Billy Bishop was a pilot until a back injury took him out of the cockpit and back to his roots as an electrical contractor. Bishop launched a residential electrical services company — Top Flight Electric — with a partner-investor, who challenged him to write a business plan good enough to snag a loan. Only problem: Bishop knew nothing about how to run a business, let alone write a plan. A friend referred him to the FSBDC at USF. Working with consultants on a weekly basis, Bishop was able to lay out a plan and gain enough confidence in the process to go it alone. Bishop applied for a $150,000 loan and got it. “I don’t even know how to put into words how much they [the FSBDC consultants] helped me,” he says. “When you’re a struggling new entrepreneur, you don’t have the answers and you don’t know where to go for them because the people who have the answers are your competition. FSBDC wanted to help me … I can’t thank them enough for everything they’ve done.”
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