How to Make Your Company Fundable – In Just 7 Minutes with Stephen Wible

Resources/Links:

• Download Your FREE 4-Step Business Credit Building Guide: https://www.creditsuite.com/

Summary

Stephen Wible is a public speaker, author of Business Credit The Complete Step By- Step Guide, trainer, and avid learner. He passionately combines his high energy and business credit knowledge and is a recognized expert in the field.

In this episode, Stephen shares how he provides impactful insight into building business credit and obtaining loans for business – teaching and presenting to thousands.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:17 – Stephen’s ideal client: Our ideal client is literally every small business owner. Anybody that has a business.
• 01:42 – Problem he helps solve: Building business credit and getting funding for your businesses
• 02:18 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Stephen: The limits they tend to get tend to be smaller. As an individual, when you apply for credit, they’re going to treat you like an individual. As a business owner, a business can get much larger credit limits, which obviously, the larger the credit limit the better for you because when you need it, it’s there.
• 03:18 – Common mistakes people make when trying to solve that problem: one of the common mistakes I see is your business phone number. When you put an application, most people when I asked them, give me your number for your business, they give me their cell phone. They would always give me their cell phone. And unfortunately, that’s an immediate rejection with the bank. Instant. Artificial intelligence will reject you immediately.
• 04:58 – Stephen’s Valuable Free Action(VFA): If you don’t have a business phone, let’s say you are a digital person, and most people are these days and age, you can use what’s called a virtual phone number.
• 06:34 – Stephen’s Valuable Free Resource(VFR): Download Your FREE 4-Step Business Credit Building Guide: https://www.creditsuite.com/

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“We all have been trained to sign for credit personally.And that's a problem because when you're signing for things personally, your utilization goes all over the place your credit scores go down.” -@swible Share on X

Info about our correspondent host: Travis has a background in sales, marketing, and strategy, and left the corporate world several years ago to start his own agency. As a copywriter by trade, his biggest skill is putting the right words, in front of the right people, at the right time. Travis has developed go-to-market strategies for grassroots apps to Fortune 500 and helped optimize up to $50k per day in Facebook Ad spend for one of the biggest startups in Asia.

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Travis Bennett: 0:09
Hi everyone and welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Travis Bennett and I’m rocking it to you out of Yangon in Myanmar, proving you can build a successful business anywhere in the world. I’m joined today by Stephen Wible. Stephen, a very, very warm welcome.

Stephen Wible: 0:25
Thank you. I appreciate it, Travis. It’s great to be here.

Travis Bennett: 0:27
And where are you hanging out today?

Stephen Wible: 0:29
Tampa, Florida, waiting on the hurricane.

Travis Bennett: 0:31
Ah, you scared it away, I heard it’s going north. So, you must be doing something right. Which is great, which is great, we want you to be safe. That’s, that’s very important. And for those of you who don’t know Stephen, he’s a public speaker. He wrote a book called Business Credit The Complete Step By Step Guide. He’s a trainer. He’s a learner. And basically, he’s a recognized expert in the field of business credit. Stephen, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show today. And what we’re going to be talking about is, “How to Make Your Company Fundable”. And Stephens got seven minutes and he will explain everything to all of us. So, Stephen, welcome. Great to have you on the show.

Stephen Wible: 1:08
Thanks, Travis. I really, really excited to be here today.

Travis Bennett:1:11
Excellent. I’m going to start this timer and we’re going to jump into question number one. So, who is your ideal client?

Stephen Wible: 1:17
Our ideal client is literally every small business owner. Anybody that has a business, I don’t care if you sell flowers, if you market on the internet, if you’re at a car dealership, or you own a printing company as I did at one time, you need to build your business credit. You need to make yourself more fundable. So, our ideal client is every business owner.

Travis Bennett: 1:36
Every business owner and you Kind of touch on that for a second, but the problem that you solve is building business credit?

Stephen Wible: 1:42
exactly the problem and most business owners are aware of this that the problem with getting funding for your businesses we all have been trained to sign for it personally. And the bank’s love that. That’s a problem because when you’re signing for things personally, your utilization goes all over the place your scores go down. Now the next time you need funding, maybe you can’t get Because your score happens to be down at that time. Okay?

Travis Bennett: 2:03
Yeah. And his building on that. So, got six minutes on the clock, we’re good for a time. Okay, the symptoms that people experience when they don’t have good business credit is you kind of mentioned there that they don’t, they can apply for more, does that also limit their business?

Stephen Wible: 2:18
Absolutely. And in addition to that, the limits they tend to get tend to be smaller. As an individual, when you apply for credit, they’re going to treat you like an individual. As a business owner, a business can get much larger credit limits, which obviously, the larger the credit limit the better for you because when you need it, it’s there. And if we have time, I can touch on an example of what I’m talking about.

Travis Bennett: 2:40
Yeah, for sure. Please do.

Stephen Wible: 2:41
So, for example, as an individual person, you could apply for a gas credit card and you may get anywhere between three and $500. But as a trucking company, your limits are going to be somewhere between 50 and $100,000. So, the SBA actually says the limits are 10 to 100 times greater when it’s in the business name as opposed to being signed for personally.

Travis Bennett: 3:04
That’s amazing. I mean, because then you’ve got so much more cash to do so much more with your business. And we’ve got question number four, the common mistakes people make when they’re doing this and I guess that’s just using their personal credit, right? Instead of a business.

