SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

??? Main Topic: Business Funding
Tom Antion explains different ways entrepreneurs can get money to start or grow a business, with an emphasis on low-risk, high-profit approaches.
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?? Key Points
1. Bootstrapping (Favorite Method)
o Use your own funds or sell personal items.
o Keep costs low; digital products are especially profitable.
2. Personal Loans
o From banks, friends, or relatives.
o Good credit rating helps secure better rates.
3. Credit Cards
o Risky due to high interest.
o Useful for points/rewards if paid off quickly.
4. Pre-Selling
o Sell products/services before creating them.
o Works best if you already have credibility.
5. Line of Credit
o Borrow only when needed.
o Includes options like HELOCs (home equity).
6. SBA Loans
o Backed by the Small Business Administration.
o Requires a solid business plan.
7. Investors
o Debt investors: expect repayment with interest.
o Equity investors: take a share of your business.
o Pros/cons around control and ownership.
8. Crowdfunding (Another Favorite)
o Platforms like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Indiegogo.
o Many small contributions, often with perks.
o Money raised doesn’t need to be repaid.
9. Grants
o Typically for nonprofits; difficult for for-profit businesses.
o Corporate/local programs sometimes available.
10. Micro-lenders
o Small loans (often under $50K).
o Can be community or corporate initiatives (e.g., Walmart local funding).
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?? Tom’s Advice
• Keep costs low, margins high, and risks low.
• Don’t overspend on things like websites or delegation before proving your idea.
• Digital products offer extremely high profit margins (around 97%).
• Be cautious about giving up control if taking equity funding.
• Focus on learning skills yourself before outsourcing.
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?? Final Message
There are many ways to fund a business, but bootstrapping and crowdfunding are Tom’s top picks. Avoid unnecessary debt, keep control, and build sustainable, profitable ventures.

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Episode 1033 – Business Funding
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 1033 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about business funding. Where do you get the money to start a business? Hope you missed episode 1032. That was on eyesight. Exemplary eyesight. I called it because I've been having some eye problems that are all fixed up now, and I wanted to tell you about how to keep your eyes good with in front of these computer screens for, you know, months at a time or years at a time. Make sure you pick up a copy of my automation book. screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Get version 3.0. If you already have 2.0, get 3.0. It's got a lot of good stuff in it. And check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org. It's the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world. Certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's quality distance learning, and you can do it concurrently with other endeavors, educational endeavors that you are taking.

[00:01:37] All right. Let's talk about business funding. Where do you get the money? Now my favorite ones are going to be number one. And then one, two, three and number seven. So I'm going to give you the first one. It's called bootstrapping. It's your personal funds used to start your business. And or you could sell something of yours to start your business.

[00:02:02] But literally in today's atmosphere with digital marketing, you probably already have everything you need to get started, which would be a computer, cell phone or tablet. You could even do it on a cell phone. If you want to get started on a cell phone. A lot of things are easier on full screens, but you don't have to, and you probably already have this stuff. And then you create some digital products and start selling them. All right. So that's bootstrapping is using your own personal funds or selling some stuff to get enough funds to get started. And I'm not talking about like going down to the courthouse and getting a business license and all this kind of stuff. I'm just talking about, where do you get money to actually start a business, not counting that legalese kind of stuff, just to get your business going. All right. Another one is personal loans And these are very often going to depend on your credit rating. So you want to always keep your credit rating good or pretty good. Mine is about as good as it gets, but it hasn't been in the past when I lost my nightclub back in the 90s. All right. But ever since then, it's been perfect credit, and that can really help you get lower interest rates on loans. And so that's another thing. You can get a personal loan either from friends of yours. That's another way. Or from your friends relatives or from a bank.

[00:03:42] All right. All right. So personal loans. Some people use credit cards. And this is something you got to be careful of because a lot of the real estate hustlers, the first day, they teach you how to raise your credit limit. And then by the end of a couple days, they have already taken 40, 50, 60, $70,000 from you for supposedly advanced training to learn all the real secrets, right? See, so you got to be careful with that because credit cards are going to be high interest. And the only upside to credit cards is that I pay everything possible with credit cards, unless they charge me extra to do so. Why? Because I get points that I can use for first class travel and for all kinds of stuff. Travel is one of the best deals for use of credit card points. If you buy electronics and wine and all that other crap. It's usually far better just to buy this stuff than to use your points for that. Okay, so credit cards is is a way. And again, I'm more in favor of bootstrapping other than a couple businesses like my nightclub. It cost me nothing to start my businesses and built this multi-million dollar empire. I mean, empire, that's kind of a word that people don't really put with me, because I'm pretty much down home, down to earth kind of person. But I built a big business and multiple businesses with no nothing down to start with, just my brain and my work ethic and so forth.

