Business Credit News

Some of you may think I’m crazy for the headline but it’s true. In the midst of a down turn, stock market plummeting, housing prices falling, high unemployment, poor consumer confidence, and all the other things going wrong there is a light at the end of the tunnel. That’s right – new business start-ups.

If you don’t believe me, just look at history. A recent article by Rhonda Abrams in the USA Today noted that 16 of the 30 companies that make up the Dow industrial average were started during a recession or depression. These include: Procter & Gamble, Disney, Alcoa, McDonald’s, General Electric and Johnson & Johnson.

In the years 1973-1975 the United States had an unpopular president, was in the midst of the Watergate scandal and was at the tail end of an extremely costly war that had divided the country. Gas prices increased 50% in just two years and consumer confidence dropped to an all time low.

You would think based on the state of America between 1973 and 1975 you wouldn’t want to start a business or at least if you did it would be a horrible time to do so and no company would make it. We’ll here are a few that did start in the early 70’s and not only survived…. Well you’ll get the picture.

Supercuts, Chilis, Cablevision, Industrial Light & Magic, Famous Amos Cookies, Oakley and of course there was Microsoft.
Starting a business in so-called “bad-times” can be a great time. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Many businesses are closing leaving a gap for the consumer to fulfill on their needs. If there are four Ice Cream stores in the area and consumers slow down their spending, you’ll likely see all four stores hurting for customers. The Ice Cream store with the best financial balance sheet will likely survive through the “hard-times”. If there aren’t any with good balance sheets, they may all go under. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for an Ice Cream Shop, there just isn’t enough of a demand for four. This would be a great time to look at where the gaps are in your area.
2. Consumers typically slow down on new purchases, which means when an item breaks they are more likely going to fix it then spend the extra money to buy a new one. If you are a handy at repairing items, you may want to set-up a repair shop. It was just reported last week that sales at repair shops have increased every month the last year when all other stores were declining in sales.
3. Become the affordable alternative. Many consumers are loyal to a specific restaurant, store or type of business. However, when times are tough and the consumer starts to cut back they are more likely to jump ship and find a less expensive alternative to meet their needs. If they are use to spending $25 for dry cleaning and can get the same quality for $20 they just may change their dry cleaner.
4. It’s a great time to pick up really good talent. If you are starting a business where you need to hire staff, now is a great time. There are a lot of layoffs at corporations and small businesses closing during tough times. This is a great opportunity for those hiring to pick up top talent at lower wages. You can now afford to hire the College graduate whereas before you had to settle for someone who just completed their G.E.D.

If I haven’t convinced you yet that now is the time to start your own business, then you may just be one of those people who I run into daily that says – “I have always wanted to start my own business – but have always been afraid it’s not the right time.” They’ve been making that statement for years and will continue to live with regret they didn’t make the move and decide it is the right time “now”.

David Gass - Founder
Business Credit Services, Inc.
www.bcscredit.com

For the first few years of operating my business my philosophy was to take care of my employees first, no matter what.

I can tell you now – that’s not the way I think anymore.

In October of 2003 I received a phone call from a local casino asking if I had given permission for a payroll check to be cashed by their casino cage. (Yes, employees in Vegas take paychecks to the casinos and cash them rather than sending them to a bank account. Not sure I have truly ever understood some people’s reasoning for doing this. Of course, I completely understand why the casino will do it.)

The call was from the security department. I told them I had not given permission and was wondering what caused them to call. They said someone had just cashed a check for $3,700. The cashier made a mistake and didn’t look up the account to see if I had given permission for cashing checks at their casino so they called to see if the check was real.

I realized quickly that it was a bogus check and decided to drive down to the casino and find out if I could get any information about who did this. In the research, I discovered the check was a counterfeit check and made out to someone that doesn’t work for me. Obviously I was concerned.

