 to help you find financing for your business. So we're gonna give you some insider tips. My name is Marianne Ciccello. I'm here with Ricardo Devlon. And we're gonna hopefully share a lot of different topics today and get you to help you need to find the funding to give you a little information about us. Again, my name is Marianne. I work with Next Street. We are a firm that believes there's a future for small business and a better future. At Next Street, what we do is we revolutionize how our clients provide capital, customers and services every day to small businesses. Ricardo and myself work at business centers in New York City serving over 5,000 clients a year. We've been in the trenches the last few months. We have provided over $23 million in capital to our clients. That was over 450 clients. Ricardo, do you wanna introduce yourself? Sure, sure, thanks, Marianne. My name again is Ricardo Devlon. I am a director of a business center in New York City. Me and my team connect small businesses to everything from funding opportunities to resources. We are for workshop opportunities. We work with small businesses for over for close to 15 years and I'm really happy to be here today. And between the two of us, we probably have about over 25 years of small business experience. So we hope to support you and guide you today. You'll notice there's a question and answer portion. So please provide us with your questions. We'll get to them at the end. So let's get started. Today we're gonna talk about understanding your funding options. That's the first section. Then we'll talk finding the right funding for your business. And then we're gonna talk about the current funding options out there because we know there's been a lot of different options. We're gonna make sure we're clear once out there. All right, so Ricardo, take it away. Thanks, Marianne. So before we dive in, I think it's actually important to really set the stage. Before you start thinking about different funding options, the first thing you wanna understand is what are some of the common uses for business funding? If you're a small business, here are a couple of things that you should be considering when thinking about acquiring capital. The first is to help you purchase new inventory or equipment. The second is to acquire new space for your business. The third is to expand or pivot your business if need be. The fourth, if you have a retail brick and mortar operation to help you make storefront improvements. And the last is to do things like paying employees or cover marketing, very short-term working capital needs. Some questions that you as a small business should consider before applying for funding or taking on funding is, why does your business need the funding? How will this money help you grow? How will this money help your business achieve its goals? It's extremely important to sit down and think about how these new funds will help you grow your business and attain your goals. And last but not least, how much money will you need? Think about things such as over what period of time can you actually take on the money and repay those funds? Think about how much you would need to actually complete your goals or your objectives. Those are all important questions that you should be considering before taking on some additional funding. As we go through the presentation, one of the first things I wanna just establish is there's no strict right or wrong reason to take on funding. Every small business is completely unique. And as a small business, it's important for you to sit down and think through how funding will help your business in particular. So keep that in mind as we go through this presentation. Now, this one slide is extremely helpful, what you'll notice is at the very top of the slide, you'll find the most cost-effective funding opportunities. And so that comes in the form of a grant. On the bottom of the slide, you'll find some of the more high interest or slightly more expensive opportunities to acquire funding. For the sake of today's presentation, we're gonna cover three main pieces. We're gonna cover crowdfunding. We're gonna cover debt financing and we're gonna discuss equity funding opportunities as well. Ricardo, before we go forward, I just wanna talk about grants because I know that during the pandemic, we've seen a lot more grants. Before it, we would tell clients that they're really competitions. But now there are a lot of grants out there. What I think we've seen is there's a lot of corporations and local organizations providing them, but they're very competitive and there is an application. And they're usually in the $5,000 to $10,000 range. So they really won't propel your business to the next stage, so to speak. That's a good point, Mary, thank you. As we go through the presentation, you're gonna see this consistently where there's a relationship between you as a small business and the funder. For the sake of the debt financing or debt funding, on the left-hand side of the slide, you'll find a lender. On the right-hand side, you'll find a small business borrower. Here is the relationship between the two. In the event that your small business needs funds, one of the first things that you can do is you can walk into a local bank or financial institution and apply for a traditional debt loan. If you're approved for the traditional debt loan, the relationship would work such that the lender would provide you the capital that you need based on your approval. And in exchange, you as a small business owner is required to make a monthly payment over the life of the loan. A portion of