ABSTRACT
At the end of October, the former owner, Bob, was leaving so we closed the books together with help from Sandra (the office manager), who typically handled this. It had been my first full month owning the business and it was the acid test for me to gauge how I was doing. It is similar to being a manager and getting rewarded if the monthly targets are met except it is a whole lot more personal. It was especially critical for me as my $75,000 of seed money to carry the business through until our receivables starting coming in was basically bottomed out. We had a reasonable month in shipments but I was unsure of the total expenses, especially during the last week. After the numbers were checked and double checked, I had good news-not necessarily great news but good enough: despite making the monstrous loan payment and the added expense of a new programmer, we still had a positive cash flow. I had only paid myself a $2,000 monthly salary, which could not last forever, but I was surviving and damn proud of it.
