Money, but miserable

Yesterday, I told you about how I got pushed off the cliff into business ownership.

And how a high quality customer list saved me from going splat.

But of course, there’s more to the story.

And it’s probably a story you’ve heard before.

“Innocent, starry-eyed newbie finds some success, then begins to compromise his values and self-destruct.”

You see, early on, we made some decisions about how we’d run the business.

Decisions that seemed like good ideas at the time…

For example, we chose not to keep any retained earnings in the business.

This means each month, we took in revenue, paid expenses, then withdrew all of the profits according to our ownership stakes.

Every month.

Every month, the business was starting from zero.

Every month, we each had no idea how much we were personally taking home.

Sometimes it was a LOT.

Other times, it was nothing. Zero.

As a result, each one of us was highly motivated to maximize profits each month, because our own livelihoods depended on it.

This led to very short-term thinking about every decision that we faced.

Our procurement guy underspent.

Our sales guy overpromised.

And I was the chump in charge of fulfillment. It was my responsibility to keep our Big Promises using scarce resources.

So let me ask you, if you haven’t been paid in 2 months, and your checking account is running slim…

…And you’re faced with a deadline to ship a product that isn’t quite 100%…

…Maybe it’s at 85%?…Still a B…

Do you ship it? Hope for the best? Kick the can?

Because if you don’t, you may not make payroll.

And there’s a strong possibility your mortgage check bounces next month.

Let me tell you, I settled for more B’s than I’d care to admit.

And by some miracle, it worked out 85% of the time.

But the other 15% was killing me.

I was miserable.

Did not like myself much.

Needed to find a way out.

The exit ended up being messy. There are some details I cannot share, even years later.

But tomorrow I’ll tell you what I can, and all the good that came of it.

See you then,

Greg