Sign Florida Banking Business Plan Template Secure

Industry sign banking florida business plan template secure

hello everyone and welcome to one billion in financing you know our mission is to help entrepreneurs raise a billion dollars in financing for their small and growing businesses my name is Sheree I am a business plan writer and I'm so proud to be presenting you today or introducing you I should say to Rafael Martinez he is a commercial banker with access national bank in the Washington DC area and I have him talk a little bit more about all the geographic areas that he represents but I will also say that he is a close friend of mine I trust him 100% and he's going to talk to us today about getting bank loans and as we know bank loans is a cheapest form of financing that we can get how do we get them sorry everybody how do we get them how do we prepare to get them and then how do we make the best use out of them so Raphael welcome to the show Cherie thank you so much for having me it's my honor and pleasure to be here great thank you so tell us a little bit about yourself about how you got involved in banking and just how you became the financing expert that you are well thank you for the kind word cherie I guess my story starts back to the fact that I'm a Washington DC native it's kind of rare this is a very transient area I was born in the Washington DC area grew up here in Northern Virginia suburbs went to high school after high school I went into the military where was proud to serve my country for eight years concurrent to that I went to George Mason University was able to finish my degree in economics and while I was finishing my degree in economics I started working at the on-campus bank which at that time was United Bank and I got an introduction to banking starting from the very bottom being a part-time teller understanding the transactions to cash in to cash out working my way up to the flat platform understanding more the customer service and then when I graduated I really had a decision to make I didn't know if was really a career I'd only seen one side of it I just happen to be part of a transition team that took over another Bank I may I met another banker who transitioned out of the bank that we had acquired and we hit it off great he called me six months later after he settled into his new position at a new bank called access National Bank and he said Raph if you're still thinking about what to do with your career I think you should come check this out it's at that time the bank was relatively new I think about four to five years it still had not gone public and he made a compelling case that it was a little bit of a different story than what my current bank at that time was so I took the leap of faith I took the plunge and I have been there ever since and working my way up from platform system rancher all the way up to a commercial banker which I am right now so it's been a winding journey but it's been a pleasurable experience and I'm very happy to be where I am great great so you mentioned a good point I'm gonna veer off for a second and talk to us a little bit about big banks versus small banks and how we as small business owners should think about should navigate you know a big bank versus a smaller bank such as X Nacional sure that's it that's a great question I think when I made a transition over I had I I had thought that all banking was the same and to be fair all banks have checking accounts they can all lend you money they all have a savings account they have all I'm banking it ATM cards so for that perspective is it is commoditized everything is the same however what is what is truly different is what market the banks serve so the smaller the bank the more focus on the commercial business the bank is the better it is for the business owner having a bank and more importantly a banker that understands business in a great a granular level is can do nothing but help your business as you can see your bankers a resource and a go-to person as you're fighting the day-to-day challenges of a growing business so what I can access it really gave me an opportunity to spend a lot of face time one-on-one time with business owners we position ourselves as a commercial bank so 95% of our client base are business owners we we do retail stuff as well but very small visa fee a large bank they are usually split 50/50 and sometimes 6040 on the consumer and they want to capture every checking account they want to capture every savings account they say they do business banking but it has six seven eight nine tiers of it so it's really hard to get a banker that can understand your business in interesting segments so that I say is the largest takeaway from doing business with a smaller regional Community Bank versus with a big national or super regional banks in the area great great nice I'm so glad that you focused on having a banker as well as a bank because so many people don't have a banker that person they can contact and say you know hi this is Cherie and you're not asking me Cherie who you're right you know who I am you know you know what I'm doing in the community you know what my business is and there's just so much that goes with that in so many ways that you can assist me as a banker and I think that every small business owner should have a banker in their corner yeah one of the things that I told my small business owners is aside from your accountant your lawyer you need to have a banker as part of your your consulting group part of your team because it's much easier for you to secure financing once you have a banking relationship established but I always tell my my budding entrepreneurs or mice my startups hey listen if you if you see yourself having to borrow in the next two three four or five years take your time interview a bank interview a banker and you may not have a bar way but start that banking relationship then so you could start to talk with the banker share your projections share the story with them and then at the right time they can jump in and it's a lot it's a much smoother and easier process at that point to secure secure financing absolutely I used to work with an auto mechanic and he had a nice sized business and he would invite the banker in to you know to actually see his retail of staff and connect with the customers that he was serving you know go upstairs to the offices and see what was happening with the business so you're right about that in inviting the banker into your business is one of the best things you can do absolutely yeah so then let's talk about the types of entrepreneurs that you service and the types of loans that you have the ability to offer people sure series so I