that payment will go to pay down the principal. And the second portion of that payment is your interest payment or the cost that you're paying to do business with the lender. So really quick way to explain this. If I'm looking for funding, I walk into my local commercial bank, I apply for a debt loan, I get approved, and lender says, great, you have $10,000 in your account now. Every single month thereafter, I'm required to make a monthly payment. A portion of that monthly payment, which is considered the principal payment, goes to reduce the loan amount that I received up front. The second part of that payment is the interest payment. And again, this is the cost that you incur for doing business with the lender. On the right hand side, as we go through these presentations, you'll notice some key considerations that you as a small business owner should be thinking about if you're pursuing these funding options. We're gonna dedicate one slide to speak specifically about these key considerations. I wanna just mention that as part of that funding opportunities, each lender is unique. And so you should expect that they may have different fees or charges or sort of any sort of course associated to take on that debt. And so keep that in mind as you look at that funding as an option. And Ricardo, I know you said commercial banks and most people do think of commercial traditional banks when they think of debt funding. But really, we work with alternative funders, CDFIs. Can you just talk for a minute about that? Sure, CDFIs are acronym for commercial development of financial institutions or community of financial institutions. The purpose of CDFIs is to provide funding to small businesses who would otherwise get turned down for commercial banks. And so think about your startup business or your business that's just not yet to a point where you're making extreme profits. Commercial banks may not be as willing to provide funds. However, CDFIs are really great because they're actually able to step in and provides you the capital that you need that you would not otherwise get from a traditional bank loan. We're gonna spend some time talking about CDFIs as we go through this presentation as well. The second type of funding opportunity that exists for majority of small businesses is this idea of equity funding opportunities. And again, very similar to the debt financing slide, you'll notice the relationship between on the left-hand side, the funder, or in this case, the investor. And on the right-hand side, you'll find the small business on client. Here's the relationship here. In exchange for capital from the investor, the small business owner can choose to provide one or two of these things. The first thing that these small businesses can provide is ownership stake of their company, which is essentially, hey, if you provide them with the capital that I need to either start or grow my company, I'm willing to provide you a portion of my business long-term. The second type of sort of relationship that might exist between the investor and the small business is a guaranteed rate of return. So very similar to traditional debt capital or debt funding, the small business can say, look, in exchange for providing them with capital, I choose to pay you a fixed amount every single month or every single year or even every single quarter until this sort of, this capital is paid back, right? Small businesses can choose to do both where they can guarantee a specific percentage of ownership of their company and also offer a specific rate of return to these investors. And I think the easiest way to think of this for most people is shark tank, right? The sharks are always looking to invest. Definitely, definitely. The third type of funding option that is made available or readily available to small businesses is this idea of crowdfunding. The relationship between a crowdfinder and a bar is sort of unique. It actually takes aspects of the equity funding opportunities and the debt funding opportunities and brings it onto one platform. And so if you ever think of websites like Kickstarter, that's one of the crowdfunding platforms that are made available to small business that can help them raise the funds that they need to take advantage of whatever goals they have laid out. Here's how the relationship works. If a small business is looking to acquire capital, they can choose to leverage a platform like Kickstarter. They will go on this platform, pretty much list out what their business is, how much money they're looking to acquire and how that money's gonna be utilized. Crowdfunders, which are normal everyday people, can get on these platforms, identify small businesses that they really like, whether they were fans before or if they feel like it's a really great concept or a really great idea, and they can choose to provide capital to that small business borrower so that they can achieve their goals. In exchange for the capital, the borrower can provide one of three things. Like an equity funding opportunities, they can provide some sort of equity, which is a percentage of ownership of their company. Much like debt capital, they can provide a specific rate of return, which is if you provide them with these funds, I guarantee that every single month or every single quarter or even every single year, I'm gonna give you a specific rate of return or they can provide a reward. Whereas if you give me capital, I'm gonna give you some sort of incentive. Really great way to explain that is imagine me owning up a donut shop for instance. I can say whenever somebody gives me $50, I'm gonna send them a