Small Business Funding Alternatives

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Ok, I’ve started this post twice…hopefully I can get it done this time. Last time the word press gremlins just made my draft disappear and I had not saved a backup. I learned my lesson!             

In any event, on to the post…….I think.

The phrase, it’s just “Too good to be True!” and the early days of factoring are two of the most difficult obstacles that we, as cash flow consultants, have to overcome in educating and informing small business owners of the funding options we bring to the table.

And, I had no idea of the wealth of information out in “internetland” on the phrase, “too good to be true” until I started researching it for this post. So, in this post, I’ll just deal with this first obstacle (too good to be true) and we’ll deal with the second one (factoring’s reputation) in another post.

OK, I’m an optimist to the inth degree; I (usually) see the glass 2/3 full. Sometimes, however, when I make mistakes in judgment, I really doubt that philosophy and wonder if I was mistaken to have it in the first place. But, then, usually something, such as some of the info I found in my research for this article comes around and makes me glad that I am the way I am. Not trying to pat myself on the back here, but I feel it is unfortunate that more people Don’t have this outlook. I found some validation for mine in my research. And, how cynical and uncreative would this world be if we just wrote off all innovative, creative and “new”, advanced ideas as too good to be true!

Check out this article by Erik Brady, USA Today:

“It’s official. We don’t believe anything anymore.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins a race at the track where his father died and the skeptics cry fix. Cal Ripken Jr. hits a home run in his last All-Star Game and the world wonders if he got a fat pitch. The Philadelphia 76ers reach the NBA Finals and some Milwaukee Bucks suggest that referees favor the team with more TV households.

We are becoming a nation of Oliver Stones, joylessly searching out conspiracy theories every time a story seems too good to be true. Nothing wonderful just happens in sport anymore, at least not without some fanciful notion of a great and powerful Oz scripting reality from behind the curtain.

History tells us our sports events are fixed sometimes — read more here

There’s a book, movie, song and blog named Too Good to be True!   To mention only a few! 

If ever I felt validated about taking that chance to believe that something “might” be as good as it claims to be, it was a passage I found about Einstein…..

Albert Einstein once said, “I never discovered anything with my rational mind.” In our context, the comment, “too good to be true,” might have just been the prod Einstein needed for his next great invention because Einstein didn’t think like that. I can see Einstein asking you “Why?”, if you were to tell him something like it’s too good to be true (and then figuring out how to disprove you)!

As has been said before, too much of anything is never good. And so it is, I contend, with the blatant thought of “it’s too good to be true.” When a person automatically thinks this Stinky Thought (as far as I am concerned) about a new, innovative and/or revolutionary idea how many of the well springs of our creative juices shut down? If, in fact, this “too good to be true” saying were completely true we would not have any of the inventions or advances we have now because those innovators would not have dared to believe it could be “true”.

“Noooo way, you can’t do that”; “that’s impossible to do” soon turn to “that’s too good to be true”………. when the successful innovator figures out “how” it IS possible to do it.

First, this innovator receives no encouragement to “try” to overcome the obstacle and then no congratulations but disbelief when it is overcome!

It’s not surprising, then, to know that the innovators and entrepreneurs among us are only a small percentage with these objections and obstacles to overcome. What more could our great country have accomplished had we not turned into a country of Stinky Thinkers?

And, I admit there “are” a lot of things that are, in fact, to good to be true but should that stop us from looking for the next great invention, song, thought, movie or business funding opportunity?

Are we so negative and pessimistic today that we just automatically say, nah, that’s too good to be true and pass up a chance to be creative and look for alternatives to fixing our cash flow problems.

Yes, skepticism is indeed needed.

Here’s an interesting quote I found on Scientific Skepticism,

“Skepticism is a primary tool of science. We’d be hypocrites if we never directed a skeptical eye towards Scientific Skepticism itself. Denied imperfections and errors are free to grow without limit, and Skepticism is not immune to this problem. Unbridled gullibility can destroy science, but unbridled disbelief is no less a threat because it brings both a tolerance for bias and ridicule as well as the supression of untested new ideas. Better to take a middle road between total closed-mindedness and total gullibility. Practice pragmatism, pursue humility, and maintain a clear, honest, and continuing view of ourselves and the less noble of our own behaviors.”

Hopefully the small business owner I am talking to here has a sound judgment, adequate education and the ability to look at a creative, new, out-of-the-box funding alternative and assess it for its true worth – be that too good to be true or, in fact, a newfound funding option just in the last 15 years or so becoming readily available to the small business owner as it has been to big business for many, many years.

You judge, too good to be true or not?

 

Until next time….Debra

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