Staying Ahead of The Money Curve 4/23 Edition

Ami Kassar
CEO, Multifunding LLC and author of The Growth Dilemma

A friend of mine wrote to me the other day that he had just bought my book The Growth Dilemma on Amazon and was looking forward to reading it while under quarantine.   I thanked him but suggested that I am not sure the advice in the book was relevant in the new world order.

It was a striking moment for me about how much has changed so quickly.  And in fact, it's true, in today's world, I don't think 90 percent of the book is no longer meaningful.

There is one element of the book everyone should think about now.  I talk about "speed bumps" and planning for the unexpected. And I try to calibrate everyone to thinking about financing strategy as both offense and defense and trying to set yourself up to have some extra cash and capacity to plan for the unexpected.

In my pre zoom speeches, I used to talk about the "unexpected" as events like waking up and finding out we had blown up North Korea or gone to war with Iran.  In a million years, I never dreamed about a speed bump that would shut our entire country down.

In most micro speed bumps, if your business is suddenly hurting, it can be too late to get extra cash on your balance sheet to help you through.  In this massive speed bump, there are opportunities, and that's why everyone who plans and wants their business to live to fight another day needs to consider the available programs.

Almost everyone’s attention is on the PPP and EIDL programs.  In context, the PPP is like a band-aid  (2 months of help), and getting an EIDL loan is like winning the lottery. Even with expected new EIDL funding, demand far exceeds supply.

The Main Street Lending Program will allow business owners who did well last year to add significant capacity to their balance sheets to fight through the next few years.  For those who are interested, I will be running a webinar on the program today at noon EST.