[00:05:24] So I'm more in favor of that because it's lower risk. I mean, you make a real big screw up as a young person, and your credit rating shot for like seven years or so, you know, so you don't want to do that. So I say keep the risk low. But anyway, there's other ways to do business and to get the money for it. One is called pre-selling. You can pre-sell whatever you're going to do to get enough money to do it. And I have done this on books and things like that. Of course, I was already established and trusted in business. The downside of this when people are like you, you could be a dreamer and you get all this money and you never do what you say you're going to do, all right. But there's another way to get around that. One of my favorites, which I'll get to shortly. All right. Another thing is called a line of credit. And this means you have money available, but you don't actually take it until you need it. And then you take how much you need. I think we have a $50,000 line of credit laying around here somewhere, but they actually owe me $0.36 from last bill I got. But if I needed something for some good investment I wanted to make, then I could grab five $10,000 and then just start paying it back to the line of credit people, which is basically my bank.

[00:06:47] All right. So that's a line of credit. Some people have them against their houses. Like I think they're called a HELOC, like second mortgage. If you have equity in your house, you can sometimes get a line of credit against that. So that's a line of credit. And that means you don't take all the money out, so you're not liable for paying interest on it because you didn't take it out. All right. You only took what you needed, but you have some in reserve. So line of credit is one. Okay. An SBA loan. Sba loan is something that guarantees to whoever's lending you the money that that it'll get paid back. And they have their own various things for you to apply for such a thing. And one thing you always should do is have some kind of business plan, even if it's not perfectly accurate, because sometimes business plans are guesses, educated guesses, but you're going to have a better chance of landing your loan if you've really thought out what you're going to do with the money and what the potential payback of the money is and all that stuff, because that's going to make you look more credible to the people that hold the purse strings to lend you the money? See? And not only that, it could wake you up a little bit to say, ah, this isn't as good as I thought it was going to be, because look at this expense I hadn't expected.

[00:08:12] See? So you got to consider how those things help you get loans and help you make a better business, because you at least thought out the stuff before you got into it. All right, now you can go the investor route. Now try to avoid the the loan sharks that are going to break your knees if you don't pay them back. All right. But investors out there again you got to make a pitch to them. You got to make it look credible. Just think of like that Shark Tank program. You got to look credible and have a good idea. And it has to make sense money wise. So there's two kinds of investors. One is a debt investor, which you pay them back with interest on a certain time schedule, or an equity investor that takes a portion of your business. All right. So those are the two different types. And they have pros and cons. And the last thing I'll talk about today is control of your business with regard to these money things. Now the next one is one of my favorites. And it's called crowdfunding. And in fact I wrote a book on it. I think it's crowdfunding. And this is where you again, you're making a pitch, but you're making it to loads of people that'll put a little bit of money in. Usually in in return they get some kind of perk. So if you're if you're coming up with a new electronic gadget, then they get it at a discount.

[00:09:45] Once you know, if they gave you 50 bucks, they get so many percent off. If they give you 100 bucks, they get a free one, you know, that type of thing. And there's places like Kickstarter and GoFundMe and Indiegogo and things like that, where the way I promote my book is that, hey, you get the money to finance your dreams and you never have to pay it back. And that's how crowdfunding works. So that's one of my favorites. And I have helped people do crowdfunding. And so it's a beautiful thing. Okay. Another way is grants. These are usually big either corporations or nonprofit organizations that if you line up with their mission on whatever you're doing, then you can get a grant to do the thing, and you don't have to pay it back either. But, you know, that's a little tougher to do. And a lot of grant money goes to nonprofits. And so having a I was considering having a nonprofit one time, but, uh, you know, I'm kind of a control freak. And if you start a nonprofit and it goes really big and you got a big board of directors, they can kick you off because you don't even you don't own this Non-profit. It's an entity in itself and you can get kicked out, right? So I didn't really like that idea. But most grant money does go to nonprofits, I think 90% or more.

