Listen and subscribe to Financial Freestyle with Ross Mac on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.," Ross Mac is joined by Joy Butts, vice president and senior business consultant at JPMorgan Chase & Co., as she shares her career journey and some tips for small businesses.
When it comes to getting capital, Butts notes that,"first of all, you need to know how much you need and what it's going to be used for... It's understanding how much you need, what you're going to use it for, and how you're going to get the return." Butts explains that"if you have a solid plan as to what it is that you're going to do, and you can articulate that within a business plan or with that banker that you have a relationship with, that is key.
And so from the moment I stepped foot in the bank and I had my interview, I was like, wow, these people are some people that I can really do life with because most of your time is spent um at work, right? And from there, it was like, you know what I think there's so much more that I could do and an opportunity to give back.And I said I raised my hand.And so just with the success that I've had and some of the relationships that I fostered, there were some people that said, hey, you need to look over here at joy and consider her for this opportunity because it was very small, right?
And so having someone there to walk alongside you to ease the pain and knowing that you're not alone within the journey is so important.You know, sometimes businesses think that I can't get the money I need or I need money in order for my business to survive. You need an accountant, you need an attorney, but you also need some other people to support that journey as well, right?And so that would be, I think one of the major things that I see a couple of other things that I see is just a lack of understanding and it's not because of intelligence, but it's just that intellectual capital not being exposed to certain things, you know, studying finance.But there's a lot of people that never studied that.
But as you're getting a good return on your investment, you're putting some of that money aside, not only just for savings for business expansion, not only just for retirement, which is extremely important, but also for maybe some other things.
And so now you're not shelling out $1000 2000, $3000 a month to somebody else, you're doing it yourself for maybe 20 $30 a month. And so one of the things that we saw throughout the pandemic with the PPP program is some people did not, they weren't able to get the funding just because their financial ducks weren't in a row.
To create, to help them, to create their books, to help them to get some legal support or something else that they might need. And so if you can handle your personal finances very well, you'll be able to handle your business finances very well or at least you should. And it's not because people around me weren't saying these things, but it's a whole different story and level of confidence when you feel it for yourself.