When I arrived in the security room of the casino there were three executive managers of the casino there to show me video footage of the “crime”. It was amazing, they had video footage of the individual walking up to the casino cage, signing the check at the cage and every step on their way out the door and into the parking lot. (quick lesson – don’t ever try stealing anything from a Vegas casino, your odds of getting away with it – slim to known).

I recognized the person in the video right away. She was an employee of the company for the last two years. What really surprised me was that I would have considered her my top employee at the time. She was dedicated, great work ethic, loved her job and put in extra hours whenever we needed it.

Long story short, after some research on her background (which we didn’t do at the time of hiring – lesson learned there) she had been previously convicted for mail fraud and producing counterfeit checks and cashing them at local establishments. She had been out of jail for 2 years and 3 months.

The person was someone I trusted, someone that we even gave access to secure information in our company. When she needed an advance on her paycheck because money was tight during December I gave her the advance. When she needed advice on managing her personal credit, I took the time to sit down with her after work and guided her in the right direction. When she needed a raise because her expenses increased – we gave her the raise.

I was always so fearful of losing such a quality employee I wanted to do whatever I could for her. In fact, when she received a raise three times, the company had not increased its profitability, so her raise came directly out of my own pocket. I took home less in order to increase her pay and let her take home more.

Even with putting this employee first, when it came down to a situation where she needed money she didn’t have, she took money from me. She committed a crime against my business in order to put more money in her pocket, in spite of what I had done for her in the past two years.
I realized then that everyone looks out for themselves first, and those that don’t get taken advantage of. You may think I’m just being cynical, but as a business owner I’ve had to learn this lesson more than once. Any time I didn’t put the company and myself first when making a decision I put the company and myself at risk.

Since that moment, I ask myself when making a decision for the company:
“Will this cause the company to lose money? Will it cause the company undue risk? Will it cause me to lose money and am I okay with the loss if it does?”

A good friend of mine taught me a business should set their priorities as: The Company, The Shareholders, The Employees. I realize this is very different than how a lot of consultants, teachers and business owners think. However, I have found that it doesn’t mean you treat employees poorly, only that you realize there would be no employees if it weren’t for the company and its shareholders.

David Gass - Founder
Business Credit Services, Inc.
www.bcscredit.com

Do you need an advantage over your competition?

Today ONLY - you have the opportunity to find out where the financing and investors are as ell as get the best advantage over your competition you could ever have.

Sign-up now, for a once in a lifetime opportunity to not only listen in, but also participate in a discussion with Investors, Angel groups and successful entrepreneurs and find out how to finance a business in an economic down turn and succeed long term.

The discussion will take place by phone in January. You can listen in and ask any questions you want.
When I told the group of investors and entrepreneurs I’ll have on the call about the event they thought it was a great idea and something we could charge Top Dollar for.

When I told them the price – they laughed and thought I was joking. But once I explained why I wanted to offer this valuable information for such a low price – they joined enthusiastically. (I’ll explain on the call why, so you’ll have to sign-up to find out.)

The phone call will consist of two hours of no-holds-bar questions and answers from you and the rest of the audience. We guarantee to answer every question – and if that takes more than two hours, we’ll spend the time – just to make sure you get the answers you want about financing and running a successful business in 2009.

I will be joined by entrepreneurs who have started businesses with less than $100 and built them in just a few years to multi-million dollar companies. In addition I’ll have investors who are looking for companies to do deals with. Investors are looking for opportunities, as they see traditional investment markets in flux. This is a great opportunity for you to find out what the investors are looking for.

Think this is going to cost you too much and can’t afford it? Well think again. The cost of this program is not $1,000 or $500 or $250. In fact it’s less than $50 for information some have said changed the way they do business forever.

For just $24.95, that’s right – less than the cost of dinner for two at your local restaurant, you can get the information that will change the way you do business in 2009. Sign-up today, this offer is limited to the first 50 people who take advantage of this low price offer.

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Go to http://store.bcscredit.com/product_p/call-011309-live.htm now and sign-up.
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Respectfully,

David Gass - Founder
Business Credit Services, Inc.

