case study

In the second quarter of 2020, our landlord offered to us the opportunity to buy our restaurant building on Front Street in Natchitoches, Louisiana. It had always been our dream to own real estate on Front Street, but the timing could not have been worse: COVID-19 was wreaking havoc on our business. We told our landlord about our financial condition, and he told us that he would have Charles “Chuck” Carpenter come look over our books and give everyone his take on whether or not we could buy our building.

We must admit, we didn’t think it was possible for us to even dream about buying the building, let alone actually pull it off – our business was on death’s door, we had maxed out our credit cards to keep it afloat, and we had credit scores in the lower 550s. Chuck looked over our financials and amazingly said that it was possible to buy the building, but that it would take time to financially restructure our business and personal finances in order to make that happen.

Chuck bird-dogged financially restructuring our finances for over a year, in difficult circumstances. Our business was restored to profitability, then Chuck sleuthed new government programs to enhance our financial position. Eventually, our cash flow was strong enough to payoff all of our credit cards, enable us to refinance our house and then, finally, we had the cash and financial ratios to buy out our landlord. In the span of a year, we went from having very poor credit to having perfect 850 credit scores. Chuck even recommended a new beer for us to sell out customers that was a giant hit.

Chuck didn’t just financially restructure our personal and business finances though. Chuck was almost our all around advisor. Chuck answered questions that no one else would answer for us in the wee hours of the night – on the spot. Chuck gave us the questions that we should have been asking other people in order to keep them honest. Chuck didn’t just correct bad situations, he instituted new methods of preventative maintenance to keep us from making the same mistakes again.