Zero To A Hundred – Episode 19: Smart Funding Strategies For Business Growth With Mark Kane!

Hey Accelerators! 🚀 Ready to unlock the secrets of smart funding for your business?

In this episode, we’re joined by Mark Kane, founder and CEO of Sunwise Capital, who’s scaled his online lending platform to $18 million in revenue. Mark dives into merchant cash advances vs. term loans and reveals how to choose the right financing for your business growth.

Don’t miss his insider tips on navigating loan options and avoiding common pitfalls!

What’s on the Menu:

💼 Merchant cash advances vs. term loans: Which is right for you?

📈 How to optimize funding to fuel sustainable business growth.

🔎 Red flags to watch for when seeking financing.

Why Tune In?

Mark shares over 20 years of expertise in business finance, explaining how to make smart lending decisions that benefit—not harm—your business. If you’re looking for growth capital, this episode has the insights you need to succeed!

💬 Gem from Mark:

“Smart funding isn’t just about securing money—it’s about making the money work for your business.”

Get in Touch with Mark:

📧 Visit SunwiseCapital.com for more financing solutions and insights.

Don’t miss out—hit that subscribe button and let’s take your business from zero to a hundred! 💥

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Smart Funding Strategies For Business Growth With Mark Kane!

Welcome to another episode of Zero to a Hundred. I am very excited to introduce our guest who is the founder and CEO of Sunwise Capital. Mark Kane has an illustrious twenty-year career in business finance, and he has scaled an online lending platform to $18 million in revenue. This guy knows how to do lending and get you what you need as a business owner. We’re going to cover some cool topics such as merchant cash advances, how to do them right, and working with the right people so that they don’t end up harming you. They end up helping you grow your business, term loans, and how to go through the underwriting process to make sure you get approved and you get approved quickly.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jarrod Guy Randolph. I am the founder of BoxFi. We are the nation’s leading payment consultant, providing business growth solutions through payments, and working with businesses like yours. I’m super excited to share the relationships and network that I’ve built over my 25-year entrepreneurial career to help you grow your business and become more profitable. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s accelerate together.

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Mark Kane, thank you for joining us for Zero to a Hundred.

Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Merchant Cash Advances Vs. Term Loans

I’m very excited to have this conversation with you because I think it’s going to give a lot of value to our audience. I know it’s going to give a lot of value to our audience. We’re going to talk about different unique lending opportunities. Can you do me a favor and give the audience a synopsis of the two types of products that you typically work with that add value to merchants who have cashflow, selling the product, service, etc?

There are primarily two main products. The first is the term loan. The second would be the merchant cash advance. Those are probably the two primary types of loans. We will do others like SBA. We will do asset-based, but the vast majority, and probably well over 90%, fall in that arena of term or merchant cash.

Can you walk us through what the difference between term and merchant cash loans is?

The merchant cash advance, unfortunately over the years, has somewhat undeservedly gotten a bad reputation. I say somewhat undeservedly because there are lenders out there who are not so nice and will take advantage of that merchant’s feeling that they hand them over a barrel. The key to understanding is that the merchant cash advance is not a loan. That’s the first thing that you have to understand. From the business owner’s perspective, sometimes it’s a little bit challenging because they assume you’re giving them money, you must be lending me. It’s a loan. No, it’s a cash advance.

What we’re saying is we’re going to give you money today and you’re going to pay us from your cashflow of whatever you do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. There is not an interest rate, and this is the biggest differentiator. It is not an interest rate, it’s a factor rate. The challenge with that is that it’s natural for all of us to want to take that factor rate and call it an interest rate. That’s where the confusion comes because that’s when you have a factor rate that could be as low as 1.15.