P.S. – I will never again put together this group of investors and successful entrepreneurs on a call no matter what the price we charge. I’m setting up this call to provide the most valuable information provided to small business owners for such a low price. Why? – You’ll have to join the call to find out.
Sign-up Now http://store.bcscredit.com/product_p/call-011309-live.htm

If you are like me, you have spent numerous hours sitting in your office, on your laptop or even at a whiteboard, trying to figure out the best way to START planning next year’s goals and objectives. Until I discovered the one tool that would help me save thousands of hours over the years, I would get frustrated with trying to figure out where I begin in my planning.

Then I discovered the tool, and everything changed. With this tool I was able to not only save hours of time (priceless) but also was able to be more accurate in my future planning, create more clarity with action steps required to achieve the plan. And the tool is FREE. That’s right, free.

All you need to do is “Start at the End”. Start by determining what you want the outcome to be. So if you are planning your business goals for 2009, one of the goals is very likely set around the amount of revenue you want to generate for the year. In order to create a plan to achieve the goal, start by writing down exactly what you want that goal to be then work backwards.

Here is an example: If you want to generate $1,000,000 in revenue in 2009 here is a formula for getting there. Divide $1,000,000 by 12 months = $83,333. $83,333 is the revenue needed per month. You can add this to an excel spreadsheet and if you want lower the number for the first few months of the year and then slowly increase the number throughout the year based on your seasonal sales.

If you need $83,333 in revenue in a given month you then need to figure out how much you need to sell each week, then each day. You can do this by dividing $83,333 by the number of days you are open each week. If you are open 5 days a week and there are 4 weeks in the month you divide the sales by 20 to get required sales by day = $4,167.

Next you need to know how many items you need to sell per day. If you sell an item that costs $100, you need to sell 41.6 of them. Of course, if you have multiple items you sell, just take an average of the amount an individual purchases while in your store. This gives you the average sale per customer. You can divide that by the required sales by day and you get the required number of customers you need.

Once you have determined the number of customers you need, you can then lay out a marketing plan for generating that amount of traffic to your store.

Also, once you have the number of customers required per day and average amount they spend per visit, you can start playing with the numbers. Take the average amount sold per customer and increase it just by $20 and see how that affects the number of people required to visit your store.

No matter what goal you have or planning you are doing using the tool of “Start at the End”, will save you time, money and get you to your goal much faster.

David Gass - Founder
Business Credit Services, Inc.
www.bcscredit.com

Here are year-end business tips to save you money, time and protect you and your business.

December typically brings many of us great joy and celebration. We are able to spend time with family, reflect on wonderful memories of past December holidays and look forward to the start of a new year.

As entrepreneurs there are certainly important tasks we need to do before the end of year to keep our business and personal life in order. Here are five tips that can help in ending the year on a positive note.

Tip #1 – Corporate Records, make sure you have all your corporation or LLC records in place. Every Corporation or LLC should have the following documentation prepared each year to protect the corporate veil and provide back-up documentation in case of a tax audit. One of the first things a tax agency will do in an audit is ask for these.

• Annual meeting minutes of the Board of Directors (Managers)
• Annual meeting minutes of the Shareholders (Members)
• Corporate Resolutions for non day-to-day tasks such as borrowing money, opening a checking account, etc.
• Stock Certificates filled out for all shareholders
• Stock ledger kept current and up-to-date

If you need a good tool for maintaining your corporate records I would highly recommend the BizDoc software. The software is an interactive program that isn’t just a bunch of word document templates, it can actually help track everything for you and provide guidance on what to do next.

Tip #2 – Financial Review. Pull together a Profit and Loss statement month-by-month for the entire year with a comparison against the previous year’s numbers. By doing a review of year over year results by month you can get a very good feel for where you business is going and what needs to be corrected. If you see sales overall drop, you need to look at the items you are selling and see if the drop was across the board or only in one area. You can also look at your advertising expense and see if the same amount was spent year over year.

You should also look at expense growth. Have you increased expenses or overhead that weren’t necessary?