dozen donuts. So it's almost very much like a barter system where in exchange for the capital, you're not providing equity, you're not providing debt, but you're actually providing some sort of product to service in exchange. I think it's extremely important for small businesses to understand what are some of the documents that you'll need as you consider these three options. We're gonna start at the very top with the debt financing option. If you're looking to take on a traditional bank loan or a traditional debt, you should expect that you're gonna need to provide an income statement and a balance sheet. In more cases than not, you're gonna also be asked to provide a cash flow statement. And these three things make up your core financial statements. And so if you're really interested in taking on traditional debt capital, you wanna be able to sit down and think through your core financial statements, which are your income statements, your cash flow statements, and your balance sheet and be prepared to provide those to lenders. Traditional bank lenders and traditional debt financiers may also ask you for things like your growth plan, your business projections, or your marketing plans. If debt financing is the route that you as a small business would like to pursue, you should also be prepared to provide your historical tax returns for both your business and for you as an individual and your credit will be checked. I think that's one of the big pieces that I want everybody on this line to take away is that if you're looking for this traditional debt capital, you should expect that your credit will be checked. Equity funding is not as overbearing in terms of the type of documents that equity investors would ask for. You should still expect to provide your income statement. However, things like your credit score and your balance sheet may not be as relevant. What's more relevant or more necessary for you to provide a set of business projections to help potential equity providers understand how your business expects to grow over the next two, three, four, five years. You should also be able to provide a business or growth plan to help equity investors really understand how your business is gonna grow, especially as we make our way through the recent pandemic. What you'll notice at the bottom is the crowdfunding platforms normally do not require a ton of paperwork, which is why they're growing in popularity. However, it's not the easiest path. You wanna make sure that you have a business plan or growth plan put in place for yourself so that you can really think through how your business will be able to leverage capital to grow your operations. And another important piece as part of the crowdfunding platform is that you wanna make sure that you have a marketing plan, right? As part of the crowdfunding platform, it's essential for you to get as many eyes on your campaign as possible. And so you wanna make sure that you sit down to really work through a marketing plan to bring some eyes to that platform. The second piece that we're gonna cover, now that we laid out the different funding options is how do you as a small business find the right funding for your company? And so we're gonna spend some time to talk about that now. Before we go into that, I think for every small business, it's important for you to understand the five C's of credit. Those five C's are capacity, collateral, capital, conditions, and character. We're gonna walk through each one of these really, really quickly. So the first of the five C's is capacity. And capacity is really, what's your ability to repay the debt? It's one thing to say, hey, I need $50,000 or $20,000 in order to grow my operations, but can you as a small business owner demonstrate that you have the ability to repay that debt? It's extremely important for you to understand that before pursuing funding. The second piece is getting an understanding of potential collateral. And so when I say collateral, think of any sort of assets that the business or even you as the business owner may own. Examples of collateral or assets can be anything from a real estate property. It can be inventory a lot of times. It could be any sort of heavy machinery. All these tangible things that you can touch may be pledged as collateral to help investors or lenders just get more comfortable with the idea of lending you money to grow your operations. The third C is capital. Lenders really wanna make sure that as a small business owner, you have skin in the game. And so you should be prepared to answer questions around how much money has you so far put into your operations to grow, right? If you can demonstrate that you've personally invested in your operations, it makes conversations with potential investors a lot easier. The fourth piece which we're encountering now is this idea of market conditions. Unfortunately, the pandemic has been tough for a lot of different industries. You should be prepared to speak to why, how your industry has varied during this recent pandemic and what your long-term growth plans are based on the company that you are, right? And so you wanna be able to speak to market conditions and how you're sort of managing operations throughout the pandemic. The last piece is this idea of character. It's one thing to have a business. It's a whole other thing to be a good business owner. And so when you're looking to take on either traditional debt or work with equity investors or even work with a crowdfunding platform, you wanna speak to your expertise and area. What qualifies you to run this business? What qualifies you to take this