Starting a Business/ Advice on getting small business Loan

So I've recently registered my LLC and domain.
Does anyone here have experience taking out small business loans?

I do aquarium service for various accounts and I want to expand into coral aqua culture and start growing. Right now I'm need to lease space (i'm looking at aprox 1500sq/f) that suitable for light industrial use (an auto garage would be perfect). I also need to buy equipment (tanks, lights, skimmers) which will cost $10,000 alone.

I'm targeting a gross break-even point of $3,000/mo which is really nothing and my previous employer who solely sold coral/bred fish made that target with everything above that being .85c on the dollar with an average unit price of $65 for the product. I'm not going to open a pet/aquarium store doing retail (perhaps in the future) my main model is aquarium installations and monthly service. The coral aquaculture operation would be e-retail and by its nature would greatly complement the service side of the business.

Now assuming I'm starting with nothing (0 capital) but can put down collateral, what is the best way to grab a loan at a reasonable rate? I have drafted a basic Bplan but not knowing things like your rent/utilities to the dot makes things hard to crunch.

Also feel free to ask me about anything related to fish and what I do.

Invest in crypto

Not my field also too risky and presents accounting/banking issues. Most small business accounts prohibit ventures that deal in crypto trading.

That being said there is nothing stopping me from accepting bitcoins, but right now the focus is on getting clients and revenue.

It appears that you may have mistaken Veeky Forums to be for business. It is actually only a crypto shilling containment board.

well its still business but its a high risk,low work field.

There's always risk the point is to manage it and be aware of it. Personally the "Millennial" generation is too risk adverse at a time when there isn't much to lose.

No one said innovation is easy in fact it's very hard.

Because shit coins are afucking scam ran by the mods

heya /an/ guy

I've given you solid advice in three threads in the past, you ignored it every time.

Your business is going to fail because you're trying to expand into low-profit sales when you haven't even managed to break into high-profit services. Your service side should be paying for your grow operations.

but no, you can't wait to fail.
a bank isn't going to buy into your bullshit. Come back when your service side is grossing $50k or better.

If you can't respond to people telling you what you don't want to hear, how are you going to handle 50 banks turning down your loan application?

Or the inevitable day when your creditors step in and seize your tanks, corals, and everything else you own?

No response necessary. I already know how you deal with unpleasant truths. Or fail to deal with them.

An LLC protects your assets from creditors.

why the fuck would a creditor want to give a loan to an entity that has no assets?

if you offer your own assets as collateral you lose the protection of the LLC.

you haven't thought this through.

Teach me to make aquariums. I have money but I'm an office wageslave. I want a weekend trade. How do I build an aquarium?

Hi I didn't ignore you, I didn't keep up with the thread because I had other things to do at the time.

You would be absolutely correct that reselling marine/freshwater livestock and corals is not profitable
One thing that is different with model I use is that I do not (Or very rarely) go through overseas importers or livestock wholesalers. The object is source corals from local hobbyists, sources and contacts I already have and us. Those corals would be placed into a brood stock system grow out and pruned into frag tanks where they would be listed for sale.

But not your not in the wrong at all, If I had a dollar for every person with a reef aquarium and thought "hmm I can make $$$ from this" I be a millionaire. That being said there is a way to do this quite profitably and I've done it before

I need to get a loan anyway because I have other startup capital expenses that need to be fulfilled like equipment, marketing holding aquariums and dedicated business vehicle not to mention the deposit on a industrial space. This just for the service side of things.

building aquariums is totally different animal vs installing/maintaining them up.

There are companies that do pretty well constructing custom acrylic/glass aquariums. I'm actually getting a kickback from a high-end furniture designer who did the stands and cabinetry for one of the last projects I did.

I personally don't like the tank manufacturing side of things and a lot of these guys who build acrylic aquariums without annealing them in specially built industrial ovens are taking a big risk should they fail.

>and dedicated business vehicle
nah brah

listen, you are GOING to WASTE your money.


I dunno how I can tell you this but I hope you can read:

1. a business's job is to make money
2. so simply make money, and you have a business.

Start small, do what you can with your own car and aqua in your kitchen sink ( proverbial )

if you actually need money for equipment to start out with ( and I wonder how much you actually know about the trade at this point ) then you need to save up whatever cash you get and get that first.

it helps to remember:
business loans are for businesses. you don't have a business, you have an idea

>there is a way to do this quite profitably and I've done it before
You lack imagination.

