Chapter 8 - Debt and Other Forms of Financing

Debt and Finance: two terms that both have negative connotative meanings in my book.  However, as an aspiring entrepreneur I’ve conferred with family members (who’ve mildly succeeded) and learned that a successful company requires both in order to sustain relevant growth.  Chapter 8 does a good job at explaining the importance of balancing debt with equity in order to achieve manageable growth.  The keyword here is manageable.  When I asked recent guest speaker and budding entrepreneur, Jennifer Kiesewetter, what obstacle presented the biggest challenge along the way to starting her own Firm, Kiesewetter Law Firm, PLLC, she quickly chimed “the unexpected fast growth”.  For EDS, financing and debt are currently minor problems since we are in our pilot stage.  I suspect that will quickly change as we, the president and I, are in the process of changing the model and subsequently our business plan.  Like Ms. Kiesewetter, our only line of credit is with Hewlett Packard (hers’ was actually with Dell Computers) so there hasn’t been a lot time vested financial planning and debt management –as bad as that may sound its true.  I have, however, dog-eared several chapters in this book; including this one, because if things go well for us it will definitely need to be re-ingested.