All About the Benjamins...or Maybe Jacksons...er...Lincolns?

A few days ago, Tanya and I had a meeting with the bank. Between the three of us, this was our third meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to get us started with personal lines of credit. The three of us decided to bring to the company a total of $50,000, meaning we would each be personally responsible for our own investment. Because we are all fresh out of college with little to no credit history to speak of, we all had to hustle our family members for a cosign commitment. Everyday we're hustling. We will then transfer the funds into our business checking account and then spend it on pretty, shiny things...like a nice stainless steel Turbo Air Reach-In Refrigerator.

Another thing we discussed with Ronald, the small business banking specialist extraordinaire, was the issue of merchant services. The merchant services department handles businesses' credit card transactions and does such things as installs the 'terminal' which is the slot for swiping credit and debit cards. The fee is a flat rate at first and then after 6 months, merchant services will reassess our business in terms of the number of transactions we process a day and whether or not it merits a better rate, etc. And that's not all...because we have a Bank of America checking account and if we decide to subscribe to BOA's Merchant Services, there is next day funding -- which means, ladies and gents, that the transactions will come through the next day and, voila, there's our money. The truth be told, however, we have bigger fish to fry before we sign on to merchant services -- but the way we see it, it's better to be prepared for these things now.

So, "What big fish?" You ask. We need investors before we start talking about swiping the plastic-y goodness that are the debit cards of our sexy and beautiful customers...or those of their parents, in many cases. This week we will be talking to some nice people who will hopefully get pen-happy with their checkbooks. If all else fails, we take to Plan B - sell stuff on eBay.