1. CapitalizingSmallBusiness
By Anne Marie Mowatt
It’s easy to see why NOWaccount
co-founder Lara Hodgson is so suc-
cessful. Equipped with a warm, gra-
cious Southern personality, one can
easily forget that they’re speaking to a
captain of industry,who also happens
to be an aerospace engineer,a Harvard
Business School grad, and a former
track-and-field star.
With an analytical mind and
people skills, Hodgson loves solving
“impossible” problems.
“I’m creative, but I don’t
dance,play an instrument,
or sing,” she says. “My
definition of creativity is
that I’m looking at the
same thing as everyone
else, but looking at it dif-
ferently.”
After starting a manu-
facturing business and
getting her first national
order,Hodgson came to a
realization. “I didn’t realize that ‘Net
30’doesn’t actually mean you get paid
in 30 days. It might be 45 to 60, if
you’re lucky.” Most small businesses
can’t wait that long to get paid and
their working capital is tied up.
Large commercial customers and
government entities can sometimes
take 90 days or more to pay. But
most small businesses can’t wait an
additional 15, 30, or 60 days. The
NOWaccount would help them get
paid right away.
A NOWaccount has a simple ap-
plication process and doesn’t require
three years of financial statements.
Once the partner business is accepted
into the program,the account advanc-
es its payments, charging
a small fee based on the
terms the business typi-
cally offers. If a business
bills Net 30, for example,
it would pay a 2.5 percent
transaction fee.
Interim financing is
not based on when (or
if ) the billed customer
pays; the NOWaccount
takes on the risk for the
customer paying the in-
voice. A NOWaccount is invisible to
the customer, too. When payments
are made to the business, it goes to a
lockbox that the NOWaccount con-
trols.The business is paid 90 percent
of the invoice value within a couple
of days. At the end of the term, the
business receives the remaining 10
percent minus the fee.It’s that simple.
Why hasn’t anyone thought of this
before?“Most innovation today comes
from the demand side of the problem,
not from the supply side,” Hodgson
says. “Many of the people who serve
small businesses haven’t actually been
Hodgson
Marching to
the Beat of a
Different Drum

2. there as a small business.”
Knowing how hard it is to start a
small business, however, she saw an
opportunity to help others succeed.
“What motivates me isn’t the job, the
salary, the car, the house,” Hodgson
says. “What matters to me is the
infinite positive impact I can help to
make on small businesses, and how
this will financially free them up to
exponentially grow. [It] equates to
about $1 trillion of working capital
that [gets] funded by the financial
institutions instead of the retailers.
“I’ve always been surrounded by
family members who care more about
helping others than about them-
selves,” she adds. “My parents have
always been involved in my life.Even
in sports,dad coached softball,and my
mom worked in the snack bar.”
Hodgson has always been involved
in traditionally male-dominated
fields, from sports to aerospace en-
gineering. “I never saw that as a bad
thing,”she says.“I always saw it as be-
ing a differentiator.I’ve never been in a
job that someone else has had before.”
Hodgson uses that pioneering spir-
it as a source of strength. “Whatever
you do, do it great,”she says, no mat-
ter what connotations people might
attach to a task. “If you come to our
offices, you might see me vacuuming,
or even picking up trash if it’s a Friday.
I never thought about how important
that [is to our staff]. But it is.”
While she’s a go-getter, Hodgson
is happiest doing absolutely nothing
at home in Atlanta with her husband
and 10-year-old son. She focuses on
experiences such as taking her family
to her family’s dude ranch in Arizona,
or continuing to develop innovative
financial solutions for small busi-
nesses. Her favorite quote is fitting:
“You can’t depend on your eyes when
your imagination is out of focus.”
Looking ahead, Hodgson wants
to continue to grow the NOWac-
count program, and help other busi-
nesses grow. “I want companies to
keep calling and saying they have
tripled their revenue [and] hired more
staff,” she says. She offers just one
piece of advice to fellow business
owners: “When someone tells you
that you can’t do something, you
should spend the rest of the day doing
it.” ◆
Anne Marie Mowatt is regional
businessdevelopmentmanagerforPrava
Construction
Services, Inc.
She has more
than 24 years
of experience
in managing
award-win-
n i n g, h i g h -
profile business/
workforce devel-
opment initiatives and directing various
not-for-profit business systems.
Reprinted with permission from the Winter 2016 issue of
Minority Business Entrepreneur
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