All funding is not equal, and the cost of getting this wrong is not small. The same 50,000 can cost 4,000 over five years or 18,000 over eleven months, depending only on which door you walked through. Owners under time pressure take the fastest money available, which is almost always the most expensive money available, and then spend two years servicing a decision made in an afternoon.

There is one principle underneath all of it. Match the term of the money to the life of the thing it buys. A seven year asset funded on a credit card will hurt. A sixty day inventory gap funded with a ten year loan means paying interest for nine years on a problem that ended in month three.

This step is a decision, so it needs the inputs of a decision:

• What the money is for, and over what period it pays for itself. The use of funds work in the previous step.
• How quickly you need it. Grants run on quarters. A line of credit runs on weeks.
• Your credit position, business and personal, honestly
• Whether you have collateral, and whether you are willing to pledge it
• Whether you are willing to sign a personal guarantee, which most small business lending requires
• How long the business has traded and whether it is profitable