Thursday, April 19, 2007
Finally, at long, long last, I have a business update! My father finally produced the Infamouse Business Plan. As some of you may know, I wrote the basic outline in a matter of a few days. I also had a few different charts and spreadsheets showing the kinds of expenses I expected, lists of equipment I needed (and costs), projected payroll hours compared to business hours, etc. It took probaby about 2 weeks to compile it into something legible. Then my dad took it to 'finish it'.
I can't pretend that what I had done was good enough for any bank to look at and say, "Wow, let's give you some money!" And I can't even begin to pretend that I have the knowledge and skills to do what my dad came up with--the finished product is 74 pages long!! It's chock full of all sorts of accounting mumbo-jumbo stuff like profit/loss, sales projections, depreciation and amortization schedules blah blah blah... to call it thorough would be like calling the Taj Mahal 'a big building'. I can't complain about the finished product. What I'm complaining about is the extraordinary amount of time it took for him to finish it. I originally gave him my paperwork in OCTOBER. Granted, at that time, there were no spaces in the mall available, and as far as we knew, there wouldn't be any spaces for at least 6 months, probably more. So there was no rush. But it's clear that he did aboslutely nothing with it until December, when I called and informed him that a space was opening up. A month later, I still hadn't heard from him. Sometime in February, he started making timeline promises. Deadlines would come and go without somuchas a phone call. I was so stressed out I wanted to just fling myself into a well over all of it--if I had been paying him for this service, I would have fired him! Finally, last month, I emailed my sister and said, "What the HELL???", just venting. She said she knew, and that even my mother had been on his back about what was taking so long, but they couldn't figure out why he's been dragging his feet. A week later I got the rough draft.
So, yeeHAW! I have it in hand. And it's a Very Good Thing. But it was SO effing stressful getting to this point, it makes me worry about how the process of actually opening the store is going to effect me!
Anyway, I met today with my local advisor. He's a retired businessman who volunteers through a group associated with the Chamber of Commerce called SCORE. He ran a drug store for several decades, and his wife currently owns a small gift shop here in town. He was almost as giddy as a schoolgirl to see my business plan. I think it surprised him, actually, to see how professional and thorough it was. I think he was expecting a version more akin to the original one that I had done on my own. He wants to take it and go through it more closely over the weekend, and he'll be calling me to talk more about it next week. In the meantime, he said I should absolutely go ahead and meet with the bank to start talking about the SBA loan application.
Yes, one Major Obstacle down, LORD only knows how many more to go.
I am switching gears now--the Business Plan is behind me. Now I focus on the loan application. Unfortunately, this part is quite a bit more personal than the last task. Total strangers are going to pick me apart on paper and decide if they think I can succeed. I suppose the upside is, once I'm through this process, I know I can handle a mortgage application without getting locked up in the loony bin. My credit sucks. OK, it doesn't SUCK--it certainly could be much worse. But it's not great. Most of the problems are left-over fallout from the divorce and/or a marriage to a financially irresponsible drunk. The more recent problems are due to working part time and not getting child support regularly (which, shockingly, is actually the STATE'S fault, not Shitfoot's!). It's intimidating, because I have all this passion and drive behind me, and their decision will be completley dispassionate. They don't care how important this is to me. They don't care that I'd be happy if I can operate and only earn my modest salary, not making any additional profit to speak of. All they want to know is, will I continue to make the payments on the loan.
*sigh*
Hopefully I can get an appointment early next week and get it overwith. I'm getting nervous already.
In the meantime, I still haven't heard back from the mall leasing agent, who originally asked for my business plan MONTHS ago. I emailed it to him last week, and got an auto-reply saying he was out of the office for the week. I expected to hear back from him this week, but here it is Thursday and still no word. So once again, I have to start harrassing him again. He sent a 'lease proposal' outlining all the costs involved for rent, and it was just a giant steaming load of horse poop. I won't go into all the details, because it makes most people go cross-eyed trying to keep it straight, but here's the gist: the ballpark figure he gave me when we were talking about it in general terms was about $6,000/month. With his proposal for this new space, the rent starts at 5,500/month, but has so many added fees (tax, insurance, maintenance, advertising), it jumps to $8400. Nice try, jackass. Plus he doesn't want to pay for or compensate me in any way for the cost of installing public restrooms. Not cheap. And not something I can remove if/when I want to leave. I was warned by another contact that I shouldn't pay for ANY improvements to HIS property, and if I couldn't carry it out, it was his job to pay for it. So it all comes down to one thing: How badly does he want a coffee shop in his mall? It's clear that Starbucks isn't interested in being in the mall itself because there are no spots where a drive-thru is possible. If other fast-food joints were interested, they'd be there already. The space we're talking about is too small for most clothing retailers, so even non-food options are pretty limited for him. They closed the food court, so the only food retailer in the mall right now is the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I really think he NEEDS my business there. I think I've got some leverage to get a better lease than the one he proposed back in January. But me and confrontation are not exactly buddies. The very idea of me negotiationg my own lease here makes me want to puke. UNCLE! UNCLE!!! What the hell do I do NOW??
