A Bitter Essay...

A BITTER ESSAY:

HOW TO RUIN YOUR FIRST BUSINESS

Otherwise titled:

SO, YOU WANT TO HAVE A  NERVOUS BREAKDOWN?

10 EASY STEPS

I’ve often been asked simple questions like “what was it like to own and operate your own business?,” or the more succicint question “what the hell happened??!!” And I’ve become inspired to share with you, dear reader, the ten easy steps I took to “success” with the first business I owned and operated.

It’s a true story, and the names have been withheld to protect the innocent from further abuses by the guilty. It’s heavy on the sarcasm and not without angst, hence the title(s), so please, proceed with caution…

One: Move to a town that you are not particularly familiar with, but have visited many times because beloved friends live there. Have a really, really wonderful idea for a business, providing a new and exciting product that folks want to buy. Begin making cold calls and tell all sorts of strangers in this new, strange town about your ideas. Be sincere and be honest!! It will add to your vulnerability when all the predatory lenders, architects, landlords and assorted scumbags show up to lay claim to your money, reputation and peace of mind. But you won’t see them coming! How exciting! Even better if it’s a small town, being from “away” is prime target material living in the Midwest. How nice to know that the insular, bigoted “50’s” mentality is still thriving in America!

Two: With no prior business experience, you’ll first need to start a business selling a product that you really love. That way, when your business fails, and nine out of ten first businesses are guaranteed to fail, it will take your dream with it. And there is the added bonus of customer resentment once deprived of a product they’ve come to love. Nothing like anger mixed with contempt tinged with pity at the checkout line of the grocery store. An added bonus if you open your business in a highly competitive yet small-minded business district, that way, you’ll have the pleasure of other, unrelated companies think you are somehow “competing” with their unrelated business and begin the process of dismantling your reputation behind your back. It’s support like that which will bring you closer to your nervous breakdown goal!

Three: Don’t do background checks on your business partners! Even if you are the sole owner of your business, your business partners are also your landlords, your neighbors, attorneys, accountants and other businesses you contract with for equipment, repairs and finances. Make sure to turn a blind eye to nepotism, long-standing feuds, signs of rampant greed and unethical behavior. You’ll be regretting it in no time!

For example: if your landlord and your architect had a previous nasty court battle concerning millions of dollars, it’s never a good idea to get anything in writing. You may run the risk of not getting exploited by either party. For example; having them help themselves to your start-up loan by doubling their bid for construction once the initial demolition had been completed.  Oh, sure, you could get another contractor, but with the clock ticking, why risk it? And since your goal is a nervous breakdown, why not let the architect and his croni…err, associates finish the job? They can sue you for the entire balance the first minute they deem that the job is over, making sure you don’t have the time or financial resources to consult an attorney. And there is nothing like unrequited rage to help fan the flames of personal destruction…

Oh, and do the demolition yourself, it’s a great way to become extra tired to prepare for your breakdown. That way, you’ll be exhausted just in time to rip out all of the work the architects and his croni… err… associates spent so little time planning, building with crap materials and not really completing. I recommend throwing it down the basement stairs where it can collect asbestos dust from the unsealed floor that the landlord failed to notify you about when you signed the lease. Please note: mesothelioma is not a nervous breakdown, but not having health insurance as a private business owner is a great additional way to add to your stress level, hastening your inevitable nervous breakdown.

Four: About the money…and this is very important: Don’t do your own books! Don’t borrow three year’s worth of capital to make sure your business will succeed! Don’t take your time making sure you are totally ready, but hurry up and open because of pressure from customers or, better yet, other business owners who want to help you with your nervous breakdown! Hire an accountant with no experience! Have them take over books your non-legally liable partner was keeping in Sanskrit! You need to make sure that once the business opens, you are so busy unraveling a labyrinthine maze of jumbled numbers and mathematical nonsense, it will prevent you from overseeing, managing or supervising your staff and keeping any kind of track of the product you are selling. It will add to your sense of futility and money draining down a black hole, getting you one step further to the nervous breakdown goal.

Four: Hire interesting people, not competent people! And make sure they bring the most interesting parts of their interesting life to work, like the drinking, drugs and the messy family dysfunction. Even better, hire multiple employees who live together or are family members! That way, when you call one of them out for poor performance, they can suddenly remember that blood is thicker than water and band together! And eventually, it will get the entire extended family clan on the angry unemployed bandwagon. Make sure they were overpaid for the work they didn’t feel like doing. Keep them on as long as you can, especially if they give you attitude, because in today’s economy it’s tough to find employees willing to work at inflated prices.

