Real deals,
and what they actually cost

What makes a deal worth writing up

Not its size. A deal earns a page when something about it would help the next business in a similar spot: a decline that became a yes, a product that fitted better than the obvious one, or a cost that came in lower because of how the deal was structured.

We write up the awkward parts as well as the result. A case study where everything goes smoothly teaches nothing, and most businesses come to us because something has not.

So there are only a few here, and there will never be many. One case with the real figures is worth more than ten with the numbers rounded and the difficulties taken out.

Why the declines stay in

Plenty of the businesses that come to us have already been turned down somewhere. Leaving that out would make the result look easier than it was, and would tell a reader in the same position nothing about how the yes was reached. If that is where you are, the place to begin is our page on being declined, which covers the four reasons behind most refusals and what to do about each.

How clients are named

Anonymous is the default. A business is described by what it does and nothing more, unless the owner has given us permission in writing to name it. Where they have, the page says so under the headline.

Lenders are never named. A real deal records a real price, and a lender’s name beside that price would turn a record of what happened into an advertisement for the lender.

What the figures are, and are not

They are the real ones: the amount, the fee, the time it took. They describe one transaction for one business at one moment. They are not a quote, and nobody else should expect the same terms, because pricing depends on the business, the lender and the day.

Each page runs in the same order: the situation, the problem, what we did and what happened. Start with the problem. If it sounds like yours, the rest is worth reading closely. If it does not, our cash flow finance guide sets the options side by side.