A martin.builds product
Know where you stand before you apply.
Most owners find out they don’t qualify after they’ve already applied. A loan isn’t declined because your business is bad — it’s scored against a fixed set of criteria you were never shown. Leverage shows you where you stand first.
The reframe
You think it’s a conversation. It’s a scorecard.
Walk into a conventional bank loan application believing a great business speaks for itself, and you’ll get a surprise. For most small-business loans, your application is scored against a model in minutes. It isn’t listening for “I have a great business.” It’s measuring specific numbers — and if you don’t know which ones, you find out by getting declined.
What owners bring
- A growth story and a great year
- Top-line revenue numbers
- Passion and a plan
- “Trust me, it works.”
What the model measures
- Cash flow coverage of the new payments
- The Five C’s, scored one by one
- Documented, provable capacity
- Ratios, not enthusiasm
Same meeting. Two different languages.
The framework
Banks evaluate five things. Owners obsess over the wrong one.
Underwriting comes down to the “Five C’s.” Four set the context. One decides most applications — and it’s the one owners understand least.
Character
Your track record and credit history — do you pay what you owe, on time?
Capacity Matters most
Can your cash flow cover the new debt payments? The number that decides most applications — and the one owners get wrong most.
Capital
How much of your own money is in the business. Skin in the game.
Collateral
What backs the loan if things go sideways — assets the lender can recover.
Conditions
The loan’s purpose and the wider economic climate — partly outside your control.
The number that decides it
The one ratio owners never see coming.
That ratio is your DSCR — Debt Service Coverage Ratio. At 1.25×, every $1 of loan payments is backed by $1.25 of cash the business actually generates. And “cash flow” here isn’t your revenue, and it isn’t your net income. It’s EBIDA — earnings before interest, depreciation, and amortization — the cash truly available to service debt. Owners quote revenue. Banks compute EBIDA.
Straight talk
Leverage tells you where you stand. That’s it.
Leverage is not a lender, and it will not get you approved. It doesn’t submit anything to anyone. It shows you — before you apply — how your numbers line up against the criteria banks actually use, so you walk in informed instead of hopeful. Knowing the score isn’t the same as changing it. But you can’t improve a number you’ve never seen.
Book a session
Find out where you stand.
Leverage’s automated read is in build. Until it’s live, you can set up a session with me directly — we’ll walk through how your cash flow stacks up against what banks actually measure, before you ever apply. Leave your email and I’ll reach out to find a time. Nothing to upload today — just a conversation to start.
I’ll email you to schedule. No spam, no documents.
I’ll email you to set up a time — nothing to do until then.