It could be as high as I’ve seen outside of what we do, 1.6 or 1.65. Somebody will come back and say, “That’s 65%. That’s outrageous.” I would agree, possibly, and if we have time I can get into my story of when I first borrowed money, and it was not a merchant cash advance, and what the interest rate was, and how I framed that. However, so it is a factor rate. To keep it simple, if you borrowed $100,000, if that’s the amount that you borrowed, the factor rate let’s say will be 1.25. You’re going to repay $25,000 on the $100,000. That’s going to be withdrawn and has a fixed rate, depending on your cashflow.

That’s the advantage of the merchant cash advance. If I’m doing well and business is screaming, I’m going to have more taking out because I have more money coming in. The reverse though is what will save the merchant. Things have slowed down. Maybe it was bad weather. There are a number of things that could be going on that will cause the slowdown. Instead of that fixed amount, which the term loan is. For the term loan, the differentiator is it’s that same dollar amount, whether it’s weekly or monthly. The merchant cash advance will reflect the health or the cashflow of the business at the time.

A term loan is fairly simple. It’s going to be a set amount of time, 1 year, 2 years, 8 years, whatever the case may be. It’ll be a fixed dollar amount, regardless of how well the business is doing. If you’re running into some challenges and you have trouble paying, that could be a challenge. That’s probably the big differentiator for the business owner. Am I positive? My cashflow is consistent. Now we can see that on our side, but the question they have to ask themselves is, do I see fluctuating cashflow where it would be advantageous for me to have the payback slow down when things have slowed down versus when I’m stuck? I’ve got to make that $500 a week or $2,000 a week or a month payment, good or bad. Does that make sense?

That makes sense. I’m a business owner and I’m coming to you and I say, “I need a loan.” These are outside typically, and correct me if I’m wrong, a conventional bank loan. Let’s say I need a loan and I’m coming to you. How do I determine which one of those products, whether it’s a term loan or it’s a merchant cash advance, is right for my business?

It’s funny you say it’s outside of the bank’s purview. I happened to have had a call a few hours ago from a banker. We are looking to refer a business to us. We got into the nuance of the differentiation between the bank and what we do. A term loan is a term loan, period. We offer a term loan to understand. It is the same thing that you would get from a bank. Our rate could be slightly better. It could be slightly more. Our terms or the amount of time to repay may be better than the bank or not as good. I bring that up only because the banker made it clear that they don’t like every business.

That’s something that the business owner has to understand and somewhat appreciate. We always encourage, especially the clients that have been in business for a while, they have great credit, and they have a lot of revenue. The first question we’ll always ask is, “Why aren’t you going to the bank?” They have to understand that, ultimately, at least in theory, the bank should be the best for them. They’ll give us any number of reasons. We can get into some of those reasons.

What we do as a firm is we want to offer that business owner. We go in saying we want to underwrite this in such a way that we can offer them the most amount of money for the longest term at the best rate. That’s the mindset going in. When we start looking at some of the touch points, maybe it’s personal credit, maybe it’s business credit, maybe it’s time in business, or maybe it’s the industry, that starts altering or changing how we look at that business because it’s all based upon risk. If in theory there’s no risk, that person is going to get the largest loan based on revenue as well as the best terms and rates. That’s not always the case.

A lot of times, the business owners, and this happens more times than not, come to us and they’ll say, “We want a term loan,” or probably more often, I don’t want one of those MCA things. I don’t want that business cash advanced merchant, whatever you want to call it. It’s all the same. Doesn’t matter.” We respect that. After we do our underwriting, a lot of times, especially the ones that say, “I don’t want that,” that is the only thing that they qualify for. That is the only way they’re going to get money.

Part of the process is gently letting them know that this is their only choice. You don’t have to like it. You’re free to go and explore other companies or whatever you think you may qualify for but we’re pretty good at what we do. We’ve been doing it for a while and we pretty much know that no one’s going to talk to you, especially there are certain industries from time to time that we like and many other companies don’t like. It sounds like to me, in terms of making a decision between whether it’s a term loan or merchant cash advance, is what your profile is.