[00:11:08] Now there's other things called micro lenders. These are people that lend very small amounts of money. I think I think it's technically it's up to 50,000, but it's usually a lot less for all kinds of businesses and startups. You might Google micro lenders and see the places that they congregate and how to submit your ID and so forth. And I don't know if this qualifies as a micro lender, but I know that Walmart has a thing. It's a local thing per Walmart that they can give you, I think 2000 bucks or it might change. Now, I don't know all the details. If you have some idea that you're going to implement that benefits the local community where that Walmart is located, and there's other companies that do that kind of thing too. You just have to research grants and things like that and microlenders. All right. So there's a whole bunch of ways that you can get money to start a business. Again. I'm all for bootstrapping and keeping the costs extremely low. And when I say keep the costs low, you could easily go out and spend 5000 bucks on a website and you never sold anything yet. Don't even know if the idea is viable. That's crazy. That's why I teach people. Learn how to do it yourself. You can make a world class website for 150 bucks. I have a $97 course on it and we even give you some technical support if you have any trouble.

[00:12:34] All right, so you're crazy to spend 5000. If you could spend 150 and get some knowledge under your belt. And I'm sick of these people that tell you to delegate everything because. And they can't even make their car payment, you you can delegate yourself straight into the poorhouse. So I'm all for bootstrapping. I'm all for crowdfunding, but I'm all for keeping your costs low and your margins high so that you're selling a high profit item. And that's where the digital product world is. It's 97% gross profit. A lot of these companies, like Dell, was probably losing money or 5% gross profit over all the billions of stuff that they sell, you know. So I don't really know. I'm just saying that the profit margins are really thin. So try to do something that's high profit, low risk. Learn everything you can on your own. Get on my training. screwthecommute.com/training. And look at all the 450 episodes I have teaching you this stuff. See? So there you go. Now, the last topic is control. So I don't like to give up control of my businesses. Now, not that you can't do it. And in fact, Ilya Pozen, one of my my protege that sold a company for $340 million, dollars. He had investors that had to be paid off. You know, they they they had equity in the company. So he didn't get all the 340 million. See.

[00:14:04] But I and they helped make it happen for him. So I you know that's a skill that I don't really have that much because I like to be in control of what's going on in my name and my image and everything. So you have to decide, do I want complete control? Which means I use if I do get loans, they're debt loans. That means I have to pay them back no matter what. Now, if you could go bankrupt. But I had a business go under that was going great. Until the drinking age went from 18 to 21, I lost my nightclub. I could have gone bankrupt, but I decided not to. I decided to pay off everybody and not, uh, you know, screw over everybody that that trusted me. But, I mean, you could go bankrupt, and you might have to if you have a lot of debt, if you have equity money, It's probably somebody owns part of that business and you're doing the work. And sometimes, you know, they do some of the work, but you have to have really good partnership agreements on who does what. And I mean, there's a lot of things that can go wrong when somebody else has equity and, and, uh, whether they have decision making, control and all kinds of details that I don't, I hate the thought of. But anyway, that's what you have to make your mind up. And Ilya made it happen for himself, and I applaud him for it.

[00:15:29] It's just not my particular way to do things. I'm not saying I wouldn't if the right deal came along, but so far it hasn't. And I haven't been looking for him. All right. So there's a whole bunch of ways to get money to to fund your business. I'm just saying keep your costs low, your profit margins high, and your risk low. And don't blow a bunch of money on worthless crap. I mean, when that dot com bubble happened years ago, You know, they were just all these young kids were getting enormous millions of dollars and spending it on pool tables and and dance lessons. I don't know what to say. But they all went under because, uh, they they weren't watching their business. They were just playing with the money that came too easily for them. All right, so that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program if you want one on one help on this from me and my entire staff and of course my school. If you have a if you're in my mentor program, you get a scholarship to my school worth $19,000 that you can gift to someone that's in your life, and it'd be the best gift you could ever give somebody, because these four year colleges, or you get all you're doing, is paying a couple hundred grand to learn how to protest, it seems like, all right, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.