am a true commercial banker so I work with the wide spectrum of entrepreneurs specifically with a government contractor since this is an industry town Washington DC it's an industry town government contracting is at every corner we do I do a lot of work with medical practitioners I do a lot of work with nonprofits service firms and technology companies so it really is there I really do work with the entire spectrum of companies great great and we'll talk to loans do or let's just say take out loans say what types of financing do you help people with so financing is it's it's a great question there's different flavors of bank financing obviously your traditional commercial loan that you would get at a bank but what I also specialize in SBA financing so it's a very particular type of loan it's a government loan program so you can only imagine the pay-fors involved in that type of loan but access National Bank is a preferred lender with the SBA so we can understand this type of loan and commit the SBA to make the loan without them having to review the entire credit so types of companies that would typically use an SBA loan or startup companies or companies less than five years in business they may be short on collateral shuri if it's it's a 50/50 loan if we like the business we like the borrower but they may be short on one of the other aspects or the criteria to get a loan the SBA loan is a great way for them to get a loan at a reasonable price in great term actually and get their business funded so we are we specialize greatly with the SBA the SBA has a three or four different programs Sheree yeah the 504 for commercial mortgages where you can get a commercial mortgage for as little as 10% down which is fantastic and also has a fixed-rate 20-year component so it is a great great product for anybody who's looking to buy a commercial building and is looking to stay in that building for over five years it's a phenomenal product it's under the SBA wing and then your typical SBA 7a that's for your working capital loans for your business acquisition loans those loans you get printed for anywhere from 7 and 10 years in terms and the rates are predetermined by the SBA so its prime plus a certain amount depending on on where prime rate stands so it's a great product it allows you to get a little bit more cash flow more breathing room versus a commercial loan so those are the types of loans that we work with shuri SBA your traditional commercial loan and your commercial mortgages fantastic and I just want to make sure everyone knows that you do not go to the SBA directly in order to ask for a loan I always have to educate people on that you go to a banker such as Raphael and access national bank goes to the SBA on your behalf so don't forget that you don't bypass the bank in order to get the SBA because it's a guarantee that they're offering that's really the bank so the other thing that you mentioned the 504 I've been telling people about that as well in terms of the you know the 10% down versus usual 20% that you need right right so that's a great program as well so tell us so one of the things that I do want to clarify that you did say was that you can work with startups yes I did hear you say that so if you are a startup one of the things that I believe is that if you're a startup you should have someone on your team that has industry experience at the very least right or absolutely now you're 100 percent right sure I think there's a big misconception out there that there is no money for startups or that that is not true I just want to put that out there is for all bankers we everything is taken on a case-by-case basis to be quite honest and to be quite fair bankers like businesses that have a stab most historical financials it's easier for for banks to project the the ability the ability for a company to repay cash but that's that's one part of our business the other part is we certainly like to get in there and understand what startups are looking to do long term some of my greatest success story Sheree are companies that were were less than a year old deemed startups they start off with a very small credit facility if any and now are going on to multi-million dollar lines of credit so it just depends but I will say this one of the most important things in a startup company has to have when they come talk to a banker about possible financing is have a strong business plan and for them to really know their numbers and to make sure those projections make sense do they make sense to a third party that we're reviewing them are they too ambitious are they missing components to that business plan and really have somebody in the business that has industry experience if you're starting a restaurant but you've never worked in a restaurant or I've been always in a white-collar business but now have a passion project that raises a red flag to a banker because there's a huge issue with industry knowledge so for us to say alright we're going to give you a loan to test-drive the restaurant industry doesn't make sense for banks so Sheree I agree with you a hundred percent if you're going to get into a restaurant business or a government contracting business or a medical practice it has to be somebody with industry experience really being a key person of that ownership group right well then now I'm gonna throw another monkey rich in here we didn't talk about this before but let her talk about franchising because a lot of franchise ORS will say well I know you don't have any industry experience however banks will tend to give loans because you're buying into a franchise sure what's your response to that every bank has its views franchising differently sure I'll be very honest with you the SBA does issue an SBA approved franchise list so some of you were to come to me and say hey I'm going through this and XYZ franchise the first thing I'm going to do before even looking at the numbers is look at the SBA list is it an SBA approved franchise the SBA does a pretty job of vetting some of these franchise opportunities so that gives me some comfort that they believe there's it's sustainable not always there have been some very interesting cases with that SBA list but it does give me an indication which as which of these franchises have the highest potential generating enough cash flow to repay loans and which ones don't so that's the first thing I would look at the second day I look at of course is the ownership group they don't have any industry experience it's going to be a key factor that they're getting into a franchise that has a very strong training model at least two to three months where they go on site they learn they go to either let's say Dunkin