A few years ago, I spoke with an entrepreneur—let’s call him Tom, who had an amazing business model. He had a service that was in great demand, and his team did a phenomenal job of serving their customers. Their reviews were overwhelmingly positive and their customers tended to stick around far longer than the industry average.

On all accounts, this company was virtually destined for massive success. But there was one small problem—it was dwarfed by a competitor nearly twice its size that wasn’t as good, but was a marketing powerhouse with deep pockets.

Tom wasn’t afraid of competition though, and he had a campaign up his sleeve that he believed would help his company start to take market share from its giant, but underperforming competitor. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the capital to execute this campaign.

While discussing some funding options, Tom kept rebutting with business credit myths he believed,  which frankly, are held by a lot of smart entrepreneurs. He was convinced he couldn’t get business credit, and that even if he could, it would be difficult, time consuming, and costly.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to change his mind, and in the end, he never pursued funding because of the myths he believed. This meant he was not able to get the campaign he had planned up and running. His business grew steadily, but slowly, until it became large enough that the giant competitor I mentioned earlier took notice.

That competitor, seeing the threat Tom’s company would someday pose, took aggressive action to eliminate it from the industry. They launched a campaign to undercut Tom’s company at every opportunity, and even targeted his current customers.

The competitor’s size and capital made it easy to decimate Tom’s business, especially since he wasn’t able to fight back. Eventually, he was forced out of business and his customers were gobbled up by his competition.

But it didn’t have to go down this way.

Tom was so attached to these credit myths, which he and many other smart entrepreneurs today still believe, that he refused to even consider trying to get the funding he needed to execute his marketing campaign.

Had he done this, he could have gained significant market share, increased his company’s revenue, and built a stronger, more resilient, and defensible company. He could have prevented his company’s eventual demise.

I don’t want to see what happened to Tom happen to you, so in this article, I’m going to dispel some of the common business credit myths I hear every day, and explain how things really work.

My intent here is to give you information that will help you get the business credit you need to achieve your goals.

You don’t need personal guarantee

Everytime I hear this one, I want to scream—not just because it’s false, but more importantly, because it hurts people financially. I’ve talked to countless people who believed they could get business credit without a personal guarantee, so they put their goals on hold looking for something that doesn’t exist and missed out on tremendous opportunities in the process.

If you’ve spent any amount of time on social media over the last few years, you’ve almost certainly seen the posts pushing this myth. They’ll claim “all you need is a brand new EIN to land six-figures in funding,” which sounds great, but it’s also a fairy tale.

If you want business credit, you will have to provide a personal guarantee, which means even if your business goes belly up, you will be personally liable to repay the debt. And I really don’t think that’s such a bad thing, because it separates serious entrepreneurs from those who are just  “playing” business.

You need a seasoned business

On the other side of the same coin is the myth that your business needs to have a long history to acquire credit. The truth is you could open a brand new business today, and as long as you have good personal credit, you can still acquire business credit.

There’s some nuance here, though. While you absolutely can get credit with a brand new business, you typically can get a higher limit, and do so more quickly, if your business has had a track record of generating positive cashflow.

Business credit also reports to your personal credit

Business credit and personal credit are different in almost every way. This includes reporting, which means your business and personal credit reports are completely different.

To take it a step further, each are scored differently, so your business credit couldn’t be reported on your personal credit anyway. What I mean by that is with personal credit, you’ll have a higher score if you keep your balance under 30% of your limit, and even higher if you keep it under 10%. Business credit, on the other hand, requires you to use a far greater percentage of your limit—often 50% or more, to earn a higher score.

But the bottom line here is that business credit will not show up on your personal credit report.

*Note: when you first start applying for business credit, creditors will pull your personal credit report, and that pull will show up, but it will fall off again in two years per FCRA laws.

You need a certain amount of revenue

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a certain amount of revenue to obtain business credit. I’ve helped thousands of brand new companies get funding, and their lack of revenue was never a hindrance.

Your revenue will have an impact on how much credit you’re able to get though. But as your revenue grows, and you consistently utilize your credit, lenders will be more likely to increase your limits and may even do so without you asking.

Lenders will only give you credit if you don’t need it

Honestly, I understand the thought process behind this particular business credit myth because on the surface, it can seem like it’s supported by evidence. But it comes, in part, from the fact that a shocking number of Americans are not financially literate so they misinterpret what they see.

People with poor credit also tend to also earn a lower income and have fewer assets, so when they see people with a higher income and more assets seem to easily get credit, they make the assumption that it’s because they don’t need it. In reality, it’s because they’ve demonstrated that they can manage their credit better. (Hence their higher credit score.)

Lenders are in the business to make money, and they do that by lending to entities that are more likely to repay their debts. When you can demonstrate that—which starts with your personal credit, then later, your business credit, you will get more credit, more easily.

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Amanda Webster is the COO of Fund&Grow, which helps entrepreneurs get the business credit they need to run and scale their companies. She is recognized as one of the leading experts in the industry, and is regularly asked to speak on the topic on stage and in the media.