Creative Financing You Never Knew Was Possible

Most brand owners think a slow quarter or a tight month means they need more cash. Often it means the opposite. The real problem is timing, structure, or how the business is set up to absorb growth, not the size of the bank balance.

That is the core idea Benjie Nunn, CEO and Founder of CreditHub, brings to this conversation with host Michael Maher. Fintech has exploded over the last few years, but the people behind every funding application are still just people trying to solve a real problem: how do you grow a brand when demand outpaces cash flow, and how do you know when capital will help versus hurt?

Why "Cash Flow Problems" Are Often Something Else

Brands love to blame the market when margins get tight. Michael Maher pushed on this directly, pointing out that a founder paying themselves $25,000 a month while complaining about cash flow is not experiencing a market problem. It is a structure problem. Nunn agreed and took it further: sometimes the issue is not too little capital, it is too much, deployed without a plan.

"You want to seek out capital when you look the best."

— Benjie Nunn, CEO and Founder of CreditHub

That line reframes the whole conversation around financing. Lenders and investors respond to strength, not desperation. Waiting until a brand is out of options is the worst time to look for capital, because the terms will always be worse and the leverage will always favor the lender.

The New Cleats Problem

Nunn's sharpest analogy compares an overcapitalized young brand to a Little League kid with brand new cleats, a brand new glove, and a brand new uniform who has never actually played a game. Confidence without experience is fragile. Brands that raise or borrow too much too early often spend it on the wrong things because they have not yet learned what actually moves their business.

"It's great to have a big budget. But if you don't know where it's going, or if you can't quantify the KPIs on when it comes back, then you're really in trouble because now you don't know why it's not working."

— Benjie Nunn, CEO and Founder of CreditHub

The fix is not avoiding capital. It is learning to operate lean first, so that when capital does arrive, the brand already knows where every dollar needs to go.

Inventory Financing and the Real Cost of Shipping Delays

A large part of the conversation centers on inventory financing and factoring, tools most brand owners have never used. Nunn explained that purchase orders and invoices can be financed directly, often up to 95 percent of their value, without relying purely on personal or business credit scores. That matters more than ever with global shipping delays stretching lead times and tying up cash on the water.

Maher connected this to what he sees every day running an Amazon agency: brands that generate real demand but cannot keep inventory in stock long enough to capture it. A three-week lead time that becomes six weeks does not just cost sales, it costs the payroll and overhead that keep running while product sits in a container.

What This Means for Brands

• Diagnose the real problem before assuming you need more money. Sometimes the fix is operating leaner, not raising capital.
• Apply for financing when your numbers look strong, not when you are desperate. Lenders price risk, and desperation reads as risk.
• Look into purchase order and invoice factoring before assuming a traditional bank loan is your only option.
• Match your financing structure to your industry. Generic small business loans rarely fit specialized categories like ecommerce or real estate.
• Build a plan for debt service and a path back to profitability before you take on financing, not after.

Experience Is the Real Collateral

Nunn's own path to founding CreditHub came from personal experience with credit challenges and a gap he could not find filled anywhere else: a platform built for the entrepreneur who does not yet know what to call the solution they need. Maher shared a similar story about running his business on cash after his own credit setbacks. Both agreed those setbacks were not detours, they were the education that made the eventual business sharper.

"A lot of companies have done well just by staying in long enough to find out what their competitive advantage ended up becoming."

— Benjie Nunn, CEO and Founder of CreditHub

That patience, paired with the right financing at the right moment, is what separates brands that scale from brands that stall out waiting for a cash infusion that was never really the answer.

Watch the full episode for the rest of Michael Maher and Benjie Nunn's conversation on fintech, inventory strategy, and what it really takes to get a growing brand financed the right way.