Donuts you university they learn the process of arles systems and then we can get comfortable that they can get enough industry experience to successfully operate one of these franchises so that's kind of that's kind of my roundabout answer cherie it's it's certainly on a case-by-case basis to bear the franchise a stronger the ownership prove the better the training the more likely they are to get bank financing right right so just because that was fresh in my mind because I went to a couple of months ago to a franchise panel and that was one of the things I came up so um and that SBA list is available to everybody sure I would agree we get that so if you go to sba.gov on the search bar you can just type in franchise list and they will you'll date you'll be able to find a franchise report so it successful this document is out there for everybody to see now bankers can access more information that that might be a little bit harder but if you if you know a banker that's sba savvy they should have access to that and they should be able to share with you some of the industry trends inside some of these top franchises yeah so one of the things that I would suggest is I have a client right now that has paid thirty five thousand dollars to get into a franchise and now he's thinking well maybe this is not the franchise for me one of the things that you may want to do before spending money with the franchise is to go banker like Raphael and say look these are the top four or five franchises I'm looking at can you give me you know any more information from the banker perspective in regards to these franchises having a good conversation with a banker that can like Raphael said more information than you would necessarily have from somebody who is not tied as a franchisor to you know to that sale correct correct I agree yeah so all right well then let's move on to our next set of topics which is the types of businesses that should not either come to you as a fort alone let's say because we do want to separate your banking services from your lending so let's just talk about the lending now what types of entrepreneurs or businesses are not ideal for a loan through access National Bank it's a good question always for a two-way shuri I think number one of course every industry has our ups and downs right so but an entrepreneur who serious and who does not have a business plan with at least two years projections that are broken down by month that have some collateral to bring to the table that's probably somebody who's not serious for a serious candidate for a business loan and I'll tell you a secret really on in my career I own one of my mentors in lending said to me Ref really the job of a lender is to question a potential business or and ask them are they sure that they are ready for the challenges of a business owner and sit them down even before we get to that conversation about how they would secure financing challenge them ask them if they if they don't know the answer right away they should probably not be going into business so it's it's a it's a real interesting conversation to have on the front especially with with startup companies but once we get over that hump some of the industries that are not that easy for us to under a lot of reasons of industry risk but also the way we're set up we are not we don't have a lot of branches on every street corner or cash intensive businesses shuri your gas stations your restaurants your small retail shops from the cache manager spective sometimes we're not able to support them and also in the lending side those are more of the higher risk loans we don't have the bandwidth to really support those type of transactions okay all right well that's fair so tell us a couple of success stories then that you've had in regards to helping people get funding sure so I'll tell you a one that had late last year it was a startup veterinary practice they a doctor was moving from one practice she always had a dream of opening her own veterinary practice it was going to be further a little bit outside of the Beltway but she felt very confident that the market would be able to support her business her husband had was a former IT executive they took a company public so they had no experience running a veterinary practice itself she was a partner but she never had any operational experience at the veterinary practice so they were seeking a rather large loan to build out a facility and hire staff right away from day one so that was a monetary cash intensive a lot of upfront cost a lot of red flags thank you perspective what I would like to share with your listener is keep in mind that banking is a risk management business not to say that we're risk-averse but we need to manage it correctly so something like that that has a lot of a fixed cost right from the beginning can be very very tough so I had the conversation with him I challenged him on on their business plan I challenged him on their idea to start this they were very passionate about it they had the right answers and when they shared with me their business plan Sheree it was one of the best business plans I had ever seen it was very detailed they had made the right movements on the numbers to make sure they were being conservative not over uh not not that overzealous and not overzealous results which you often see yeah and it was broken down and they had contingencies they had a certain amount of cash that we're going to put it and they had some reserves so it was very very impressive but still that was just part one we had to get to the underwriting and really see would this would this business succeed after six 12 18 months we got our final analysis and we gave them the entire amount of the loans they were asking for fast-forward to February 2016 they have now completed a year in business they have turned the profit and they are paying back their loan without any issues and are actually considering buying more equipment for their facility to support their dynamic growth so that is a great success story we actually used a a loan program through through the Commonwealth of Virginia called the Virginia small business finance program to get them over the hump because they were there was such high risk on the front end we needed a little bit of credit enhancement but the program made a lot of sense it gave us a guarantee similar to the SBA loan program Cherie we got comfortable they were comfortable with the loans in terms that we offer them and we have made this a resounding success stories so the moral of the story here is know your numbers and know your number they had it down to the cent it was amazing yes and if you are not a numbers person because I work with