Let’s say that you ran into an investor that wanted to know more, so how much do you have prepared as far as budgets, pitch decks, business plans, branding, strategy, menus, market research, websites, drawings, 3D-renderings, supplier relationships, and so on?

Especially if this is your first time doing a business like this investors will know that you won’t be aware about all the problems and details that you have to deal with until you actually get to having to deal with them. Meaning that experience in the business in combination with wanting to do it yourself won’t be enough. They want to see that you’ve done all that you can, have solved all the problems that have been hiding in the details, and that their money would go straight to actually opening the business according to plans. They don’t want to pay for you to spend perhaps a year learning how to do a business like this, they want to invest in someone that’s ready to just do the business.

Can you simply go “I’ll send you the material” if an investor want to know more, or will you risk burning that bridge by looking like someone that just wants to excitedly talk about their grand ideas (like starting a chain without even proving the concept first)?

Investors want to invest, but you have to be prepared to be invested in, and that takes a lot of work to prove unless you’re already a successful serial entrepreneur.

So are you ready to actually be talking to investors right now? And if not, what would you need to get ready (that isn’t money)? What type of help or support would you need?