business to the next step? You should be prepared to answer those questions. And Ricardo, I know you talked about credit score and a lot of people get caught up on that, but your personal credit score is really the first screen for many of these funders. Yeah, that's actually a good point. Before the pandemic, lenders were really comfortable with credit scores right around the 640 mark. I think post pandemic, what we're seeing now on the ground is that lenders are really, really tight and they're asking small business to have credit scores above 680 and sometimes even above 700. Here's a really good helpful slide to help you understand what are some of the available options that exist based on where you are in the stage of your business. Our startup business, which is classified as a business that's less than a year old has a number of different options. Friends and family will probably be the first source of capital that you're gonna receive. However, you can leverage things like CDFIs, the community development financial institutions that you talked about, and credit cards are also a really good option for a lot of startup companies. For operating businesses, your options start to expand a little bit. Commercial banks really like operating and established businesses and so you should be prepared to have conversations with them at that one or three year mark. You should also expect CDFIs to remain available regardless of the stage of business that you're in. And there might also be some conversations with angel and venture capitalists, angel investors and venture capitalists. These are equity providers who are really interested in businesses that have really strong growth targets that they're looking to meet. These are the type of funders that really like that type of business and so keep that in back of your mind if you are in fact looking for funding. For established businesses, your options include commercial banks and financial institutions. Commercial banks and financial institutions really love established businesses and so keep that in mind if you're looking to require capital. CDFIs again will always be available to small businesses looking to grow regardless of the stage. And private investors or private equity investors are something that really comes into play right at the three year mark. Again, these are equity providers who are really interested in businesses that have really, really high growth targets and are looking for an angelic capital to get to those targets. And I know we talked about commercial banks. Sometimes it's even hard to get funding until you reach that two to three year stage. And during the pandemic, we've seen that tighten up a little bit more. So that's why we keep pushing the CDFIs because they do work and they're nonprofits we should say most of them and they do work with small business owners every day. That's a good point. Here are some key questions that you should ask yourself before pursuing these different options. If you're pursuing debt financing, I think one of the takeaways I'd want everybody on the slide to have is you wanna make sure that you check the credit. Now more so than ever, it's important for you to be able to demonstrate a good reputation in terms of how you manage credit. If you haven't checked your credit yet and you're pursuing, you're looking to pursue debt financing, do that today, it's extremely important. The second thing that you should understand if you're pursuing debt financing is are you willing to provide a personal guarantee? As a small business owner, you should be prepared such that if your business is unable to repay the debt, you as an individual should be prepared to step in to take ownership of that loan and figure out how to make that payment. And so keep that in mind if you are in fact looking for traditional debt finance. If you're looking for equity investments, couple of key things that you should consider. One, am I willing to give up ownership stake in my company? That's an extremely important question that you need to ask. An equity provider would be in it for the long game, right? And so if you're looking for capital from equity firms or an equity provider, you wanna make sure that you're comfortable providing ownership stake to these individuals. You also wanna understand what are some of your aggressive growth plans, right? Equity providers are really interested in businesses that have really aggressive growth plans. And so if you're not able to demonstrate your ability to scale up rapidly and make it very difficult for you to identify an equity investor to grow your operations. For crowdfunding, as I mentioned in one of the slides prior, your document request or requirements would be a lot lower than traditional debt financing or equity investments. However, there are two important pieces that you should consider. One, you wanna have a business plan in place. And the second thing is you wanna have a marketing plan as well. You wanna be able to speak to or be able to talk through how this campaign will get as many eyes as possible. And so you should really be working on putting together a marketing plan to try to attract as many people as you can. Hey, Ricardo, you asked people to go check their credit score. Can you recommend the website? Credit Karma is actually a really good site. Credit Karma, they ask you three or four questions and if you answer those questions about your personal profile, open up your credit score at no charge. And so I'd recommend Credit Karma for those businesses. Thank you. So the third piece we're gonna talk about is we've talked about the