Once the review is complete, write down key findings and action steps you can take in the New Year to correct them.

Tip #3 – Budget and Projections. Take time to layout projections in revenue for the New Year by month. What will sales be each month for the New Year and break it down by category of sales. With the projection in sales you should then be able to determine how much you need to spend in marketing to get to that number. This will start you on the budget. So next start a budget for what expenses will look like in the New Year based on the previous year’s results. Look at the key findings in your review from Tip #2 and be sure to correct the areas that need attention.

Once the budget and projections are complete make sure you use them as a tool throughout the year. This means you need to track your Profit and Loss statement on a weekly basis to be sure you are sticking to the budget and meeting the projections.

Tip #4 – Write down your goals. I never start a new year without writing out two sets of goals. I have one list of personal and one list for business. I found it was a lot easier to write the goals when I didn’t put my business into the overall mix. Personal goals need to include at minimum your physical health, financial situation, mental wellbeing and rewards. I love having rewards as part of my goal list so I am reaching to achieve the goals for more than the satisfaction of meeting the goal. I want to reward myself for doing it. I have trips, electronics, and simple rewards such as an extra day of golf.

Tip #5 – Create an Action Plan. Now that you have a list of corporate documents you need to complete, a review of your financial situation, budget for your business, projections of where sales need to be and goals written out you need to create your action plan.

Start at the end. Look in the future 12 months. Figure out what everything has to look like in order to reach your objectives. Then work backwards. For example, if you want to lose 20 lbs in the next year, you can break that down by saying I need to lose 1.7 lbs a month. In order to lose 1.7lbs per month you need to figure out how many calories you need each day and make sure you eat only the amount of calories you need and nothing more. Then determine how many days each week you need to exercise in order to lose the weight.

In the first month or two you will be able to determine exactly what those numbers are and can set out the action plan. The action plan should have in it what you need to do each day, week and month to accomplish the objectives.

When looking at the five tips, I start by protecting my business (where my income comes from). I want to make sure initially it’s protected from lawsuits and audits, and then make sure I have a good budget and projections in place. Once I have that I can create my goals and action plan to tell me what I need to do for the new year.

David Gass - Founder
Business Credit Services, Inc.
www.bcscredit.com

When you start a business there is always a chance that the venture won’t work out the way you want. In fact more than 80% of the time businesses fail in the first five years. I’m sure you’ve heard that statistic before. In my opinion I believe the number is even higher because of the many number of entrepreneurs who start without filing a business license or setting up a checking account and they are unable to be tracked for statistics.

I’ve known a lot of people, including myself that have started companies only to find ourselves a few months or years later with nothing to show for all the hard work, money and sweet we put into the deal.

When it comes to starting a business I make sure I always do four things to protect myself in case the venture fails, and yes I never go into a venture with the expectation to fail. I never have fail as an option, but I also know when to cut and run. There is a fine line between the two and you have to find your own comfort zone when it comes to that line.

The four ways to protect yourself when starting a business are:

1. Incorporate – I almost always file a corporation for my business ventures. If I am bringing in partners and everyone has their own strategy for holding ownership interests in the venture, I’ll form an LLC (Limited Liability Company). In almost every other case I file an S Corporation.

2. Separate I.P. (Intellectual Property) – If the business have any intellectual property I will set up a C Corporation and place the ownership of that I.P. in the entity. I.P. that would benefit from this includes but is not limited to: patents, trademarks, service marks, or any other publications/books or writings. This keeps the “ideas” out of the operating entity in case there are any judgments or liens on the operating entity.

3. Insurance – I will always sit down with my insurance agent and get a couple different policies so in case I am sued I have coverage that will pay for it up to a point. Work with your insurance agent to determine which policies are best for you.

4. Develop a Plan – Always, ALWAYS have a plan. Write down exactly what you intend to do before you take any steps to starting the business. Write your plan by starting at the end. Ask yourself what your exit strategy is, what amount you want the business to be worth in five years and then determine what you need to do to reach that level. The plan will write itself once you have the exit worked out.

