HATTIE: Here's a bolt of lighting. To do business with bankers, learn to speak their language.

Tim Hennessey's Ekkwill has grown to be the world's largest producer and shipper of fresh water tropical fish distributing approximately 120 tons of livestock by air cargo every month.

TIM HENNESSEY: We paid off all our creditors.

HATTIE: The shrimp business.

TIM: The shrimp business. Right, and we put together a bunch of business plans and proposals to different venture capital companies and different investors and that type of thing. A lot of them -- I'm talking 12, 15 over some period of time. At this time Sherry and I were living in a parking lot up in Tampa. Our joint income that year was under $2400. What we were able to do, again we're pretty broke and we really didn't have any assets either, is put together a series of notes. We found a fish farm that was an old tropical fish farm. It wasn't very big but it had a good earnings record and it was a good small business for this one guy. But this time we had done lots of business plans and lots of proposals and we had experience in the aquatic farming industry. We knew how to raise some kinds of fish. So, we were able to put down. He wanted 20% down and owner finance the rest. Pretty standard deal. So the trouble is how to come up with a 20% down.

HATTIE: Yeah, when you're living in a parking lot. What banker's going to give you a loan when you're living in a parking lot.

TIM: And then there's working capital too it takes to get things going. So we're able to put together a series of 3 debt instruments, 3 notes that were secured by assets that came along with the farm that we had not purchased yet. So with a stroke of a pen we actually catered all these debt instruments at the same time and we were able to buy the farm with no cash. So we literally started the business with $5.

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Like Tim, Frank Jao, founder of Bridgecreek Development learned how to create the documentation the bankers need. To find a sample of the type of document the banker wanted him to prepare, Frank actually searched the bank's dumpster one night. He found one that had been approved, plugged in his own numbers and projections, and he got the loan. So you owned the land.

FRANK JAO: Right.

HATTIE: That's all you had though.

FRANK: Right. Right – even buying the land, I would still need a loan. Because $350,000 doesn't buy the land.

HATTIE: It wasn't enough. Okay - so what did you do?

FRANK: I approach a bank anyway. The bank basically told me that there isn't enough ingredients here that they can give me a loan of 3 million dollars.

HATTIE: So that is what you wanted? You wanted 3 million?

FRANK: Well that is what it takes to build.

HATTIE: That is what it took then – it takes more now – but that is what it took then.

FRANK: So I have to ask, 'Give me your list -- Give me your requirement list and I will go back and fulfill it. In one of the lists would be a feasibility study and a loan package. I found out that a feasibility study at that time – we could bring in a consultant to do them and pay them. So that solved the problem. Then we need to put a loan package together. A loan package normally being charged by the loan broker – back in those days – for a considerable amount of money. And I wasn't ready to do that and I couldn't even afford that. So I have to figure out a way that I have to do the loan package myself.

HATTIE: So how long did it take you then to go back to that same banker who told you no and say 'Okay, here's my stuff.'

FRANK: About three weeks in total.

HATTIE: Three weeks. So now you have been in this country for five years, six years and you have just gotten a 3 million dollar loan.

FRANK: That was the first loan I ever had -- at the time. And it was just amazing - I couldn't believe it.