Back when I was rich...

I grew up during a time of constant recession.  I graduated High School in one of the worst recessions in the last half of the 20th century.

Fortunately for me, I was able to find work in the military.  However, the experience really stuck with me.  Recessions had a way of following me around, too.  The economy was on the downswing when I got out of the Army, too.  When I got out of college, same deal.

The mid and late 90s were a party.  I have to admit.  It was the manifestation of all the hope and excitement of the 80s.  The decade that has no name (the years from 2000 to 2009) wasn't that great, really.  It's like we were doing everything we could to keep the 90s going, but eventually, it caught up to us.  The no-name decade (or the aughts or the naughts or the naughties), were probably more bummer than party.  We had the dot com implosion, the terrorist attacks, two wars and ultimately, the real estate bubble and the global economic collapse.

Things were exacerbated because not only were there fundamental injustices, with the rich staying rich and the poor getting poorer, but because the very dimwits who caused the problem got the government to give them essentially all the money in the world to make sure their party never had to end. 

Now, this decade?  Shows every potential to be much, much worse.  Like the late 70s, we have a well-intentioned, but weak and ineffectual president.  There is absolutely no indication that things will return to pre-recession levels maybe ever.  We stand a very real chance of seeing the first young generation who will not do as well as the preceeding one.

I've got a business and we were doing great.  I think that's what makes things so difficult, now.  We grew from about $200,000 in sales in 2005 to about $1 million in the rolling 12 months from mid 2008 to mid 2009. 

Being a small businessperson was a thing of beauty at the time.  I had built a million dollar business in less than five years and it seemed like there was endless potential ahead for me and my team.

We took on a lot of overhead, added a lot of staff and borrowed a lot for capital equipment to make it happen.  It's easy to add a thousand dollars of debt service when your company is averaging $80,000 a month in business.  It seems like such small potatoes.  If it helps you add to sales, why wouldn't you?

I think like most success stories, luck plays a part, though.  I think way too many people give themselves too much credit when things are going well.  Likewise, they shoulder way too much of the blame when things go poorly.

I certainly cannot control the weather or the global economy.  When both of them conspire against me, along with a complete disappearance of small business credit and the destruction of the automotive industry when your business is located 30 minutes from Detroit?

Sorry, but you could be the biggest genius in the world and you'll still probably have difficulty.

Now, our sales are about half what they once were.  We've had to shed a ton of personnel. 

Even so, every week I have to weigh the possibility that further cuts are necessary.  I held off too long, hoping we could turn things around.  I just didn't like the idea of letting people go.  In the end, it was the wrong decision to make.  It burned through every cent of savings and tapped out pretty much all my available credit.

We've cut our payroll by about 2/3.  Some of the expenses just aren't that variable, though.  The long-term debt we service is not something I can change very quickly, or at all.

If I can manage to hang on, there is some cause for optimism.  Our landlord agreed to lower the lease on our warehouse by $200 a month in October.  The first two trucks we bought will be paid off in December.  That'll save about $13,000 a year. 

I'm going to cut yellow pages spending by about half.  So, that'll save us about $9,000 a year.

That presumes, of course, that me make it that far.  I am trying to survive week to week these days.

Time seems to have really sped up, though.  Seems that no sooner do we close the books on a month and next thing you know, we're closing them on another month.  That's good if, for instance, you're trying to get closer to the day when you pay off a couple of trucks.  Not so good when the bills for the next month are coming due and the receipts from the previous month are underwhelming.

However, if we do manage to survive, this was a bit of a cleansing.  We tightened things up.  We've still got debt to service for the next 5 years, but it drops off pretty regularly throughout.  Every year we surivive will be easier than the one previous.

There are advantages to being small, too.  Right now, we have essentially 5 employees.  At our peak we had 14 and were looking to hire more.

With the 5, I honestly think they can handle about $50,000 to $60,000 a month in volume no problem. 

Adding the other 9?  It made my core 5 that much less productive.  They had to try and keep the others from messing up.  They had to spend part of their week fixing the mess-ups they couldn't prevent.

So, doing another $30,000 or 40,000 in volume sounds attractive, but in the future, I don't know that I'll do it.  I prefer to keep just A players and do the volume they can handle.  And keeping overhead and payroll down will mean that I won't ever have another month where I lose $30,000 or $40,000 or $50,000. 

Yeah, having those extra folks lets you handle another $20,000 or $30,000 a month, gross, but that additional gross profit doesn't mean much if it exposes you to losing as much as $50,000 during a slump.

This is just a tough, tough time to try and run a small business.  Politicians will do anything they can to keep Wall Street rich, but the rest of us?  I think it's hard to deny that Washington doesn't care about us one whit. 

I keep hoping I can pilot this thing through this recession, but that's hard to envision since I honestly don't think things will improve for years. 

However, I also wonder, what if this thing goes down?  I've burned through pretty close to every available resource I could muster.  I might very well have to find something else to do here, soon.

At my age, I can't imagine finding that many employers who would be interested in me.

I'd really want to start another business.  But what?  I sure won't have any money. 

There are a couple of things I'd like to go back to school and study.  Again, though, school is expensive. 

I could take a deployment or two with the Navy, but that only solves the problem for a few years. 

The other part of all this is that my son is 8, almost 9 years old.  I have about 9 more years with him until he, most likely, leaves home.  This business was a way for me to earn a living in an economic armpit of the country so he wouldn't have to change schools and could keep all his same friends.

If he were already off to college, I'd probably be asking to be mobilized with the Navy right now.  Instead, although I'll probably have to spend a year or so away on mobilization one of these days, I want to spend as much time with him as I can.  His years as a youngster are numbered.

So, all there is left for me to do is keep plugging away.  Do whatever I can to avoid becoming another sad story.  Do whatever is within my power to avoid becoming a small business statistic.

It's been so long, honestly, I can't even remember what it was like to do over $100,000 a month in business.  We had 2 of them in 2008.  In the first half of 2009, we had 3.  It's not like they were totally unheard of. 

Now, though, everything is changed.  Instead of seven figure annual sales goals, I'm hoping we can sustain $40,000 a month.

I am already thinking in terms of, "It used to be like X back when I was rich." 

Back when I was rich.  Let's hope those days come again.