different funding options. We've talked about ways in which you can really narrow down the best funding for your business. The last piece we're gonna talk about is how to explore, just exploring the current funding options that are made available, specifically to businesses who are looking to get through the recent pandemic. Let's talk about that. Before we dive in, I wanna make sure that I set the stage here. I know acquiring funding can be sort of overbearing and complicated. You're not alone. Across the nation, you'll find nonprofit and mission-driven organizations that make it to a point to simplify a lot of these concepts for you as a small business. A number of those, some of those organizations include SCORE, the Small Business Development Center, also known as the SBDC, and the Women's Business Center. And so if you have questions around exploring different funding options and if you're not necessarily sure what works best for you, I'd encourage you to go through these different organizations in your neighborhood, sit down for a professional, and they can provide you with free resources and assistance at no charge. Yeah, there are thousands of people on the ground in local markets that can assist you, not only with financing, but with education and access to other resources. So you should definitely get to know these people. As part of recovery efforts, SBA has made available a number of different loan opportunities. Those opportunities include the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, the Paycheck Detection Program, and sort of a nuanced loan product called the Community Advantage Recovery Loan Product. We're gonna spend some time to walk through some of the existing relief loan products, specifically the IDO program, which is the Economic Injury Disaster Loan and the Community Advantage Recovery Loan. We're gonna talk through those in these upcoming slides. So the first program that we're gonna cover is the IDO program. The IDO program is made available to small businesses that have less than 500 employees. The loan allows you to apply for and receive up to $2 million in funding. The interest rate is capped at 3.75 for small businesses and 2.75 for nonprofits. One of the really cool aspects of the IDO program is that there's no payments required within the first 12 months. And secondly, your payback period can stretch out over the course of 30 years. And so for those businesses who are really worried about paying large monthly payment obligations, a really cool feature of the IDO program is that you can actually stretch these payments out over the course of 30 years, thereby lowering your monthly payment obligations. The program is available directly through the SBA and applications are made available up until December 21st, 2020. And Ricardo, we're big fans of IDO because unlike the Paycheck Protection Program, which is no longer available, that you really needed to spend, depending on when you got it, 60 to 75% on payroll. Where IDO, it gives a small business owner a lot of flexibility on what they could cover. That's a great point. And I also wanna add that with the IDO program, there are no payments required for the first 12 months. And so again, it's a really great opportunity to get yourself back on your feet as you look to grow your operations. The second type of program that's available currently for small business as part of relief efforts includes the Community Advantage Recovery Loan. The Recovery Loan is made available to pre-start-up and operating businesses. It allows small businesses to apply from anywhere between 50,000 to $250,000 in funding. And the interest rates are more market rate. And so you should expect that rates are anywhere between five to maybe 8% in funding in terms of interest rate. I think the big piece, the big takeaway for the CAR program or the Community Advantage Recovery Loan program is two things. The first thing is that there are no payments required for this program. And more specifically, the SBA is actually covering your first six months worth of payments if you are in fact approved for this CAR program. So again, it's very intentional about making sure they get small businesses back on your feet. Covering those first six months allows small businesses to really best leverage those funds to grow operations. The second piece about the CAR program is that it allows for 15 hours of technical assistance. And so once you acquire those funds, you can actually sit down with a trained professional and they can help you understand how to best leverage those funds to grow operations. Yeah, and I think Carl is pretty recent. I think it could be at the end of August, early September. And we've been speaking to a few clients. The money is there. Right now, Congress needs to sign off on the release, but we expect it to become really active. And we know there's CDFIs in the local markets accepting applications. Ricarda, how long does it take to get through the process of getting a loan typically? Yeah, that's a good question. We ask small businesses to anticipate anywhere between four to six weeks in terms of underwriting processes. And so if Carl looks appealing to you, I'd really encourage you to start working on your applications today. That's an extremely important piece here. Some really quick next steps that you will want to consider as you look at these three different funding options. First thing that you should do as part of your next steps includes reviewing your funding sources, including the requirements and considerations for your business specifically. You want to be able to start looking at