a lot of people that are not numbers people that's when you want to hire somebody who can not only create your numbers but explain them to you because you as the business owner needs to be able to explain and defend where the numbers have come from absolutely I just add one more thing regarding business plans and projections keep like the SBA loan program requires borrowers to have a business plan with two years of projections so if you're going down that route it's best to engage with the specials like yourself Cherie or somebody else who can do business plans and coach you through it but more importantly help you understand the number so that you can present it to the bank because sharee or your business plan writer is not going to be at the pitch meeting with you yeah the bank is going to be the bank is going to be very interested to see how you present numbers and can you answer questions when we challenge some of the numbers absolutely absolutely so then let's talk about the most successful people in what they've had in common in terms of what do they prepare before they come to you what do they have I mean outside of collateral and credit like sure what do they bring to a meeting in order to have you say you know what I'm going to really work hard and really fight for this business because I think they have a chance yeah that that's another great question for you right so aside from collateral and cash wheat what I'm looking for as a banker is I want I want somebody who has industry expertise we had talked about that earlier who understands it and is really passionate about not only being a business owner but taking on the challenges of a growing business that's a little bit different you can be passionate about business I've seen a lot of people are very passionate about their industry their segments but when it comes to really managing people or managing orders or managing operations they tend to shy away from it so that is something that again is a red flag in the risk mitigation business so I those the people who can do both who are enthusiastic about their industry enthusiastic about running a business and people having a pragmatic approach that's really a good thing to have also people who have great numbers or understanding that hey these are the numbers we're projecting what happens if we only hit 50% of the revenue so they're able to scale up and have projections that make sense have contingency plans it can explain to a banker what the secondary repayment source would be if operations don't don't come up to where they were supposed to be so people who are very prepared on those two fronts we tend to be highly successful those are some of the most common traits that I see highly prepare people upfront highly passionate people about their industry highly passionate people about the operational side of business great great so tell us a little bit more about what's coming up in the next 12 months for you your bank any expansion efforts you're going to have and one thing we didn't talk about what do you service outside of the Washington DC metropolitan area as well so why don't you give people a little bit of a taste of what's happening now and then what's going to be in the next 12 months great well I'll tackle your ladder question first so yes we access national bank is a publicly traded bank we traded on the ticker ticker symbol a and C X we have a national charter so we can do business in all 50 states however our geographical footprint is primarily the DC metro area but we have clients that are in Florida New York California they're they're concentrating spurt in particular segments like government contracting because those are very hot areas for government contracting but they don't have banks or financial institutions that understand the visit so they come to banks in the DC metro area which are very proficient in government contracting so we're able to service those type of clients as well in terms of what's coming the rates are still very attractive for borrowers Sheree the Fed increase rates but there has not been that that pressure that we would have seen for a upward trending rate environment to move we had anticipated so what I'm telling all my borrowers right now or my my business owners who are looking to borrow now may be the time to really roll up your sleeves and see if it makes sense for a capital improvement project if you're looking to acquire a business if you're looking to buy a building I think there is another eight to twelve month window where the rates remain at these all-time lows so I I know late last year if you would ask me this question I would said the window might be closing a little bit sooner but the rates have actually dipped a little bit the prime rate has gone up but banks are still pricing to market so that should be very beneficial to people who are looking to borrow right now so that's kind of an industry trend that I'm seeing so if somebody is looking to borrow if somebody's been sitting on the sidelines looking to do something talk to your banker re-engage see if it's the right time to make that transaction happen on the banking side just a quick heads-up on for access we are expanding organically we hit a billion dollars in assets last year in our opening our Alexandria branch in the summer fall of 2016 so we're continuing to grow organically I've been very blessed and fortunate to be here for now eleven years flies so it is very fun to see how the bank has continued to grow organically through cultivating valued commercial relationships that are producing more and more these opportunities fantastic so if someone wants to reach out to you they've heard something today and they want to know more about you and about access national what's the best way for them to connect with you the best way is via email Cherie I am I'm very accessible one of things that I probably my cell phone is there's no business owner that I'm going to turn away just have a conversation with everybody deserves a chance to be listened to and everybody can learn something from a conversation maybe it's not the right time to do business banking or the right time to borrow but at least you can have a take away from a conversation with me and I'm always happy to share my email is our Martinez ma RTI Nez at access National Bank comm so if anybody out there wants to run an idea by me or ask questions about banking itself I'm happy to have a conversation fantastic well thank you so much for being our guest today and we look forward to a continued relationship with you and access national in terms of the clients that we're helping at the profit partner so with that everyone thank you very much have a blessed day