Having protection in place will only help you protect the assets you have in other businesses and your personal life. This is exactly what the wealthy people do, look at Donald Trump. People say he filed bankruptcy two or three times. Fact is HE didn’t, but a couple of his businesses may have. If those businesses were not incorporated he would have lost a substantial amount of his net worth. Instead he protected himself and was able to work on other ventures to create the fortune he has now.

David Gass - Founder
Business Credit Services, Inc.
www.bcscredit.com

My role at BCS allows me to interact with our clients on a daily basis. I get a chance to discuss their business plans and the future of their companies. With all the economic news making headlines on a daily basis, it’s not surprising that I get asked one question over and over again:

Is business credit still available?

My answer is a consistent, resounding “YES!” Business credit is still available and going strong! Business credit continues to be the world’s single largest lending source. Lending money for goods and services is alive and well in the B to B space.

In order to get the funding your business needs, you need to look at the “entire picture” of your business. This includes:

1. Compliance with the Credit Market
2. Your Corporate Veil
3. Your Corporate Financials
4. Your Personal Credit Score

In the next few paragraphs, I’ll examine each of these areas.

Is the business in compliance with the credit markets?

Now more than ever, vendors want to make sure they are lending to a solid, operational business. Getting your business in compliance with what a lender wants to see is a step that cannot be ignored or rushed.

When you apply for credit for your business, you can expect the vendor to check to verify your business is “real”. First, they will check with DnB and other credit bureaus to see who else is lending your company money.

Then, they will call the phone numbers you provide to ensure the phone is answered in the company’s name. They will run the phone number through search engines to ensure it’s not a residential number and it’s listed in the business’ name.

Also, expect them to verify the status of your business with your Secretary of State. Other common checks include seeing if there’s a website and email addresses associated with your business. Having an email address with one of the common email providers is a red flag. Remember: Your email address should be associated with your company’s domain (name@yourcompany.com)

Our clients will see where their business is in compliance and the items that need to be addressed when they get their Credit Ready Report. This is a report that checks more than 200 common factors vendors look for before granting credit. I can’t stress enough how vital being in compliance is with the business credit market.

Does the business have the necessary documentation to operate?

You need to be 100% certain your business has all of the necessary paperwork filed with your Secretary of State. If you are performing services in another state, ensure your business is foreign filed correctly. Remember, each Corporation and LLC requires regular documentation. Without it, your corporate veil can be pierced. A vendor loaning money to your business will want reasonable assurance the corporate veil is in place.

Financials

While not a paramount concern for tier 1 vendors, as your corporate credit continues to grow, you may find yourself looking for hard money from banks. Make sure you have solid financial records. You need to be able to produce these quickly. It is vital you are able to prove the financial performance of your corporation or LLC.

Your Personal Credit

What? I thought corporate and personal credit was completely different? They are different, but using your personal credit to get the operating capital you need is a great tool. In today’s economy, most banks are looking for a personal guarantee for lines of credit and credit cards. There is nothing wrong with doing this, provided the lender can guarantee you that the credit line will only report to your business credit profile. Many banks will do this. The only time this will negatively impact your personal credit is if you default on the line or make late payments. If you service the credit line within the guidelines of the agreement, this line of credit will not impact your personal credit. For many small or young businesses, this is a fantastic way to go.

Getting Help Putting the Picture Together:

BCS is always ready to assist small and medium sized business owners. If there are areas you need assistance with, we most likely offer a solution.

Getting Into Compliance:

The corporate compliance check with the Credit Ready Report is included in all of our Business Credit Builder packages. If you are not a client, but want this check performed, you can order it from our store by clicking here.

Corporate Documentation:

BCS offers a fantastic program called BizDoc. This software will allow you to generate all of the necessary paperwork to maintain your corporate veil. Also, our parent company offers number of services for the small business. Visit www.incorporate.com for more info.

