In Doubt

Well, the last week has been pretty depressing. After scrambling to get all the requirements together for the submission for funding, we were sent a discouraging email from the funding institution.

The funding institution had a large number of “concerns” with our business plan. The amount of funding was too high and the personal investments were too low. Those were the two big issues and I guess I should have been more prepared for this, but over the phone we were told by this same company that they could fund quite a bit more than what we were asking for and they required less personal investment from us then what we were actually investing.

I can’t figure out why this funding institution, which is a government run program, would lead us on like this. Maybe they had nothing better to do, who knows. And calling our venture “high risk” … what business isn’t high risk in Northern Ontario? Honestly.

We are going to take a week off and see if we stumble upon something to make this work. Eventually we are going to have to let the current owners know. I feel bad for them because they did a lot of work as well, to get this deal going.

This campground has been in business for 50 years, so hopefully somebody comes forward to keep the campground going, even if it isn’t us.

Holding On

It was another interesting week. I've spent the last 10 days analyzing our financials to death. Shawn and I have tweaked just about every number on the cash flow at least once, as we try and come up with the most accurate report possible. I think we have a great plan with some ambitious goals set. Although after sleeping on it, I can already see a couple changes that should be made. The next step will be to transfer the numbers from the cash flow to the rest of the financials, business plan, marketing plan, operating plan, etc. Fun. I’m really wishing I had logged my hours working on this thing.

We also sent an email to the current owners with our offer to purchase. After requesting some more details on the offer, we haven’t heard from them. I’m hoping today we hear something. If they agree to our price, we’ll be able to submit our business plan to the financial institute, as well as find a lawyer to start writing up a more official agreement.

Apparently it can take the financial institution 6 weeks to approve/deny a loan, so I guess we will still have some waiting to do. If approved, we will then need to have the land surveyed, inspected and appraised. We will also have a few municipal questions to get answered to clarify their laws on fires and water systems. I would love to be in this place by the end of the year.