re interested in assistance through this complicated process.

US Treasury State Small Business Credit Initiative

The federal government is making available $10 Billion and all small businesses in the country are eligible for the money.

This is not the paycheck protection program or the economic injury disaster loan program. Both of those Covid-relief efforts have expired. This is also not a loan program from the Small Business Administration. It’s from the treasury department.

The program is called the state small business credit initiative, or SSBCI, and it works like this:

  • Your State submitted an application to the US Treasury proposing how to use the funds
  • US Treasury reviews and approves and funds directly to your State

So how does your business get access to these funds? You can go to the Council of Development Finance Agencies’ state resources map. The funds, once received by the states, will then be distributed to existing and authorized organizations that finance and support local small businesses. 

These are community development investment funds (CDFIs), minority deposit institutions (MDIs), community banks, economic development groups and other non-profits that work with small businesses in their areas.

The funds will be used for loans, grants and equity investments. They can also be used to collateralize new debt with existing banks or insure their repayments. The whole idea is to get money in the hands of small businesses that wouldn’t otherwise be able to get financing through traditional lenders because of their financial history – or lack thereof.

Certain funds are targeted specifically to minority-owned businesses or businesses located in low- to moderate-income areas. But just about any business can apply for these funds, even non-profits.

Find out the organizations that are receiving SSBCI money from your state and reach out to them.

They need to get to know you and your business. The application process will take a bit of time so you want to gather your documentation – bank statements, tax returns, financial records – and begin down that road. You should be applying for funds from multiple places.

These organizations aren’t going to come knocking on your door. But they do have money to spend. Your objective is to get them to spend it on you.

US TREASURY small business credit initiative ebook cover page with lighthouse

Need more Working Capital?

SSBCI Treasury Guide

Through this program, the Federal government is making available $10 Billion directly to States for all small businesses in the country. In our Step-by-Step guide, we explain the program and outline how to access the funds including examples of eligibility and use of funds. If you want instructions on how to submit a financing request, check out our Business Financing Application Fundamentals BEACON GUIDES.

SBA Facts, Faults and Failures

For all its faults, SBA has helped MILLIONS of Small Business Owners (SBOs) with the EIDL program. Seems irrelevant when you’re still waiting for funds.

The SBA has many, many, many faults, however we’ve discussed Trevor’s “Three P’s” for EIDL success: Patience, Persistence, and Process. Today we add a fourth “P”: PEOPLE.

An SBA senior Loan Officer, also a former Mortgage Banker like Trevor, recently said to Trevor, “It comes down to who’s working on the file here at SBA.”  There’s a lot of “in between the lines” to unpack about that comment.

The Loan Officer also made this statement: “You know, the application for EIDL is pretty simple. A tax return, and a couple of documents. It’s not complicated.

This is why your success—OR FAILURE—with the SBA process and your application, more often comes down to ONE PERSON.  One good person gets you approved; one bad person leads you into SBA EIDL HELL.

DECLINATIONS

We have NO RESPECT for SBA declination letters. The reasons given for declinations are often so absurd and so out of touch with the reality of the loan application documents is a complete JOKE.

Declination Examples:

“You’ve received maximum allowable EIDL based on your 2019 tax return” or “Economic Injury Unsubstantiated” when the tax return CLEARLY shows there’s sufficient income. ONE PERSON at SBA doesn’t know how to do 5th grade arithmetic. That ONE PERSON DECLINED the loan.

“Withdrawn due to inactivity” this one is one of the BIGGEST JOKE declinations.  We’ve received these on files where we had literally submitted documents weekly for two months.  Even after emailing with a Loan Officer!

AND THE INFAMOUS: “Unverifiable Information”. What does this even mean? They don’t tell you what information was unverifiable.

THANKFUL MOMENT: YOU CAN GET APPROVED with the FOUR P’s: patience, persistence, process, and people.

Ignore the declination letter.  Don’t give up. File a Reconsideration; file four Reconsiderations. KEEP GOING.

You will NEVER KNOW the reason you were declined.  Remember what the Loan Officer said to Trevor: “It’s pretty simple.” If you KNOW that you’ve submitted your documents in a clear and organized and professional manner, then you’re going to get approved. As long as you’re persistent and you keep going until the RIGHT PERSON gets your file, you will get approved.