Here’s what happens. Here’s what we think makes sense. We get a little bit of commentary, pushback, or whatever you want to call it from the perspective of we respect it. Ultimately, when I talk to someone, I say, “You’re making a business decision. You have to be happy.” My job is to lend you money. That’s what I want to do. I want to lend money. I want to lend money to someone who says, “This is good. It makes a lot of sense for my business.” Ultimately, the type of loan you take matters less.

What matters more is the comfort that you have because we’re looking for that long-term relationship. I don’t want this to be a one-and-done. Sometimes it does happen, but I’m looking for somebody who, ten years later, is talking to us and discussing their need for additional capital. We do have clients who have borrowed 20 or 25 times from us and happen to be a well-heeled bankable client who only does merchant cash advances with us because of the speed. He knows what he’s going to do with the money. He’s in construction. He has to dig a hole. He doesn’t have time.

It’s not that it takes necessarily a lot of time. One of the other things that will change the scenario is the prospective client will say, “I have good credit.” “Yes, you have good credit.” “I have good revenue.” “Yes, you do have good revenue.” “Why am I not getting something better?” If you want to take a little bit more time, let’s talk about SBA and what that entails. Once they get what that entails, they have nightmares because this is exactly what the bank already spoke to them about because there’s not a lot of difference between non-SBA through the bank and SBA. The hurdles are the same.

I think it’s important that a business owner understands a few things. One is that Harvard did a major study on the process, and this was a few years ago. I don’t think anything has changed. If anything, it’s become a little bit more rigorous. They did this massive study on what steps business owners have to take when they’re looking for funding or financing through a traditional conventional bank. There are up to 28 different documents that business owners have to fill out or provide.

This is beyond the standard profit and loss, balance, and statements. It will now include every owner in the business. They want personal tax returns from every owner in the business. They want business tax returns. It’s got to be a minimum of two years. They want to see all the insurance documents. The list is 28 but that’s only part of the problem. It takes, according to Harvard, about 28 hours to do all that work to pull all this paperwork together. A lot of times, business owners don’t have an extra 28 hours.

Even if they’re working with accountants and bookkeepers, by the time that keeps going back and forth, I know simple things that I request from our accountants can take days or sometimes even weeks, depending on the time of the year. To top it off, you have to visit approximately three banks to get the deal done. That’s the rub right there. Here’s one of the challenges and one of the mistakes that a business owner makes is the frustration in any number, any bank, and the bank is not lending them money for whatever reason. It’s irrelevant.

The frustration is I’m going to go to the bank next door or down the street. When you talk to that banker and say, “I’m doing business at the bank of whatever and I’m thinking of moving to you, but I need money, can you help me?” The banker says, “Absolutely, of course. All you have to do is move everything over here and of course, we can help you.” That’s usually not the case.

This is the conversation that I had today. Banks get paid with money under management. They’re not getting paid per se because they’re lending money. That’s a different division. Now we have that abbreviated discussion. We don’t necessarily get into this detail because you asked which way you’re going to go. That’s why the bankable clients that we have said, “I’d rather go with this other product,” which we’re going to call the MCA.

Calculating ROI

Let’s talk about if you’re in that position as a business owner, how do you calculate that return of getting those very quick funds versus the cost of those?

Every business is a little different and hopefully, the business owner has an understanding of their ROI or their return on investment. One of the questions that I’ll get into, and I’ll say, depending on the size, but we’ll keep it simple. This is the conversation that I have with the business owner. If I’ll give you $100,000 today, what will it be worth? What’s your margins? What’s your profit? Most businesses come somewhere in between the 20% to 30% margin. Some are more. I have clients that are at 50% and 60% margins.