your business financials. Again, look at your core financial statements. Make sure that you're comfortable with them. And if you're not, there are different community-based organizations throughout the nations that can actually sit down and review these things, which... And so that's the third piece. You're not in this alone. There are a ton of no-fee small business organizations across the nation that make it their point to help these small businesses or health small businesses as they make their way through this pandemic and get themselves to a point of stability. And so I encourage you to sit down with a trained professional and sort of walk through some of the challenges so that you can prepare for next steps. Great, thank you, Ricardo. So I think we're gonna go to some Q&A. So I hope everyone has provided with some questions. Let me see what we have. So please give us your questions. I have one here. You touched a little upon two different types of debt funding, a lot of credit and term loans. Can you talk a little bit about the differences between those funding options and what type of business do you consider them? Yeah, it's a good question, Marion. And so when you're walking into a commercial bank, a lot of people are very familiar with this idea of taking on traditional debt. You may be experienced through student loans or mortgages or car loans. It's a pretty straightforward product. A lot of small businesses, however, are not familiar with a lot of credit. The best way I like to explain a lot of credit is imagine having a credit card without the actual card. Here's the big difference. With a traditional bank loan or term loan, the way it would work is you'd walk into a commercial bank, you'd ask for the loan. If it's approved, the money gets put into your account and you'd have to start making payments on it right away. A lot of credit works a little bit different. The way a lot of credit works is you walk into a commercial bank, you apply for a lot of credit, and if you are approved for a lot of credit, you're given access to a separate account where you're able to draw out capital to use it on short-term needs and pay back when need be. Very much like a credit card. One of the really cool features of a lot of credit is once you receive a lot of credit, you have the flexibility of taking out the capital to take advantage of short-term capital needs, paying it down, and then reusing those funds without having to apply for a whole new product, right? And so I encourage you, if you are a small business that funds yourself, really looking to cover short-term needs like covering salaries, or if you deal with account receivables, make sure that you have capital in place to cover your day-to-day operations. You may be in a better position to take out a lot of credit or a traditional bank loan. Again, we really encourage small businesses to sit down with trained professionals to help them navigate these different options. Mr. Carter, we have any more questions. We have someone asking, will they look at my personal credit score? We said they will, but I have not yet started my business, and I don't know if business have a credit score. Yeah. You should expect that your business credit score is actually your personal credit score. And so if you are looking to start your business operations, the first thing that you should do is check your personal credit because your personal credit will play a major factor in understanding your business credit score. And so really great rule of thumb is if you're looking to take out a business loan, the first thing that you should be doing is looking at your personal credit score and taking steps to make improvements there where you need it. Great. Another question is, how do we access Angel and Venture Capital? Is there a website? And before you answer that, I do want to note on the screen, we have a link to a resource page that we put up. So please feel free to access that as well. Go ahead, Ricardo. Yeah, so Angel investors are not just walking around. You're not going to find Mark Cuban walking down the street. You're not going to be able to just do that. I think one of the best practices that we tell small businesses is the first thing you should do is look into your own network. Think about your clients, think about your vendors, think about your friends and families. These are usually your first taste at Angel investors, equity providers. And so my recommendation to you, whether you are a startup or growth stage company, is start speaking to your clients, start speaking to your vendors and your partners and they're really good in terms of providing you with good insights as to where you can find Angel investors. Someone asked, what is the timeline to receive Idle? Is it difficult for a startup business to receive these funds? Yeah, it's really depending on the interest amongst the community. When Idle first came out, the timeline was pretty extensive. I like to tell small businesses, you should expect anywhere between two to four weeks for the Idle program. The advantage of the Idle program is that you have the flexibility of applying directly through the SBA. And so what that means is you don't have to walk into a commercial bank, you don't have to seek out a third party. If you're interested in the Idle program, hop onto the SBA website, application's pretty straightforward, and the SBA has been pretty consistent with providing updates. And so I'd say three to six weeks, but the advantage is again, you're applying directly with the SBA as opposed to some sort of like third party. Great. Is the qualification process