OTHER ADVICE: Everything we share with you is based on hundreds of interactions and hundreds of Clients and thousands of documents combined with Trevor’s 30+ YEARS as a Lender.  Here’s some valuable advice we have for you:

You’re the only person who can provide the best quality documents and the most accurate information.

Sure, you can read about a couple of people on Reddit who:

A) Called their politician
B) Called the SBA everyday
C) Made friends with an SBA Loan Officer but the advice they give you is WRONG.

  • CALLING SBA is a waste of time
  • EMAILING SBA is a waste of time
  • POLITICIANS CANNOT HELP
  • THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS

SUBMITTING documents in an organized manner, with NO STORY TELLING, is the ONLY WAY to get a RESULT

IF you’re declined, submit a RECONSIDERATION.  Don’t give up. Organize your documents and send it in AGAIN. AND AGAIN. UNTIL you’re approved.

SBA: The Painful Truth

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For more than 18 months we’ve processed EIDL files for our Clients. For 18 months we’ve dealt with the complete dysfunctional insanity known as the Small Business Administration (SBA). Today we’re sharing with you the “painful truth” of what you can expect with your interactions with the SBA.

We know there are many videos, blog posts, newspaper articles, not to mention SBA “good news” propaganda out there in the world. We know that millions of Small Business Owners are desperate to receive the vital funding available through the EIDL program. We know that, in the moment of truth when a Small Business Owner (SBO) receives ANY kind of notification from SBA, or any hint of activity or whisper of progress, the typical SBO loses their minds, thinking, “Finally! At long last!” 

It’s a lot like Tom Hanks on the beach in the movie “Castaway” when he sees an airplane flying overhead. He’s so desperately, depressingly, excited, to even dare think he might be one tiny step closer to being rescued that his emotions overwhelm him, first with the excitement stage, then in the absolute grief stricken stage when he realizes he’s lost, without any hope.

That’s exactly how millions of SBOs feel with the SBA and the EIDL process.

Here are some “painful truths” to help you prepare yourself to better handle your emotions and potential anxiety.

The Background.

Trevor is a 30+ year veteran Mortgage Loan Officer. He has literally “seen it all” and he dealt, almost exclusively, with U.S. Government lending programs. He leverages this experience in two (2) ways for our EIDL Clients. 

First, because he understands Government regulations and processes, he approaches the EIDL application with a different perspective from the average Small Business Owner. It’s more pragmatic, more logical, more process-driven. 

Secondly, given the opportunity to speak directly with an SBA representative, Trevor flashes his credentials like a big city homicide detective in a small town police station after his grandmother smacked her car into a neighbor’s shrubbery. 

He’s polite, respectful, but, because of his experience, and because he presents himself as a colleague and fellow traveler, the SBA representatives, more often than not, communicate with him differently than they would to you. Often, they share insights into the SBA process that would NEVER be revealed to the average SBO.

For instance, yesterday a young SBA Loan Officer made the following two statements upon hearing Trevor’s “I’m a Loan Officer” introductory rap: “I’ll be honest, the guidelines change almost weekly.” And, “I’m not talking out of school, but sometimes, I get quite frustrated with many of my colleagues and the notes they make in the files.

In other words, there’s an entire “behind the scenes” aspect that SBOs simply cannot grasp. And you may not understand how that behavior at this Federal bureaucracy is prohibiting you from getting access to these vital funds.

Important “Painful Truths” to understand.

Painful Truth: Seven days to submit documents.

SBA says you have seven days to submit documents (we’ve seen three days also!). Problem is twofold:

1. Even if you submit the requested documents, say an IRS 4506-T, within three minutes of receiving the request, you’re most likely to hear nothing back from SBA for weeks. Or months

2. We’ve seen SBA indicate this ridiculous rule of “seven days to submit” only to get an email six weeks later, looking for the same documents, whether they were submitted or not. In short, what the SBA “says” about your process must NOT be trusted AT ALL.

Painful truth: multiple IP address log-ins. 

Yes, we’ve discovered that SBA representatives are putting fraud alerts on your EIDL file if you’ve logged in from multiple different IP addresses, whether by emailing the SBA or by visiting the SBA portal. 