I have clients that are in the single digits, but that’s only part of the equation in my mind. I’m not an accountant and I don’t profess to be one. If it’s a little bit more than the business owner can handle, we say, “Talk to your accountant.” Most of them don’t need that conversation. They know and they have a sense of their number. You’re going to borrow $100,000 and let’s say the factor rate is 0.25, so you’re going to pay back $125,000 on the $100,000. Now the first $100,000, that’s the money that we’re giving you. You’re paying that back no matter what. I don’t care what you want to call it.

You borrow $100,000, you pay it back $100,000. The $25,000 becomes now the question. The way we frame it, and I think we do a fair job, is that $25,000, and I’m most successful, this is why we have those clients that keep coming back 2 or 3 times year after year. The $25,000 is an expense. That’s your cost of funds. The question is, your margins are 25%. In theory, I give you $100,000, it cost you $25,000, and you just broke even. That made no sense at all. Let me ask you this. How quickly do you turn over your money?

In other words, if I give you the money today, when will you have turned the money? What we find is a lot of businesses in a quarter have inventory within three months, and have sold all the inventory. Now this is a one-year term. Technically, you are making payments, but let’s put that aside. We’ve already established that you can afford it because if we’re offering you the $100,000, we’re saying you have breathing room.

This is not the last dollar in your account. We want to make sure that we see your fluctuations you can afford it. You take the $100,000, you make $125,000. Technically you can now take that $125,000 three months later and do the same thing again. You can do that four times a year. Now you’ve made $100,000 on $100,000. You owe me $25,000. You made $75,000. We do invest $25,000 to make $75,000.

This is interesting. What you’re saying, if you’re looking at a merchant cash advance, if you’re borrowing $100,000 and you have to pay back $125,000 and you have a twelve-month term, you can turn that $100,000 multiple times and you pay them $25,000 a year. For a business that has multiple turns of capital, that $25,000 that they’re paying for the $100,000 could get them an additional $100,000. They’re still paying $25,000 to make $75,000 and they have no other way of doing it. That sounds like a good deal to me.

I’m sure you have someone in the audience who’s going to take exception to how it’s framed. When I started, I borrowed $5 million way back. It was because I couldn’t go to the bank, I did whatever for a whole host of reasons. It was very expensive money. It worked because my ROI was so high that it was from a hedge fund. It was very expensive but my ROI, and I understood that going in, and the hedge fund knew that too.

They were comfortable saying, “This is what we’re charging you.” I was comfortable saying, “I’m comfortable paying it,” because I knew how quickly we were going to turn the money. That’s the key. For the business owner, that’s uncertain, hasn’t worked through the numbers, was too generous in their projections, felt like I know that if I refurbish my restaurant at another 25% seating, I’m going to generate an additional X amount of revenue.

It so happens that they run into freaky weather, whatever the case may be, something in the economy gyrates and they underestimate it or they overestimate it, depending on how they’re looking at it. That’s where the challenges come in or you have business owners that don’t have a good grasp on it. We’re fully transparent. We go through everything. It’s down to the pennies. They don’t have the grasp that they need to say, “This makes sense.”

Good Vs Bad Terms

Talk to me, now that we’re having this conversation because I think it’s an important conversation. My experience and understanding of merchant cash advances have been quite predatory. I think it’s because there are bad players in the market who take advantage of business owners and don’t go in with a plan and don’t explain to them what you’re explaining right now, which is a huge value add. Talk to me about what bad terms look like and what good terms look like.

That’s hard to define because I could say if your rate is over X, that factor rate is greater than, that’s bad. That’s unfair because I don’t know the risk per se. I guess first, does that make sense? Generically, that’s a little bit challenging. I certainly would love to answer it, but I don’t know if your credit is 490, but you have a good business or your credit is 720, then maybe the business isn’t as good, but you’ve been in business longer. There are so many factors that come into play, so many variables.

Here’s where I take exception. If you want to say what’s a little bit unscrupulous, a little bit backhanded, I’m not going to say anything that a lot of people don’t know like, “Oh my God.” On the other hand, it does bother me as a human and dealing with other business owners. I’m empathetic. I know what it feels like and I know what it feels like to have someone take advantage of you. Here’s what happens, and this is what’s bad.

