Get Your Business Funded: Creative Methods for Getting the Money You Need

Using Personal Assets

According to SBA.gov, “The primary source of capital for most new businesses comes from savings and other personal resources.” Personal resources can mean all sorts of things: savings, money market accounts, stocks and bonds, whole life insurance, and more. Whatever the case, using your own personal assets is the subject of the first chapter of this book because that is where most people start when looking to fund a business, and likely where you will need to begin as well.

In addition, it will be very hard to ask anyone to invest in your business—be it a bank, angel investor, uncle, or whoever—if you do not have some of your own money invested too. Entrepreneurship is a risk. For you it is a risk of many shades: financial of course, but also emotional and professional. But lenders and investors have little interest in those latter two risks. What they want is to see that you are willing to accept your fair share of the financial risk. That is where using your own actual capital, like savings, also comes into play. For starters, it proves you are serious.

There are both pros and cons to this strategy:

Pros

• You incur no debt.
• It comes interest free.
• You need no one's approval.
• You will not be liable to others.

The last point is significant. The fact that you can get creative and possibly obtain some or all of the money you seek with no strings attached is no small matter. As you will see throughout this book, getting the money you need almost always requires ...