That fraud alert is literally stopping your file in its tracks. 

Many SBOs have been working for many months, or even more than a year, to get their EIDL processed. In all that time, out here in the real world, it’s perfectly reasonable that someone might use different computers or devices, or different Wi-Fi networks to interact with the SBA. 

BUT, instead of understanding how the world actually works, the SBA treats these normal activities as fraudulent. Meanwhile, the real criminals have been stealing money from the SBA and the US Government since day one. 

You are getting lumped in with the criminals simply because you used your iPhone to log into the SBA portal on Monday, and then your home computer on Thursday.

Painful truth: SBA representatives either don’t read your complete documents submitted, or, worse, they don’t know their own required forms.

We’ve seen it all in this regard. We’ve used the SBA’s own forms (3501, 3502, 1368) to submit Reconsiderations and Appeals, only to get yet another ridiculous document request, or worse, a declination, because the SBA person working on the file didn’t bother to read the SBA forms we submitted, or didn’t understand them.

The reasons for this behavior are layered, ranging from:

  • lack of time to review the file thoroughly (a true underwrite takes hours, not minutes)
  • lack of training or knowledge, and finally
  • utter incompetence

What can you do about this? Nothing, other than keep plugging away.

Painful Truth: Management Review

Even if your SBA Loan Officer is a Superhero on your file, because of the aforementioned fraud consciousness of SBA, your file must go to a supervisory level to sign off on the Loan Officer’s approval. Not only can this be a “black hole” for your file disappearing, but some of these supervisors are attorneys, not loan officers. So, even if you had a great conversation with your Loan Officer, once the supervisors get your file…well, you understand the painful truth revealed here.

When your EIDL file is declined, you will NEVER in ONE MILLION years be told the truth of why the file was declined.

STOP ASKING WHY. They won’t tell you, or will give you a reason that may or may not be accurate. This is mostly because there are no accurate notes in your file at SBA and also because to answer your question literally requires a FULL UNDERWRITING REVIEW of your file.

The Customer Service rep or Tier 2 Agent cannot give you that level of attention. They cannot. PLEASE STOP ASKING. 

Final Painful Truth: YOU, the EIDL applicant. 

Your emotion and anxiety and failure to take care with your own documentation, gets in the way.  We see this time and time again with our own clients. 

They want to tell “story”, and yet, they submit documents that are inadequate, incorrect, contradictory, and incomplete.

We’ve said this thousands of times: STOP STORY-TELLING.

The SBA reps not only don’t want to hear it, but you’re actually muddying the waters of your loan process. Do you know what it’s like to have to sort through 23 novel-length emails explaining and telling stories? It’s impossible.

We’re advocates for our clients. Can you imagine how the SBA representatives react to this nonsense? You’re literally your own worst enemy with the EIDL process. We know, the truth is painful. 

10 EIDL UPDATES

Visit our Videos on COVID-19 EIDL Updates

Our opinions are our own. For videos on EIDL Updates, visit our YouTube playlist.

1. SBA is definitely working faster on files. We’re seeing recent Reconsiderations getting a response in thirty days or less. The response typically requests additional documents; the response isn’t necessarily an approval.

2. Once documents are submitted. SBA’s typical dysfunction kicks in and there’s silence on the file, no status updates available, NO approvals, and, too often, DECLINATIONS.

3. DECLINATIONS. We’re seeing that SBA fails time and again to actually read documents submitted for the Reconsideration process, including failure to read SBA’s OWN specialized forms (SBA Form 3501 and 3502). Also a failure to thoroughly review tax returns.

4. DECLINATIONS II. There’s a spate of declines over the past several days. Feels like SBA is “clearing the decks” again and sweeping older files over the starboard bow.

5. OLDER Reconsiderations. It’s an absolute disgrace with the lack of activity on these files. When SBA actually works on the file, there are repetitive requests for the same documents, and failure to read the documents submitted and move the file forward.

6. Once a Loan Officer signs off.  When a file is marked for approval based on the loan officer’s review, there’s a secondary review level (including legal team as far as our understanding). This secondary review seems to take weeks and there’s no response or status update in the meantime.