Again, it’s a flag. It’s not black and white, but it’s like when you go to the beach. There are different colored flags. I’m okay sometimes with the yellow flag. I don’t like the purple flag. The purple flag means there are creatures in the water that could bite you. Here’s what happens. There are different scenarios. Let’s say I make $1 million a year. For whatever reason, the lender that you went with says, “We’re only going to give you $20,000.” Realistically, they probably could have afforded $100,000. For whatever reason, maybe the business owner takes $20,000 because, in his mind, that’s all I need right now. All of a sudden, the project blows up in a good way and they realize they need more money.

That original lender, odds are they will not go back to the well. Now the business owner is forced to go to another lender and he will take a second position. There is a certain limit. Let’s say it’s about $100,000. That should be it. The business and the business owner need to beware, and we see this too often and it does pain us because I’ve seen great businesses get ruined. You’ll have individuals out there who will make promises that they cannot keep. Here’s what I mean. The business owner says, “I want a line of credit.” It’s what everybody wants. Why?

That is the broad-based generic term for line of credit. The individual that they’re talking to will say, “I can get you a line of credit, but before we do that, I need you to do this. This is going to set up so we get you that line of credit that you’re looking for.” The setup is I’m going to get you this merchant cash advance. On the pretense that right behind it is this line of credit.

Big line of credit. I heard that before.

Line of credit, let’s say it’s APR 15%, 20% which is different than a factor rate of 1.45, 1.55. Again, the pretense is if you take out this merchant cash advance, you’re going to get this line of credit. What ultimately happens is that the individual who sold the deal disappears. Why? They’re driven by a commission. We all get paid in one manner, shape, or form in the business. I always joke, and you can probably tell them no longer 25 years old. When we talk to them, where we let them know that you’re not going to be bombarded by individuals who are trying to make the biggest commission possible. They don’t have a commitment to the business. They’re in for a fast buck.

That’s where the business owner gets in trouble because sometimes they don’t know. My gut tells me you can tell the difference in a phone conversation between someone who is looking out for you and taking the time, keeping it calm, not getting excited, and with no pressure at all that you have to do it now. If they’re calling you 5, 6, or 8 times a day, which happens if you’re getting flooded with their emails and texts trying to get you to take action. That’s not to say that a legitimate lender won’t put a timeframe. It’s not unusual, let’s say at the end of the month, that you’re trying to get X amount of money out on the street. That’s what lenders do.

What the business owner should be experiencing is not the pressure to take the deal, but here’s a better deal for you. In other words, “It’s the end of the month. I’m trying to hit some internal numbers. Here’s what we can do. I’ll discount it. I’ll try to shave something off to make it better for you. Not worse for you, but better for you if you can do it by Friday because Friday is the end of the month.” That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. In my opinion, the individual who’s calling the business owner 5, 7, 10 times a day, yelling at them to take the funds. I think a lot of times, they don’t have the wherewithal to say no. and hang up.

I want to make sure that I’m hearing this clearly because I think this is important for the audience turning into this. When you’re seeking the merchant cash advance, you want to make sure that you are working with a credible lender who is on your side. They’re finding out about your business. They’re giving you the appropriate time. If they’re pressuring you to buy now, sign now, time is about to expire, and most likely they don’t have your best interest in mind. They’re not somebody who’s going to be looking out for you beyond that transaction. It’s that coupled with they’re telling you they’re bundling two loans together. Another thing you need to watch out for is when a merchant cash provider is telling you that they’re going to bundle the MCC, as well as a line of credit. That’s typically something to be wary of.

