In this practical episode, Sue Schuster, COO of BizFi.io, shares how you can access growth capital without always putting your personal assets on the line, why corporate credit matters more than most founders realize, and how to use debt strategically instead of fearfully. If you struggle with needing capital to hire, buy equipment, or scale but hate the idea of personal guarantees and high-cost advances, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– How to use equipment financing first so the asset itself serves as collateral and frees up other cash
– Why building true corporate credit (Dun & Bradstreet, Equifax Business) takes deliberate action most founders skip
– How to test whether your funding plan is actionable before you take on any debt
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello, and welcome, welcome once again to the Start, Scale, and Succeed podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven levels of your journey as a founder. I’m your host Scott Ritzheimer, and today we’re going to talk about founders who they need capital to grow, but you just can’t be the one personally guaranteeing everything because you and I know that being a founder is a personal enough journey. We don’t need to make it more personal than it already is. But it seems like everywhere you go, that’s exactly what everybody wants to do before they’ll give you a dime. And so when you’re sitting there and you want to grow and you know that next hire, either you know, to get the hire, to get the equipment that they need, or to get the opportunity, is going to require credit, capital, something from outside the business to give you that kickstart that you need.
My guest today is going to be a real help because she helps founders to find the capital they need without blindly betting everything they own. With us today is Sue Schuster. She’s the COO, I’m sorry, of Bizfi.io, and a business funding strategist who helps entrepreneurs access the capital they need to grow, sometimes without putting their personal credit at risk. With more than 20 years of experience as a business owner, she understands how cash flow, how funding and how financial clarity make or break a company’s ability to scale. A former competitive athlete and coach, she brings discipline and resilience and strategic mindset to the business owners that she advises and supports. Sue specializes in working with consultants, coaches, fractional CFOs, equipment sellers, and small business service providers to help their clients secure working capital, equipment financing, growth terms, and SBA funding. Sue, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here.
I got really excited when I was doing research for this because of just how how practical you make it. And and so one of the the challenges, and kind of mentioned this as we opened up, but one of the challenges that every founder faces is this journey is so hard and so deeply personally challenging that when you go to get the help that you need, at least that’s what it feels like, and everyone turns around says, “Hey, you know, put your house up for it, or put your retirement up for it, or or you put your name on this line. It just it feels so. It feels like we’re trapped. How do you help founders that that feel stuck in this place in between? And and how how can they think differently about financing as a whole?
Sue Schuster
Well, Scott, that was a lot to begin with, and thank you. But I just like today, got off a call with a founder, and she just started her business and everything else. And they’re already like, even their business has only been in business for three months, and they’re already getting inundated by the people who want to give them money via merchant cash advance because that’s the easiest. So often you are signing your life away. The SBA requires it, depending on the state you’re in. It might your house might be the collateral. It might not be. The easiest funding to get without a personal guarantee would be equipment financing.
Any of the working capital, any of the capital here’s money, use it wisely type loans are going to come with that personal guarantee, and we know that this is like your third, fourth, or first child in in your business. And I was a business owner myself, and you know when you sell your business, it’s like giving away your child. It’s worse than them going off to college. I’ve been through both, so it is deeply personal. But the fact of the matter is that you have to bet on yourself. This business is yours, and it is a reflection of you. And that’s also what I teach definitely female entrepreneurs: is that even if the salon down the street is doing the same thing that you are, it’s never your business because you are your business. So everything is deeply personal, and if you want working capital or just capital, it’s probably going to be personally guaranteed because these lenders want to lend you the money, but more than that, they want to get the money.
They want to back. They want to make money on their money. What’s my return on investment? That’s what everybody’s asking. Equipment financing is slightly different because the equipment itself is the is a collateral, so you can get away with more just working on your business corporate credit, growing that, which takes time too. It’s not a quick fix, but equipment financing is a whole lot easier. Can fit in the box of I don’t need to personally guarantee this a whole lot faster than a capital loan.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, and one of the ways I would imagine that this can be used if you if you have some capital available and you need equipment and you need to make other purchases, I’m I’m imagining that you could pursue the equipment capital line for the equipment capital. Which would then free up the other resources that you have for other expenditures. That is that accurate?
