Money Focused Podcast

EP 56 - Amanda Webster - Business Credit Strategies, How to Secure Funding!!

July 17, 2024 Moses The Mentor Episode 56
EP 56 - Amanda Webster - Business Credit Strategies, How to Secure Funding!!
Money Focused Podcast
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Money Focused Podcast
EP 56 - Amanda Webster - Business Credit Strategies, How to Secure Funding!!
Jul 17, 2024 Episode 56
Moses The Mentor

Ever wondered how business credit strategies can help grow your business? In this episode I talk to Amanda Webster, COO of Fund & Grow, who shares her journey from law to finance and her love for helping entrepreneurs. Fund & Grow's unique way of handling business credit gives you a clear plan to get business funding without giving up equity. Amanda outlines how using business credit versus personal credit is the way to go. We also go over tips on handling multiple cards, using 0% interest offers, and the card stacking strategy. We stress the importance of financial education to help small business owners succeed. Don’t miss these key insights to improve your business credit game! 


📢 SPECIAL OFFER!! go to www.fundandgrow.com/money for $500 off your subscription and secure up to $250k of business credit

📺 You can watch this episode on Moses The Mentor's YouTube page and don't forget to subscribe: https://youtu.be/IWyUZyVZ9lo

🎯Connect with Amanda Webster @fundandgrow on Instagram and visit her website fundandgrow.com

🎯Connect with Moses The Mentor: https://mtr.bio/moses-the-mentor

☕If you value my content consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mosesthementor

📢Support Money Focused Podcast for as low as $3 a month: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2261865/support

🔔Subscribe to my channel for Real Estate & Personal Finance tips https://www.youtube.com/@mosesthementor?sub_confirmation=1

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Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Ever wondered how business credit strategies can help grow your business? In this episode I talk to Amanda Webster, COO of Fund & Grow, who shares her journey from law to finance and her love for helping entrepreneurs. Fund & Grow's unique way of handling business credit gives you a clear plan to get business funding without giving up equity. Amanda outlines how using business credit versus personal credit is the way to go. We also go over tips on handling multiple cards, using 0% interest offers, and the card stacking strategy. We stress the importance of financial education to help small business owners succeed. Don’t miss these key insights to improve your business credit game! 


📢 SPECIAL OFFER!! go to www.fundandgrow.com/money for $500 off your subscription and secure up to $250k of business credit

📺 You can watch this episode on Moses The Mentor's YouTube page and don't forget to subscribe: https://youtu.be/IWyUZyVZ9lo

🎯Connect with Amanda Webster @fundandgrow on Instagram and visit her website fundandgrow.com

🎯Connect with Moses The Mentor: https://mtr.bio/moses-the-mentor

☕If you value my content consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mosesthementor

📢Support Money Focused Podcast for as low as $3 a month: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2261865/support

🔔Subscribe to my channel for Real Estate & Personal Finance tips https://www.youtube.com/@mosesthementor?sub_confirmation=1

Share your feedback

Support the Show.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Money Focus Podcast. I'm your host, moses the Mentor, and on this episode I'm excited to welcome Amanda Webster. She is the Chief Operating Officer for Fund Grow, which is a company dedicated to helping business owners secure funding without having to give up equity in their business. They are experts in business credit and she's here to talk us through some funding strategies and how you can improve your business today. So let's listen in. Thank you so much for joining Money Focus Podcast, amanda. You know it's truly a pleasure to bring you on to the show. You know I love the concepts of using business credit and I'm actually a customer of Funding Growth. So to have the chief operating officer on the show, I really appreciate you joining and talking to us. So the first thing I always ask my guests to do is to really kind of walk us through your career journey, your professional journey and, in your case you know, how did you get into this industry?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so mine is not traditional in the fact that I never thought I'd be in financial. In general, I have a passion for teaching, yet I don't want to teach kids because I don't know that I have that type of patience, because those people deserve lots of praise. I actually started my journey in the legal world, fell in love with law and the practice of law and the theory of law and just everything that went into. It became a registered paralegal and then went up and I finished my bachelor's degree and actually finished it in business management and human resources and then ended up running law firms. So I did that for about 17 years, so from literally from 18, out of high school until 2020. Not that that ages me. I'm very young. I don't know if those dates come from now.