For sure. I’ve been doing this for fourteen years. We have never bundled anything. What we may do is, “Here’s what we’d like to see, Jarrod. I would like to see you do this. Let’s take another look in 30 or 60 days to make sure you feel good.” You now are telling me, “Mark, I need more funds. It was not enough. This thing is better than I thought from my perspective as a business owner and I could use an additional,” whatever the case may be. Most legitimate lenders don’t want to see owners borrowing like today and then another loan tomorrow.

That is such a red flag, but you’ll have the players out there that don’t care. Why? It’s no different than applying for credit cards. You know that I applied for a credit card today. Unless you say I’m approved. If I send out another application to another credit card company tomorrow or next week, I can almost guarantee you, that not only will they say no, they’re going to flag you because the velocity is too great. You should not be applying.

In other words, they’re going to say, “Are you going out of business? Are you using personal credit cards? Are you struggling? Are you not going to go into bankruptcy and all you’re trying to do is a money grab and get as many credit cards as possible?” It’s very likely and it’s no different for us. We do see it. There is fraud and there are those that work in cahoots with somebody else to get as much money, do the grab and go. That’s unfortunately to the demise of some decent businesses.

It makes sense if you think about it. This isn’t a loan on a piece of property. It’s not like you’re going to have a first and a second mortgage because there’s no tangible asset. You’re lending against, whether it’s this term loan or it’s the MCC, you’re lending against the cashflow of the business. If somebody’s telling you that they can stack loans, what are they stacking loans on? It doesn’t make sense that somebody can come out and give you that merchant cash advance and then provide a line of credit fifteen days later. I can understand the reassessment that you’re talking about. That makes sense because we get through one, see if that works, and then we could potentially get what you want.

We know. Again, we have that million-dollar business. For whatever reason, ultimately, we’re saying, “We’ll start you with $50,000 but we know that they’re good.” It could have been a hundred. There is room. That’s a little different than me thinking short-term saying, “I can make a lot of money if I do 2 or 3 loans simultaneously. There are a lot of unscrupulous guys. To the audience, if they’re getting the sense that the transactions are not a single transaction, but multiple transactions, and they all have to be done on the same day, you have somebody who’s doing a hit-and-run.

Potential Term Loan

That is a public service announcement for the audience to be wary if that’s the type of character that you’re talking about. These are the types of things that the audience wants to hear because they come here to get that vital information that’s going to help protect their business or other businesses and create more profitability. Let’s switch gears a little bit and talk a bit about what you do when looking at a potential term loan for a business and how you would underwrite something like a term loan.

The underwriting process is the same. It’s an algorithm. For the most part, it’s all computerized, but that’s nothing new. Back in 2005, I had a consumer loan portfolio. I was putting money out. To put it in perspective, we would look at consumer loans and business loans. Consumer loans are easier because I have to look at the person and not the business as well. To put it in perspective, we were getting 10,000 applications a day and our decision as to go or not go was within three seconds.

When you’re asking the question about the process, there is this process where some level of decision-making can be done quickly. Typically, a lender will have what is more commonly known as a waterfall. Every lender is different because every lender has something that’s more or less important versus another lender. What happens is as it goes down the waterfall, it’s either let’s say yes or no at the beginning. There’s no maybe. There’s no nuance. There’s no story to be heard. It’s yes or no. You’ve been in business for three months. You’ve got a 500-credit score. You have no business credit, pretty much no.

That’s pretty much no. That is a big no.

Now, some lenders will work in the MCA space with a company that’s three months old. The credit is irrelevant because as you mentioned, these are unsecured. There’s no PG attached per se. There’s no asset attached per se. They’ve got lousy credit, they’ve been in business for three months, and they only have to do a minimal amount of cash revenue, as long as they’re doing $3,000 a month. There are a lot of guys and gals out there that have side hustles that do better than that, as opposed to what we would consider to be, not that the side hustles are not legitimate, but we would think of them in terms of traditional business.

