ABSTRACT
In 1990, after years of effort moving at a snail’s pace to make CheckMate work, things were going great. We had a profitable business. Our sales had held at a 9% hit rate for two years. As long as this figure held, nothing could hurt us. Years of data showed it would take more than an earthshaking catastrophe to make that figure drop. My wife, Linda, and I confidently decided to relocate our small mailorder business to the peaceful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, as we’d planned for years. Two weeks after I announced leaving my day job, it happened. All in one week, Iraq invaded Kuwait, news of recession broke, President Bush and Congress were gridlocked on passing the 1991 budget, and the federal government was on the verge of shutting down. The country went into shock, and our sales hit rate did not simply drop; it plummeted to zero.