You can make a few thousand dollars in a month of propagating frags, or you could make the same few thousand dollars off a couple hours a month in service work. Which should you be concentrating on? The one that takes a month or the one that takes a few hours?

I know you're thinking the frags are less work so you prefer them. You should be building up the service side and hiring employees, then that becomes less work for you. Then you can waste your time growing corals if you want.

the problem is you're approaching your hobby as if it were a business. Your business can't afford a hobby yet.

even if your grow operation makes you a couple bucks you'll be wasting time on it that you should be using to make millions off the service side.

>1. a business's job is to make money
weird how few people get this.

the instant you take out a business loan you've failed rule number 1. A business should pay for its own expansion at the very least.

>weird how few people get this.
I learnt it only after I failed with my first "official" business venture.

official in quotes because I didn't do jack shit.

Last year we were making gross $7-$12 thousands dollars a month on frags and bergia from the online store. We had two months of low revenue attributed to fact that I wasn't currently activity updating our listings and slacking on the marketing because as you guessed it I was working on the service side of things and we had a loss due to a contamination leak.
The frags are not less work, in fact we did have to hire a hand to do things like prepping orders and even just taking photos (taking good photos takes a huge amount of time believe it or not).

>it helps to remember:
business loans are for businesses. you don't have a business, you have an idea

Indeed we already do, but we have a pressing need to move up soon. Making money is fact that has not escaped me.
Right now I have the opportunity to purchase two fully setup frag/propagation systems and all the live stock at firesale for $10k much of it easily worth over $40k. It would be a prefect base to startup from.

yep, another violation of rule 1.
setting up a "business" without cash flow.

Like you said, make money first.

>Last year we were making gross $7-$12 thousands dollars a month on frags and bergia from the online store
is that store still in business? Will you be competing with it? How long were they in business before getting those sales?

In short, are there any particular reasons to think you won't make those numbers?

and again, grossing $10k a month is not great if you have to hire people. It's really not great if you have to both hire people and work the site as well. The margin is slim for the amount of work invested.

services will almost certainly pay margins of 3-10 times as much.

>Indeed we already do, but we have a pressing need to move up soon.


THEN PUT THAT IN YOUR PLAN.

you're not starting with 0 capital. you're starting with a lot of capital, you might not have liquid but that's different.

>this is our growth per month
>using resonable forecasting, we can afford X amount of rent per month
>with y amount of startup costs for new equipment.

you don't need actual figures of rent because you don't know that, you show the amount that you can maximum reasonably pay.

on the side note, if you have two months of low revenue because you're busy with other things how are you going to start up this new venture?

you need to start again with your business plan I think.


>Like you said, make money first.
ye boi. it's actually entirely about the money, not the name, not "having a business" for the sake of having a business.

all lessons learnt.

Yes they are still in business, but they are not doing aquarium service or installs (and actually one of the reasons I broke up with them as a partner is as you flatly put it, I wasn't getting enough time and energy dedicated to the service side of things which even with only three in clients first month we were getting $600 to $800 for each of them.
Case in point I wasn't happy with the time he was putting in and granted he had the excuse he worked for the world bank doing things that had far more priority but I had no benefit from being together.

>all lessons learnt.
I've tried to pass those on to Veeky Forums over the years but the attitude here seems to be, "if I build it they will come." Which strikes me as an extremely risky way to start out.

Very well. $10k is not a lot of money for a business loan. I've found bankers prefer to loan small sums like that to businesses over a period of 30-90 days. Meaning they want repayment in 1-3 months.

Your challenge is presumably going to be showing income and assets to secure the loan. Business loans are generally NOT easier to get than personal credit. And if you personally have collateral to put up you might consider getting a personal loan and then injecting it into your business if this is legal to do. Something to ask a lawyer about, I have no clue.

But for reference I couldn't get a business loan of any size until I had been in biz over a year and was grossing several hundred thousand a year. Now I can get a signature loan of $10k any time I like, but my biz makes about $100k/month most of the time. They want to see cash flow. The bigger the better.

Anyways I'd start off by talking to a banker. Find out if you should be applying for a business or personal loan. They'll be happy to run either scenario, their job is to make loans if it's prudent to do so. Once you know exactly what you're after you could shop different banks and see what rates appeal to you. I've personally found it pays off to use one bank though. Building a relationship with a bank will often save you far more in the long run than shopping might.