If SBA 7(a) loans become directly available through the agency if it's under $150K, would an established business be more advantageous than a new one?

Can you demonstrate value for them? All the words you're using here are very negative; you need to find a positive spin because I'm not going to pay for something which sounds so negative.

I'm reading a book called, "Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup" written by Bill Aulet. The 24 steps are broken down into six categories: 1: Who is your customer? 2: What can you do for your customer? 3: How does your customer acquire your product? 4: How do you make money off your product? 5: How do you design and build your product? 6: How do you scale your business Your technically asking a good number of questions and I'm thinking this book might be a good starting point for you.

Great question, this is something that can be handled with a proper deal structure involving some vendor financing. I recently did a video about this very topic for one of my YouTube followers. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/hWm4ZQxWlEw You basically make the vendor's outstanding gift certificates a 'currency' which can be used by the buyer to repay the vendor loan. It's a net-sum game for the seller since he's already received the cash without having to provide the goods or services. Hope this helps. Feel free to schedule a call anytime you have a question about business transactions. David

After founding one company on my own, and co-founding several others with teams, I've written and spoken extensively on this topic - it's an under-recognized risk and challenge of entrepreneurship. You can read one of my more popular articles at http://lp.co/perspective, but I'll summarize it here... Entrepreneurship can be a very lonely endeavor. Even when you have others on your team, no one else is in quite the same "boat" that you are. Looking to other entrepreneurs for support can be deceptive. Most entrepreneurs are always "on" - showing only the best side of their business - and it's easy to understand why. As an entrepreneur, you're constantly selling yourself and your company to potential customers, employees, and investors. As a result, you compare yourself with others who are only showing their best side (and only sharing the good news), while you know that your own pursuit is a daily struggle. Raising money (if you are going that route) is an exercise in perpetual rejection. It's a real test of your self confidence to be told over and over why your idea won't work and isn't worth an investment. If you're not raising money, you may deal with this same challenge when trying to find your initial customers or employees. I've found three primary ways to counteract these forces and stabilize my own perspective: 1. Find some peer entrepreneurs with whom you can build some truly deep and transparent relationships, where the masks come off. Share your insecurities and vulnerabilities with them, and allow them to do the same. 2. Find mentors, advisors, and coaches who have experienced the same ups-and-downs you are facing. Listen to their stories, soak up their wisdom, and most of all, realize and remind yourself that they survived it, and so can you. 3. Recalibrate your perspective by taking time off to help others who are less fortunate than you are. Volunteer with an organization that supports a cause that you care about. The side effect of focusing on others is that you will be reminded that the challenges you are facing are not the worst problems in the world.

I think differently about this, because of two reasons: 1) I've always (and only) been involved in bootstrapped startups; and 2) I've been lucky that those startups grew organically and fast (enough) which minimized our need on marketing spend. Instead of deciding on a specific budget for this, I would instead look at your current priorities (in terms of budgeting and re-investment into your team): 1. Build a great team. 2. Build a great product. 3. Craft incredible customer experiences. 4. Spend money on marketing. If you've already hit all 3 top priorities and you can't reinvest any further into those, then you should start spending money on marketing. If you don't have revenues today and you are hoping to generate revenues through marketing spend, you're on slippery slope (says the bootstrapper). Whilst not wrong, this is tricky and you'd need to take a realistic look at your customer acquisition cost (CAC) and how much you can invest into acquiring new customers.