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There are several potential financing options available to cash-strapped businesses that need a healthy dose of working capital. A bank loan or line of credit is often the first option that owners think of – and for businesses that qualify, this may be the best option.

In today’s uncertain business, economic and regulatory environment, qualifying for a bank loan can be difficult – especially for start-up companies and those that have experienced any type of financial difficulty. Sometimes, owners of businesses that don’t qualify for a bank loan decide that seeking venture capital or bringing on equity investors are other viable options.

But are they really? While there are some potential benefits to bringing venture capital and so-called “angel” investors into your business, there are drawbacks as well. Unfortunately, owners sometimes don’t think about these drawbacks until the ink has dried on a contract with a venture capitalist or angel investor – and it’s too late to back out of the deal.

Different Types of Financing

One problem with bringing in equity investors to help provide a working capital boost is that working capital and equity are really two different types of financing.

Working capital – or the money that is used to pay business expenses incurred during the time lag until cash from sales (or accounts receivable) is collected – is short-term in nature, so it should be financed via a short-term financing tool. Equity, however, should generally be used to finance rapid growth, business expansion, acquisitions or the purchase of long-term assets, which are defined as assets that are repaid over more than one 12-month business cycle.

But the biggest drawback to bringing equity investors into your business is a potential loss of control. When you sell equity (or shares) in your business to venture capitalists or angels, you are giving up a percentage of ownership in your business, and you may be doing so at an inopportune time. With this dilution of ownership most often comes a loss of control over some or all of the most important business decisions that must be made.

Sometimes, owners are enticed to sell equity by the fact that there is little (if any) out-of-pocket expense. Unlike debt financing, you don’t usually pay interest with equity financing. The equity investor gains its return via the ownership stake gained in your business. But the long-term “cost” of selling equity is always much higher than the short-term cost of debt, in terms of both actual cash cost as well as soft costs like the loss of control and stewardship of your company and the potential future value of the ownership shares that are sold.

Alternative Financing Solutions

But what if your business needs working capital and you don’t qualify for a bank loan or line of credit? Alternative financing solutions are often appropriate for injecting working capital into businesses in this situation. Three of the most common types of alternative financing used by such businesses are:

1. Full-Service Factoring – Businesses sell outstanding accounts receivable on an ongoing basis to a commercial finance (or factoring) company at a discount. The factoring company then manages the receivable until it is paid. Factoring is a well-established and accepted method of temporary alternative finance that is especially well-suited for rapidly growing companies and those with customer concentrations.

2. Accounts Receivable (A/R) Financing – A/R financing is an ideal solution for companies that are not yet bankable but have a stable financial condition and a more diverse customer base. Here, the business provides details on all accounts receivable and pledges those assets as collateral. The proceeds of those receivables are sent to a lockbox while the finance company calculates a borrowing base to determine the amount the company can borrow. When the borrower needs money, it makes an advance request and the finance company advances money using a percentage of the accounts receivable.

3. Asset-Based Lending (ABL) – This is a credit facility secured by all of a company’s assets, which may include A/R, equipment and inventory. Unlike with factoring, the business continues to manage and collect its own receivables and submits collateral reports on an ongoing basis to the finance company, which will review and periodically audit the reports.

In addition to providing working capital and enabling owners to maintain business control, alternative financing may provide other benefits as well:

It’s easy to determine the exact cost of financing and obtain an increase.
Professional collateral management can be included depending on the facility type and the lender.
Real-time, online interactive reporting is often available.
It may provide the business with access to more capital.
It’s flexible – financing ebbs and flows with the business’ needs.
It’s important to note that there are some circumstances in which equity is a viable and attractive financing solution. This is especially true in cases of business expansion and acquisition and new product launches – these are capital needs that are not generally well suited to debt financing. However, equity is not usually the appropriate financing solution to solve a working capital problem or help plug a cash-flow gap.

A Precious Commodity

Remember that business equity is a precious commodity that should only be considered under the right circumstances and at the right time. When equity financing is sought, ideally this should be done at a time when the company has good growth prospects and a significant cash need for this growth. Ideally, majority ownership (and thus, absolute control) should remain with the company founder(s).

