The Entrepreneur's Nightmare - "You Can't Pay The Bills With Projections."

Stranger than fiction...it's...

The Entrepreneur's Nightmare - "You Can't Pay The Bills With Projections."






[A voice from the last row in the back yells out, "Do I hear 'AMEN!', Brothers and Sisters?"]

Dear Friends, Readers, Futurists, Internationalists, Activists, TNNWC Members and especially Entrepreneurs (both aspiring and currently at-large):


You've heard them all..."the darkest hour is always before the dawn,"..."a watched pot never boils"..."slow and steady wins the race"..."The Lord never gives you more than you can handle...."

There is always a childhood aphorism to offer you comfort in times of hardship. Ironically, the person who offers you these time-worn words of fatuous philosophy is almost never someone who has any money to fund your enterprise (or your personal sustenance). Yet the incorrigible entrepreneur somehow knows that there is a light at the end of the tunnel (and that it is not an oncoming train), but he doesn't know precisely when that light will become visible.

The uncertainty of timing is the most nerve-wracking part of entrepreneurship. It is the most frightening of all paradoxes -- not unlike that of the the airline pilot who has been circling over the airport time and time again waiting for clearance to land and trying to think of a "Plan B" as he watches his fuel gauge needle approaching (ulp) empty.

I'll leave you with an absurd example (because those are the easiest to visualize and remember)...

[cue angelic, dreamlike harp music in background....possibly whole-tone scale arpeggios.....]

After five years of hard work, and after having spent your entire personal fortune on your venture, you have found a sincere, enthusiastic investor who is sincerely interested in financing your continuity and growth. He wants to meet you and your small crew at your offices to exchange his ONE MILLION DOLLAR check for a stock certificate.

While he sits down in your makeshift conference room and you try to make him (and yourself) comfortable with small talk, two burly chaps walk right into your meeting and announce to you, "Hey buddy - you ain't paid your rent for the copy machine, the coffee maker and the water cooler in almost three months, so the boss told us we gotta take this stuff outta here now." They proceed to pick up the items, one by one and remove them from your increasingly vacant-looking offices.

You grin sheepishly at your Angel Investor, and helplessly shrug your shoulders. He slowly stands up, puts his checkbook back in his pocket and says to you these fatal last words..."I can see this is a bad time. I'll (ahem) call you at some time in the future. Good luck with your situation, I'm sure that it will work out just fine. Thanks for the Sprite. I'd better get going -- I've got a busy schedule tonight. In fact, I might be busy for a week or two."

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle


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Douglas Castle - THE DAILY BURST OF BRILLIANCE .001™  at http://aboutdouglascastle.blogspot.com/  



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