I have an experiment Id like you to try. No waitI TRIPLE DOG DARE you to try. Go to your gatekeeper or other top employee on payday and instead of giving them a paycheck, give them an invoice for monies due. Outline their pay stub on the invoice and give them 30 day terms. Then duck.

They wont accept that from you, but you accept that from your customers. Why? Thats how business is done. In the meantime you have to make payroll, pay your vendors and continue working. That can be pretty tough to do with nothing but a bunch of IOUs from your customers.

There is a 4,000 year old industry that specializes in giving you money for those invoices. Its called factoring and it is a billion dollar industry. Each year millions of companies sell their invoices to a factor and enjoy the constant flow of cash they have coming in each time they invoice their clients. Do you recognize these namesHome Depot and Coca-Cola? Both these conglomerates factor their invoices. Take a look at the fine print in your Home Depot bill. You will notice you are actually paying CitiBank. If the big guys do it, why shouldnt you?

How does it work?

Lets say you bill client XYZ for $10,000. You send both them and your factor the invoice. Your factor gives you $8,000 in 24 hours. In a perfect world, XYZ will pay in 30 days. So lets assume thats the case here. The factor will receive the payment for $10,000, recover the $8,000 already advanced, take out their fees, lets say $300 and you get the remaining $1,700. So over the life of the invoice, youve received $9,700 and you paid $300 to get your money faster. Not a bad dealespecially for a growing company like yours.

Finally there is a way to get peace of mind and grow your business.