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Put On THe Head phones and let All the White Noise Pass you by!!

Here I am in the middle of a complete blizzard, but once people find out you own your own business, everyone has an opinion! Everyone wants to pry, it is a very strange thing. You gain this instant status  and I really don't know why! I mean 95 % of the people I met after I owned the company, kind of raised an eyebrow, and instantly assumed you were successful and on autopilot! It is a very weird thing,   and generally kind of annoying. I was a business owner yes, with a brand, yes, was it doing well, NO, but its funny no one bothered to ask? It was like, well, wow he owns that business, how successful! Nothing could be further from the truth. But then your pride and your ego kicks in and you feel the need to tell people everything is going great. When in fact, you are  in the biggest storm of your entire life.
You see, when the average person finds out you own a business they automatically assume you are doing great, that was far from the case. So very few people actually realized that everyday was an extreme challenge! Hell if I knew then what I know now, I would say it just wasn't worth it! But to the outside world, it was like wow, he made it!
Well I have to tell you, I didn't make anything, all I did was inherit a whole lot of problems, and because it was privately held, I really didn't understand how bad it really was. If I sat down and told someone, they would have called me a lunatic !! I guess I was, and then I reasoned I was the only lunatic, that could bring this thing out of all of its problems! It was insanity when I look back on it. I should really submit it as a harvard B school case study and see what these mover'd and shaker's would have done. I had one skill that I could use to the the fullest and that was survival. I used every bit of that and more to keep the doors open. It was a very taxing time, and when I look back it was so tough, I would never ever do it again. But I was 37, I had a dream, I had a good friend loan me $50,000 and I wasn't not going to pay him back.
I sat in my office and went over the bank's forbearance agreement , with my lawyers, it was like reading a death sentence! I realized that the lawyer's were just as afraid of the bank as anybody. Then I started to think? Hmmm. I wonder how much other business these guys do with this same bank on the other side? What an education I was getting, the answer was, a significant amount! It was time to get someone s=who was just on my side, everything else had repercussions down the road for everyone involved. Ah the life of an entrepreneur. Welcome to the real world Joe, I doubt they taught you this in a Babson MBA course!! It was survival of the fittest, and I had better come up with a plan. I was paying the bank $47,000 per month in interest!! They capped my salary at $ 175,000 per year! Who was I working for? It clearly wasn't me, but for some strange reason I kept looking for the solution. Crazy, but totally true!! I guess I wanted it that bad. I wasn't giving up that is for sure.

Hey, if you want amazing coffee shipped direct to your house from the best coffee plantation in Costa Rica! Click on the ad for Cafe Britt on the top right side of this blog!! They are the market leader in a country which I feel really does coffee cultivation right!! It is amazing coffee and I am honored they chose my blog to advertise their superior products! Do yourself a favor and order some now!! You will be blown away!!

Thanks for reading and as always Spread The Word! This is still just the beginning, believe it or not!
Joe

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