Speaker 2:

But COVID happened and unfortunately in the law world in my area, which was like family divorce law, it just people didn't have the money during COVID to hire attorneys and do all that for obvious reasons. So that law firm just wasn't able to keep everybody employed and I said, hey, listen, let me furlough me, let me go, because you know I'm running the firm, you can figure that out and hopefully stay afloat. So it ended up kind of making me take some decisions that you know I wouldn't have done. Initially, I was home for six months with my kids, which was great and terrible all at the same time, because I have five children.

Speaker 2:

But I discovered Fund Grow just literally through looking through you know ads that were out for jobs, and then fell in love with it. I really fell in love with what they were doing for entrepreneurs and the way they were doing it. So and I didn't know about business credit it was a brand new concept for me in 2020. But it makes sense and now that I know about it, I just have this passion to educate but also facilitate and help entrepreneurs in any way that we can. So we've kind of expanded a lot of things.

Speaker 2:

So that's how I kind of made it here, and then, once I made it here, I just dove head first and figured out how can I help, what's the best way to expand this, how do we get our voice on a bigger platform, because they've done amazing things, but when you're a national company, there's just you got to just get it out there and getting the word out there, and so podcast is a great tool for that as well. So that's kind of where I'm at and where I'm sitting right now is helping, you know, get the word out, educate and see, you know what we can do for people who don't have any business credit, and then what can we do for the ones that do, and furthering that and even just education on proper uses of it, things like that.

Speaker 1:

Great explanation and we have a lot more to dig into. You know, when I first ran across Fund and Grow, I initially thought you guys were like a financial institution. I was like, oh, here comes this place trying to give me a loan. You know, and I'm happy I did end up watching the webinar and I kind of took a chance on it because my wife and I have, since you know, acquired six figures working with business credit. But I wanted to give you the floor where you can talk about your funding model and talk through how people acquire business credit and why your approach is so unique.

Speaker 2:

So business credit is a very unique space in general because there, at least in 2007, when Ari started it because that's that's where the journey had started there wasn't really anybody in the space. He kind of was a pioneer of the service aspect. So we're not a direct lender, we're not a financial institution. What we are is a service, but we're a very concierge white glove, done with you type of service where we have spent a lot of time, money, energy and focus on finding out how to not only obtain business credit but the strategy to get the most right, so to get it in the best format for each individual person, which isn't something you can do in a mass way. So you have to have one-on-one funding plans for each person in business, because it doesn't work the same for any two people for the most part, because, kind of like you know, personal credit scores are like a fingerprint. My sales manager taught me that it's like a fingerprint, right, nobody's is exactly the same. We all have them, you know. So figuring that piece out and how we can facilitate both on the personal and the business, and making the best funding strategy. So what our actual expertise are is diving into the analytics of your both your personal credit, your business profile, your business credit if you already have it, and then what is the best funding strategy in the business credit space to get you the best approvals with the highest limits available and also, depending on what you're looking for, the best points rewards, things like that. So we are a service model that looks at a strategy from day one through the rest of your business. This isn't something that's just for today. Now.

Speaker 2:

Your traditional business loans are set for a certain term typically, and then you have to go through the process again, or they come with a lot of high fees, points, interest rates from day one that you have to pay back right away. Business credit is this beautiful revolving area that a lot of people just they know what credit cards are Like. That's not a secret. They know what that is, but they don't understand. This amazing opportunity, which obviously you and your wife have learned, is like you can use this in so much easier of a way than a traditional business loan, because you only use what you need and then you can just readjust as your plan evolves, because a lot of businesses starting out may only need $10,000, $20,000, right. But then what do they need two years from now? What do they need five years from now?

Speaker 2:

So we look at the service side of setting you up long term and how that looks for your business so that you don't I don't want to say so you don't ever need us again, but in reality it's so that hopefully you don't really need us. You may want to come back and do another round with us just so that you can utilize our strengths and our knowledge, but you don't have to. A lot of companies out there in our space now are kind of preserving it so that they don't tell you all these little secrets or they don't tell you the plan. They just do these things. We want to try to educate you with as much as we can. Of course it always changes Lending patterns change but we work with direct lenders. We work with Chase and Bank of America and Amex. These aren't like small alternative lending. It's just that business credit is its own alternative use that you can use in business. That a lot of people don't understand.

Speaker 1:

So just to clarify for the audience you know I'm kind of a ringer here because I use your services. When you say business credit, you're referring to business credit cards. Correct, correct, correct, yeah, gotcha, so and so for the skeptic or someone who said well, why do I need to use a business credit card when I can use my personal credit card? What would you say to someone who would say that I would say you need to come watch my webinar.

