Oddly, I feel pretty good today. Strange. I was up half the night thinking about the biz. So, not only was I stressed out last night, I didn't get much sleep.
I think half my problem these days is just fighting my moods. I've got a business that's struggling, in a state that's struggling, in a region that's struggling, in a country that's struggling.
I try to remind myself that all things considered, I've got it pretty good. I'm relatively healthy. I have a fantastic little boy who is also healthy.
The business has been discouraging, but technically, it will post a profit this year. A modest one, to be sure, but it will probably post a profit.
The issue isn't so much "will the business survive?" Within limits, it can grow or shrink to whatever size it needs to in order to accomodate business conditions. The question really is, "will I survive?"
I mean, the business, technically, is viable if it posts a $35,000 profit. However, that doesn't make for much living on my part.
I keep reminding myself that this is a lot like the end of my first year of business. Things really took off from there. First and second years were draught years. So, just like this past year, revenues were hard to come by because of the weather.
We did $207 and about $330 those first two years. This year, we'll probably be at about $500 or so.
At $330, we were really profitable, but that was because we were adding staff to accomodate growth. Meaning, we were virtually never overstaffed.
The ride down is a lot bumpier because you're overstaffed almost all the time. So, this year, despite not-dismal sales numbers, profits took a big hit.
The silver lining to all this is that we can probably handle about $50-60,000 a month in revenues with our current staffing. So, as we build sales volume, we should be back in the land of impressive profitability.
We also have infrastructure and equipment, now, that we didn't have before. We have a lot more trucks and equipment. We don't have to worry about that aspect of growth for a while. We're well poised.
In the mean time, I have to get us ready to fight another day. We just let go of one employee. It was 50% due to business conditions, and 50% because the employee was an imperfect fit and we didn't have anyplace else to put her.
I posted an ad for an office manager trainee on Monster and good lord. I'm getting about 6 resumes an hour.
We did get a phenomenal sales rep trainee from our ad there. I can see I'll have a great bunch of candidates to chose from for an admin.
Monster has a way to post for certain jobs for just $99. Worth every penny. I don't know why I didn't do this earlier.
We should get a renewed marketing effort, and that candidate seems to have a lot of runway ahead of him. Could be a future GM.
I'm determined to get a cracker jack office manager. We haven't had one since Stacie left 2 years ago. The position is just too critical to have somebody who isn't awesome in it.
Next year, even if it were a repeat of this year, things should be a lot better. A more realistic, but conservative estimate would put us at about $600K in revenues if the weather cooperates at all.
If we get our normal weather patterns, we should be up over $800 again. If that happens, my finances get healthy all in one fell swoop.
It could happen, and I've seen similar turnarounds in this biz before. Our sales increased by $330K between year 2 and year 3. We increased by $220 between years 3 and 4.
Really, in the grand scheme of things, my business' profitability is the only thing in my life that's going poorly. Perspective is in order. Even if the absolute worst-case scenario were to play itself out, I went broke and declared bankruptcy, I still have a lot of talents and opportunities.
It wouldn't finish me. It would make life hard in a lot of ways, but nobody ever said that life was supposed to be easy. Really, if you took the entire population of the world right now, or the total number of people who have ever existed, the number of people who wouldn't trade places with me right now is almost statistically insignificant.
I'm a lucky person and I need to never lose track of that.
I heard this poem when I graduated basic training. The distinguished graduate read it to everybody. I always liked it and it has held meaning for me at so many times during my life:
Don't Quit
Anonymous
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and its turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When they might have won, had they stuck it out.
Don't give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit,
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit!
No comments:
Post a Comment