Tightrope Juggling
Let’s say you’re a juggler on a tightrope and the objects you are juggling are a knife, an arrow, and a hatchet. Which object deserves the most attention to in this situation?
In my situation, the knife is making each and every pick up and delivery. The arrow is keeping the store fully stocked of everything we need to do the work, and the hatchet is making sure the employee is happy and is treated fairly.
If you chose the knife, the arrow, or the hatchet, you chose wrong. The most important object is the tightrope.
You could get injured by or lose one of the objects you are juggling, and still somewhat recover, but falling off the rope means it all comes crashing down.
In my situation, the tightrope is cash flow.
I dumped everything I had into building and opening the store. I also ran up a lot of debt. It might look like bad money management, but I had reached my sales capacity without the store. The store was/is necessary for my business to grow. But it took my bank account hitting rock bottom.
And because of all of my new loan payments, I lost money in December despite having the best sales month I ever had, breaking $10k sales in the month for the first time.
In my previous post I said my bank account was flirting with $0. I wasn’t kidding. It dipped below $1,000 four times in the last month or so. And this last time I borrowed money from my brother to bring it up to cover the bills.
I need to advertise. But do I borrow money to advertise?
It’s pure chaos. I’m in a constant state of panic. Of course I have to keep juggling, but the number one mission: don’t fall off the tightrope.
This story is part of a series documenting the journey of a Dallas startup called Feather Laundry. For your reference here is the Table of Contents for the series.
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