Speaker 2:

No, personal credit and business credit have very different scoring modules. Personal credit as much as I hate to admit it, because I hate that this is the reality is not set up for success. Let's say I have a $25,000 credit card right in my personal name. Well, if I go use $20,000 of it for valid reasons, for great things, my credit score is now dropped Substantially if that is my only credit card, by the way. In the reverse, if I have a $25,000 business credit card on my EAN side and I take $25,000 out, not getting any negative credit from that, not getting a score, that's going to hurt me. Actually, on the business side, they like to see healthy use and, of course, paying back. Obviously, you still have to pay back this. You still have to be responsible for it.

Speaker 2:

Somebody who's putting their business expenses on their personal it's going to actually hurt their personal credit. Now, I'm not a CPA or a tax expert, but I can also promise you that any CPA or tax expert is also going to school you on IRS rules, about commingling the personal and business stuff. It's going to be very healthy on both sides to do it. And then there's also corporate credit and paydex scores that are all this beautiful access that you don't realize you have if you don't have that education. And when you put everything on the personal, you have a double-edged sword. So now you don't have personal credit available for your personal purchases. What if your air conditioner goes out in your house? What if your car breaks down? What if you don't have that credit anymore because you put it all there? So it's kind of a double-edged sword where you can actually just utilize business credit and make both really healthy.

Speaker 1:

We love the fact that we can, you know, have the funding readily available to handle any business expense and not really worried about those ratios. Like you said, the utilization ratio, you know I might be, you know, 40, 50% on a business credit card and it has zero impact to our personal credit profile. You know, we can still walk around with high credit scores yet still have the business debt on a business credit card and it has no impact. So I think that's the part I love. And, plus, the limits are much higher. So I don't know if it's just us as clients, but is that truly the case where, you know, typically a business credit line is going to be much higher than a personal?

Speaker 2:

So I've definitely seen personal be high too. Don't get me wrong. There's people who are able to get there. Here's the difference is you can get to 25, 50, 90, 100,000 in a credit limit on a business card much quicker. That can be done within months sometimes. On the personal, that's going to be years. That's going to be years of growing, years of relationship building or having you know.

Speaker 2:

Obviously the extremely wealthy might have a different you know different avenue for them. We're not. That's not our clientele. You know the top 1% or even 3% of the business owners are not in our clientele base. You typically are not going to get that. As an example, I've myself have been business credit. Obviously, I've learned a lot by working here and I want to make sure I'm always seeing both sides. But I got a Chase you know, a Chase card on my personal. It took me like probably three or four years to get it to the same limit of what I got out of the gate on the business side. They're willing to take more risk on the business side than they are on the personal. I don't know why. Again, none of these rules are ever fair for the consumer, but that's the world we live in.

Speaker 1:

It's not. But again, my show is really about just exposing people to the opportunities because it really doesn't make sense. Because I have a corporate career and I'm blessed, you know, I have a great job, right, but then I'll, you know, put put my business out there, which is still a profitable real estate business, but actually a net more for my job. Yet, you know, they'll throw, throw us money for a business account, you know, and it's like you know, it's like pulling teeth if you want to try to get a higher credit line for a personal card. So it is pretty crazy. But again, the more we know, the more informed we are and people like you come on in your company that offers these services, the better people can do extraordinary things with their money. So that's the key.

Speaker 2:

Yes, absolutely, and that's what we love to do in here, and obviously you know that is. You know we live within the bounds of the rules and how things work, but our expertise is is stretching them as close to that line as we can get.

Speaker 1:

And I'll take a moment and, kind of you know, let the audience know. You know like the customer service is fantastic the account managers from the time you're assigned someone. I believe you guys have like an onboarding specialist at first, but from the time that you're saying hey, you're ready to go hit the ground running with your account manager it really is white glove service. It really is. So, while I have the opportunity to tell you directly, I think you know all the account managers and we've had three and it's been a consistent experience along the way, so really appreciate the service.

Speaker 2:

So I'm glad to hear that because that's one of my center strength and focus points. I actually shifted it recently. We call it client success now. So the person that gets assigned to you is client success advocate, because that truly is their journey is to make sure you're successful. But, yes, we strive for you to have one focal person, one person who's helping you build that plan, and I love to hear that. That's very exciting. I'm going to definitely share that with the team.

