June 2011 Update

So, after frantically scratching around I managed to find the money to pay off the debt I was sued for, but I still have to find more money (a long long story).

I have managed to get my company closer to breaking even. Just a bit more cost cutting, allied to achieving our drastically reduced revenue targets and we should put ourselves in a position to break even/make a profit this year. If we do, perhaps I can finally look at paying myself a salary, which would be nice after 3 years of living off my savings.

Actually, on second thoughts, that's a nice daydream! I won't be able to pay myself a salary because it wouldn't feel right when I still owe money to friends and banks etc.. I'll have to put any surplus into reducing debt first and just hold tight for a while longer.

But, you know, Hope is a strange thing. It is a great gift. If I have hope that I can turn this around, thereby managing and hopefully reducing my debt levels, it would constitute an improvement in my general situation and that alone would be a great step forward.

If I achieve it, I'm going to give myself the nickname of the "Turnaround Guy". When I became the boss of the company I ran before, it was losing over €500,000 a year and was over €2 million in debt and when I left it was making over €2 million a year profits, had no debt and had literally millions in cash in the bank.

Now this business that I am currently running was losing over €750,000 in 2007 before I took it over and, fingers crossed etc., should break even this year 2011. However, I couldn't do it without the people that are working with me in the company. It's a small team but they have been very loyal and hardworking and I feel like I finally have the right person running Sales. Of course the other vital ingredient was my friends and family whose support has provided a great foundation from which to build.

Now, not to get too much ahead of myself, it's back to the grindstone to make all of this come true.

"and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep"

April 2011 Update

You have to laugh...............if you didn't you'd cry!

Someone I always thought would have my back and be there for me in thick and thin, has sued me for a debt I owe him. I was negotiating a payment plan and working hard to figure out how to pay him faster than the plan offered. Next thing, he rejected it and went straight to court. This is going to do wonders for my credit rating.

I guess I'd feel better about it if he wasn't the person who introduced me to the deal that created the debt in the first place, and persuaded me to get involved. Come to think of it he's also the guy who persuaded me to buy the company which has sucked up all of my cash, thus preventing me from discharging this debt...............TO HIM. There is an odd kind of logic at work here.

I think it was Mark Twain who said that "Big shots are just little shots who kept shooting". I wonder what happens to 'little shots' who keep shooting while the boat is sinking.! Maybe one should start swimming! It's a poor metaphor but it serves.

March 2011 Update 2

Did I say "one step forward - two steps back?"

Ye Gods. My departing Finance guy left me a little six figure present! A debt to the Taxman. And if I can't work something out fast, they'll shut the company down. Everything gone in one fell swoop.


The really tragic bit is that it was avoidable. They sent a letter to us and it went to the wrong address and someone there sent it back to them saying that there was no company of that name at that address, which was accurate but which they misinterpreted as they didn't know that it had been misdelivered! So they acted.

Oh Boy! Now what do I do?

March 2011 Update

So where are we? Well I managed to get some cash to pump into the company by securing a loan against the last asset I own - a tiny site in the back end of nowhere (left to me by my father). Unfortunately revenues are down year on year and the disparity has swallowed the capital injection I just made in under 2 months.

The other directors are now gone and I'm saving their salaries and other costs which are substantial enough for this tiny business to be very close to breaking even. I've restructured and not replaced certain people who thankfully left of their own accord. I may just be able to save the jobs of the remaining staff. The problem is that I'm doing 75% of the ex-Directors' jobs right now and possibly not very well, or not well enough (time will tell).

A quick and nasty summary of life right now is:

• one step forward,
• kick in the face,
• pick your self up,
• dust yourself off,
• realise that you are now two steps back and
• start trying to move forward again.

Woodrow Wilson was right. It's about perseverence. Not giving up. Not giving in. Damn fool stubbornness. And maybe when your back is to the wall it changes from being your worst to your finest hour in some indecipherable way I've yet to figure out. I certainly know that if I go down then I'll go down fighting. But we're a long way from that.

Maybe I'm deluding myself but I think that we may just be closer to success than I think. I've made some good decisions and the team that's left are good and loyal and hard-working and they have pride in our little business.

I'm learning too, about the corrosive quality of worry. If I allow anxiety and concern for negative outcomes of events and processes then I'm shooting myself in the foot. Worrying never fixed anything.

By just focusing on where I am, what I am doing and dealing with what is in front of me I can make myself impermeable to worry and crucially, to its negative impact on my efficacy.