7. Uploading documents to SBA portal.  This is a constant nightmare: documents do not register in the system or are marked as “incorrect” when they aren’t.

8. $2M Increase requests. So far, it’s easy to request; we’ve submitted several.

9. Funding problems. Once a file is approved and the primary “authorized signor” DocuSigns the Loan Agreement, there have been delays in receiving the funds. We solved the mystery yesterday when we discovered the SBA is emailing the Loan Agreements to ALL other owners with a 20% or greater ownership interest, but the emails often go to SPAM and the primary signor is UNAWARE of this because there’s no mention (or functionality) on the SBA portal.

10. INCREASE BACKLOG. SBA has NOT cleared the backlog. We still have dozens of Client increase requests languishing in the SBA system with NO activity since APRIL.

Grab it NOW

How to Apply for an EIDL Loan

An updated sample of the EIDL application with Trevor's commentary on what changes the SBA has implemented when underwriting your EIDL loan.

How to Manage Distractions for Your SBA EIDL APPROVAL

Saturday afternoon, Trevor purchased a half gallon of 2% milk for his morning coffee. He then discovered the milk was bad. When he checked the date, he saw the container was already 8 days past its “sell-by” date when he purchased it, thus making today 10 days past due.

He returned to the market, grabbed another 2% half gallon only to discover that the date was also past due. Finally, he found one that’s good for another 8 days.

When Trevor went to the counter to tell the owner, he said, “I knew it. I should always stock the milk myself.  No matter how many times I tell them, they just don’t pay attention.

He was referring to the two young men, probably teenagers, who work part-time for him. We remembered they were there the Saturday when Trevor went to the counter to pay for the first, bad, half gallon of milk. They sat off to the side and neither one had the sense to get up, come to the counter and ring Trevor out. The owner was busy at the ice cream window scooping out some of his excellent local creamery ice cream.  Trevor had to wait to pay for him to finish with his ice cream customer.

When he told Trevor about the lads not ‘paying attention’ to their work, we were reminded of the teenager we hired to split firewood on our property. We told the owner, “When they’re working here, you have to take their phones away.” Trevor went on to describe his observations of the wood-splitter at our house: “His Mom drove him up to our driveway with the wood splitter on a trailer attached to her car.  Then, later, I saw him split two pieces of wood, then take his phone out of his pocket, spend five minutes messaging, then split two pieces of wood, then the phone would come out of the pocket, and so on.

Before you think we’re just old curmudgeons who disregard a teenagers’ work ethic, let’s describe some of the same behaviors we’ve discovered in our clients.

Thanks to COVID-19, our little financing practice morphed into assisting small business owners with the Federal Government’s disaster assistance from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) known as Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL). Working on an SBA loan application is, in the best of times, a daunting and complicated process. 

The paperwork is complicated and lengthy, and the bureaucracy is fraught with all kinds of systemic incompetence.  All of these features have been exponentially made worse by the overwhelming need for this program due to the pandemic.

Our clients run the gamut from “gig-worker” self-employed sole proprietors to owners of businesses that generate multi-millions in annual revenue; age ranges from 20-somethings to folks my age (60) and older.

Trevor was a mortgage loan officer for 30 years. He learned early on that the key to getting any loan application approved was paying attention to details, especially those that may appear to be inconsequential. He worked mostly on government mortgage loans in his career; which presented a solid preparation for working on these SBA government loans now. And the most important lesson, about those otherwise minor details, comes to bear every single day.

Most of our clients have applied for the SBA loan and have been declined. So our job is to review their documents and their applications and “fix” whatever was wrong that caused the declination in the first place. You may think these folks were all declined because they simply didn’t qualify; but that’s not how this program works, almost every applicant is eligible and qualified due to the fact the loan program is only about compensating the business for revenue lost due to the disaster—COVID-19.

We’ve discovered a terrifying aspect of our modern life: it seems everyone, of all ages, every generation, is distracted. Their distractions are causing real difficulty, personally and professionally. In almost every client file we work on, we see mistakes that range from their SBA application process to the mistakes made with their fundamental business documents or information.