Five: Find ways to progress your nervous breakdown outside of work! Hobbies can be good in helping you achieve this goal. For example: chain smoking will increase your body’s hypertension levels and body chemistry toxicity. Don’t make a good night’s rest a priority, eat a lot of greasy fast food and strong coffee. Recreational drugs and alcohol will go far in helping assist you with your goal here. Nervous breakdown, here you come!

Six: Don’t have any allies working for you!! Especially anyone kind, competent, thoughtful and loyal! They will only prevent the nervous breakdown you’ve worked so hard to achieve! They may prevent incompetent employees from completing their handiwork or supporting you at a critical emotional juncture when you become ready to have that long-awaited nervous breakdown. Can’t have that now, after all that hard work to lose your mind, eh?

Seven: Go into debt… I mean, seriously. Start borrowing a ton of cash when you cannot account for the money that was already spent because your accountant is a stupid dummy moron who can barely add and subtract, much less read a bank statement. Don’t declare bankruptcy while you still have the cash to pay for the attorney’s fees, that’s silly. You wanted a nervous breakdown, right? Still with me?

Eight: That stupid dummy moron of an accountant is more valuable than you may realize! By not mailing in any of the tax forms, State, Federal, Martian or otherwise, you may be in luck and have an IRS auditor on their way to your establishment right now! Many first time business owners may not realize this, but by simply not filing the paperwork on taxes due, it can add as much as 25% penalty to the taxes due, plus the government will estimate the businesses income as much as 3 times higher than the actual number, just to make sure Uncle Sam is getting a fair share of income. And if you are super lucky, your auditor might arbitrarily hate your guts, want you dead and may decide to harass you. I was once fortunate enough to have a State Revenue agent stalk me at my home, she didn’t bother with the doorbell but instead I found her sneaking around the bushes outside my bedroom window. How’s the breakdown coming along so far?? Hands shaking yet? Be prepared for many possible years of visits to the local IRS office. Don’t find a competent accountant to re-do the financial books at a later date, it will only serve to fix things.

Nine: Be both the employee and the boss, at the same time, working a minimum of 12 hours a day, six days a week. You might ask “Why not seven days a week?” Well, you really need the one day off so you can feel the bone-tired fatigue and still have no strength to take care of yourself, your dishes, your laundry or have a social life. The one day off should give you enough pause for the powerlessness of your situation to sink in. And especially if you are single, one day off per week ensures you will spend it on the couch, trying to get your throbbing feet/neck/back/eyeballs to return to normal. Don’t fight it, the best part of the nervous breakdown is the pain, baby!

Ten: Drag out the business for as long as humanly possible! Why quit when you are so far behind? Any second now, a magic customer/phone call/piece of mail/genie in the bottle is going to arrive and make it all better! If you quit now, what is going to happen to this big dream of yours? And you’ve worked so hard to whip yourself into a frenzy.. What will the unsupportive bigots think? Return to a normal life and get a solid job with benefits? Give up the dream of a nervous breakdown? Thoughts like these are best suppressed until they go away in a haze of denial and delusion. Maybe you can find a strong-willed customer who is looking out for their own needs to look you straight in your baggy, bloodshot eye and tell you that you are doing GREAT, that your business is WONDERFUL, that you should add LUNCH, maybe ESPRESSO might help sales. These marketing geniuses are everywhere and should be listened to at all costs. Because they know! Even if they have never sold a Girl Scout cookie in their life, trust me, they know what it takes to get the nervous breakdown ball rolling, my friend.

Well, that’s my best advice on having and keeping your very own nervous breakdown through business ownership. It’s not easy, believe me, I’ve tried all of these techniques and am still recovering. Just remember, you too can make foolish decisions! With drive, a little chutzpah and a family home pledged against a tiny business loan, you can pursue the American Dream!

Postscript note:

But in truth, today, I would not change a thing.

I learned more about life, business management and the world and its foibles in that year and a half because of my first bakery in a little town in Northern Wisconsin than I had all the years leading up to it.

Failure, abject irreversible failure can be the “real adult” turning point . Those on a similar path may find, like I did, that one becomes more proud of the ability to pick oneself back up, move on and try again than any initial success. And learning that I was not as special or unique in either my successes or my failures as I had initially thought, gave me greater freedom than I had ever imagined that it would.

Thanks to all who supported me, listened lovingly to my distress, those who never judged me and especially those who believed in me afterwards. You’ll never know how much that support changed my life.

Thank you,