Stage Two of the Business Credit Success Guide
How to Build Small Business Credit with No Personal Guarantee

Step 2 ~ Don’t Lie on Applications

The one constant in your journey to build small business credit is you will become very familiar with business credit applications and later in this guide we will share the right and wrong ways to complete the application.  The application stage also provides you, the small business owner, with the best chance to lie in order to make your business look better on paper.  Included in the previous disclaimer is language regarding fraudulent activities and we feel it deserves a deeper explanation and what it means to you, the business credit seeker.

The simple definition of the term “fraud” is to knowlingly provide false information.  As you start the process of building small business credit you will start to see that many applications, especially the higher tier business credit issuers, have extremely high business sales/revenue requirements in order for approval with no personal guarantee, which is likely higher than that of your small business. It is tempting to provide incorrect numbers to give your small business a better chance at approval or to get a little higher credit limit.  Although most of the time you won’t be required to submit documentation to setup the account there is always an opening for the business credit issuer to come back and verify the information you provided on the application. If you are unable to provide documentation or you can only prove a fraction of the numbers represented, you leave the door open for a formal investigation and possible felony fraud charges.

We decided to detail this topic not to alarm you, rather to empower you to make the right decisions.  The good news is it is our experience, and the experience of our members, that business credit issuers list the higher numbers to deter a small business owner from applying if they aren’t qualified.  If you meet the minumum levels described with each business credit issuer later in this guide there is typically not a problem.  Do the work of building a solid business credit file and the massive amounts of business credit and unsecured financing will follow, all without a personal guarantee.