Those mistakes, many of them fairly simple and functional, are causing these businesses to be delayed in getting an approved for vital this funding that, quite literally, will keep their business alive during the pandemic and beyond. When we discuss these errors with the clients, the responses too often point to that one disturbing word, again and again: distractions.

“I was in a hurry when I did the original application,” as an explanation why there are wild inaccuracies in their application when compared to their financial or other business documents.

Or, from the business owner who’s original business partner, absent from the business for ten years or more, recently walked into the bank and withdrew nearly $100,000 of the business’ money for himself because his name still appears on the business name and the bank account, even though our client doesn’t consider the man to be a partner at all.  Our client never took the time to visit his attorney and change the paperwork, or remove the partner’s name from the bank account. Why? Distracted with his other job, another business, his family, and, you name it.

That same local market owner had his problems with the SBA process too, notably, his inability to locate an important email from the SBA about his loan that we had submitted for him. We called him every few days to ask if he had received an email from SBA with his loan approval (all our other clients were receiving emails and I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t). “No, nothing yet,” he’d say, to which we responded, “Did you check your SPAM folder?”

But he’s busy running a little country marketplace (with, apparently, useless employees who can’t even stack milk cartons with correct expiration dates), so it wasn’t until we got him on the phone late one afternoon when we knew the store would be quiet and we forced him to stop what he was doing and scroll through every single email, including SPAM.  And, there it was!  The SBA email from two months before, now long expired, with his loan approval.

Like the milk episode, this caused more work for us. His distractions of simply running his business kept him both from hiring competent employees (who were distracted in their own ways), training those employees, and taking the time necessary to attend to a vital funding that would dramatically have eased his economic suffering due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

Trevor realized that he noticed this trend in the late years of his mortgage career, too. Folks who were requesting that Trevor’s bank lend them hundreds of thousands of dollars, were so distracted in their daily lives (they always had the excuse of being busy…and thus distracted.), they couldn’t find the time (or bandwidth) to pay attention enough to basic documents or questions needing to be answered to get their loans approved. This to buy their dream house.

Like the young men at the local market who are too distracted to pay attention to “sell-by” dates on the milk cartons, so many of us are distracted to the point of distress. You’re literally ruining your lives, either personally or professionally, or both, with your failure to recognize and control your distractions. These distractions are not solely the fault of our smartphones. Or even social media.  There are all kinds of static-inducing disruptions to our days.

Trevor, as a student of economics and history, he puts these distractions down to a single phenomenon, one that is (finally) getting more attention in the media. That phenomenon is directly related to money.  More specifically, earning money and the cost of living. We’ve watched this distressing trend grow from the early 1990’s, through the boom times and recession times, and especially after the global recession that resulted in 2010 from the mortgage meltdown.

People have been struggling to “catch up” with costs, and earn a decent basic living for decades; but that struggle received a new infusion of chaotic confusion after the global recession. The rich definitely got richer, none of the bankers or financing titans went to jail or paid any kind of price for causing this worldwide calamity, but the average working person today has paid, and continues to pay, the price for that more than decade old recession.

COVID-19 only exposed the brutal reality of this financial duress in the most blunt terms possible.

But, those of us who have struggled and continue to struggle, we fail to recognize this calamity. Instead, like bugs scattering when you lift a stone up, we simply go about our days, go about our business, go about “living” in a way that seems to us to be satisfactory.

Wake up.  Your distractions are killing you. You need to save your own life and you need to slow yourself down and you need to focus.

Take your pick of the things that are killing you, or will kill you, or your children: Climate change. COVID-19. Politics. Driving fast combined with distracted driving. And on and on.

We have three suggestions, or “rules” on actions you can take to reduce, and hopefully, eliminate, distractions from your life.

Rules to not be distracted:

  1. Take Care
  2. One At A Time
  3. There’s Plenty of Time

Take Care

We use this rule with our financing practice. Think of the old carpenter’s adage: “Measure twice, cut once.” That’s essentially what “Take Care” means. Whatever activity you’re undertaking, whether you’re stocking the milk cartons, preparing financial documents for your business or to buy a home, making decisions that could affect your or your children’s well-being, take the appropriate care with that process. Look at the solutions, the consequences, the pro’s and the con’s; look at the mechanism, about what it will take to accomplish whatever it is you’re doing or deciding on. Then, put all that good brain-power you just expended to work.

