When The Next Step Isn’t Intuitive

The clients were definitely freaking out right about now.

The two brothers knew they needed help with their business. They have had the business together for more than 35 years, but the past several years had seen a deterioration of the business, pushing the business near extinction.

Their current situation was a business in the Rubber Mold Industry, Machining, and as of fairly recently, also some simpler fabrication work, which one of the brothers had started up in the hopes of bringing more business in to help save the business.

Sales had steadily been falling over the years. Competition was fierce which soon enough had downward force on the pricing. That meant the decreasing sales they did obtain, came at lower and lower gross profit margins, stressing the business results even further.

They had their own facilities and with a mortgage attached. Additionally they had a couple of traditional small business loans and credit lines. The credit lines had dried up, and so the credit facilitation had spilled over into making use of the vendors, not because that’s what they wanted to do, but because when payroll had to be met, they took the little cash there was left and paid employees and not their vendors.

Several vendors had suffered the consequences for some time by now, and some had put the business on Cash On Delivery only, while others actually had sent them to collection agencies.

The business employed outside of the two brothers, the wife of one of them. She helped out with bookkeeping and other office functions. The son of the other brother was employed to do CAD and other technical drawings that were used to ensure the more challenging work the business did for its clients would be correct. He also was the one who programmed the CNC machines.

Additionally, the business employed about 10 other people, counting one more for bookkeeping and the rest in the production.

They had 4 CNC machines, but the biggest and newest one had broken down about six months ago. Seeing they didn’t have cash to get it fixed (that would cost around $6,000), they had switched around production of the various client assignments to the other smaller machines.

Out of the 3 other CNC machines, the next best one didn’t operate optimally and they were forced to run it at lower rpm than the capacity it normally would have been able to provide.

Sales for the fiscal year was at $812,000 and the business had produced a negative result of almost $27,000.

For a while now, both brothers had been wondering if they would be forced to declare bankruptcy and walk away from the business. The stress had certainly spilled over into their private lives which is only natural, especially with several obligations being personally vouched for and when the income from the business is what provides entirely for their livelihoods.

The brothers both had realized they wouldn’t by own accord know what to do to save the business and turn it into the successful and profitable business it once was in its days of glory several years earlier.

So they had asked for help. However, it was evident they didn’t have the cash needed to secure the help of a top Business Turn-Around Agent such a me. Well, not without seeking some sort of funding at least.

The banks had already turned them down, so they did not present an option. That meant we would have to explore an alternative source of option. There was only a few left that could be gotten to with any speed, and speed is of essence when you need to save a business which is in this deteriorated state of health.

That source was that of a loan from a different type of lender. Basically it was like a payday loan. Loans such as these typically come at an elevated interest rate and additionally, the lender automatically will withdraw from your account the remittance to them on either a daily basis or weekly basis.

Not a type of loan you’d typically would want, but if it’s your only option and you can use the funds to turn the business around fast enough, then it’s surely worth it. Besides, as mentioned no other conventional lender would finance the brothers as they were already stretched out too much financially and seeing their Profit & Loss Statements and Balance Sheets looked terrible.

Indeed, the only reason the lender that accepted the brother would do so, was because they knew that the success rate I was bringing to the table was so stellar that they pretty much knew, they would get their money back.

The price for the loan: A hefty 39%. Ouch.

Now, thankfully, for a business such an expense is tax deductible, so its expense is financed a bit by tax reduction, but it still meant an after tax expense of 27.3%, so still an expensive loan.

Both brothers were highly nervous. Not only did they by signing onto this sign up for an additional debt of $152,900, but they also signed up for meeting the expense for my service to be paid for in full on a weekly basis. A weekly expense in this case of around $25,000.

One of the brothers and his wife were convinced this had to be done. He wasn’t relaxed about it for sure, biting the nails that he had already bitten down to next to nothing, darting his red eyes, and his veins visibly throbbing, and his one leg bobbing fast and nervously under the table. But he knew this was their only recourse.

The other brother, who had a tendency to be rather reserved and a bit more negative in his opinions and viewpoint, weren’t so sure, that they shouldn’t just throw in the towel on the business.

But they signed on, and we went to work.

“You Cannot Go Up, Without First Going Down”
– Dan Henry

If you read my story named “And Debt Shall Set You Free”, I told you about the natural law that Dan Henry is speaking of. I mentioned in that story also that for you to build skyscrapers, to build high up into the air, you first have to dig down into the ground and make a solid foundation. I.e. you will first have to build in the opposite direction.

So was the case with the two brothers and their business.

Another mentor of mine, Dr. Myron Golden, told me a story from the bible about a prophet that died and left debts that his widow and two sons could not pay. The creditor decided to take the two sons as slaves as payment of the debt:

2 Kings 4:1–7 King James Version

Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead; and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord: and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.

2 And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil.

3 Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few.

4 And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full.

5 So she went from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured out.

6 And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed.

7 Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.

So the narrative is that, when the widow learned that her two sons were facing being taken as slaves to meet repayment of debts, she asked Elisha for advice on what to do.

Elisha asked what she had in the house that she could sell, to which the widow replied she had nothing except for some oil.

Elisha then told her to go out and borrow jars. A lot of jars.

In other words, even though the widow’s trouble was that of debt she could not meet, the charge was for her to go even deeper into debt. Not by a little, but by a lot.

The widow did as she was told. She had faith. She borrowed all the jars she could possibly get hold of and commenced pouring oil into each jar. The oil kept on providing and didn’t run out.

Then she went out and sold the jars of oil, paid off the debts and could following live off the extra beyond the money that went to pay the debts. The lesson here, is that you don’t borrow the extra money to pay off debt, but to make your business better, grow your profits, and then become able to pay off the debts and pay for your life from the extra profits.

Again, this was completely the case of my clients. They already had so much debt and were so strapped for cash that they were up against the wall and certainly very, very stressed about their situation.

But to get out of the debt, they would have to make an investment in the solution. Seeing they had no money, they had to accept taking on even more debt, even though their current debt seemingly already was about to “kill” them.

The family of the business here had faith. They signed for the expensive loan and trusted the process. The cash landed in their account the following morning.

Now it was time to go and improve the business.