One of the reasons I chose to go into disaster restoration was that the business was essentially actuarial in nature. If you walk into any insurance company's office, they can tell you, with some precision, how many claims they'll be paying out in the next year. There are always disasters happening to people's homes.
Granted, the slow economy has hurt us in ways that may not be obvious. For instance, if you have unemployed friends and relatives with construction skills, you might choose to have them restore your home, instead of a professional restoration company, like mine.
Still, overall, some percentage of people will need help. I figured no matter what, there'd probably always be some business for me to do.
Trouble is, the business doesn't come in a nice, steady stream. Sometimes we're so busy we are literally having difficulty keeping up. If you walk into our office that day with an impressive resume, we might literally hire you on the spot.
Other times, things are dead slow. We have been that way for the past 3 weeks. Dead slow, as in plans to cut everybody's hours were closerthanthis to being implemented and the next step was to lay off as much as 1/3 of my workforce.
Still, I held on because I knew, eventually, we'd be busy again. There's just no way to know when.
We've grown quickly in my company. That has presented its own set of problems. We've had to borrow money to buy equipment so our capacity was able to meet customer demand. We have never really had an excess of cash in the business. We have had to spend a lot of money to train and equip everybody. In the past year, alone, I've bought 3 vehicles for the company. (Last year, we had 6. One of them basically died. Now, we have 8.)
So, when slow times come, there's not some huge cushion of cash we can draw on. Small business is its own universe. One of the ways it is unique is that in most cases, the owner is the only financial "backstop" there is. Once I run out of money, the business runs out of money. We then become insolvent and perhaps bankrupt.
During my first year of business, I sold over $10,000 worth of musical instruments and recording equipment because of a business slowdown. Fortunately for me, that was able to tide me over for two months until things could pick up a little bit.
These days, with as many people as I employ, and as much overhead as we carry, it would be nothing for me to burn through six-figures in just a couple of months. Suffice to say, that's an amount of money that can ruin most people, and in this case, I'm no different than "most people".
I enjoy being in business for myself, but it is always obvious that my financial well-being is in-play. Every day the doors are open, I take a risk. To me, it's not just a risk to me, but also to my family. A lot of people get hurt if this thing craters, and some of them I'll be seeing regularly for the rest of my life.
That's one reason why I cringe when politicians make attacks against high wage-earners. Many of these so-called "wealthy" are small business owners just like me.
It's important to note that my total compensation as a small business owner should really be considered two separate components. I get paid for my labor: basically the things I do to run this place. I also get paid for my investment: I need an economic rate of return in order to keep my money in the business.
Without that economic rate of return, I have no incentive to risk my money. I'd either sell the business, or sell off the assets and sit on my money collecting a risk-free rate of return. Every day I leave my money in my business, basically my entire net worth is tied up in a single, undiversified investment.
Granted, the "undiversified investment" is a business that I, personally, run, but I'm not going to put so much of my net-worth into an endeavor if there isn't a good prospect of an economic return on my money.
I am very happy being a capitalist. It has benefitted me, personally, but it has also benefitted the dozen people who I employ. It benefits our community and our country with the taxes we pay. Our customers benefit from quality services.
So, it pains me to no end to hear the efforts of entrepreneurs described in terms of "greed" and the need to punish us with increase taxes. Accept it or not, I don't see that I'm doing anything wrong. To the contrary, I believe I'm doing a whole lot of good.
In any event, the past 3 weeks were the worst we've had in about a year and a half, near as I can figure. The tide appears to have turned, though. This is our slow time of year. Things are touch and go until about December, sometimes as early as November. That's when the real cold weather comes and all heck breaks loose.
We jumped the track and it will take 3 solid months for us to finish the year at over a million dollars. Still, worst-case and we'll have increased sales by about 10% this year. In an economy like this when so many others are struggling, that's not half bad. It's not out of the question to hit a million... we'd just have to have some serious good fortune for the rest of the year.
We never did have to lay anybody off these past few weeks. I paid a lot of folks to do some tasks that came dangerously close to busy-work, but never even so much as asked an employee to clock out early. We've never laid anybody off since I opened the doors. That is a streak I hope I can maintain.
Times like these, it pays to stay positive. It's already the middle of September, and this year's busy season is right around the corner.
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