"I came in looking for a loan. I left with a three-year plan and the capital to execute it." - Marcus, CEO of Caldwell
In 2023, Brasfort was generating $500,000 a month in residential renovation work, with ambitions that reached far beyond that. Their first conversation with us started with an SBA loan request. It was straightforward enough, until the conversation moved from the immediate need to the longer path ahead. The meeting ended with something far more useful than a one-off loan: a capital strategy built around a three-year trajectory, with a five-year horizon already in view.
The Situation
Brasfort operated across residential renovation, roofing, windows, and home additions—a full-service contractor with consistent demand and a clear sense of what they wanted to focus on in the long term.
Ground-up construction and development was the target. Getting there required a capital foundation built for that kind of transition, and a partner at their side who could see the whole road, not just the next turn.
The Challenge
An SBA loan made sense for where they wanted to take the company. The cost of capital, the structure, and the terms all had to align with a business building toward something larger. But like most small businesses pursuing SBA financing, Brasfort didn’t yet meet the profitability threshold required for approval.
The denial was more than a financing obstacle; it’s a moment where the gap between where the business felt it was and what lenders were willing to see felt personal. There’s a particular frustration in building something solid and having it not register the way you know it should. But ultimately, the SBA process doesn’t measure ambition or discipline — it measures documented profitability. Brasfort’s financial profile needed time to catch up.
Their dedicated Financial Business Advisor didn't open with how much the business could get now. Instead he asked what the capital needed to accomplish today, and where Brasfort wanted to be in twelve months.
For an owner who had just come up against the limits of what traditional lenders were willing to see, that question landed differently. Most conversations at this stage start with what the business has. This one started with where the business was going. The immediate answer was working capital: payroll, production, and the operational stability to keep active projects on track. The longer objective was building a financial profile that would support an SBA approval by year’s end. Those were two different goals, and the funding structure needed to serve both.
A $500,000 Cash Flow Financing facility was the right fit. With consistent demand and reliable revenue, the business had the history that Cash Flow Financing is built to recognize. Structured to hand off cleanly to SBA down the road, it gave Brasfort room to operate and the time to show what its margins were capable of.
The capital went to work immediately: payroll, production, and the active project pipeline that kept revenue climbing toward $600,000 a month.
More importantly, it bought time. Time for margins to strengthen, for profitability to become documentable, and for the business to build the financial track record that senior lenders require.
By year’s end, Brasfort had their SBA loan. The blended cost of capital came down. And the owner who had walked into that first meeting hoping to solve a liquidity problem walked out of the year with something worth more than the original ask: a business that had earned SBA financing and was just getting started.
Why This Works
At this stage of Brasfort’s growth, sequencing was everything. Their cash flow was strong enough to support a first round of financing, and that first round was strong enough to build the profile that unlocked senior financing by year’s end.
An advisor willing to look twelve months ahead—and structure capital around that timeline—is what made the difference between a one-time loan and the beginning of a multi-year growth strategy.
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