America’s SBDC Blog

A “Forbes 100 Best Websites for Entrepreneurs”

How to Consolidate Your Business Loans

January 22, 2018
By Constance Brinkley-Badgett

Consolidating Business LoansIf you’re like many small business owners, you’ve taken on some debt in order to cover the costs of starting or growing your business. According to the Federal Reserve’s latest figures in the 2016 Small Business Credit Survey, 64% of loan applicants sought funds for a new business opportunity or to expand an existing one.

Whether you applied for a small business loan, used business credit cards or even sought out investors, you needed that initial cash infusion to get your business off the ground or to the next level. But what happens with that debt should your business hit a slow period? (more…)

Tried & True Ways to Increase Your Cashflow in Just One Month

November 27, 2017

CashflowFormer Congressman Chris Chocola once said that one of the earliest lessons he learned in business is that balance sheets and income statements are fiction, and cash flow is the true reality.

Investopedia defines “cash flow” as the net amount of cash that moves in and out of a business. Cash flow is positive when liquid assets are increasing and negative when they are decreasing. There are only two main ways to increase your cash flow, and that is to bring more revenue in (increase sales) and/or to keep less revenue from going out (decrease your expenses). For this article, I will expand upon both concepts further.

Bringing In More Revenue

There are a variety of ways you can increase your revenue, and what makes you a strategic business owner (with a thriving enterprise) is the fact that you’ve developed your own secret sauce (business plan) to do so. Some ideas to bring in more revenue include, but are not limited to, the following:  (more…)

How to Find VCs and Angel Investors

October 30, 2017

How to Find VCs and Angel Investors

By Lydia Roth

When you’ve mapped out the coming months for your business and expect to need a good amount of capital to grow, you may need to find outside funds. If you have a wealthy family member who believes in your venture, you’re in a good position. Otherwise, you can seek funds in the form of debt or equity financing.

Debt financing is when you take on someone else’s money in exchange for interest paid throughout the duration of the loan. Equity financing is when you take on someone else’s money in exchange for some ownership of your company.

Two popular forms of equity financing are VCs, or venture capitalists, and angel investors. If you’re thinking “I’ve heard of those and want in,” ask yourself these questions first:  (more…)

Half of Millennials Want to Start a Business: Here’s How to Get Going

June 26, 2017
By Kali Geldis
NAV

Millennial businessIf you were born between 1977 and 1995, there’s over a 50% chance that you would start your own small business if you knew where to get help to make it happen.

America’s SBDC, the face of a nationwide network of Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), collaborated with the Center for Generational Kinetics to better understand how different generations view entrepreneurship. The findings indicated that millennials were especially eager to start businesses of their own, but there were some things standing in their way.

Millennials stated that they’d like help writing a business plan, and they rate money high on the list of things holding them back from starting a business. In fact, 45% of the study respondents said that finding capital to start a business was their biggest barrier. That’s not a huge shocker — there are more than 44 different types of business financing out there, and they come with unique interest and fee structures.

Here are five tips that can help any millennial, no matter their entrepreneurial dream, get started.  (more…)

Small Business Payments Toolkit – A Free, Informative Resource for Small Businesses and their Advisors

April 12, 2017
By Mary Hughes
Senior Payments Consultant, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Small Business Payments Toolkit

The Business Payments Coalition recently released the third version of its Small Business Payments Toolkit. The Toolkit provides education about payments and encourages the adoption of electronic business-to-business (B2B) payments by small businesses.

Visit this link to download this free resource:
https://fedpaymentsimprovement.org/wp-content/uploads/small-business-toolkit.pdf

Breaking Up (with Checks) is Hard to Do!

Checks are the main way many small businesses make B2B payments. Checks are popular because you don’t need to know the account information of the person or business you want to pay. However, the Toolkit points out that small businesses should try to reduce their reliance on checks because they are expensive, labor-intensive and expose a small business to fraud.  (more…)