Everybody starts somewhere. With that, a lot of the underwriting process is the same until it gets to more of the decisions. Now, we’re seeing strong personal credit, 700 plus, strong business credit, paying their bills on time, and five years in business. The 3 to 5 years is one of the big break points. Two years or less certainly is a high risk. One year, six months, you’d have to be crushing it for us to do anything if you’ve been in business for six months and looking for funding. It happens. Now we want to look at tax returns.

This is where it goes from the automation to the manual because now we’re looking at perhaps a balance sheet. We’re looking at a P&L, depending on the type of term loan. Do you need to be profitable? Yes and no. How much was the profit? We do want to see a certain number. That’s where a more nuanced approach where an underwriter is massaging numbers. Now with that, the merchant cash advance pretty much is an automated process. It’s pretty straightforward.

That’s how we can fund somebody within hours. You come in the morning, we’ve approved you, we’ve gone through the whole process, you’ve been approved, you’re getting funded today. Let’s say at 5:00, the money is wired into your account. The whole approval process period is four hours. Term loan, not so much. Term loans are going to take more time because we’re going to look at paper and we’re going to do it. Now, on top of all of that, there is sometimes a story that’s compelling that is not showing up in the application or the paperwork.

There’s something more that needs to be discussed. You have to get a better understanding of why this happened. What were the circumstances? It could be good, could be bad, it doesn’t matter. Is there something compelling to it? Depending on the relationship, I’ll ask them, “Have you ever watched Shark Tank?” It’s the people that have somewhat of a compelling story that grabs the Shark’s attention. You’re asking for money, show me your business. If I’m going to a committee and the committee wants to know why we are giving this person a quarter million dollars, they see a piece of paper or a computer printout of the score, what’s behind it?

What is going on? I didn’t realize you got a patent on something that you’ve been working on for ten years and this puts you in a position to now sell fruit to Walmart or Target or whatever the case may be. Not a much friendlier scale. “Now we get it. That makes sense.” You didn’t know there was a local law that changed that enabled you to build something that you were previously able to do at the speed at which you’re doing it. Makes sense. Good story. It could be on the flip side, I’m owed a lot of money. That’s why I look so terrible. I’m owed a lot.

Walmart isn’t paying me very quickly. That for sure happens. Walmart doesn’t care. They’ll hold your funds for 90 days if you’re lucky. I’ve heard some horror stories when you were dealing with these big boxes. There were a lot of circumstances. That’s something I want to know. Yes, I see. You’ve sent me your contract with Walmart. Yes, I see that they owe you $4 million. I’m pretty confident Walmart is not going out of business. I’m glad you shared that with me.

That’s now the difference in terms of digging it a little deeper. We’re still able to do it in four hours. It’s not going to be in 24 hours. It could take 2 or 3 business days, so maybe 2 to 4 business days, and then funding after. It could be five business days, which ultimately is a week. These are typically more substantial funds as well. That business owner is a little bit more, I don’t want to say sophisticated, but an understanding of the process. We’re still beating the pants off the speed of the banks.

You are.

It’s a process. From our vantage point, speaking in terms of how we think about that client, philosophically, we started off early by saying, “We want to be able to set up the initial experience.” First, we’re building a long-term relationship. From there, what we want to be able to do is give you when you return more money at better rates and better terms. I got to know you. We have a track record together. I see how you drive. I see how you do whatever it is that you do. More importantly, you’ve made every payment without any hassle.

Your business has grown and that’s the key. It’s very easy and we’ve gotten enough clients where maybe they were doing half a million dollars a year in revenue. They started with a modest loan, maybe $40,000 or $50,000. Over the years, they have taken that capital and they’ve grown it to $7 million, $8 million, $9 million. They know that they can pretty much be hassle-free when they come. That’s the whole thing. It’s like they’re not stressed because they sent me the last three months of business bank statements and I’ll get you the money tomorrow.

