"You just can't beat the person who won't give up." - Babe Ruth

For many people, the American dream includes a cozy home with a manicured lawn, and our home loan system is merrily set up to make this dream a reality for quite a few people.

But for entrepreneurs dreaming of owning their own store, shop, or office location, the dream is a lot murkier. There are quite a few differences between residential mortgages and commercial real estate mortgages, and you need to be sure you fully understand what you're getting into before taking the plunge into commercial property financing.

Commercial Differences from Residential Loans
The United States has some of the best home loan options in the world. The most common loan type, which you're probably familiar with, is a 30-year, fixed-rate loan. These residential loans are readily available, have low interest rates, fairly low fees, and carry no prepayment penalties.

Commercial real estate mortgages tend to be the polar opposite.

Commercial mortgages tend to be much shorter time periods. Five to ten years is a typical loan term. The monthly payment is often calculated based on a 20- or 30-year time period, but the loan itself comes due much sooner. At that time, a balloon payment is required, which means that you must either have the cash to pay off the loan, or you must refinance it. Most business owners end up refinancing into a new loan.

But you don't want to refinance too soon. No, no. Unlike residential mortgages, commerc ... Read More…

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” - Margaret Thatcher

Whether your business is in full-on work-from-home mode, or your business is such that this is a totally foreign concept, the reality is that cybersecurity steps are something you absolutely need to address.

Your office computers, employee laptops and tablets, cloud services (which can be accessed remotely), and even company cell phones all have an insane amount of information on them that hackers would love to get their digital hands on. Along with customer credit card numbers and employee SSN’s and DOB’s, your digital records contain a wealth of valuable information. Even something as seemingly innocuous as customer estimates and invoices can look like hidden treasure to the world’s digital pirates.

Taking basic cybersecurity steps is cheap protection against potentially embarrassing and expensive data breaches.

If you do have employees working remotely, it’s your responsibility to protect customer and employee data. Just like the IRS sets minimum requirements for us to protect YOUR private information, you should also set minimum standards for cybersecurity in your own business.

A recent study by Shred-it (business document destruction company) stated that a whopping 96% of American consumers consider a business’s employees to be the largest risk factor for a data breach. So, how do you put your customers at ease, do the right thing, and help prevent data breaches and ensuing expensive l ... Read More…