Speaker 1:

Your company plays within the rules, so obviously I don't think everybody can participate out the gate. There's some criteria that you would need to pretty much get started. Can you talk a little bit about what exactly someone would need to do as far as credit wise? Is there any income that you need? Can you kind of talk us through that so they can get a full picture of what you need before you reach out to you for new service?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So business credit cards, business credit, what we're talking about today. It does use a personal guarantee and what that means is we're going to leverage your personal credit history to get you these approvals. And that's the kind of the trade-off to get around all the red tape of, like you know, income taxes and bank statements and two years in business and all the things, especially in the high-risk category. Unfortunately, real estate is one of those. But so your personal credit does matter. Now it's not going to report there, it's only going to report on the EIN side. It's just going to leverage that side and we're only going to do a soft pull. I always like to make that clear because some people get nervous. So a 680 credit score is what we're going to look for. However, that is not the only thing we're going to look for. We also are going to look at things like your utilization, your mix of credit, how long you've been seasoned with your personal credit, things like that. But don't get caught in the weeds with that. If you have a 680 or you believe you're close to there, it's worth a phone call to see where you're at, because, yes, not everybody can sign up and be ready to go today. But what I can promise you is my team is going to be very open and honest and tell you, hey, you're ready, or hey, you're not ready. And here's why what you need to do in order to get ready. We can't do it for you. We can't do credit repair legally, but we can absolutely tell you, hey, the reason it's like that is your $2,000 over the utilization on this card, Even though that shouldn't be the case. That's where we're at. But they're going to be able to tell you that just by on the front side and not even paying us.

Speaker 2:

You do need a business. Now it can be a sole prop. I don't suggest sole props anymore. That transitioned about probably 16, 17 months ago. We saw a big shift from the lenders that they wanted to see LLCs. So we're actually seeing brand new LLCs have the same results as a seasoned sole prop, which is crazy to me. But that's kind of how the game changes. Even if you have a brand new LLC, it's OK. Even if you don't have six months of revenue to show, that's okay. That's why we're going to utilize the personal. So just having a business, having an EIN number and having a 680 credit score, those are the pillars that we can work with anybody within those pillars.

Speaker 1:

I touch on this a lot on my show. It comes up in various you know interviews on how important credit is. So this is another example of when your credit is in good shape, you're afforded different opportunities versus someone who has poor credit. So really important that you take care of your credit and not credit karma score. You might be 750 on credit karma Do you know why that is?

Speaker 2:

Do you know why?

Speaker 1:

No, tell us, Let us know.

Speaker 2:

So credit karma, they are 100% a business. So what they're trying to do is to get you to believe that you're going to qualify for the offers available on their platform. So they're going to give you a credit score that's going to heighten your thoughts of okay, let me go ahead and apply for this right. And typically those are hard credit inquiries. So be very, very careful on hard credit inquiries, because a hard inquiry on your personal can sometimes be as much as 10 points going down, and 10 points there's levels and tiers in the bank side. So 10 points can actually make the difference of huge interest rate, offer difference, getting approval getting denied. 10 points can actually do that. As an example, an 800 and an 810 are two very different tiers. That sounds crazy, but that's how that works.

Speaker 1:

What would you say like to someone who says oh, another credit card, oh, this is just way too risky for me.

Speaker 2:

My first question to someone like that and my team are the same way is okay. So then what would be acceptable? What did you call for today? Because you either opted in or called because you're looking for funding for your business. What were you thinking? And typically the answer is going to be oh well, a business line of credit or a business term loan. So okay, let me talk that through with you.

Speaker 2:

Why is the credit card different than the business line of credit? A lot of times it's the interest rate. That's usually the first thing that I hear and I say, okay. However, have you seen the interest rates currently on business lines of credit? Have you actually done the research to see where we're at right now? And I could say that in any economy this one's a little bit worse, but just in any economy right, all right.

Speaker 2:

So you're going to get that business line of credit, right, but do you know how much you can get? Do you know how you're leveraging that? Because I promise you they're also leveraging your personal credit in looking at that. Unless you have a five-year seasoned business, they are still going to look at those things. So then I talk about like, what are you going to use the line of credit for, typically, what it's going to happen is I'm going to be able to show them that there is no difference between the two. The only thing I always want to explain is, no matter what, you have to have a plan to pay it back. It doesn't matter which avenue you're going down, but also the red tape, how much documentation, information you're going to need to get those traditional business loans and business lines of credit, versus my business line of credit just happens to be housed on a credit card. That's really all it is. It's just a different vehicle.

