Would you get a loan to acquire top talent?
If you’re a start up or a small business with serious growth goals, you need top talent. If you’re like many early stage businesses, you’re also tight on cash. Given your reserves may be low or cut into your ability to grow other parts of your business, you may not be able to pay top talent what they make with more established companies.
In some cases (and perhaps maybe in more cases than not) you may not even be able to pay talent a fair market rate. This just sucks. So as any entrepreneur would do, you get creative. You sell talent on the opportunity for working with you based on all of the softer, yet equally important benefits: Culture. The joy of spending days with people they like. Meaningful and fulfilling work. Flexibility. Unlimited vacation. You may even have equity to give (assuming that is worth anything). But you may not want to give up ownership, or it may not be something the talent views valuable.
So what do you do? In many cases you just don’t get the best people for the job. Again, this sucks. As a result, your business may not grow at the pace it could or evolve in the ways it should because you lack the BEST people to help you do so. People are everything. This is irrefutable.
But what if you could get access to cash to attract and pay top talent what they’re worth, and then some?
What I’m talking about is the idea of talent loans. Money today for your small business or startup to acquire top talent with customized payback terms.
Doing so requires creating an equation whereby you’re able to calculate your company’s Talent ROI.
What value does a person bring to your business? What is the monetary worth of that person? How will their value be measured relative to your business growth goals?
ROI on top talent may be worth the investment — and so why not treat that capital investment like any other function of your startup or small business? Why not get a loan?
Walk through this scenario with me…
Imagine you’ve identified top talent that’s a fit with your culture and the only sticking point with them is comp. At this point, would you consider capital infusion? What if a loan provider specialized in two thing:
- Assessing your organization to design a customized talent ROI equation
- Providing cash with payback terms that fairly match the estimated time it takes for your talent to impact your ROI
Talent loans. Would you do it? Does this already exist as a standalone offer? Maybe it does. I don’t know. I’m curious if startups or small business leaders would take advantage of this. Let me know your thoughts.
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