Blog | Entrepreneurship

How To Secure Funding

If you feel down—but you’re determined to avoid being out—take stock of your teachers, they hold the key to success

Over the last few months, I’ve taken you on the journey Lisa and I took to create our rehabilitation and addiction center. I shared with you how we stumbled on the genesis for the idea, our failure to create a solid business plan, all the way up to our current point in the story, securing start up capital.

When we last left off, my father had introduced me to a friend of his, Arvis, who he believed could help.

If you recall, I didn’t do a great job of impressing him and left empty handed. I returned home and after much reflection, realized Arvis was right. We weren’t prepared. All the huffing and puffing and blaming I was doing wasn’t going to change that fact.

A few days later, after I had cooled off, I asked asked my dad if he could arrange another meeting with Arvis. It was going to take a month and half to schedule a meeting with him which gave us ample time to work on our business plan.

To keep the momentum in our favor, we looked at more properties for our treatment center to help keep us focused. We looked outside of Las Vegas into Colorado and Utah. Both seemed promising.

With our sites on Utah (after looking at roughly 150 properties, and walking through at least 20 of them) we set our eyes on a bed and breakfast in Salt Lake City. The owners were looking to sell it as is. It was an ideal turnkey property for us. Even without the money in hand, we made an offer.

That is when we learned one of the most important lessons I want to share with you. See, when you’re trying to raise capital for something like a treatment center, it’s far easier to secure funding when you have something tangible attached to the loan.

By securing our property, we had real estate attached to our business. It was no longer a pie-in-the-sky dream on paper. We now had a location to hold business.

There was something else the property brought with it: pressure. We were now under the gun to raise capital more quickly.

Now we knew exactly how much money we needed, the purchase price, and a location to insert into our business plan. Unlike a month and a half ago, we were very confident to meet with Arvis.

We had dinner and, like last time, didn’t get off to the great start I was hoping for.

After settling for soup instead of the catch of the day, and biding time with small talk, Arvis said… he’ll think about it.

If there was one thing I learned up to this point it was to not push my luck.

So, we went our separate ways. It was only after a few weeks when I followed up with my dad. No word from Arvis. Then, nearly two weeks after our meeting, my dad reported that, unfortunately, Arvis declined our request.

My dad, showing his concern, asked us again if this is really something we wanted. Yes, we did. Hearing the update from my dad was heartbreaking. We knew this was what we wanted to do with our lives.

My dad was very direct with his next statement, “It’s just, well, that plan is really bad.”

Great. Now we have a property we can’t afford, for a business we didn’t have.

We had no choice but to forge ahead. After all, we had nowhere else to go.

We worked on the plan some more, consulted expert resources, read more Rich Dad resources, and sealed every hole in the plan we could find.

My dad agreed to call Arvis for another shot, only this time, Lisa was going to join us.

Again, we met at Arvis’ kitchen table in his mobile home. He began by asking us why we want to start it.

Unlike before, Arvis seemed genuinely interested. We didn’t give him a sales pitch. We spoke from the heart. We told him how we have first hand experience with the pains and fears of addiction and how we were able to get through it.

When we finished, he looked us both in the eyes and said, “I can see now why you want to start this business. You’re stubborn. You didn’t give up when I repeatedly declined your plan. And in business, people are going to beat you up and knock you down. You didn’t give up. And you must keep coming back. That’s what it takes to be successful. Because of that, I’ll loan you the money. I’m in.”

And after months and months of let downs, missed opportunities and absolute failings, we had secured our $1.5 million. We locked up the property and were in the game.

That is what happens when you seek great teachers and follow their leadership.

If you want to read more about our story, grab a copy of our book The Social Capitalist.