Alternative financing solutions like factoring, A/R financing and ABL can provide the working capital boost many cash-strapped businesses that don’t qualify for bank financing need – without diluting ownership and possibly giving up business control at an inopportune time for the owner. If and when these companies become bankable later, it’s often an easy transition to a traditional bank line of credit. Your banker may be able to refer you to a commercial finance company that can offer the right type of alternative financing solution for your particular situation.

Taking the time to understand all the different financing options available to your business, and the pros and cons of each, is the best way to make sure you choose the best option for your business. The use of alternative financing can help your company grow without diluting your ownership. After all, it’s your business – shouldn’t you keep as much of it as possible?

Inbound marketing is largely viewed as an effective medium of brand promotion. However, it’s often viewed as a “good to have” as opposed to a necessary aspect. It is now turning out to be key essential component.In this article, we’ll outline the meaning of the term inbound marketing and then elaborate why it’s becoming an important part of your online marketing plans.Understanding Inbound Marketing?In case you’re new to digital marketing; you may be a little bit confused about the concept of inbound advertising. It’s a relatively new strategy that’s almost exclusive to the web.Inbound marketing, comprehensively, is a means of enabling your brand to get noticed by customers. Listed below are a couple of ways to achieve the desired results from your inbound marketing efforts.The first and most popular inbound marketing strategy involves the effective utilization of content. It’s quite often that the phrase “Content Marketing”and “inbound marketing” are used interchangeably. The reality is that content marketing is a subset of inbound marketing.With the help of effective content marketing or management, brands publish authentic and helpful content on a blog and on their website. They optimize the content to achieve better ranks in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Instead of advertising upfront and pushing the content, the content pulls the customer towards itself via blogs, social media platforms and websites. That’s how people find it and connect with the brand. The core idea is that effective content management is used to generate leads which are then converted into customers.Another admired means that inbound advertising companies use is social media marketing. However, in this case, social media marketing isn’t the paid advertising. It’s instead used to place a human face on the entity. Digital marketers will often use social media to connect with the target audience by posting something witty or a touching story shared by people and has the elements to go viral. Brands get coverage and gain followers when they effectively use a sound social media strategy.Now that we’ve understood a bit about inbound marketing, let’s observe why it’s essential.Usage of Ad Blockers:Ad blockers have been the annoyance of digital marketers for quite some time. There’s no sign that’s going to let up any time soon.Ads are a typical example of outbound marketing. They’re usually interruptive in nature especially if they’re pop-up ads. They stand in contrast to inbound advertising companies which use different ways of pulling customers towards brands through intelligent content marketing.People don’t like pop up ads. No matter how clever, cute, or creative your ad appears, many users simply don’t want to see it. They will install an ad blocker and take the annoyance out of their Internet experience.That’s an effective step for them to get desired user experience, but it doesn’t do any good to marketers who run such ads in an effort to gain more business. That’s why alternative marketing strategy must be used.What is the effective alternative available option to running ads? You absolutely guessed it right. It’s inbound advertising. Availability of experienced inbound marketing companies makes your journey of obtaining effective results easier.