I can't pretend that what I had done was good enough for any bank to look at and say, "Wow, let's give you some money!" And I can't even begin to pretend that I have the knowledge and skills to do what my dad came up with--the finished product is 74 pages long!! It's chock full of all sorts of accounting mumbo-jumbo stuff like profit/loss, sales projections, depreciation and amortization schedules blah blah blah... to call it thorough would be like calling the Taj Mahal 'a big building'. I can't complain about the finished product. What I'm complaining about is the extraordinary amount of time it took for him to finish it. I originally gave him my paperwork in OCTOBER. Granted, at that time, there were no spaces in the mall available, and as far as we knew, there wouldn't be any spaces for at least 6 months, probably more. So there was no rush. But it's clear that he did aboslutely nothing with it until December, when I called and informed him that a space was opening up. A month later, I still hadn't heard from him. Sometime in February, he started making timeline promises. Deadlines would come and go without somuchas a phone call. I was so stressed out I wanted to just fling myself into a well over all of it--if I had been paying him for this service, I would have fired him! Finally, last month, I emailed my sister and said, "What the HELL???", just venting. She said she knew, and that even my mother had been on his back about what was taking so long, but they couldn't figure out why he's been dragging his feet. A week later I got the rough draft.
So, yeeHAW! I have it in hand. And it's a Very Good Thing. But it was SO effing stressful getting to this point, it makes me worry about how the process of actually opening the store is going to effect me!
Anyway, I met today with my local advisor. He's a retired businessman who volunteers through a group associated with the Chamber of Commerce called SCORE. He ran a drug store for several decades, and his wife currently owns a small gift shop here in town. He was almost as giddy as a schoolgirl to see my business plan. I think it surprised him, actually, to see how professional and thorough it was. I think he was expecting a version more akin to the original one that I had done on my own. He wants to take it and go through it more closely over the weekend, and he'll be calling me to talk more about it next week. In the meantime, he said I should absolutely go ahead and meet with the bank to start talking about the SBA loan application.
Yes, one Major Obstacle down, LORD only knows how many more to go.
I am switching gears now--the Business Plan is behind me. Now I focus on the loan application. Unfortunately, this part is quite a bit more personal than the last task. Total strangers are going to pick me apart on paper and decide if they think I can succeed. I suppose the upside is, once I'm through this process, I know I can handle a mortgage application without getting locked up in the loony bin. My credit sucks. OK, it doesn't SUCK--it certainly could be much worse. But it's not great. Most of the problems are left-over fallout from the divorce and/or a marriage to a financially irresponsible drunk. The more recent problems are due to working part time and not getting child support regularly (which, shockingly, is actually the STATE'S fault, not Shitfoot's!). It's intimidating, because I have all this passion and drive behind me, and their decision will be completley dispassionate. They don't care how important this is to me. They don't care that I'd be happy if I can operate and only earn my modest salary, not making any additional profit to speak of. All they want to know is, will I continue to make the payments on the loan.
*sigh*
Hopefully I can get an appointment early next week and get it overwith. I'm getting nervous already.
In the meantime, I still haven't heard back from the mall leasing agent, who originally asked for my business plan MONTHS ago. I emailed it to him last week, and got an auto-reply saying he was out of the office for the week. I expected to hear back from him this week, but here it is Thursday and still no word. So once again, I have to start harrassing him again. He sent a 'lease proposal' outlining all the costs involved for rent, and it was just a giant steaming load of horse poop. I won't go into all the details, because it makes most people go cross-eyed trying to keep it straight, but here's the gist: the ballpark figure he gave me when we were talking about it in general terms was about $6,000/month. With his proposal for this new space, the rent starts at 5,500/month, but has so many added fees (tax, insurance, maintenance, advertising), it jumps to $8400. Nice try, jackass. Plus he doesn't want to pay for or compensate me in any way for the cost of installing public restrooms. Not cheap. And not something I can remove if/when I want to leave. I was warned by another contact that I shouldn't pay for ANY improvements to HIS property, and if I couldn't carry it out, it was his job to pay for it. So it all comes down to one thing: How badly does he want a coffee shop in his mall? It's clear that Starbucks isn't interested in being in the mall itself because there are no spots where a drive-thru is possible. If other fast-food joints were interested, they'd be there already. The space we're talking about is too small for most clothing retailers, so even non-food options are pretty limited for him. They closed the food court, so the only food retailer in the mall right now is the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. I really think he NEEDS my business there. I think I've got some leverage to get a better lease than the one he proposed back in January. But me and confrontation are not exactly buddies. The very idea of me negotiationg my own lease here makes me want to puke. UNCLE! UNCLE!!! What the hell do I do NOW??
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