Dashboard: Finance Your Business Without Taking on Debt or Investors

Most business owners know the usual ways to finance a startup or acquisition: savings, investors, bank loans, SBA loans. But there’s another option that many owners have never considered—even though Jeremy Ames says his company, Guidant Financial, has helped arrange more than 35,000 of these transactions. It’s called ROBS financing—Rollovers for Business Startups—and it allows entrepreneurs to use money they’ve accumulated in retirement accounts to start or buy a business without taking a taxable distribution and, perhaps most notably, without taking out a loan. There’s no debt and no monthly loan payment. Instead, the owner’s retirement plan buys stock in the this 21 Hats Dashboard, Ames explains how the structure works, why some owners use it to avoid debt while others combine it with SBA financing to buy a larger business, and what it costs to set up and maintain. He also addresses the tradeoffs: The money is no longer invested in stocks or mutual funds; it’s invested in your company, which means you’re betting some of your retirement savings on your ability to build a successful discuss the questions owners should ask before making that bet, including how ROBS compares with conventional financing, what happens if the business fails, why the IRS has scrutinized these transactions, and why Ames believes anyone considering one should consult an independent adviser. The episode is brought to you by Grasshopper Bank.