Good People Stand Behind Good People

(0:00 – 1:11)
I’m just going to kind of talk a little bit about a very important moment in my life, in our business life. So, back in the day, in the early 90s, we had a consulting business, we had a sign company, but we also had a chain of video stores. And our chain of video stores very quickly grew to each store creating or generating a net profit of $10,000 a month net and it was fun.

We were opening stores left and right, we were borrowing money to fuel the purchase of many videos. Each VHS tape was $72 each, so you’d have to rent it 40 times at two bucks just to break even. It was a very, very interesting time in our life.

We were in our early 20s, we just began having kids. It was awesome. So, however, as good and as fast as it grew, it dropped 10 times faster than it had grown.

And I’ll never forget, there was a period of 19 months where we were losing so much money so quickly that we were selling assets in other companies just to meet payroll. I sold a crane that lifted signs up 70 feet in the air to meet payroll. I sold the biggest piece of property in Shorewood, Illinois to meet payroll.

(1:12 – 2:35)
I sold a Corvette to meet payroll. I was running out of things to sell to meet payroll. And after 19 months of our three different corporate bank accounts averaging a negative $3,000 balance and never having any idea if we could buy food, if we could put gas in the car, a year and a half went by, we had a sales rep had a heart attack and died in my arms.

It was a very interesting time in our life. Talk about forging character. I don’t wish that type of time on anybody.

But bottom line is, we got to a point where we realized we are going to have to sell everything related to this video enterprise. We’re going to have to sell the buildings, we’re going to have to sell the shelves. We did not own the buildings.

We did have to sell the contracts, the lease contracts, is what I meant.