I think we were shut down by the bank yesterday. It was the same old stuff.....no assets, no loan. This is so frustrating considering what the cash flow is for the shipping business. Why can't we be judged on that instead of the assets? There are no service businesses with assets. Web sites don't have assets, technology companies don't have assets, and those are new businesses. We've been in business for almost 5 years and we can't get a loan to grow our territory because our trucks are not an asset and our customers are not an asset. WTF? I am almost at a loss on this. I am beyond frustrated and without words. Our 1 business that has always done well despite the economy and the one that we want to grow now that things are rough in our other businesses, we are not able to get a loan. We are not even asking for that much money....$100k-200k. That is nothing in the world of business.
Talking to the banker she was trying to bring up that if we were a yogurt business it would be so much easier... I nearly smacked her upside the head.... a yogurt business. We are a worldwide shipping business and you are comparing us to a yogurt company. UGHHHHH
We will keep looking for a bank that is willing to help and probably one that is not as conservative as the one that we visited yesterday.

On a better note. I finally ordered my 5hp 60 gallon, 20 CFM air compressor. It should arrive next week sometime along with the wool shipment. I absolutely promise to put up pictures of the studio next week and hopefully have the start of a rug to show. In the meantime I'm just going to complain about the banking industry.

I would love to be able to start my own bank and lend money to businesses and people like us. There is a lot of money to be made in service businesses with no assets and I don't understand why the banking industry can't get it thru their heads.

I am the cause for the drop in consumer spending

Obviously I am no longer making any money as an architect. My 2 projects I had left that I was counting on to get me thru till summer were indefinitely postponed last week. The money I make is not a lot.....sporadically like $2-5K every other month, but that is my money and I spend it everywhere. It's for:
1. Vacations (weekend trips to Phoenix, Vegas, San Diego, LA)
2. Bimonthly trips to Old Navy for clothes for the kids
3. Endless amounts of craft supplies from Michaels
4. Toys and knick-knacks from Target.... I used to spend $800/month on crap from Target... new hand towels, new sets of sheets, cool frames, DVD's, the latest trade paperbacks, cheap shoes for the baby to go with every outfit, novelty t-shirts for the boys, anything and everything that looked cool.
5. Books from Barnes and Noble.... I used to spend about $80/week there.
6. Amazon and yes this deserves is own line item seperate from Barnes and Noble. I am the queen of Amazon. I don't like to get just 1 book a week (like I am now) I like to order 20-30 books at a time from Amazon. I have over a 100 books in my shopping cart and saved for later I am so far behind on my book shopping.

You might think..... wow that's a lot of money spent on crap, but that is what keeps consumer spending up and the economy moving. Those are all the things that keep me sane. It's all entertainment... not the shopping so much, but all the things that we buy give us something to do. We need books to read, we need to visit other cities, we need clothes on our backs. Now that I've lost that income I am most cetainly bored. I guess in one way we just need to be a little bit more creative in how we spend our time. We are repainting our craft projects instead of buying new ones to paint, we are watching old DVD's that we haven't seen in a while, we are buying shoes that go with every outfit, I am reading all the classic books that I paid so dearly for from Easton Press instead of buying new ones, we are exploring closer to home and finding places we didn't even know were right in our own backyard. It's not all bad, but it is definitely different.
I guess we should be glad that those are the only things we are losing due to the economy. We have no problem paying our mortgage or any of our other bills. There are families that are not able to buy groceries or pay their rent and all I'm moaning about is books and crap from Target, but still we are feeling the pinch.

The Great Recession

Good News! For one of our businesses (Business #1 I'll call it) we were able to modify our SBA loan. We had tried months ago to get our bank to refinance our loan since we are having a hard time making our $9500/month payments. That's right....that is a freaking lot of money. Our sales have been down between 25-30% in the last 6 months due to the lack of construction around here. The bank said "No way". We finally called the SBA and they had to call our bank and strong arm them into adjusting our loan. The SBA basically had our backs. This to me is just another example of how the banks are hoarding money and until the government (SBA) called them out on it there was no way they were going to help us. We got our loan extended 18 months and our payment will be reduced to around $6300/month. Yea! SBA!
This week we have another meeting with a bank for our shipping business. We'll see if they are interested in loaning us $200,000 to expand our business. That should be an interesting meeting.

Just to update you on how over all the Great Recession has affected us...
1. I've lost all of my architectural clients due to bankrupt projects, and the unwillingness of banks to fund any new ones.
2. I'm taking my daughter out of day care since I can no longer afford the $500/month and also see above.... I have no projects and a lot of free time on my hands.
3. I have upped the deductible on our health insurance to $5000 so that the payments are not $750/month but a more affordable $450/month.
4. We are giving up our luxury automobile leases. When the lease expires in June we will not be leasing another Audi, but will resort back to driving our 1990 Ford F150 pickup.
5. I am giving up my cute little office down town due to reason #1 and to save the $1200/month.
6. We've let go all of our employees at Business #1 and are staffing it solely with family members which makes for lower overhead, but long 6 day work weeks for everyone.

