Buying your way into the fastlane with debt

[Valhalla]

I'm sure the temptation has come to everyone here at some point to take on debt (cash or equity) to fund their entrepreneurial venture. Why or why did you not decide to take it? Any regrets either way?

 

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[Charnell]

Yes, but only after I had a proven method for a return on the investment. A few years back when I bought into the self-publishing gold rush it got to the point that for every $100 I would spend outsourcing a fiction story, it would make on average $200 the first month and slowly decay as time went on. No brainer to ramp up production, but it would take 30-90 days to collect that revenue depending on the platform they were sold on. Queue up the business credit card.

In my current venture, I'm waiting for the day I have enough data to know that for every X prospects I find, Y% will move on to be paying customers, and Z is profit after the entire CAC. Until I'm close to that day, it's onhand cash only.

 

[Longinus]

There's no shortcut to the fastlane.

 

[astr0]

Not in Ukraine with the best credit rates for chosen ones starting at 20%. For most businesses 34% and more.

Oh, and only in local currency, cause a lot of people took credits in USD a few years ago cause the rate was much lower and couldn't pay out cause USD-our currency rate raised 3.5 times.

Maybe instability in my country left something in my subconscious, but I must have a good reason to go into debt.

 

[minivanman]

Way back when I first turned 18, I thought if I bought something with a credit card, I would have to pay it off at the end of the month. I didn't know you could carry over a balance. But after I found out you could carry over a balance, I always figured if I didn't have the money to pay for it now, it would just cause stress later to try and pay it off. I hate stress. I could just imagine having all that stress with a new business on top of the stress a person already has with a new business. That would suck!

Even to this day, I hate putting out a lot of money to start a business. We have done it before, but it worries me to death.

 

[Valhalla]

Not in Ukraine with the best credit rates for chosen ones starting at 20%. For most businesses 34% and more.

Oh, and only in local currency, cause a lot of people took credits in USD a few years ago cause the rate was much lower and couldn't pay out cause USD-our currency rate raised 3.5 times.

Maybe instability in my country left something in my subconscious, but I must have a good reason to go into debt.

That's crazy, inflation there is only like 9 percent, so must be super unstable, interesting to know thanks!

 

[EvanOkanagan]

For my 2nd investment property I opened 3 unsecured lines of credit, and did a 10k cash advance on a new credit card in one day. Definitely not recommended, but I hate bad debt (I consider anything higher than 5%) and it drove me to pay those off as fast as possible. Ah the early days!

 

[MHP368]

I did that with my first company and i'm still paying that off, bad idea. Hustle, mow lawns, flip junk on craigslist, work a second job...

 

[ruzara5]

Got to keep the control. Initial projects in the fastlane need to be getting resonance from the customer. Grow the customer base. Grow the income base. Improve the product response. Process the month to month and expand into the quarterly. Credit needs to be removed until it can be managed and justified by bottom line. If that is improving and doing better. You may not even need it. Just for those little bumps in the road

 

[James Klymus]

It really depends. Its literally a double edged sword. For something like real estate it can give you leverage to buy a property you dont have the cash for. But for a business I would be careful about taking on debt.

There are so many businesses that dont require much upfront investment like service based businesses.

Like others have said, Debt = Stress, some people have a high tolerance for stress but I dont. Im somewhere in the middle.

I say stay out of debt.