Was talking (actually fishing) with a few small businessmen. Known all for 15+ years. For the last 3 years one showed a loss on his taxes. He is a 1 man company and historically makes about 3x-5x what a regular worker would make in his area. He cut his expenses to the bone and still lost money. Scared the crap out of him as his kids are in JHS and HS. College is coming. As of a month ago, he had more work than he could handle. Work began to trickle in late December and never stopped coming. Another is in commercial real estate. 8 person company. 3 years ago, he made over a million dollars in a year. The last 2 years, he did not do a single deal. Essentially took last summer off and went in 1-3 days a week. Didn't lay anyone off. Just kept paying them and even gave them small bonuses, while he was losing money. He said no more fishing this year, too busy, is working on 7 deals currently and turning away others (takes 6 months-2 years for deals to close in his area). Refinancing major hospitals, colleges, flying to Europe to meet with the money guys, etc. The other guys are getting busy too and planning to buy new equipment, new trucks, hire workers, to handle the workload. The last was going to send his wife back to work at this time last year. Never got into details with him. His kids were in public school. Don't know exactly what happened with him, but the wife is not looking and he just got 2 out of 3 kids into private school and paid his 50% deposits. I am in sales, and last year was like pulling teeth. Even had a bunch of unpaid invoices, which were written off. This week, I got in a couple of payments on 1 year old invoices, from guys that wanted to buy more. Totally unsolicted, never expected to hear from these guys again. One customer, a good payer, just increased his regular order 6x. I was in this mode where I was hustling, networking, cutting margins just to make sales quota, but I'm wondering now, how much was me and how much was the economy.