One At A Time

We refuse to waste time arguing, or reading about, whether or not multi-tasking is a good or bad thing. We prefer to think from the positive perspective: doing ONE thing, allocating time and energy to that one thing, and accomplishing that ONE thing, is a worthy enterprise. It works. Time and time and time again: when you’re focused on ONE thing, from spending time speaking to an elderly parent, or preparing your documents for your tax returns, or whatever task or mission you need to accomplish, large or small, when you do only the ONE thing at one time, not multiple things at the same time, your results are so much more gratifying and accurate.

This also saves time from having to go back and redo something again.

There’s Plenty of Time

We’re convinced that somehow we all have come to believe that time is running away before our very eyes and that if we don’t hurry up, we’ll miss out on something.

There’s this trend, apparently, among the younger folk, to take time for getting the most out of their young lives now. That’s why they don’t want to be trapped in jobs that are mind-sucking-soulless-energy-sapping endeavors to earn money and nothing more. A good meal with friends; rock-climbing; doing nothing for its own sake. These activities sound more like retirement, but in reverse because the people doing them are all young. It’s as if they believe they’ll run out of time.

We posit this concept: when you’re young is actually the BEST time to invest in yourself for your future, whether that’s education or earning, or any combination of the two.  Further, spend your time wisely. The time’s not running out; but YOUR time to create something good for yourself in your life is running out, because economics will catch up to you with bills you’ll have to pay, families you’ll have to clothe, house and feed, and energy that wanes as your years progress.

Embrace your life by all means; live for your moment. But do it in a way that is well-considered. Take into account that, short as all our lives are relative to the Universe at large, there’s actually plenty of time.

Distracted while writing this: We confess that, as we wrote this, we were distracted a few times. Maybe that’s part of the writing process, taking time to think, although some of the best writers in the world say you should lock yourself in a room alone with no distractions and do nothing but write. Hemingway started every one of his days that way: with no distractions and focused on his writing and we all know how that turned out for him.

We don’t believe we allow ourselves to be distracted in the ways that we see so many other people churning through their lives.  And, we can honestly say this: we have accomplished some fairly incredible things in our lives by following these three aforementioned rules. Focusing and refusing to be distracted.

We hope our little discourse didn’t distract you too much.

Break It Down

Business Financing Documents Checklist

Stop worrying about what's required when pursuing a business loan for your small business. This list will indicate what a lender, bank, SBA, etc. will want to know about you and your small business if you're looking for a business loan. These are prudent documents that help tell your small business story. Without them, it's difficult for lenders to assess you as a risk when it comes to lending your small business money. This is NOT SPECIFIC to the SBA EIDL loan.

Advice from Trevor the Loan Officer: Obey The Speed Limit!

Working on EIDL Reconsideration files for more than a year, we’ve learned the many reasons that loans have been declined and why many Small Business owners are continuing to have tremendous difficulty with the SBA EIDL process. Simply, it’s mistakes folks make when completing their EIDL original applications.

Trevor, a 30 year veteran loan officer learned long ago to take his time when completing a loan application. He also learned long ago to triple check information, cross-verify documents and account numbers, and generally, obey the speed limit.

As a result, his loan applications have a higher rate of approval, including the many EIDL applications he’s submitted since last year.

The following two examples support our theory that Small Business owners are rushing and making mistakes.   Completing your application (or any other documents you submit to SBA) isn’t going to get you the money faster than the time you take to slow down to complete the EIDL application so that it’s accurate the first time. On average, Trevor spends approximately two hours to complete an application for each one of our clients.

Here are the actual mistakes…one of dozens and dozens:

“I put an incorrect phone number on my application because I sped through it.”
“In my rush…I put the bank account number (in place) of the EIN.”

Please slow down, pay attention and review and double-check the information you are providing to the SBA. They will not contact you to verify, they simply decline.

For information about Natural Disaster EIDL vs. the COVID-19 EIDL, please visit this page for information about that distinctly different process.

How to Apply for an EIDL Loan

An updated sample of the EIDL application with Trevor's commentary on what changes the SBA has implemented when underwriting your EIDL loan.