Question
Where do you enter the loan to buy the business, that gets immediately paid to the old owner. I am trying to show the principle repayment and interest costs in my plan.
Putting it in the long term loan, it shows as being in the company and the interst was not enough for the first year [...]

Question
What does an investor look for in a return on their money? This type of investment is for land in the mountains of Georgia along with building a cabin on it to sell.
Answer
Put yourself in the investor’s place. What would you want if you invested. Imagine you have extra money that you can [...]

Question
How can I determine the market penetration opportunity available in a category?
Answer
The key word in this question is opportunity, which makes this a critical question, for which there are no formulas, no magic answers. Market penetration is one thing, but market penetration opportunity is a far more important and deeper concept.
Determining market penetration is conceptually [...]

Question
Recently my department store is going down hill. We are losing medium- and high-class customers.
How can I bring back my medium-class customer?
Answer
The fact of the matter is this is not really a complicated issue. Of course, being on the outside looking in, it is probably easier for me than you to make my simple [...]

Question
When writing a business plan-how many copies do I usually need to prepare?
Do I need to make some kind of contract agreement with clients who are looking to invest in my business when showing them my business plan-to protect my ideas and planning organization?
Answer
Prepare as many copies as you intend to distribute and keep track [...]

Question
I want to combine several industries into one complete, total business center for teachers.
The business will sell office, school and educational supplies, offer training (computer, seminars and workshops) to teachers (college students studying to become teachers), general computer training, general computer repair and upgrading, and also have an online store where they purchase supplies.
There is [...]

Question
I am trying to decide between two shop locations. I live in a medium-sized city, approx 450,000 people. My business is retail leather goods (purses/wallets/belts/hats).
The first location is about a third bigger than what I need to start, but could grow into it. It is next door to a News Shop (Mags/Lotto/postal) and a medium-sized [...]

Question
My husband and I are looking into opening a gym in our area. My husband was a CNC programmer, but he injured his back and is now unable to continue working in that field.
We have $200,000 in liquid cash but we really have no experience in the gym industry.
I am now working on our business [...]

Question
The town in which I live (population about 10,000) currently has only one bakery.
About a year ago there were three in town. One being one my husband’s grandfather had established about 50 years ago and sold to someone outside the family about 20 years ago.
This had been the most successful bakery in town until they [...]

Question
I am in charge of developing a call center for the Hilton Head Island area. It is mainly a tourist spot, I will be creating packages such as golf and accomodations packages.
Could you give me advise as the information I must obtain to do this? I just don’t want to leave anything out.
Answer
I would develop [...]