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Continue reading →: Quality of Earnings Reports: The $10 Million Reality CheckThe SBA may help finance up to $10 million of your acquisition. It will not check whether the seller’s EBITDA is wearing makeup. I’ve sat through due diligence from nearly every seat: selling a company I built, writing angel checks, and reviewing deals as a fund GP. The deals that…
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Continue reading →: Incorporate Your Business with Your State: A Simple Guide for FoundersStarting a business is the fun part. Incorporating it is the unglamorous paperwork that keeps the fun part from ending in a lawsuit that takes your house with it. In my experience as a small business owner, this is the step people either skip too long or overthink for weeks.…
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Continue reading →: Strategic Sale vs. Recapitalization: A Founder’s GuideWhich Is Better for a Growing Business? A strategic sale vs recapitalization comes down to certainty today versus more upside and risk tomorrow. When I sold my first company to Petco, I learned how quickly a founder can go from owning every decision to owning very few. The choice looks…
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Continue reading →: How to Buy a Domain Name in 2026 Without OverpayingA workable domain takes about twenty minutes to secure and costs less than a burrito, so stop treating it like a fork in the road. Every company I’ve started began the same way: an idea, a name I liked, a domain search, and a few quiet minutes of disappointment. That…
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Continue reading →: How to Check If a Business Name Is AvailableYou can form the LLC, buy the domain, and print the signage, and still not have the legal right to use your own company’s name. It happens all too often. An excited small business owner comes up with the perfect name for their business and 6-12 months down the road…
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Continue reading →: Men Not in the Labor Force: What the 2026 Data ShowsThe unemployment rate improved last month because 264,000 people stopped being counted. I once spent eleven weeks trying to fill one warehouse lead role at a consumer products company I helped build. Four applicants, two no-shows, and a lot of me insisting the labor market was just tight. The real…
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Continue reading →: Debt Settlement Companies: Where the Money GoesThe biggest debt settlement companies are private, profitable, and paid on the balance you enroll, not the money you save. I run a small Google Ads campaign in small business lending, so I know what a click costs in consumer finance. Debt relief keywords, meanwhile, sit a tier above that.…
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Continue reading →: How to Name a Business Without Overthinking ItA business name has to be memorable, sayable, and legally usable, and the requirements pretty much stop there. I named my last company PetInsuranceQuotes.com, which is either the least imaginative name in insurtech or the most honest one. Petco bought it anyway. That’s worth remembering while you stare at a…
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Continue reading →: Business Loan APR’s: How to Compare Any OfferEvery lender quotes cost differently, and only one number puts them on the same scale. Learn how to compare loan offers and borrowing costs apples-to-apples. Every working capital offer I have seen as an operator leads with a number engineered to sound small. A 1.25. An 8 percent fee. A…
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Continue reading →: FICO Score Ranges 2026: What Lenders Really Look AtYour personal FICO score still sets your business borrowing terms, and two of the rules governing it changed this year. Every business line of credit I have signed for came with a personal guarantee attached. The bank was underwriting me, not the company, so my personal credit file set the…
