Ways to Be Creative in Your Business Financing

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Emily Gasner, and I'm with Working Solutions, and I'll be talking about how to be creative when you're looking for financing for your business. So one of the things that entrepreneurs are, is they are very creative in terms of their products, service, but also in terms of getting the money that they need to start their business and grow their business. So how can you do that? One of the things that you can do is find out if there's anyone that you know in your community, maybe it's a friend, family member, someone you used to work with, someone that's real excited about your business idea, that might want to either give you some money, take some ownership in your business and invest the money into the business, become a business partner with you--I see a lot of times people find business partners to fund their businesses. But then there's a lot of other things that you can do. One of the things that some people do is they might have a group of people that might be interested in their business get together and pitch to them their idea, and see if someone can give five hundred dollars, another person a thousand dollars. See how you can get other people real excited and involved, and giving money to your business. I've seen businesses get creative and do things like a cafe here in San Francisco that did an art auction, and they used the proceeds from that auction to actually start their business. So there's a number of different things that you can do. You just need to be creative. Some other creative things are that oftentimes there are places to get money from that you may not have thought of. So, one of the things are credit unions that lend money for people who start businesses, and there's also nonprofits that make what are called micro loans, or small loans from a thousand dollars up to thirty five thousand dollars, to people that are just getting started in business. So don't think that the only place to go to get a loan or financing would be a bank or a financial institution. There's also small nonprofit organizations that lend out money. And just be as creative as you can, and hopefully your business will be successful."