What does it take to get a loan?

What does it take to get a loan? I got a great question from my newsletter readers, love you guys, Namukasa, who wrote in to say, what does it take to get a loan and how can you pay it if you want to start a small business? So a lot of entrepreneurs, when they're thinking of getting started, they need the money to get launched, they think bank. How do I get money from the bank and get a loan to start a company? The thing to remember here is most banks are not startup friendly. Banks do not like entrepreneurs because they don't like risk. They want something that they can take, right? They'll finance your house because if you can't make a payment, they're gonna take your house. And so with a startup business, banks don't like lending money. Typically, if you are under 3 years in business, then the only way they'll give you money is based on a personal guarantee, which means you have to personally guarantee that you're gonna pay back the money. So if your business goes under, you're still on the hook. So it's not really a small business loan, it's a personal loan for you. And that's going to just depend on your credit history. If you have good credit, you can get the loan. You don't have good credit, you're not going to get the loan. And so banks are typically not the place to look for. But I would also, you know, encourage you not to start a business on a loan because you're in debt and you're paying money back and you're not making anything yet. And the problem with entrepreneurs at the start is the business that you start with is rarely the business you end up with. You have to make lots of changes. The assumptions that you make will be wrong. The things that you think will work won't work, and other things will, and you have to change and figure it out, understand the market. That's how it goes with entrepreneurs. You look at the successful entrepreneurs, you look at what they started with, it's never what they ended up with. They always had to change many times before they hit their big idea. And so all this time while you're experimenting, you're losing money because you have to pay back this bank loan. If you want to get started, I'd say bootstrap. Find a way to get it started without spending any money. Start it as a service if you need to. Get close to your customers, learn what they need, learn how you can help them instead of going into personal debt to get this company launched. Another great way to do it is to get a job. Go work for somebody and don't just get a job to make money, get a job to learn. The reason why you get a job is to learn. You work to learn. I have an entire Zuga guide that's dedicated to working to learn, that breaks down all the steps on how to do it. But basically, you want to find somebody who has done what you want to do, who's accomplished what you want to accomplish, and go work for them. You get paid, so you're not worried about, you know, paying your bills. You're getting paid to learn. You're making industry contacts. You're making mistakes while getting paid. It's like going to university. But getting paid to do it. You're making contacts so that when you launch your business, you already know what you're doing. You don't need the money. You can line up clients. That's the better way to do it and to fund it than to go into debt and take on a personal loan to launch. So maybe not the answer you wanted to hear, but that's my advice. Believe. For those of you watching the video, thumbs up below. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you've gone to the bank and tried to get funding and were accepted or rejected, your experiences. Leave it in the comment section below. If you have a question for me, leave it below too. I'll make a video response just like this. And if you want to see more videos like this, click on my face, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.