Sue Schuster
That’s a strategy that we were just talking about. I don’t know two hours ago, because she wanted money for equipment for what they’re doing, but then she also wanted to hire somebody, and of course you don’t have the money to hire somebody until you make the money with that money, with that person, and then she wanted money for marketing. I said, “All right, well, you’ve only been in business for this long. It hasn’t been long enough. You’re not making the revenue. Any money we’re going to get you is the expensive money. I can get you expensive money, but I don’t want to get you expensive money. Let’s go after this equipment so that you can make a little bit more money faster and start checking off these boxes of time and business and revenue, so that we can get better funding later.
Scott Ritzheimer
Switching gears just just slightly, one of the things that I’ve bumped into, and this seems to be a little bit newer, maybe last 5, 10 years, but there’s almost this kind of subculture in in some areas that debt is failure. That it’s some kind of like there’s a there’s some type of morality attached to it. Is how do you how do you reconcile where do you stand on that? How what’s a healthy way of viewing debt in a business context?
Sue Schuster
Well, there’s even some religions that won’t allow you to go into debt. Just FYI, yes, I find the debt averse. They don’t want. They want to bootstrap everything. And the questions that I start asking, like this individual, I’m like, “What do you need the money for?” Well, I need it for this, that, and the other thing. But if I can bootstrap things, I rather do that than get into debt. But if I bootstrap things and it’s going to take me a year, two years, three years to get to some place I can get a whole lot faster, it can really jumpstart the process. Now I don’t want to get people in debt just to get in debt. That’s not what are we using the money for? Do you have a CFO that can help you use it. Are you utilizing a coach? I mean, where is the? Are you just using chat? I don’t know. It can work, but who’s making you responsible and accountable for this to make the money grow? If you’re not ready to, if I gave you 10,000 or $100,000, boom! Here’s $100,000. Do you already have a plan in place to make more money with this money. If the answer is no, then that’s not a good time to go into debt. If the answer is, oh my goodness, I know exactly what to do with that. We make double, triple that in this much time. That’s a perfect time to get funding.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So you started to list off a couple of things embedded in a story, and I actually want to pull these out a little bit clearer. So one of the things you were talking about with your earlier today was getting ready to be creditworthy, and and and as far as I understand, and I’m a novice at all of this, but business credit and personal credit are are two different animals. How do you get your business ready, and and how do you get your personal credit ready to give yourself the best shot when you do want outside capital?
Sue Schuster
Well, one thing that us founders love to do is to utilize our own personal credit, especially those tradesmen or people who just getting into business and they’re like, “Well, I don’t have the revenue. I need to pay this bill. I’ll just pay it and use my credit cards. And now your utilization personally goes up really high. I can’t tell you the amount of people that I end up actually putting in debt repair because they’re now they were 750 and now they’re 650 or 620 or barely 600. And now the financing is really really hard to qualify. People won’t look at them because now you’ve utilized their personal. So personal would be your TransUnion, Experian, Equifax. Business completely separate. It is Dun and Bradstreet, and everybody can get their free Dun and Bradstreet score. Experian business and Equifax business. So those three, there are different cards that go and start reporting. Often things don’t report at all. Give you some kind of businesses that report.
Quill reports. Uline reports. So if you start like Net 30 or whatever, then you can start building your corporate credit. Some the Spark card reports to all three. A lot of your gas cards, those report. Who’s not reporting? A lot of people. Your bank is probably not reporting at all. American Express, American Express, except for the top card, doesn’t report. Low. and Home Depot reports when you’re tier two. So there’s all kinds of ways to build corporate credit, but it’s really hidden and really hard to do. There’s many many companies out there that have been in business for years and years and years, and they make millions of dollars, and they still aren’t. Reporting and or very little is reporting. So the corporate credit is kind of I don’t enigma to many many businesses, and it’s also changing a little bit to the SBSS score, which unfortunately does incorporate the business owner’s personal. So the business score is actually leaning more towards being part of the personal. It is less and less completely separate.
Scott Ritzheimer
So working through this, so we’ve got kind of a clear-eyed understanding of of you know what role debt can play in the relationship. We’ve we’re getting away from personal credit. We’re starting to build professional credit, and we’ve got a plan for how to use this money, and maybe even looking at the different types of of capital that are available. You again kind of just barely touched on. I want to come back to it, but what’s a good plan for your money, and what’s just a plan that sounds good for your money? Because even you mentioned using Chat GPT, it’s easy to make really wonderful looking plans now. It’s easier than ever. What’s the difference between a wonderful looking plan and a sound plan before you take out debt?
