I have another idea - a Ben Bernanke Pez dispenser where the pez comes out of his mouth and has $100 bills printed on it.

Better yet, we can alter the design a little - load it in from the top and have it come out his butt when you bend his body forward. Sort of like that smiley we have here on the board LOL.

Small Business financing has always been a bitch. This story sounds a bit fishy. He had 3000 stores agree to sell it's product. Yet there was no mention of how much much business that was and would it be a final sale or a consignment sale.

There's always purchase order financing and receivable factoring which allows one to fund day to day if they can take the 3-5% that comes off the invoice. It sounds to me like one of those too good to be true BS dilemmas that small business gets trapped into. A large business indicates a need. Small business thinks it has a sale, but it really doesn't. If he had the sale as in a purchase order, financing would be expensive but it would be there.

This one stinks. Most SBs will tell you they don't want a loan or equity, they want to see a demand for the product or service, a sustained demand, not demand based on a one time promotion

Years ago, I used to do small business/ economic development for both a University (lots of technology transfer and 'rural extension' programs) and for the Small Business Development Centers (funded half by the SBA and half by a local entity).

Although the goal was to help folks start, grow and make their businesses efficient, most of my time was spent trying to keep people from blowing themselves up. Back then, I was far more open to debt than I am now, but still even then I was quite conservative and understood the implications of debt servicing and the risk it brought.

One of my more interesting cases:
1) A small construction company owner got himself in $90K in credit card and ($100K) personal (unsecured) debt with a small, regional bank. The bank, now realizing that the loans were 'good ole boy with a handshake and a wink' and were gonna blow contacted me to "restructure these loans into an SBA backed loan to 'help' the customer." This bank was not an SBA preferred lender. They shouldn't even be a bank.

This is in Texas in the later 90's, and home equity loans were just starting to be offered. So, the folks didn't **** themselves in that regard, although I doubt they had a house. Dunno, conversation didn't go there. Didn't need to. Read on and be amazed...

So, I pop in, talk to the owners (who were busy, as they told me, getting an EIN so they could roll the credit cards onto it, dunno how they were planning on doing that, but who was I to let reality get in the way of a little fraud) and the good 'ole banker. The company's books were a ****ing mess. They were 'in between' CPAs (didn't have a new one yet). Asked why they were switching CPA's and was told "Oh the CPA firm didn't have time for our account anymore so they said we should go elsewhere."

Red ****ing flag. That, combined with the cluster**** I saw, was a big neon sign that there was serious **** going on.

Oh yeah, there was. As the owner's wife (well, she was 51% owner though she didn't know a hammer from her ass... minority and women-owned business contracts and all) was flipping though a stack of papers, I see a few notices from the IRS and then the State Comptroller.

"Are you caught up with taxes?" I asked, while looking at my notebook and pretending I'm just doing a 'checklist' interview.

"Well, we're just behind two."

"Two payment? To whom?"

"Two years. IRS not much, because we didn't have much profits, but we owe a lot for payroll taxes."

"You withheld payroll taxes, but didn't fully remit them for two YEARS?" I asked, clarifying.

"Yeah, well, we put the money to the side, but then we'd be short a payment on our note to the bank, so we made up the difference... We'd pay most of the money, so it wasn't so bad. So, because we paid folks a check and such, I went back and modified my records to show that many hours were not as employees, but contract. You know, like they worked for us for some time as 'employees' but then the rest as contract. So, I could account for the difference. Some folks were really good about it and had wives and family members cash their checks for them. You can't do over $600 in contract work, so when pay time came around, I made the check out to a friend of theirs or family.

But, I couldn't account for it all, that would be dishonest...

Once we roll these credit cards onto the EIN, we can get more cards and get cash advances to pay off the remaining payroll taxes we're behind. We're paying lots in fines and penalties. The loan would help us roll this altogether. Then, instead we can use the credit card advances for a new truck."

"You need a new truck? Special equipment for a project?" I asked, just curious, as this was no long a viable business in my mind but a fraud-riddled train wreck.

"Yep. We'd like a new truck. The other one is 7 years old. If we get an F350, we can write it off our taxes."

Nodded. Got a few pieces of paper from them. Went back to the office, called in my boss and the district manager for the SBA and had a discussion...

