Getting Refocused

This week has really flown by. Unfortunately I have gotten very little work done on the business plan, due to by inability to cost out our campground renovations. For some reason I couldn’t come up with prices, so I finally asked Shawn to take over. I’m not sure why it was giving me so much trouble, but I would spend 4 hours researching and have nothing to show for it.

Shawn is also firming up the new cabin quote as well as getting some questions answered, mostly through email. My big project right now is the marketing plan, which so far is taking too long… again, too much researching on my part. I’m just starting to get in a groove, so hopefully I’ll be able to see some results tomorrow

On Tuesday Shawn and I went to see the economic development team, which was a little disappointing.. The guy that went over the plan had absolutely nothing good to say about our venture. Shawn has dealt with this guy before, but I haven’t, so I was a little surprised at his overall negativity in our plan and our approach. The guy spent 2 hours criticizing why we would want to buy a business that loses money every year, attacking our investment requirements and my cash flow statement.

The guy reminded me a lot of a know-it-all school teacher. He was smart and knowledgeable, but often quoted generalized blanket statements as if there was no alternative. My favorite was when he said that banks won’t even think about lending us money, even though we know that the only bank we went to said they would try and help.
After that depressing meeting, Shawn and I went out for lunch and realized that there weren’t a whole lot of things to fix in our business plan.
We were told by economic development that we needed more budgeted for marketing, but we kept telling them that we hadn’t done marketing yet.

We were told that the cash flow statement was done incorrectly (which I guessed it would be since, I have never done one before), but the only thing he said was wrong with it was that I started the cash flow after we purchased the business instead of before. So, that will be a relatively easy fix.

The last thing he criticized us for, was our monthly expenses were pulled out of the air. I’m not sure why he thought that, but it is a good opportunity to go over all our expenses and really firm up the numbers. Most of the numbers are taken from the current owner’s income statement, so we can try and find cheaper quotes for things like insurance and banking fees to help the bottom line.

One thing I don’t understand in all this is that the lending institution won’t approve/pre-approve a loan until a purchase price has been agreed to. It seems odd to me that I have to pay a lawyer to negotiate a price, so that I have 30 days to change all my financials in my business plan to match that negotiated price, then submit my business plan to a bank and find out if they will actually approve/deny it.