Sue Schuster
How actionable and how ready you are for it. Because you can. Whenever somebody says, “I need a million dollars,” well, why don’t you need $954,000? Why is it? Why it’s just a round number? It looks pretty. Why do you need the money you’re asking for? I mean, have you really looked into it? Do you have your business plan? All all these things are are necessary. You shouldn’t just get the funds. A lot of what I do is actually restructure debt, so people have gotten taken advantage of. I’m going to say taken advantage of with the merchant cash advance. People call them if somebody’s calling you up says I have money for you. It’s easy. Just fill this out. That’s probably not great money to get because the SBA people are not doing that. The growth, the term loan people are not doing. The HELOC people are not doing that.
They might put some ads places, but they’re not calling you. The merchant cash advance people are doing that. So if they have gotten into that space and they’re like, “Oh, I could really use 50 grand for my business,” and now they’re looking at 30, 40, 50. I’ve seen 60% interest rate. I know. Talk to people who are like, “That’s the mafia.” I’m like, “Well, maybe.” We do go refinancing those. So in that situation, you don’t need to really know your number. But if you’re looking to start really growing the business, you need to know kind of what you think your return on investment is. When do you need the money? If you need quick money, that’s usually bad money. If you have time to put in all your documentation, which would be your tax returns, your business, maybe personal and business, your business accounts, see where those numbers are, your debt schedule. I mean, these are all things loan officers and underwriters are going to look for. Did I answer the question?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yes, yes, yeah, and I think focusing in on on actionable insight because again, it’s it’s easier than ever to come up with things that look really good, but how much history do you actually have putting it into action? I think is a great a great litmus test. I have this question. I want to make time for it because it’s a question that ask all my guests, but the question is this: What is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish every founder watching or listening today knew?
Sue Schuster
I guess it would be about corporate credit, because nobody knows about that. Everybody’s like, “Oh yeah, I have this credit card. I’m sure it’s reporting to the agencies.” And no, it’s not. I would check your Dun and Bradstreet score. I would make sure that they know you exist. You can tell Equifax and business and Experian business that you are a business. And hey, start tracking because I’m doing great things over here. I use my credit and I pay it off. It’s not how much money you make; it’s how much you use and pay off throughout the the course of your business, so that’s what I would want everybody to know. Don’t figure out what the heck corporate credit actually is, so that they can start utilizing it. And the lenders know what it is, so we as business owners should know too.
Scott Ritzheimer
Brilliant, brilliant. If somebody wants to know how to do that, or even more importantly, how to actually build it once they have the number, and they they love to reach out to you, find more out about that, or or the financing options that you offer. Where can folks connect with you? Where can they find out more?
Sue Schuster
LinkedIn‘s a great place, which would be Sue Schuster, or my email, which is Sue at b i z hyphen f i dot i o.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, fantastic! We’ll get those both in the show notes for y’all. You don’t have to go looking for either one of them. Sue, thank you so much for being on today. Learned a ton. Really appreciate your time being here with us. And for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us as well. I hope you got as much out of this conversation. As I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Scott Ritzheimer
Hey everyone, Scott Ritzheimer here. Thank you so much for listening to the Start, Scale, and Succeed podcast. I hope this episode gave you exactly what you need for the level you’re in right now. If you want to discover what level you’re in. Take our 10-question Founders Evolution Quiz for free at foundersquiz.com. That’s foundersquiz.com. It’ll pinpoint exactly where you are and give you tailored tips to move forward and reach that next level in your journey as a founder. If you got something out of today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, or review. It helps us reach more founders like you, and let’s be honest, it means a ton to me, my team, and all our incredible guests. So keep starting, scaling, and succeeding, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
Contact Sue Schuster
Sue Schuster is COO of BizFi.io and a Business Funding Strategist who helps entrepreneurs access the capital they need to grow, sometimes without putting their personal credit at risk. With more than 20 years of experience as a business owner, Sue understands how cash flow, funding, and financial clarity make or break a company’s ability to scale. A former competitive athlete and coach, she brings discipline, resilience, and a strategic mindset to the business owners and advisors she supports. Sue specializes in working with coaches, consultants, fractional CFOs, equipment sellers, and small business service providers to help their clients secure working capital, equipment financing, growth term loans, and SBA funding.
Want to learn more about Sue Schuster’s work at BizFi.io? Check out her website at https://biz-fi.io/sue-schuster-943172.
Connect with Sue through her LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-pantano-schuster
Email Sue Shuster at [email protected]