Just how important it is to fuel yourself after a workout?In my opinion, it depends… it depends on your goals and it also depends highly on how good your nutrition throughout the rest of the day is.Post workout nutrition (PWO) is a much debated topic, some people will swear by the importance of PWO nutrition within 30-40min of finishing a workout, while others will claim it’s not as important as made out to be. In this article I will cover both topics and explain the reasoning behind them.A post-workout meal could be a solid meal or liquid nutrition (meal replacement shake). When it comes to PWO nutrition soon after exercise, liquid nutrition is known to be an easy way to get the nutrients to the muscles quickly while they are highly receptive to it. The theory is that the insulin elevation brought on by a PWO shake will help shuttle carbohydrates and amino acids (proteins) into muscle cells and encourage protein synthesis.If you’re goal is to increase muscle mass, I would recommend a post workout shake within a maximum of 40min of finishing up your exercise session, and following up with a meal 60-90min later. The post workout shake should consist of high GI (Glycemic Index) carbohydrates, protein, micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, enzymes, etc) and should be low in fat.In this case, it’s necessary to consume enough carbohydrates to promote a substantial insulin release, as spiking the insulin hormone will open up the window for carbohydrates and proteins to get into the muscles and start repairing tissue. It’s hard to say exactly how much carbohydrates you should consume, because if you consume too much the excess carbohydrates not used could turn into stored body fat.Research has shown however, that an intake of 0.8 to 1.2 grams per 1kg of body weight (that’s lean body mass), increases the insulin response and accelerates protein/muscle repair. If you want to use this math, I would recommend 0.8g of carbohydrates per 1kg of lean body weight, unless you have done a really long intense training session, in which case you may feel better consuming more.It’s also important to include micronutrients in your initial post-workout nutrition, as the micronutrients help in the transportation of protein to muscles, and dramatically enhances the rate of repair of muscle tissue (as there are more nutrients the body needs and can use). In addition, during a workout session, the body’s immune system gets damaged and increasing the micronutrient consumption post-workout and during the rest of the day, will help boost the immune system back to optimal/above optimal levels.Make sure though that your workout is worth it. A 30min high intensity session probably won’t bring your glycogen levels down low enough for them to need to be replaced. If you have a high GI post workout drink and your glycogen levels aren’t lowered, chances are you’re probably just going to spike your insulin levels higher than they need to be to contribute to long term health benefits, and as a result you will store fat.Now, if your goal is to reduce body fat then there is a whole other side to the PWO nutrition story, and that is to not have PWO nutrition directly after a workout session, but to fast (not eat) for 1.5-2hrs after your session.The main factor to keep in mind here is what nutrition you are eating during the day, if you are providing your body with efficient amounts of protein, carbohydrates, fats and micronutrients during the day, a post-workout nutrition shake/meal isn’t all that necessary especially if the body composition goal in mind it to reduce stored body fat.I will only recommend fasting after a workout if you have an extremely good diet throughout the day (meaning you are providing your body with efficient amounts of protein, carbohydrates, fats and micronutrients), as this nutrition alone should be enough for the body to repair itself after a workout, leaving a post-workout nutrition shake/meal becoming not all that necessary, especially if the body composition goal in mind it to reduce stored body fat.If the day’s nutrition is solid, I see no reason why muscle repair and performance goals would be affected by a lack of initial post-workout nutrition. If you do not eat a good diet however, then you just won’t be fueling your body correctly for this to take place.The idea of a post workout fast isn’t to starve yourself in order to reduce your total calorie intake, the idea however is too delay the meal in order too obtain the benefits of fasting without the calorie deficit. Calorie depriving is a whole different topic all together, but in short, calorie depriving is not good for you in the long term.A 1.5-2hr fasting window after a workout will require the body to burn up energy; if there is no energy coming in through food consumption, the body will look elsewhere, and the number one place for that is stored body fat. Hence the reason the post-workout fast can be quite beneficial to those wanting to reduce body fat.So make sure your diet is good, which it should be anyway if you are wanting to achieve optimal health and performance. Un-fortunately I know too many people who believe they eat really well, but in reality have a very poor diet in regards to nutritional quality and quantity. So here are some quick pointers on determining whether or not your diet will balance up a post workout fast;If you don’t feed your body bad foods (i.e. grains, starches, sugar, processed foods) instead of real food, you are most likely eating healthy and your body is running effectively. On a more thorough note though, when it comes to looking into your diet on a daily basis, if you eat the following, you are definitely on your way to good heath;
Eat at least 1.2g protein per Kg of lean muscle mass

Obtain carbohydrate sources from fruits and vegetables

Consume omega3 fish oil everyday

Consume enough calories for your body to function properly

Be consistent with good nutrition

If you are un-sure about the quality of your meals and your nutrition, monitor it for a week and look over it, measure and write down the food you eat, you may be surprised at what you are actually eating.In conclusion, if you want to lean out, delaying your PWO nutrition could be a good option. But if you want to put on muscle mass or have just completed a long workout where your glycogen levels are low, a PWO nutrition shake may become pretty important.And if you’re still un-certain as to what to do, play around with what happens to your body composition when having a PWO shake Vs not having one, then make a decision. There are many studies out there which will show benefits in both of these situations, but its best if you take a personal approach on the situation and see what works best for you, as there isn’t a single protocol that works well for everyone.