easier for loans specifically needed short term for inventory? We hear that a lot. Or people would get a contract and need some money to get started. Yeah, it's important for you to understand as a small business whether your needs are short term or long term. I just spent some time talking about a line of credit. A line of credit is really good for short term needs because again, it allows you to draw up the capital that you need, cover those short term expenses and pay it back. The qualifiers may not be as different. There are some specialized loan products that are made available to the small businesses that have really great contract opportunities. But outside of that, I would say that the qualifiers for a line of credit and a loan are pretty much in line. Thank you. Someone did ask if they'll get a copy of this. We'll take a note and make sure GoDaddy gets it out. We know that since the pandemic, a lot of businesses have been struggling. And what are the lending conditions and how are they looking at the Pindeva now, the institutions? We talked about commercial banks as well as the CDFIs, but if you could go into that a little bit more. Yeah, commercial banks are just, they've just tightened up their sort of underwriting processes. And so in full transparency, it's gonna be extremely difficult for a lot of small businesses to acquire the capital that they need in order to grow their operations during these times through a commercial bank. With that being said, again, there are a ton of CDFIs or community development financial institutions that make it their point to lend to small businesses who would otherwise have issues receiving funding. I'd encourage you as a small business owner, if you are interested in funding, you should speak to a trained professional or seek out a CDFI to ask about funding opportunities and they can provide you with some big insight as to, you know, acquiring those funds. Great. And we should talk to Ricardo. I know now since the pandemic and a lot of us are virtual. I mean, where should people be keeping their financial documents? I know early on, many of our clients, we're trying to get them from accountants who were shut down. What's the best way for a small business owner to really have easy access to their financial documents? Yeah, so you have, you should first and foremost have a great relationship with your accountant or your CPA. That's extremely important. And so if you don't have an accountant or a CPA, that's something that you should look to put in place as soon as possible. Outside of that, you should make sure that you keep a set of books for yourself. And so whether it's an Excel document, QuickBooks, so on and so forth, you wanna make sure that you have that in hand so that if lenders ask for that information, you can at least give them your existing resources and then leverage your trained professional at a later point in time. But you really need to know your finances. And we encourage our clients, it's not just having the accountant or bookkeeper do them, you really have to know to be able to talk to them, when you're, especially when you're looking for financing, you have to know the numbers. It's really important. This is a tough one. I've been living 10 years abroad, trying to move back to the States. Will my credit score from abroad be taken into account? No, it won't. And so if you're living abroad, you should expect that you would be seen as new credit here in the States. And so you wanna make sure that if you have not, if you have not yet taken on credit here in the States, you should start with a regular credit card or a secured credit card to start building credit in anticipation for funding out of future time. Great. Is there a financial threshold that banks approve faster or are easy to qualify for? For example, anything under 10,000 or is the process for approval really the same regardless? Yeah, there are specific loan products called micro loans. Micro loans are typically loan sizes that are less than 25,000. And for the most part, those products are a little bit easier to get than traditional loans. Application processes are a lot simpler. Underwriting processes are a lot simpler. And so yes, there are specific loan products that are a little bit easier. You should expect that anything between 1,000 and 25,000 would fit that threshold. Okay, so someone has two questions. I'll start with the first. The difference between a venture capitalist and private equity investors and which one is easier to deal with? Yeah. Difference between venture capitalist and private equity. Sometimes they're actually pretty similar. I think the big difference is that private equity investors are usually larger operations. And so it's not just one person. It's usually just a company or a facility that makes their point or day to day is to identify high-growth companies that they can invest in. Venture capitalists are a little bit more of an individual sort of level where you'll find individuals who have capital or who have money secured. And as an individual, they're looking out to, looking to go out and secure opportunities to invest in others. And so another question came in, is idle loans forgivable? The idle loan program is not forgivable. You do have the year that you don't have to pay, but the interest does accrue during that one year, we should say. Right. So if you're able to get idle now, you really don't have a payment due to next September or October, which would be great. Right. Right. You mentioned a business, having a business plan can help me as I prepare to access funding. How long in detail