Owners filed bankruptcy a couple of months later (how they lasted that long, I dunno), at the urging, from what I understand from the grapevine, from the bank president, who got a 'most disturbing' telephone call.

Uh, yerah.

Perhaps you need to convince the Catholic Bishops to restore the traditional teaching against usury. It has not gone away but has been ignored more than any other relevant teaching I can name.

A propaganda piece for Obama's latest housing scam disguised as investigative journalism.

Brilliant I tell ya!

The reason no one is investing is because its a stupid idea. "Gamers" arent going to buy snacks called gamer grub. They probably laugh their asses off when they see it. What a moron.

Gamer grub, dehydrated lizards, worms and dragon ****.

I own a small business that is doing just fine. I am the company's sole employee and I do contracts for two companies - both of them publicly traded Fortune 500 firms. Right now I'm generating about 3K/month in positive cashflow (after my business expenses and payroll expenses). After my personal expenses I have about 3K/month left for investing or whatever. I'm looking at what I'm doing for both companies and its very much the same work. I'm thinking of building some reusable components/services which I could market more widely. However this would require an investment on my part of approx 50K, with about half of it being my sweat equity and the other half being to hire trusted individuals I already know who could help me do what needs to be done to get the job done so I'm ready to go to market. How do I plan to fund this if I do it? I will do it with my company's positive cashflow and if necessary with a small 0% loan from myself to be paid back by the end of 2013 at the latest.

Degaston may i ask what it is you do?

Most small businesses dont have a plan. People are just trying to get by on it. They just throw something at the wall and hope it sticks. If everyone had to have a plan then there wouldnt be half the small business there is in this country. For better or worse...

Here's a quick description of the promotional partnership between Call of Duty and Gamer Grub, according to a snack food trade publication - http://www.candyandsnacktoday.com/archiv....

Sounds like he bullshat his ability to quickly scale up production (without the pre-existing funds) and now wonders how he can front-run his good fortune to land this contract.

As an aside, this whole story describes yet another person who confuses the terms "funding" and "financing". If your idea was so brilliant, you'd be functioning on cash not credit. You don't need more credit, you need a viable business plan that generates positive cash flow.

I had more folks than I care to count ask me if they could use proceeds from loans to pay themselves.

Come in. The 'equity' they put in the business was basically credit card sourced. Looked at me like I had three heads when I suggested they cram down their personal budget and live on half the income (or one income, if it were a dual income couple) and save the difference to, you know... Invest in the ****ing business.

Re: Payroll Taxes

I had a IT client who hadn't paid payroll taxes for two years with 200 employees (temp). Owed in excess of 2 Million. She decided she needed a house , a house with 12,000 Sq feet. Normally these things are settled without the business owner being charged with a crime if they have enough to pay it back or enough to do an offer and compromise. Not this time. The USA drove by the house and flipped out. That was in 2006. She gets out this year after a 5 year term in the federal penitentiary.

What drove the prison sentence was that business was wildly profitable because the administrative overhead was so cheap. Probably 2.5 Million a year pre-tax. She didn't want to wait. "had to have it now"...hates debt. She got it now.

They sold the business for 600K. A business that had 2.5M pre-tax. Hmm, wonder who the trustee knew. They sold much of the stuff in here house. She had paid $850,000. So they got all the money. They left her the house with the property taxes. She's gonna come out to a whole new world.

Rule of thumb: If you can't pay payroll taxes on the day of payroll, you can't make payroll period. That lets people know not to slip extra terms in or let slow pays off the hook. It's a deadly tax too because the IRS never squawks about until the business goes belly up or the business does something as egregious as the above.

BTW, the reason she was caught was she didn't pay payroll tax or personal tax from 1995-2000. Apparently they did an offer and compromise with a warning.

Even if a company bellies up the IRS will go after all the officers of the company. It's not dichargeable in bankruptcy. Don't ever let those taxes slip behind.

Yep -- payroll taxes are BAD NEWS -- never, ever let those go unpaid. Stiff the employees and shut the doors instead if you must.

AND fill out and turn in ALL required forms to the IRS!!!

2.99 for a 3.25 oz. pouch. ouch.

But they sell at BB and micorcenter.. Maybe ill have to get a bag and take picts. ha