I would like to start this with, "I should have...."
"I wish that I would have..."
"I feel ignorant..."
But none of those are helpful.
We didn't get the coffee shop.
The woman decided to sell it to another buyer because she got tired of waiting to hear back from our financier. She decided to be ignorant (which she has been this whole time) and call our financier so that she can personally check on the status of our loan.... after she'd hassle us daily with her anxiety about us checking the status.
Alas. I'm really not upset for the reasons that you would think that I might be. That kiosk was always going to be a stepping stone. A way to get from nothing to having a bakery/coffee shop of my own.
The reasons that I am upset is that the woman has truly made this whole process more aggravating than it truly needed to be.
Truth be told... we don't believe that she even has a new buyer. She decided that she couldn't wait to hear back from our financier/potential lender so she decided to try and push things through.
Confused?
Let me try and put it in a better way
* March: Michael does web service for a coffee shop owner in
exchange for lattes.
Michael tells coffee shop owner that I bake.
Coffee shop owner asks why am I not baking for her.
Coffee shop owner then asks, 'why don't we just buy it, she's
too busy to run it... her other business is falling behind....
she's stressed.'
Coffee shop owner tells us that she's willing to owner finance
if we can't get the loan.
We tell coffee shop owner that we can't act on things until May
because we want to save up more money.
Coffee shop owner says 'ok, I would need 1000.00 to start owner
financing if we don't get financing, i think you'll be able to get financing because there are programs out there that help with small business. blah fricking blah.'
An hour after talking with her she calls and says she needs to be
out by April 19th. She's stressed, blah blah blah.
We (because we were willing to compromise) decide to proceed with our end.
*April
We put together crazy hours of baking
We invest crazy hours working the coffee shop... learning how to make
lattes and mochas, blah blah blah.
Instead of it taking two weeks, it only took me three days to learn. I still
worked.
Meanwhile, coffee shop owner got caught up on her stuff, isn't so stressed out
and then says, "It'll take 4,000.00 to start owner financing." Not to mention that she feels that we should pay her 8 percent on the loan.
(Damn, should have got things in writing.)
She says she won't have an owner financing agreement without an aggressive default clause.... as in her default clause says, "If you default, I can sue you for interfering with my ability to run my other business, and I can come in and take everything that you invested, and pursue whatever means necessary to get the rest of what I think is owed to me, meanwhile, you get nothing back that you invested."
Every single day she is badgering us with 'Have you heard from the financer, the bank?' Trying to transfer her anxiety, and get us to jump through the hoop. We stopped responding to her.
She's going on about all the bills that are up and coming that she has to pay, like insurance and parking and blah blah blah blah.
HELLO BITCH... I don't have a fucking job. Shut the fuck up.
We got turned down for the first loan.
We apply for the second loan.
May:
We continue to be harrassed by this woman, calls emails, blah blah blah..
We kept telling her.... you have to do what you have to do... we will call you when we know something.
Now mind you we've taken about 12 points worth of dings on our credit scores because you get dinged every time someone has checked your credit, what a crock, but it's what's happened.
We begin to be impatient and feel like there's not really a chance of us getting this loan... we start pursuing selling my baked goods.
She decides that she's tired of waiting, can't wait any freaking more and so she calls our financier tells him that she needs an answer by 10 a.m. because she 'has another offer'. So, 10 a.m. Friday comes. No answer. No coffee shop.
Meanwhile, she decides to do this on Thursday afternoon. We are in the middle of getting ready and traveling down to WV for the weekend for mother's day. We aren't available, we don't have time, and we don't have our information with us. So in the middle of our 'mother's day weekend' we are being forced to do business.
Now, I hope that you can understand, I'm not really mad that we didn't get it. We sorta had come to terms that it was a very high possibility that we weren't going to get it. But we are pissed at the woman because she truly made this an aggravating experience.
My advice:
Get everything in writing before you do one single thing that could compromise you in any way.
I've got to get over the anger. I have a notion that verbally filleting her would help. But it wouldn't work. She's the type that is truly clueless as to how she is.
I'm waiting for her to call about not having a buyer.
I'm waiting for her to try and ask me to work for her.
Not because we would change our minds about it.... but because I want to laugh at her.
Sick? Maybe. I really wish I could send her a bill for the time that I was 'training'.
Now to add:
We are happy to continue with the path we are on. I've been tempted to tuck tail and run back to my 9-5, but I'm not doing it. We believed that we were on the right path, I have been quite a deal happier, and we both know that starting a business is hard coming out of the gate. The experience has taught us, and it has helped us really and truly prioritize. We could be much worse off.
So, yay for that much.
Posted by hawkie at May 13, 2007 05:53 PM