Coonie -
I know your story from many months ago. I have been wondering how you've been doing.
Well, hindsight is 20-20. I understand your situation better than you might think because my wife and I have been in one business venture after another going way back. At one point we had 230 people working in the business and brought in $ 30,000 a week.
But no matter how good it is this very day, tomorrow it can be all gone. Under-mining free enterprise are a bewildering array of laws and regulations - seemingly designed to destroy small businesses. On the other end are clients that are a main-stay today and tomorrow morning you awake to find your services no longer needed.
Maybe they still owe you a few thousand and refuse to pay it. Why? Because some-one in their upper management decided either to use a different supplier or to do things a different way.
So...when business is good, one MUST make it a point to over-pay one's self enough to put that extra money into a slush fund which is on reality a sort of retirement fund - providing cash for when your business fails as such small operations commonly do in this country. It gives you what you need to skimp along until you can get something else going. And it must be paid to you rather than kept tied to the business - otherwise when the business fails, there goes your slush fund also.
The laws in this country are mostly designed for huge operations, so small operations are lost in the margins.
In your case, I suspect that the financial obligations were in your husband's name because he had the credit rating - which means that fiduciary responsibility is laid at his doorstep even though he might not have a clue what is going on.
Let me just say that one business goes down the tubes, always have something else in mind for the next one. Of you base your business on your talents are art-crafts of some sort and you have made this your dream, it is a very hard pill to swallow when it all goes down. The solution is not necessarily to start up again doing the same things being that you already know that it didn’t work as well as you had hoped.
In our case we did dig gerent things. It doesn’t matter what your business is except that you are honest and fo it well. Many are the businesses in this country that never started out to be nusinesses but some-one was just doing some certain thing very well and more and more people wanted what he or she produced or did until that people realized one day he/she was rich.
Well, such things used tio be more possible than they are today. Laws are now such unless you think big and make it big, you don’t stand much of a chance. By the same token when you go for the big money, money becomes the object and the business is neglected and ultimately fails. When you go for the big money hoping to win big, you also risk losing big.
At least when you start small you don’t risk much. Our businesses all were started with very little capital out-lay - precious little on credit.
So, I ask you: what could you do to make money that doesn’t require a huge investment. If you can think of anything, it might mean you can start earning money, perhaps get a line of credit to cover the money that should have been held as collateral and then pay off the loan with the new business. Or it may be that you can still make something of your failing business by changing something that makes your goods or services more appealing.
Whatever the case, I Pray that God gives you the insight and inspiration to over-come this current situation, and that He keep the wolves from your door while you get back on your feet, In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Shalom.
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