should a business plan be? It depends on what type of funding you're looking for. If you're looking for a traditional debt funding, I tell small businesses, anything over four pages is probably too much. Right. If you're looking for equity opportunities, you should expect anywhere between five to 10 pages, but for traditional back lenders, I'd say anywhere between two or three pages is probably more than enough. Great. Someone joined a little late, they're asking what the three options are. Can you just quickly mention them again? Yes, sir. The first is equity financing or equity funding opportunities. The second is traditional debt opportunities. And the third is crowdfunding opportunities. Those are your three most readily available options for small businesses at this point today. Great. Can you explain a little bit more about capital injection requirements for small business startups? Yeah. If you are looking to secure capital for your small business, you should expect that you should come to the table with 20% of your project costs. And so here's how I normally try to explain this. If I need a, let's say I have a project and it's gonna cost me $100,000 for this project, I should expect that I will need at minimum $20,000 in operations. And so you wanna make sure that you, when you're thinking about your startup business or your project, you wanna make sure you have 20% in capital injection if you're gonna go out and look for more traditional loan opportunities. Lines of credit sound great. Would you recommend using business credit card as a line of credit? It can work in the short term. As your business operations continue to grow, you should expect that lenders, that you're gonna need more capital. That line of credit, that credit cards just aren't able to help. And so you're gonna get to a point where you know that you're gonna need additional assistance and a line of credit is where, that product will come in and step in and take care of those needs. Another question about IDO. Is it through a bank? IDO can, you can apply for the IDO solely through the SBA. So not through a commercial bank. You have to go to the SBA.gov website by December 21st to apply for IDO. Thank you. All righty. So the question I have for you, Ricardo, a lot of clients come to us and they usually are confused, right? Between what a CDFI is, what a bank, a lot of people are frustrated on their ability to access capital. How long does the whole process take when you're dealing with clients from start to finish? We talked about underwriting being three or four weeks. But how long does it take to gather the documents, fill out the application, get everything kind of going? Yeah, it can range. Again, every business is unique. I ask small businesses, if you need funding, try to start applying for it as soon as possible. It can range anywhere between two weeks for like a micro loan program. It can sometimes expand over a year depending on the loan amount. I think the important piece though is if you know you need financing, the first thing that you should be doing is to start speaking with a professional about your options. That's the first thing. Second thing you should be doing is looking at your financial statements and making sure that you're comfortable with it. The process can, excuse me, can range, but it's important for you to, if you know that you're gonna need capital in the eventual future, the important thing to do is to start working on it today. Great. What is, can you also talk to small business owners? They're sometimes skeptical about getting to know a bank and really develop that relationship. I know you were a former banker. So can you talk to that, bring that relationship going? Yeah, it's important for you to understand who your bank is, who your bankers are. I mean, I think when you're looking, you may not be in position where you're pursuing funding today. However, your business, if you're really looking to grow, you're going to need injection of capital. And so as a startup business or even as a growth stage business, it's important for you to understand your banking institutions, your banking partners, have conversations with them about what their requirements are or what their fees are because again, there will be a point in time where you need additional capital and having those relationships can be extremely helpful. And so I definitely recommend that for sure. Great. Ricardo, when there's multiple owners, can you talk to them applying for a loan? What is necessary? Yeah, any owner that has more than 20% stake in a company is required to provide a personal guarantee. And so if they're more than one owner, you should expect that if they own 20% stake in a company, they have to be on the application. They're going to get their credit check. They're going to be asked to provide personal financial statements and tax returns. And so more than one owner just means that if, you know, if there's anybody that owns more than 20% stake in a company, they need to be on applications. That's extremely important. And the lenders will ask for that. The lenders will query that. Great. All righty. Great. Well, I think we're going to move to the last slide then. Ricardo, thank you. So we want to thank you for joining us today. We hope you're enjoying your day with GoDaddy. And we thank you again for being here. We hope we answered many questions. Please go out and seek out those resources we talked about, get the help you need because we really want small businesses to succeed. They're the backbone of our country. And we wish you the best of luck. Thank you for your time today.