Growing your company takes a strategic plan and a growth budget.  Funding your growth, businesses is one of the key obstacles to getting your company off to the next level.  

There are four primary reasons for seeking funding: 

1) Expand market share

2) Purchasing inventory

3) Hiring better people

4) Strengthening business processes

What approach to funding will best suit the intent and needs of your small business? Understanding what types of financing is available is a good first step in figuring that out.

There are two major categories of financing—debt and equity—and other options exist as well.

Debt Financing 

This involves borrowing money that you must repay (usually with interest) over a period of time. Generally, some or all assets of your business will be used to secure the loans. To protect them from default on a loan, lenders commonly require borrowers to personally guarantee repayment (i.e., to have a sufficient personal interest at stake).

Banks have been the maj...