My brother and I were talking about opening an HVAC company.
We had been working as HVAC technicians for the last ten years, and our local HVAC company owner was retiring and closing down.
We were sure that if we talked to the owner, we could come to some kind of agreement and buy him out, instead of it closing and leaving the local customers in the lurch. While I did all the negotiations, my brother went to classes given by the local Chamber of Commerce, for small business owners. He learned about taxes, how to approach the bank, and what information we needed. We had to work up a five-year plan that included our marketing plans, website development and hiring plans. There had to be an inventory list and so many other things that my mind was boggled. He said that having an established company would make things easier, but it would be best to get a new name and establish it as ours. Once we had all the information, we went to the bank. While talking to the HVAC company owner, he said he had never set up a website for the business, and wondered if that was why the company hadn’t grown. He offered to sell us the company, and the price was doable for us. We had everything we needed except a working website, but I knew how to handle that. I called an internet marketing company that my brother found, and it had an HVAC specialist. I couldn’t ask for much more than that. Within the first year, thanks to the online marketing company, our business had almost doubled, and we were off to a good start.