Small Business Start-Up Financing - How to Get Up to $150,000 to Start Your First Business

Believe it or not, one of the best places to get financing to open your first business is a bank. While banks are incredibly strict when lending money to first time business owners, there is a special loan program that helps them to loosen up their lending requirements. That program is called the SBA (Small Business Administration) 7(a) Loan program.

The 7(a) loan program can be used in many different ways by many types of businesses. The focus of this article will be using the 7(a) loan program to secure up to $150,000 in financing to start your first business.

The SBA 7(a) program works like this:

• The SBA agrees to guarantee a large portion of a loan made by a bank to a first time business owner, granted the bank follows specific guidelines when approving the loan.
• The guarantee means that if the loan goes bad, the SBA will write a check to the bank for the guaranteed portion of the loan.
• The effect of the SBA guarantee is that it greatly reduces a bank's risk and the bank will be much less strict with its lending guidelines.

So the SBA gives anybody looking to open their first business a shot at getting a bank loan to help with start-up costs. That's the easy part to understand. While a bank will loosen up its lending requirements with an SBA guarantee, it can still be hard to get approved. There are several things you need to know if you if you decided to pursue this type of financing.

1. First, you've got to have a solid Business Plan. This is what the bank will rely on heavily to determine if you know what you're doing. A solid Business Plan and Income/Expense projections will go a long way towards getting your loan request approved.
2. Second, you've got to have some business experience either directly or related to the business you are trying to open. If you don't, you'll have a hard time getting an approval.
3. Third is cash. You'll need to provide 30% of the total cost of starting your business in cash. So if you determine that you need $100,000 to start your business, you'll have to come up with $30,000 of your own cash to invest in the business.
4. Fourth, strong personal credit is a must. The better your credit scores, the better your chances of getting approved. If your credit scores are less than 650 or you have a bankruptcy you' ll have to seek other avenues to get the financing you need.

That's it in a nutshell. If you have all of these things covered you stand a decent chance of getting approved for a 7(a) loan to open your first business.