The Boss of You

Earlier this month (like four days ago) we celebrated our 9 year anniversary as a company. Over those nine years we’ve been banking with the same credit union and while this post is not meant as criticism or praise for the institution specifically, I’m going to be honest here: until recently, we didn’t really love our banking experience with them. Really, it was fine, no big problems. We can deposit cheques. They have a decent online banking system. We get pretty friendly service. And we’ve had reasonable access to capital when we’ve needed it (in the form of lines of credit), but honestly: it’s never been super awesome. And in particular, when we’ve needed anything beyond the basics of depositing money, paying bills and writing cheques it’s been sort of … well kind of lame. Each time we’ve needed advice, an extension on a line of credit, etc. we’ve had to sit and meet with someone new, explain our story (“No, Raised Eyebrow is not an esthetician studio…”) and generally feel a bit like we’re wasting a lot of time with the “getting to know you phase” what we really want is financial advice and action. As really busy business owners, that wasted time and the lack of big picture thinking that you get with a consistent relationship was kind of starting to bug us frankly.

That said, we love the credit union. Love the work they do in the community and have many friends and clients who are closely associated with the institution. And so, at a recent business conference, we decided to ask someone who worked there what it would take for us to form a relationship with one person at our branch who would be our contact and advisor within the credit union. And as is often the case, when we finally asked the question, we finally got an answer. They told us, we needed to extend our line of credit and basically ask the credit union to give us that kind of a contact. So, once our year end financials were done last month, I went about doing just that. And, lo and behold, we got ourselves an account manager who specializes in small business. And I LOVE him. He is my new BFF. Seriously. He’s already given us advice, helped us make some strategic connections, reviewed our account to lower our banking fees and pushed through a line of credit application with speed and ease I’ve previously only fantasized about. I seriously can’t believe it has taken us this long to have this relationship.

While every financial institution is going to be different, here’s my advice on getting your own banking BFF, which should be generally applicable:

• Borrow money. Even if you don’t need it. Lauren and I are proud ladies. And cautious. And careful. Also, did I say cautious? And we didn’t borrow any money (that’s right not even carrying a VISA balance ) for the first few years we were in business. This was a mistake I had no idea I was making (in fact I thought it was a success). When we first opened our business account we should have inquired what it would take to get a line of credit. They may not have given us one right away (though they probably would have, they would have just relied on our personal net worth info), but at least we would have known what it would take to get there. Basically, as soon as you are able: start borrowing money and building a credit record for your business, if you don’t need the money, that’s ok. (Obviously don’t do this if you have a problem with having too much credit and abusing it, but I’m going to assume that’s not your issue). While it runs totally counter-intuitive to my inner, Depression-era old-lady self: the banks won’t care if they see that you’ve been carefully squirreling away all your money in your business account and not spending a penny more than you needed to for three years (unless of course you’re talking about a sizeable wealth). They care about whether or not you can manage debt responsibly. And when you want money from them: that’s what they look at.
• Ask. Ask for a business banking contact, or even better a small business banking contact. Ask to meet that person and ask them what it takes to become a part of their portfolio, they can’t manage every single person with a business account at the branch, but they will have certain criteria that they use to evaluate who they bring on. Find out what it is so you can fit that criteria. At our credit union it took having a certain amount on our line of credit. For you it may be different. We probably could have gotten a larger line of credit and had an account manager like this two or three years ago, but we never asked. We always took the minimum amount of credit we could get by on and never really asked for what we needed, assuming they would give it to us one day. In hindsight: that was silly.

Now, I obviously don’t offer this as gospel truth to y’all, but simply advice that may help you find your banking BFF sooner than we did.