Personal Credit:

If you have challenges with your personal credit history, you should take steps to restore it. There are several solutions out there. BCS offers the Personal Credit Builder. Read more about it at www.betterpersonalcredit.com

Joel Blakley
Director of Customer Service
Business Credit Services, Inc.

If you couldn’t make it to the “It’s Only Business Workshop” in Philadelphia last week…

Don’t worry!!!!

We are bringing our team of World Class Wealth/Financing Experts and Investors into the comfort of your own home.

Good Afternoon,

Well, the reviews are in and it looks unanimous.

Our first workshop on the East coast this past week was hands down one of the most powerful workshops we’ve EVER presented! In an intimate setting just outside the Philadelphia area 30 entrepreneurs enjoyed three full days of power-packed strategies and lessons to help start, grow and finance their businesses.

Successful entrepreneurs, investors and authors shared their proven strategies that helped them grow multi-million dollar businesses and who they look for when investing in new ventures.

We’ve gotten a ton of thank you notes and inspiring emails from our attendees just to say how the event changed their mindset on business.
One attendee said “I spent 5 years and $60,000 on a business degree at a major university and didn’t get anywhere near the business knowledge from just three days with BCS at this event.”

Now perhaps you were unable to attend due to a scheduling conflict, or you weren’t in a position to make the financial commitment at this time.

That’s unfortunate – but the good news is that we got the whole event on professionally-recorded DVDs.

Today I’m offering them to you at a never-to-be repeated value.

The catch? This offer will expire November 30th at midnight (PST). After then, the price goes up and will NEVER be lower than right now.

So if the idea of finding the capital you need, protecting what you have and getting more time to enjoy life sounds good to you, please check out this offer right now http://www.itsonlybusiness.com/seminar/

Respectfully,
David Gass- Founder
Business Credit Services, Inc.

PS: The strategies you’ll get on this DVD set have been proven to help businesses all across the country to raise capital, build credit and obtain financing from investor groups. The speakers at this conference are entrepreneurs who have built multi-million dollar businesses, raised millions in joint ventures for real estate deals and are angel investors looking for good deals now.

Take a look at what they have to offer you.
http://www.itsonlybusiness.com/seminar/

The much anticipated ‘It’s Only Business’ Workshop on the East Coast has come to a close and we are very excited to share our experience with those who were unable to attend.

This was the very first time we have ventured to the East Coast using the new workshop format of ‘It’s Only Business’ and I have to admit that we were welcomed with opened arms. We kept this workshop closed to the public and were joined by an intimate group of entrepreneurs and small business owners laying out a number of strategies that could be immediately implemented into their businesses.

Our Nationally renowned trainers, David Francis, Mark Del Guercio, and Scott Fritz along with myself, discussed topics directly related to the current economy and focused on the importance of having an action plan.

“To love what you do and to feel that it matters, how can anything be more fun” said David Francis about this training session. This was a very emotional workshop, with the economy in the state it is in, business owners large and small face times of turmoil and without knowledge business owners are finding themselves having to close up shop. “Education is the key to survival,” Francis added, “we are here for just that, to educate and help in times where there seems to be no hope.”

The media has focused on the bad for far too long…
Now is the time to focus on your goals and educate yourself as a business owner or entrepreneur in order to see yourselves through the dark times and his workshop has proven that you are able to do just that.

Structuring your organizations with a step by step action plan is critical, especially when funding is the main source of stress. The first step is to know what business credit really is and how very important it is today.

If you could just turn back the clock to when you were 18 years of age and start all over again with your personal credit. If there were a class or seminar at your high school where you could have attended to guide and educate you on how personal credit works and the impact it will have on your life, knowing what you know now, how much would you be willing to pay for that seminar if you had the money? This is a question we have asked audiences all over the country. The answer is always the same, “tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars”.

Well, we cannot go back to high school or to the start of our personal credit record, but what we do have the opportunity to do is start our business credit the right way and allow ourselves to save tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of the life of our business.

