It turns out, there is a lot more business and a lot less alchemy in a business project than I thought, as Joe discarded most of my preliminary work, focusing on the aspects I thought were least relevant.
But since he was pointing at the same things as Grandpa, I guess businesspeople don't understand alchemy.
I scouted the region, looking at the locations I had noted on the cadastral map, noting things like water rights (very important for any manufacturing) and closeness to roads (ditto). I made cost estimates for everything, wrote projected production, cash flows, pointed benefits of the much simpler permit process.
I even set up another meeting with Mr. Graham, which went surprisingly well.
"So at least that part wasn't vastly exaggerated," Joe said, once we went out of his office.