Oh yeah I'm gonna give you all the facts and figures. I have no secrets when it comes to money. I love to see what things cost and assume most other people do to. If I'm going to put a personal face on how the economy is affecting people then I can't do it with allusions to figures. I've got to be real about it. Keep reading....it's only gonna get better....or much, much worse.

Things are looking a little better today. Although I am upset becasue the powers that be at Harkins Theaters and the movie distribution companies have decided that Flagstaff is not a chick film city. I was told yesterday by a 17 year old manager at my local theater that we will be getting more slasher movies and more action adventure flicks and less girlie ones. This is the only theater in a 35 mile radius. If the movie does not come here then I don't get to see it until it comes on NetFlix or I have to take the car down to be serviced in Phoenix. What kind of bullcrap is that? That's 2 movies now that I am missing out on. I really wanted to go see "New in Town" and "Revolutionary Road" but neither will be coming here and I'm stuck here in my office with noting to do but look for old gradeschool friends on Facebook.

That's it that's all I have to say today. I'm frustrated. I'm basically jobless, and peniless this week. Things will start to look up soon. In the meantime there is always the new season of American Idol.

What ever happened to Michael Johns? He was smokin hot.

Economic Conditions

This is the week that I finalize and package all of the info for my accountant for personal taxes and 2 of our business taxes. So in other words this is the week that I take stock of how things went last year. Over all, not as bad as you might think, but also it shows me where we need to cut back for this year. This will not be the year to spend $5k on business meals, magazine subscriptions, pretty architectural picture books, or piles of post-it notes.
I am also looking to expand 1 business, drastically scale back on a second, close down a third and start a fourth. It will be an interesting year. If things aren't changing then I'm not growing. I'm a serial entrpreneur and this is how things go when times get rough. This is what keeps us afloat....having our hands in a myriad of different businesses. If one is down then the other is up and we still have income.
I'm trying to deal with banks, employees, clients, partners, and business sellers. It's all very frustrating, exciting, daunting, and stressful but I wouldn't have it any other way.

My studio pics are still coming. I took some iphone photos, but they won't upload here unless I go thru the desktop at home. I'll get there, but not today. I'm also very close to getting a yarn wholesale supplier. They just have to approve my applications and recognize me as a real business and then I can place my orders.

Tomorrow I'm going to sneak away and try and see "New in Town". I don't like Renee Zelwegger, but I love Harry Connick.

Progress

I've got no pictures this afternoon of my beautiful new studio. It was such a wasted weekend and I got nothing accomplished. The awful trip to Phoenix on Sunday resulted in a horribly long day, extremely tired children and a broken down Land Rover. My baby, my ride, needed all new spark plugs and spark plug wires to the tune of $900. Not only that but it had to stay in Phoenix for 2 days and we all had to stuff into a Ford Focus to ride home that night. So that will be 4 times this week I will have to go to Phoenix for car issues. The Audi is there now and they had to call in some real live German Audi engineers to try and access it's myriad of electrical issues that make it stall, keep the trunk from closing, cause the alarm to go off every 5 minutes, and lose power steering. We might just have to break down and get a new one. I'm all for the 08 A5 or maybe a cute little A3. we'll see if the engineers can fix the old one though.
On the new business front I'm still looking for a suitable wool yarn that I can get in bulk quantities and for a decent price per pound, oh and the colors are important too. That is seeming to be the hardest part of getting things up and going. It's hard to create patterns without the color palette. I still need to get the huge air compressor too and I should be set to go. I still hope to get some photos of the studio since even I am impressed with it's awesomeness. It looks like creativity will just ooze out of that room.

No more Architect

I'm going to start writing this again since I'm going to be having more free time. I am officially not going to be an architect anymore. After all of my rantings in 2007 and all my research and reading done in 2008 I have found my true calling......hopefully. So now I want to document me moving from being an architect to being an artist more or less.
I am going to be designing and manufacturing my own hand tufted wool rugs. Strange but true. It should be pretty cool. I spent a week in Minneapolis in November learning all about it and have since been setting up my studio and buying all sorts of equipment and getting yarn and wool samples. I am almost there and will post a lovely picture of my dog kennel turned studio on Monday once I have finished moving my office furniture back home. Yes that's right.. I'm giving up my cute little office downtown and moving it all back home. That's how serious I am about not being an architect. I should be settled in in a few weeks and really be able to post some awesome photos of things getting up and running. I still have a few more projects to wrap up and then hopefully I will never have to submit drawings again to the giant mess that is local government.