On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:02:09 -0800, "Dave Bugg" >
wrote:

>Ekal Byar wrote:
>
>> Went belly up.
>
>LOL!!! It wasn't as bad as that.

Dave, I read every word of your excellent post. I admire the way you
started, ran, and finished your business. It sounds like you came out
of a Harvard MBA program! You know your stuff pal.
I owned a business for 22 years but was a wholesaler so did not have
to worry about location, customer base, signage, and all the things
that go with a retail establishment. It sounds like you did
everything right, but at the end it was government that did you in.
But I admired your expertise.
What did me in was Asian competition. I could not compete with
competitors that worked out of their garages, with mostly family
employees and had no taxes to worry about, no insurance to deal with,
no 401, 402 taxes and endless paper work to content with. In the end
they were able to out-price me because they had little or no overhead.
But now I'm doing what your doing. Driving. And never been happier
in my life. Just bought my third home and in addition to a good
salary with excellent benefits, I'm getting more than 2K/mo combined
SS.
Plus no more working 7 days a week with no vacations (I have 9 days
vacation 5 months out of the year). and most important, more family
time with no headaches and constant worrying about whether it was
going to be too hot, too cold, too rainy, too windy, too dark, too
light, union strikes, political changes, and government regulations.
You see, I was in the flower business, and had to rely a lot on
foreign business in addition to local and national suppliers.

Eddie