Promises made. Promises broken.

There is one moment of my Corporate Bankruptcy that I play over and over in my head. Actually, there are many more. Some are filled small victories of revising leases or vendor agreements. Others are filled with broken handshake agreements or other deals. But this one is like a dull pain. It came at a moment of great vulnerability and anxiety. What brought this moment up that I felt the need to write about it today? Checking the evil box. Have you ever filed for personal or corporate bankruptcy protection? Explain. In this 1/2" box. Explain.

My mind wanders. I wander back to 2011 and I am sitting in front of the US Trustee and some creditors and I am being grilled. My attorney had prepared me well. He told me what questions I should answer and which I should defer to him. His repeated advice was do not make this personal. Do not take anything personal. Do not show emotion. It was great advice in theory. I have a feeling he spent so much time on this because he could tell from our brief time working together how passionate I was about our business. How emotional and personal the entire process had become for my business partner and I. I was doing my best to follow his advice.

Then the question came. From a creditor. One I had never even met. A woman in her early 50s. "How could you do this to us? You promised to pay your bills and told us we'd get paid. We delivered on that promise. You have ruined us. This is all your fault. How are you going to fix this?" I did not know who this woman was. I had never spoken to her before. So I started, "I am sorry ma'am, I don't think I have ever spoken with you before...." She interrupted and told me that she was an owner of the distributor that had been supplying oil to us in the months leading up to our filing. The same distributor that was currently supplying oil to our locations. She was crying. She was full of anger and emotion. I felt bad, I still feel bad. I started to explain and Jon, my attorney, calmly grabbed my arm and stopped me.

In the grand scheme of things, the amount of money owed to that one particular vendor was small. But the impact on the owners, their family and their business cannot be measured by percentages of debt owed, or dollars owed or by comparison to others. I negatively impacted the life of those individuals. Much like many of our other small vendors. It is a shame I live with every day. In essence what she was saying was right, I made a promise to pay those bills. No I hadn't talked to her or uttered those words. Maybe my business partner had, or maybe it was just an implied part of accepting product on terms. It doesn't matter. Those bills weren't paid. At that point in the process, I couldn't have paid them even if I wanted to. So while I really wanted to explain, Jon moved the questioning along.

As I sit here today, I look back on my time in Corporate Bankruptcy and have many regrets as a businessman. The biggest regret was not listening to everyone's advice (and I do mean everyone) to not buy the company. There are many REASONS our company failed. But the company failed. It failed under my watch and my direction. I don't get a redo at that. When I check that box - the dreaded box - yes I have filed both personal and corporate bankruptcy - it is checked in ink. The 1/2" to explain is all anyone really wants to hear. The economy tanked. I lost my company. Done. But for those, like the creditor that grilled me, that actually felt the impact and had a personal interest, that explanation is not enough.

How do you explain why a promise was broken to pay your bills without it sounding like an excuse? The housing market tanked, and my partner was unable to fund his part of the deal because his house did not sell. The first winter we had was the worst winter on record in Spokane. Days went by that we couldn't even open the stores. The stores were in disrepair, equipment was broken, heaters were down, pipes were bursting. Oil prices rose from $7 to $10 per gallon. People were driving less. Credit was impossible to get. Excuses. Excuses. Excuses. The bottom line was, I personally exhausted every avenue I had to fund the company. I had nothing left to give. I did not get a salary from the company. I was not getting reimbursed for any money I put into the company or even expenses I had on behalf of the company. I sold my truck, my family's SUV, maxed out credit cards and our HELOC ... I had nowhere left to turn. I was financially, emotionally and professionally spent and ruined. How do you explain that? I don't know. Thank you Jon for stopping me from trying.