Out of Business

A sign should have gone up weeks ago

SALE! While supplies last! Going out of Business! SALE! SALE! SALE!

I think I'm going out of the business I've thrived in so much over the last 20 years. It wasn't a particular product I was hocking or a particular service - it was an experience. A truly mutually beneficial agreement of 50/50 profit split - a shell corporation consisting of offshore bank accounts with loads of emotional funds. For the longest part I was passionate about this business, the industry. It afforded me insights and made me privy to information that those learning how to value companies or understand organizational design only wish they could have.

I suppose that's why business school and I turned out to be a great fit tho.

Disclaimer (because they're necessary and I like them): To all of those involved in my business right now - our contract stands. However implicit it may be. I honor the signed pieces of imaginary paper because times have been both good and bad, awkward and pleasant - and I hope to keep having those times. The terms of engagement shall remain.

I'm going to be like the Customer Service branch of a Car brand going out of business. I won't produce or sell new cars anymore (because we were in the red for too long and Chapter 7 came in and killed us) but I'll continue to fix incidental problems of the cars I have on the road.

I'm just sick and tired of chasing bad money with more money. I'm exhausted of starting out a lucrative real estate investment only to have it turn into your run-o'-the-mill commercial paper transaction. You know what I mean?

If you don't here's an illustrative example that the characters in Alcott's books would have correctly identified as an allegory.

In Chemistry class we'd start out with a collection of vials and test tube thingies with pretty liquids in a rainbow of colors. My favorites were the clear ones that hid their true identity behind a thin veneer of science that our teacher simply describes as "upper level chemistry". NaOH + HCl would start out like this but when mixed the level of clarity would vanish instantly as one hit the other - precipitating into a mixed state I hadn't expected.

The thing I've realized is that in business you can't always keep going forward. No matter how good the returns - growth for the sake of growth is a dangerous path to travel. That's why I'm stopping for a while, reassessing strengths and weaknesses and evaluating the environment with a simple SWOT analysis.

Call it restructuring.