Speaker 1:

I would say, you know, for someone who's in it, you do still have to be organized when you have your business credit cards, especially for my family. I mean we've done multiple rounds, family, I mean we've done multiple rounds, so I have a lot of credit cards now. So you do have to be organized. And but what I love is that you know, although with a business loan it might be a, you know, a fixed payment and it's just one bill, I don't want to gloss over the fact that if you play your cards right, you know you can really take full advantage of the promo interest on these business credit cards. So and you know you'll speak on it much better than me, but in my case, you know, I've had cards as low as six months with, you know, 0% interest, and then some as high as, I believe, like 21 months that's what I mean by the organization to be able to maximize that promo interest for as long as possible. So if you can talk us through, like the card stacking and those benefits, that would be great.

Speaker 2:

So definitely, card stacking is our specialty. That's what we are. We do multiple rounds of funding while you're with our company and the way that we're doing it, we're only looking at zero percent offers. We don't unless you are specifically asking us to go after, say, the Amex Platinum card, unless you're one of those people that wants one of those and tell me that card's amazing, has a great benefit for having it, but it also has, you know, different things. It's a different class of card but it also has different things. It's a different class of card. So 0%, and we have seen them as low as six months. We've seen them as high as 24 months.

Speaker 2:

0%. These offers change all the time. There's hundreds and hundreds of offers out there on the market and, understanding what each of them can mean, you definitely, on the front side, should be utilizing them to invest in things that are going to create ROI. So the whole point and using business credit on the front side is to fund whatever you need to start making profit. So you need to figure that out. Your business plan should definitely be in place, at least on paper, before you're getting funding for businesses anyway. So, long term plan, utilize the front side to be able to charge aggressively, have that minimum payment although I always suggest paying two times minimum payment as much as possible just to build a healthy profile for your business but then on the backside on the backside of that, when you need to be organized every statement that comes will tell you when that offer ends. So making sure you're keeping track of that, also being very careful If you do anything against the terms. Just as little as paying your payment a day late can actually offset the 0%. Be very careful that you're paying on time. I typically tell business owners if you have the means, pay it. The second the statement drops, because then you don't have to worry about it. There are some that have auto pay for minimum payments and then you can just go in there and make extra payments when needed. That way you don't have to have that happen. But then the hope is 10 months from now, 12 months from now, you're going to build ROI.

Speaker 2:

In addition to that, we do have a merging process that we try to do with clients as much as possible. These offers change also, so on who will allow it when you can do it? Merging process would mean I'm going to pick on Chase just because it's my favorite one to pick on. If you have a Chase business card and you had a 0% offer and now you're 10 months into the 12-month offer, you can apply for a different Chase card with a 0% offer and you can actually merge those together into the new offer, as long as you you can only merge the credit limit that's available. But you merge it in and you now restarted the 0% for that new card offer. Now it doesn't mean you close the old one, unless it was paid off and you're able to merge the whole thing. Then it will obviously need to be closed because there's nothing left on it.

Speaker 2:

But just like a personal, you don't want to close business credit cards, even if you don't need them at the moment. Keep them open. You're building a business credit score over here on this side so you want to keep that healthy and then just charge like gas once a month or a client dinner once a month or a title search for a property every once in a while. You know whatever it may be that you're doing. Charge a little bit on it, pay it off, use like a charge card so that it stays open and you keep those longstanding relationships Because in the future you might be able to.

Speaker 2:

I think it was Bank of America. Recently I wasn't using my card. I had no balance on it. Guess what happened? I get an offer in the mail saying hey, if you want to use your balance of what you have available, we'll give you a 0% offer for the next 12 months. When you don't use it, those tend to roll in. So there's always things that happen and benefit from that. But then there's the whole point game, which is why you also need to be organized, because if you can utilize the points and rewards that come with business credit cards, you can actually sometimes profit from just using the business credit cards that you're going to use anyway.

Speaker 2:

I also teach people and I'm sure you've done this on here and within your series is like you should never use your debit card in your personal life for anything. It's like the worst card you should ever use for anything you're doing for so many reasons, right? I am a Chase Freedom girl, love my Chase Freedom personal cards. My favorite one gives me all the points that I love, so I use that for everything in my personal life and then I pay it off every month. I use it like a charge card but I get all those fun points.