According to FAIR Isaac, the issuers of personal credit scores (FICO); the average number of credit inquiries for the American consumer is one per year. An inquiry is when a credit grantor purchases your credit report to determine if they will grant credit. Based on our experience if someone has more than the average numbers of inquiries, each inquiry tends to drop their personal credit score 5-10 points. Now, as a business owner will
we have more or less than the average number of inquiries? Of course, MORE.

The good news is that as business owners we have the ability to develop a credit profile personally as well as one for each of our businesses. If proper steps to establish and build excellent credit history have not been taken, applicants for business credit are in for a rude awakening. However, unlike what many people think, it is not an easy process to obtain the credit and capital most small businesses need. There are specific steps a business, or individual, must take in order to have a realistic chance at gaining approval for an application of credit. The steps one needs to follow may seem deceptively simple on the surface; however, it is very important to note that the implementation of these steps can become complicated. Each step has to be carried out with a great deal of preparation and it is very important to know that each step is thoroughly choreographed. You wouldn’t want to skip a step and have your foundation crumble would you?

As Mr. Francis stated, it was a very emotional workshop. Our attendees went down a path of enlightenment and were truly thankful to all of the trainers. You can look forward to hearing some of the testimonials soon.

David Gass - Founder
Business Credit Services, Inc.

We all know small businesses make up an enormous portion of the Nation’s economy but it seems all the news is talking about is how big companies are facing major upheavals as they deal with the fallout of this global financial crisis. As a small business owner you need to come to grips with the challenges you are being faced with.

Just like any problem you encounter in life, you must recognize the source of the problem and address it. It is easy to make excuses for yourself and your business, especially with the economy in such turmoil, but what good is that going to do, blaming the economy? You CAN achieve success even in a recession!

With the threat of a potential credit card crisis at hand, most business owners are running scared; and without having the knowledge of how to avoid this next wave of dismay in the economy, much less be able to even face yet another hit, I can hardly blame anyone for being afraid of what the future holds for consumer and business owners alike.

Times like these call for IMMEDIATE ACTION.

When CNN Radio posed the question “How can the consumer avoid the speculated credit card crunch” I was able to answer without hesitation. (Don’t forget, business owners ARE consumers as well.)

“Build a strong foundation. Do not make credit card purchases unless you can facilitate the means to pay your monthly bill. Small business owners and entrepreneurs need to realize how critical it is to build a business profile that is completely separate from their personal credit profile. It is imperative to take action NOW before this wave of interest rate raising actually hits.”

Developing your business credit can be difficult and in some cases take time. However you need to keep in mind that what you are doing is building a solid foundation for your business. By maintaining a proper compliance standard with the I.R.S., credit bureaus, government agencies and lending market you will increase your likelihood of success in your business.

Keep in mind the following as the necessary steps to take when building your business credit profile.

Education – Continue to learn about the process and what credit grantors are looking for. The market changes quickly and you need to keep abreast of the most recent requirements.

Compliance – Get your business in compliance with the Federal, State, county, city and any other local agencies. Stay in compliance and be sure to file all necessary documents. Almost all of the information is accessible by public record and credit grantors only want to do business with those that are paying to keep their companies up to date.

Trade Credit – Build credit references by working with businesses that will issue you credit and ask the questions necessary to determine if they are the type of vendor you want to do business with.

Registration – Register you business with the major business credit bureaus. Only working with one bureau will limit your choices of credit grantors in the future.

Financials and Business Plan – In many cases you will be required to provide a business plan and financial statements of your business when applying for a loan. Keep these up to date and readily accessible.

Money Management – After building your positive business credit profile, continue to develop the score and maintain the good credit history by managing your credit. Keep only credit that you can afford to pay back.

Your business will succeed even in times of recession with the right attitude, capital and education. Maintain the positive attitude and don’t let others drag your spirits down. Work at developing additional sources for capital by building your business credit. Most importantly continue to be a student of business and entrepreneurship.

David Gass
Founder of Business Credit Services, Inc.