Industries

You’ve given us some clear ideas on how to qualify yourself as a business owner, whether it’s for the MCC or it’s for a term loan. What I would love to know from you is our last question before we go to our rapid-fire section. What type of industries do you work with typically? I’m assuming you can work with almost anything under the sun, but what do you typically work with?

Pretty much anything under the sun. There’s a tremendous number, and it’s easier sometimes to say, “We don’t do this or don’t do that.” Haven’t done the medical marijuana. I know some lenders are out there. We don’t do any of the adult stuff that’s out there. I don’t know of anybody who does, but I’ll leave it alone at that so no one gets upset. We love construction. That was something that we happened to honestly fall into at the very beginning and we got clients, a lot of construction clients and we did well.

I’m not going to say word got out because we’re not a household name, but we do a tremendous number of loans in that space. We love manufacturing and wholesale distribution. These are the more seasoned types of industry. Healthcare is very good and I’ll say retail and that could mean anything from the restaurant to the local tavern to a store. What we look at are those that are a little bit more established because in retail, you just have to drive up and down the street and you see a lot of empty space out there so there’s a lot of risk in retail.

There are a lot of good businesses. That’s how they thrive. I have a cousin who manufactures women’s coats. Years ago, we had a conversation and I told him what we were doing. He said, “If it wasn’t for factoring, we would never survive.” There’s not one of my competitors that won’t tell you the same thing. Certain industries know. They’re not going to the bank. They don’t understand the business.

Rapid-Fire Questions

That makes sense. Mark, we’re going to jump into the rapid-fire section before we sign up.

Is this where I get to choose between door number 1, 2, or 3 or supplies?

The red pill or the blue pill? Here’s your first question. Coffee or tea?

Coffee.

If there were a zombie apocalypse and you had to leave your home and protect your family, what would be your weapon of choice?

I guess the shotgun.

What would be one of the number one business books that you would recommend that our audience reads?

The title of the book is All You Can Do Is All You Can Do But All You Can Do Is Enough. It was an interesting story of the person who wrote it. The point is that if you have the passion and the drive, you’re doing enough, keep at it. It was a great lesson.

Dead or alive, if you had a chance to have dinner with anyone in the world.

Ted Armstrong.

If you were a small business owner and you were doing $10 million in sales a year, I walk through your door and hand you a $300,000 check. How would you suggest that that business owner invests that $300,000 to double their profits in the next twelve months?

I would focus on that. Where’s my highest margin and say, “Can I double, triple, quadruple that product or service in the marketplace.” The answer is probably yes.

Last question. What was the biggest obstacle that you had to overcome in your career to get to where you are today?

I think it’s what’s between years. It’s the self-imposed limits that sometimes you put on yourself. Those limits are false positives. The biggest story that I tell is the baby elephant that’s chained to the post. That chain remains the same size as the elephant grows. The elephant thinks because as a baby, it cannot go beyond the chain, but as a two-ton beast, it could sneeze and break it. Mentally, it believes it’s still chained to that post, self-imposed limit.

Episode Wrap-up

I love it. I love that you overcame that. Mark, I love that you are our guest. So much valuable information that you shared with us. Mark Kane, please tell everyone where they can reach you if they have questions, comments, or complaints.

SunwiseCapital.com. You can reach me directly at 561-560-7736, or you can send an email to Mark@SunwiseCapital.com. I welcome anybody and everybody. I’ll do the best I can.

Mark, thank you for joining us on Zero to a Hundred.

Important Links

• Sunwise Capital
• Mark Kane – LinkedIn
• All You Can Do Is All You Can Do But All You Can Do Is Enough

About Mark Kane

Mark J. Kane, Founder and CEO of Sunwise Capital, brings over 16 years of business financing expertise. Originally a psychologist, he transitioned to a major Wall Street firm before founding multiple ventures, including bootstrapping a startup with $5K to $18M in revenue within months. Driven by a commitment to empower business owners, he established Sunwise Capital to deliver strategic financial solutions that fuel growth and long-term success.