Bought into a partnership at the firm that I had been working at for 17 years. 5 other partners.
2 years in, in 2007, FBI showed up at the door. Apparently one of the partners who was also a county commissioner had run afoul of the law. He was asked to leave, along with the president of the firm who was also the founder and a co-conspirator. He ended up doing a 5 year stint in a federal pen. The president was not charged, but was out of the game for good. The 4th partner(most senior left) couldn't stomach it, so he left for greener pastures.
That left the 3 most junior partners with a tarnished reputation in an sliding economy. (Civil and Engineering and surveying).
Our industry peers felt certain we could not make it 6 months, and I actually had a couple of good job offers, but I never even considered them.
I looked across the table and said to my remaining partners, it really can't get any worse than this. If you guys want to bail, I will understand completely. But if you stick around, I know we can pull this thing out of the ditch.
Next you know, I was voted as president.
We ended up changing the name of the firm, and although it has never been anything less than dicey, we did better than survive.
After the initial downturn due to bad publicity, and general belief that we were all dirty, we managed to increase business by about 5% over each of the last 3 years. Employees never missed a check, or benefits or any of that. I doubt any of them even really felt any pain, but they did stick it out.
Was it bad? For me, I can't say that it was. Failure was never an option. We were going to be successful at 30 people, 20 people or 5 people. We held steady with staff.
Picked up some good people, dumped some legacy employees.
It sure isn't easy, cash flow is always in question. People are slow to pay, bills never stop coming in. We quickly figured out how to do more with less.
I don't know that I ever thought I had it in me, but of course if I had failed completely, everyone would not have been surprised cause we were dealt a bad hand, but we played it as best as we could.
You always watch the almighty dollar like a hawk.
|