Now four months behind in lease payments in the office and two behind in the factory, even Eppy admitted things were bad. He laid off salesmen and office staff. He cut back on factory workers. He even decreased his own take from the company, which hurt the most. Seemed like he was working for free now. The 30 day notice of cancellation of the office lease came. Eppy worked furiously to get the management company to back off, allow more time, but no go. He sold his office original paintings for much less than he had paid for them, since they had not had time to appreciate and the buyers knew it was a fire sale. The hundreds of thousands of dollars a month Eppy had put into short and long term advertising came due but he couldn't pay. The internet advertising he had accumulated stopped as did the paid as the search engine placement. Now the factory was in default on it's lease. Eppy hurried to the bank for a short termer, but with only two plus years in business and the financials in shambles, no bank would touch him. In short, almost three years after the big initiation, the company was broke, with more than you could imagine in unpaid bills, lease payments, and most all other obligations in default. Eppy went under and lost everything. He was too proud to file bankruptcy, even though he was advised by countless professionals to do so. So with staff gone (the last 3 pay periods unpaid), office gone, factory gone, everything moveable sold for whatever he could get, machinery repossessed and the unpaid invoices, he was in deep s....
Now without a business or income, the lawsuits came. His big time lawyer (unpaid) was replaced with a kid just out of school and the judgments came, especially since Eppy couldn't pay even the kid's bills in the end and so defaulted on many cases. The last we heard of him he was living in some low rent apartment, a shell of his former self, on disability for severe mental conditions and hiding. And so it goes sometimes when you start your very own business.
Funny thing. Eppy's brother started a similar business at around the same with little or no overhead, working from his house, watching expenses, and making no contractual commitments. He started out very slowly, just enough to get by, but at the time of this writing 7 years later, his business is almost as vast as was Eppy's and doing very well. The brother, Edmund, started with no confidence in success; nor did he have any business abilities to speak of. One thing he did know though. The cardinal rule of small business: Don't overextend yourself at the beginning or take for granted whatever success came along the way. Major source of business failure he used to say.