Speaker 2:

Same thing in the business world. I'm not going to use my business checking account card to pay for my business transactions. For the same reasons, I'm not using my debit card. So there's so many things in business that you're going to spend anyway. So developing ROI, using and maximizing 0% until it's out, being very aware of when that's going to go out, and then using the point system or even the charge card system to gain other values in your business. So there's so many different things that can work for it. I would definitely suggest some type of Intuit product or a really advanced Excel spreadsheet to track everything so that you're not losing all those things. You want to make sure your points don't run out, you want to make sure you pay your payments on time, and a lot of people will use this card for marketing, this card for this, this card for client entertainment or education, and they can kind of separate out their expenses by using the different cards that way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean that's probably the only kind of a slight headache. I'll say you know, because there's so many benefits, I'll deal with it. But just you know, staying organized because you don't want to miss a payment. You know, even though it's not on your, your personal Reddit profile, that you've missed a payment. I'm assuming you filling the gaps for me. I'm assuming that you know a missed payment would have a big impact. If you guys went back and say, hey, I want to get additional funding for Moses, I'm sure the underwriting process will say, well, look, he can't even pay his bill one time, and I'm sure that that will have some impact.

Speaker 2:

It has an impact Luckily not the same as personal, because personal, again, is not set up for fun and a success but it will have an impact. So even when you go for a business loan later, when you, you know, when you've seasoned business and you're going to go get a business, a commercial loan, it's going to be on your business credit history, so they're going to see that and so you want to make sure it's healthy Now, missing one payment, having one late payment, not going to hurt you the same way it does on the personal, but it's all going to add up. So it's just like anything else in business. You got to be organized. You got to make sure your finances are set up, use technology to your advantage, even just from the individual lenders, you know, making sure you have alerts set up to send you emails or text messages when your payment's coming due. You know little things like that, but I promise you it's completely worth it because of all the benefits that come with it.

Speaker 1:

I agree. You know I've purchased, you know, real estate with my credit cards paid contractors and these are, you know, instances where people wouldn't necessarily accept a credit card. I don't know if you guys still kind of point people in this direction, but I know when I initially signed up it was a company I use where you can use your credit card and they will actually send a payment in the form of a check, a wire, and they would accept the credit card payment because it's a business expense and convert it. And the fee was pretty small compared to the rewards you will receive for just using the card, so it really didn't cost anything. So the invoice might say, hey, it costs $100, but you might get $180 back in rewards, for example. It just gives you a lot of flexibility because in essence, I can be a cash buyer without even going to the bank.

Speaker 2:

And we still do it. Actually, that has expanded in the sense of there are more, even bigger platforms that are now offering that service for the same service fee. So I think 2.5 to 2.9% is the service fee that we're seeing for that merchant process to happen. But, yeah, you can utilize it to close on a house, pay a contractor, pay anybody that's for a valid business expense that they just don't have a merchant account set up, or, like you said, paying into escrow or a closing agent, depending on how your real estate set up. So that is a very common thing that we teach. That people don't understand because they didn't think that a business credit card could be used in that capacity. And your personal can too. To an extent. It just has more restrictions On the business. As long as it's a valid business expense, it has less restrictions than on the personal side. So people have used like Millio for years to do things like that, or even PayPal used to allow a lot of that as well, but there's restrictions on the personal side.

Speaker 2:

I will say that you cannot and you should not ever pay yourself through these ways, otherwise your card can get shut down. Don't do that, and there are rules with some of them, like Amex, will only allow you to use certain platforms to do it. Otherwise it'll look like a cash advance and then if you're in the 0% period, cash advances don't count, and now you've got to pay interest on it. So we make sure we're educating that as well, because it's a very finicky area. But a super positive thing that we've learned for real estate investors, especially the ones that are flipping, because you can do both you can close in the house, you can pay for rehab, whatever you need to do. So we've been expanding our knowledge on that as these platforms come open, because it's just a business need. At this point, not everybody has a merchant account, so it's natural that somebody would have a high-level one and allow people to use it in that facet.

Speaker 1:

Great. What's next for FundingDrew? So you've been enrolled now you said a little over two years, so what do you expect the next five years to look like as the COO of the company?

