I have made it through my first year of business. By December of this year I will have made over $150,000 (this is a conservative estimate). My business is located in a greater metro city area. I purchased a professional maid service franchise. I have spent close to $30,000 in marketing to get the phones to ring. I have advertised on the Internet, direct mail (post cards and coupons), local papers, inserts, door hangers, yellow pages, networked with local businesses, and a few other advertising venues. I have approximately 70 regular residential customers, a few offices and I have a couple hundred occasional customers. My weekly revenue is over $3,000; I had hope to be at $5,000 in revenue by now but the summer months were very unkind to all of the cleaning companies in the area and I believe in the industry as a whole. Competition in my area is stiff and I worried about posting too much information in this forum, hence, why I do not mentioned the city.
I want to branch out into commercial cleaning (offices) to offset the recession and its impact on residential services but I need additional working capital to get me to the next level. The couple of banks I have spoken to request collateral such as my home which my wife and I are not willing to put up as collateral. I have put in over $100,000 of my own money to start up the business. My accountant, fellow business franchise owners as well as the home office feel I am about to break out this next quarter. They tell me to hang in there which is easy for them to say. I have weathered so far a weak economy and the slowest months for my type of business (summer) without loosing too many clients. Actually, I have broken even in customer turn over between the ones that cancelled for financial reaons and the new customers I gained in this period.
But I need working capital -- approximately $30,000 but have not been able to raise it as of yet. Credit card companies can be expensive especially if I use it for cash advances. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can raise working capital for a business that is only one year old but with great potential?
I want to branch out into commercial cleaning (offices) to offset the recession and its impact on residential services but I need additional working capital to get me to the next level. The couple of banks I have spoken to request collateral such as my home which my wife and I are not willing to put up as collateral. I have put in over $100,000 of my own money to start up the business. My accountant, fellow business franchise owners as well as the home office feel I am about to break out this next quarter. They tell me to hang in there which is easy for them to say. I have weathered so far a weak economy and the slowest months for my type of business (summer) without loosing too many clients. Actually, I have broken even in customer turn over between the ones that cancelled for financial reaons and the new customers I gained in this period.
But I need working capital -- approximately $30,000 but have not been able to raise it as of yet. Credit card companies can be expensive especially if I use it for cash advances. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can raise working capital for a business that is only one year old but with great potential?
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