Stephen Wible: 3:18
Well, that’s true but there’s actually a little more to it than that. You know, people, even myself before I came to work with Ty Crandall in this company, I built business credit. It took me five years to do it, which should have taken me six months because I didn’t understand the fundability part of it. I didn’t understand the credibility part of it. So, one of the common mistakes I see is your business phone number. When you put an application, most people when I asked them, give me your number for your business, they give me their cell phone. They would always give me their cell phone. And unfortunately, that’s an immediate rejection with the bank. Instant. Artificial intelligence will reject you immediately. They’re looking for a real business phone number. Not only are they looking for a real number, but they’re also looking for it to be listed with a national database, the national 411 databases. And I’m old enough to remember picking up the phone dialing 411 asking for Joe’s Pizza on Main Street. That still exists today as the first place that the banks check.

Travis Bennett: 3:19
Okay, so these digital people who are going online, who’re using their cell phones, they’re hurting their ability to get credit because they’re not setting up the foundation that they need for their business to apply.

Stephen Wible: 4:26
Exactly. Exactly.

Travis Bennett: 4:28
Okay. Very cool. So then…

Stephen Wible: 4:30
And that’s one of, by the way, that’s one of 10 items that they look for that people fail generally three to five of those, but we don’t have time to dig it all that.

Travis Bennett: 4:39
For sure. Question number five, three minutes left on the clock, we’re doing really good. A valuable free piece of advice that you can give to the listeners today that will help them with their credit application. When they say, okay, look, I need to go out, I need to apply for business credit instead of using my personal stuff, where should they start? What would you recommend?

Stephen Wible: 4:58
Okay, so if they’re set up properly, and most or not. So, I’m going to give this valuable piece of information. If you don’t have a business phone, let’s say you are a digital person, and most people are these days and age, you can use what’s called a virtual phone number. Now, be very careful. A Google number is the right street but the wrong direction. Okay. Because you don’t own that number, Google does. What you need to do is you need to get with somebody like RingCentral, you go to ringcentral.com. I don’t represent them, they don’t even know that I give their name out. But that number, if you run the number from them, and typically it’s fairly cheap, $20 a month, $30 a month, that number is listable with the national 411 databases. So that’s free information I’ve given out right now, if you don’t have a business phone number, contact RingCentral and make sure you get not only the phone number, you get an 800 number and fax. And I know your entire audience is laughing about the fax but banks still use them and they expect that you do too.

Travis Bennett: 5:53
Wow. Yeah, I can’t. I didn’t even have a printer in my office.

Stephen Wible: 6:01
I know. I laugh, I go, I haven’t used a, I don’t even know how to use the fax anymore.

Travis Bennett: 6:06
I’m sure there’s an email to fax service that exists but, but yeah.

Stephen Wible: 6:10
That’s it. That’s what I’m talking about. When you get that virtual phone number you get the virtual fax, it’s an email to fax, that’s all it is.

Travis Bennett: 6:16
Perfect. Perfect. So, it’s something that they can implement today. And if they’re interested then to learn a little bit more. And they said, okay, you know what, I need to get on top of this, that’s a good stepping stone. But where should they go to find out more about you and everything that you’re doing, what you’re writing about, and all of that? What’s the best place?

Stephen Wible: 6:34
Well, I’d love to see them go to our landing page, obviously, at creditsuite.com, and get a free eBook, a four-step guide, so they can get started. The first thing that pops up, they can put their info in, they’ll get a free guide to start building their business credit.

Travis Bennett: 6:46
Very cool. So CreditSuite, S-U-I-T-E, dot com. And they can get that four-step guide right on there. Perfect. We’ve got 50 seconds left, and that’s just the right amount of time to ask you question number seven. What’s the one thing I should have asked you, but I didn’t have a chance to yet?

Stephen Wible: 7:02
What major company utilizes business credit?

Travis Bennett: 7:06
Ooh. Creating? Amazon? BP? Shell Oil?

Stephen Wible: 7:11
Maybe. But the one that built their entire business from start to where they are now is Walmart. Their entire business plan is based on business credit. You go, when you buy bounty towels, they haven’t paid for those. You pay them, they pay their vendor 60 to 90 days later. So, everything on their shelf, they owe. Now that’s power, there the number one retailer in the world. That’s a location. I know Amazon’s larger at this point.

Travis Bennett: 7:39
But still, that’s an amazing business built off the back of credit. And that’s something that a lot of the listeners if they applied it correctly in their businesses, they could leverage that and scale and grow quite a lot faster.

Stephen Wible: 7:51
And I know people will think, yeah, but that’s a large company. Well, when Sam Walton started this, he wasn’t a large company.

Travis Bennett: 7:56
For sure. For sure. He was a small little general store, right?

Stephen Wible:Stephen Wible: 7:59
Exactly. Exactly. And he realized how great this was, controls his cash flow, and he was able to scale because of it.

Travis Bennett: 8:06
Excellent. Stephen, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for your time today. That’s all we’ve got time for. And everyone, thank you for listening, check out creditsuite.com and get your free guide on there.

Stephen Wible: 8:16
Thanks, Travis. I appreciate being here.

Travis Bennett: 8:18
Cheers.

Tom Poland: 7:49
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.