Bart, you say you have been in teh sign business before. So why can't you develop the figures based on income generated in the past? Volume of sales, profit, number of customers etc. ALl this goes into the equation. If you have hard figures, and the receipts or invoices to prove it, that is much more useful to a lender in determinning your ability to repay the loan. To just throw out numbers with no industry stats, or your own personal documented sales receipts, they will consider it all to be vapor ware. In reality if you cannot pull this together, you either are not being honest with yourself or you are setting yourself up for a great fall. I agree with one commenter, owning a CNC machine is not a guarantee. I'd be real interested in your ability to run it, show me you have customer orders for your services etc. THAT is much mre important than a spread sheet with fake numbers. If you are profitable doing it befor, then show me how the purchase of a CNC will improve your bottom line and production. Use the old numbers as a baseline, then build on that and sell a story based on real hard facts.