March 15, 1992 I finish the final paperwork to incorporate the business. This board makes me feel that we are entering a new phase of the company. It is time for me to take it seriously, too. An attorney friend who has been borrowing my computer at night offers to do the filing. I have an attorney with a major firm in town, but I agree.
March 17, 1992 When Mike P. talks about anything, I find myself listening especially closely. He has a service business with employees. He is experienced in the art of business ownership. I invite him to lunch. I come to the meeting with an advisory-board file one-inch thick and an organizer stuffed so full of notes that it no longer zippers shut. Mike walks in with a calendar/phone directory the size of a small calculator in his breast pocket. He has built his company to $10 million in revenues. I closed the year at billings of $367,000. Was I bogging myself down in paperwork and missing the point? He reminds me again that I need to install daily and weekly financial controls. He also gives me the name of his health-insurance administrator.
March 30, 1992 My regular attorney contacts me. He has seen the incorporation advertisement and wants to know if he has done something to offend me. We agree to meet for lunch at his club. I tell him what is going on with the business and about our new PowerLink board. He admits he could be more useful to the company if we saw each other on a regular basis. He sets up quarterly lunches at his club to discuss the business.
April 1, 1992 DRM Inc. is eight years old. Don't want to think about it.
April 3, 1992 We almost miss payroll. Our largest client (representing about 30% of our monthly billings) changed the criteria for what constitutes a lead -- and we are being paid by the lead. As a result we've been turning in one lead every five hours instead of every hour. Losing about $500 a day.
I know we will run out of all cash reserves in the next two weeks, and our receivables are below adequate levels. [Note: I've always used the shorthand version of a current ratio, adding up all of my bills and making sure they come to less than 33% of my outstanding receivables.] I quickly write out a list of things I will have to do to stem the losses. When I first started in business, I used to joke that I never ran out of plans. If Plan A didn't work, I went to Plan B. If B didn't work, I already had Plan C waiting in the wings. An employee reminded me recently that I once got to Plan N. She also remembered accurately that we never, ever considered that we would run out of plans. Even today, if a problem occurs with a project, we brainstorm about Plan B, C, and D. Today I don't feel that creative. I know we are going to have to lay off staff, and that is probably Plan B. Plan C is to renegotiate the contract.
April 7, 1992 Second board meeting. This time five of seven attend. The meeting moves slowly. Instead of talking about payroll, I say vaguely that we are squeezed "a little" for cash.
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One of them asks if I have a line of credit. I do, I tell them. Then you are OK, they say. I wonder to myself how that makes sense. Yes, I have the line as security, but accessing it only gives me another debt to pay with receivables I don't have right now. I hope someone asks me the right questions, but no one does.
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And I still feel unfamiliar with these people. Nothing in the notes from PowerLink has prepared me for corporate executives who seem to think I am doing OK. It is Mike P. who asks if he can help with financials and brings a small piece of paper with ideas he wants to share with me about business.
The meeting ends as the first one did. I have a list of new pieces of advice to hold under the light and decide if they make sense or if I should throw them out.
April 17, 1992 Financial controls still out of whack. My young accounting major/bookkeeper is up to 30 hours a week on nights and weekends. He is not able to give me regular weekly reports on time, let alone the ones Mike P. recommended. I try to understand why this is so difficult. I realize that our systems were purely dependent on a single person, Pat B., who was organized and set up her own system. It is hard for my bookkeeper to follow, and I am not around much to supervise him. We lose valuable time while he learns on the job -- typical in a tiny company. But the impact of losing one person in our small office has been great.
Seems like another catch-22. Not big enough to hire backup for every position. Everyone straining to get everything done in a day. Who has time to write a procedures manual? I wonder again, How the hell does a multimillion-dollar company get that way?
I review contracts and personnel with my telemarketing supervisor and Diane N., my new sales manager. We agree that while we work on resolving problems with our major contract, we must lay off six people.
April 21, 1992 I cancel meeting with Brian M. after being off for four days and coming back to find office out of control. Operations problems with our major account still setting us back.
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Payables backed to 90 days. The money I borrowed last year seems crushing now that our major account is generating 20% of its normal billings. Our meeting to present the account with a new plan is next week. Though all our other projects are going well, I can't see it. These are the times when I'd like to walk away from the whole business, chalk up my debts, work out payback arrangements, and go work at Wal-Mart as a cashier. I call these my "depth-of-despair days."
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April 22, 1992 Second D-of-D day in a row. I wonder why I put myself through this. I could be a corporate executive again with a paid staff and someone else worrying about the bills. I feel if I have one more day of settling disputes between employees, no matter how minor, I will shake them until their heads rattle. This is lonely work. No one else in the company seems to care, I think, about how the bills get paid. No one else cares how our customers are treated or how we get our next customer.
