Since the essence of my business is SERVICE, and I had devoted most of my energy in creating a service environment in the business, I knew that things would not be good from here on. This pattern continued in slow dribs. I was undercut by competitors who didn’t know what they were doing, but it didn’t matter to customers. I learned that what THIS business was about was to be cheap–not good, not necessarily competent, but CHEAP.

I eventually sold the business for a song just to get out of it, lost almost $100,000 of personal cash in the process,and wouldn’t even think of getting back into that business. So 3 years of knowledge, devotion to service and to customers, training employees and helping them grow, all of that is gone, a thing of the past. A wonderful experience, but I can’t afford to repeat it. What a waste.