<prompt> Human: So the fiancèe and I have been discussing starting a business for about... 3 years now. Ive been thinking about it for a bit longer but then I met her and shes all sorts of involved.I recently finished my engineering degree and am working as an engineer, I love the field, and Ive got a ton of debt. Thankfully Im pretty good at math so personal financing is pretty smooth so far.This may not be the correct subreddit for this, but where would I go to learn about starting something up? Or saving up for it? Or would I just take out a loan from the bank, team up with someone who knows all the lawstaxesrules about hiring people and legally being paid. Under the table, easy, but.. I dont know the legal loopholes I have to jump through to make this legit.The end goal is to have one owning company that runs a bunch of small mompop companies that arent in the same markets, and will have a hella safety net by being a part of a group.I know what kinds of places I want to open, and where theyll be located.But um... Where do I start? The bank? The local courthouse? Google? And how should I save up for this? Or just take out another loan?  <response>: Google Starting a business. Plenty of free guides out there. Call up you local chamber of commerce, at least in every city Ive lived in they offer free monthly courses in what steps it takes to become an entrepreneur. The end goal is to have one owning company that runs a bunch of small mompop companies that arent in the same markets, and will have a hella safety net by being a part of a group.FWIW, thats actually a pretty poor plan. I spent many years in management consulting and worked with some medium sized clients like it sounds you are trying to become and so Ive seen a LOT of people who succeed and a lot who fail in that world. The secret to success in small and medium business is to find a formula that works, then replicate it as many times as you can. It lets you accurately forecast costs and revenues, it allows you economies of scale when purchasing, you get flexibility in labor costs, and when you come up with a new productservice it is instantly scalable to every location you have. Even conglomerates tend to stick in the same industry, for just this very reasonFor example, say you owned a restaurant, a gas station, and a daycare three of the most popular small businesses. Youre thinking, Hey, Im diversified, thats great right? But when you go to buy new dishs for the resteraunt, and new sheets for the daycare, and new sodas for the gas station, you are dealing with three different suppliers, and not getting a quantity discount on any of them. Then the manager of your restaurant quits, and you need to find someone new right away or the restaurant isnt running, and daycare and gas station employees dont know how to run a restaurant. Then you see a new restaurant for sale in the area of your daycare, but you no idea what the market for restaurants is in that area, just daycares. And on and on Now imagine instead you own 3 restaurants. You need dishes for them, you can source all of them from a single distributor, and you get 15 discount due to the volume of the order. A rack breaks in your first restaurant and all the dishes break, no problem, truck some over from the other two places. The manager quits in the first restaurant, no problem, you pick your best asst manager from the other 2, congrats you are promoted to managing my other restaurant. A new location opens up, and you already know the resteraunt market in the area, so you can decide if its a god investment. the advantages go on and on, but to cut to the point, you want to pick one business, develop a business model that works, and the do that model over and over and over again in as many locations as possible. THATS how the successful empires are built. Theres a reason chains exist. Cause its a proven successful business model 