Speaker 2:

I'm really focused on education right now on on different facets of that. So, being able to, I'm trying to do some outreach locally and broaden that to educate the younger generations that are coming out of college. That need you know, they need to understand personal credit and then translating that into business funding and a business plan, because there's a ton of people coming out of, I mean, even high school, but high school and college that they have the entrepreneur spirit but they don't really understand what they're doing yet because the school systems aren't educating that component. That's more on like the outreach side, as far as within the program, we are trying to reach more people to educate them as well. The program we are trying to reach more people to educate them as well, because I recently learned that there's only about 20% of small businesses that are utilizing business credit cards, and so I really want to get as much out there as we can and use our platform to do so. And then we've also been developing additional coaching and educational tools for our clients for the long term, so being able to give them a little bit of the secret sauce so that they can actually be equipped to go in and request an increase on their credit without needing to come back to us necessarily Trying to educate for long-term planning, because I do feel that's important.

Speaker 2:

We've taken so much time to learn it. We need to really get it out. So that's been our focus of being on more podcasts, being out in the press to give education, and I think that's going to just keep growing, which, of course, will probably naturally grow the company at the same time, but we're ready for that as well. Covid we had to do a lot of things through COVID to keep everybody going and keep all the things having the right staff in place. So now we're going to focus on educating and being able to just get this information out as much as possible.

Speaker 1:

If someone wanted to start working with you guys today, talk us through that process. I'm sure someone here may say, hey, I got to run to the computer or pick up the phone.

Speaker 2:

So I set up a special link for everybody to make it easy. So fundingbrocom all spelled out, forward slash money. That will be a link that brings you to a page that gives you a couple of options. There's a free webinar for you to watch. You can learn a little more and maybe be able to dive in a little deeper. Or you can do a prequelqual, which is a soft pull, and then my team will have a one-on-one consult with you to be able to talk through where your specific journey is at, where kind of like what you got going on. Are you ready? What can you expect? So they'll do the front side of that. And then, like you said earlier, if you do move forward and sign up, you have a processing team that onboards and processes to make sure everything's kind of lined up. And then you're assigned you know someone to handle your file and we're going to get you to funding as quickly as possible.

Speaker 2:

Typically within five business days we're able to get someone into that first round of funding so we can get them some credit to start using. And then it's a 12 month process. Three rounds of funding is the goal. Up to $250,000 of 0% interest cards is also the goal. At the same time we also educate and give them a path to corporate credit, vendor trade lines on the Dun Bradstreet, paydex side. So all of that's available to our clients to educate them on how to do that. That's a more long-term process but we try to get them up to 100,000 while they're here. Of course it's client-driven, so they do have to do some work on that side because it's not one that we can do ourselves, because it's very personalized in what offers they want to use and they have to really use them. But they're also 0% because they're net 30, 60, 90-day accounts. But we are a full white-glove service in the sense of we're giving you every bit of attention, every bit of, you know, guidance. We're going to do a lot of the legwork for you and then we're going to make sure we're here to help you for all the in-between that we can't do. So we're always here to support very client, you know, centered in our customer service side.

Speaker 2:

But fundandgrowcom forward slash money is where you want to start and then we'll take the rest from there Comes through here. They're going to get a $500 discount, which means that the entry point if you do the FI payment plan is $847. So you can get started. We're not going to hold up your file. You can do just that. You can then get the credit and use the credit to pay us off. Also, we still have the BOGO option for your people, so if they have a partner, they can actually bring them in for no additional charge. So basically, you can get two memberships for the price of one. We do now set up two totally separate portals for each person, so that way it can be a business partner, a spouse or a life partner, it can be your cousin, it can be your best friend. It will be two totally different memberships, but all for the price of one.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you can't beat that. You can't beat that. Y'all need to make sure to tap into that. You said that's fundandgrowcom forward slash money.

Speaker 2:

Fundandgrowcom forward slash money.

Speaker 1:

Perfect, and I'll make sure to include that in the show notes and everybody type in. So, amanda, do research, no matter what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

It's super, super important to understand your personal credit, no matter where you're at in your journey, and don't take no for an answer. You always have a path. You just got to find the right one for you. As far as me, you can actually find all of my connecting points on a nice little hub, fundingroadcom. Forward slash Amanda, and that will bring you to my little hub that talks about my different various speaking gigs but also how to connect with me on social media.

Speaker 1:

Great information. You have a great company that you're working for, so just good luck to you with everything Appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

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