Of course, as I start to write this post, Rodney Atkins “If you’re going through hell” starts to play. Rather appropriate. What a weekend. I didn’t want to say anything until it was all done. A bit superstitious I guess on my part, but… it is now over. All but one last bit. Now to explain.
Over the last month, we have been scraping by paying the bills for the company. When Carlos, our one business partner came to visit last month, we stated rather succinctly that the company was in financial straights. Not unfixable, but that it had to have something done fast. Karen and Carlos both said that things would get done. However, they had a severe case of “oh… look at the kitty” on about three other projects. RBT was not primary on their radar when it should have been. It was also expected that we drop everything we were doing in order to follow Karen and Carlos’ latest interest. Oh, and keep the RBT stuff running as well. This meant many long hours and short nights as we literally did double time to get things done for them. It was wearing both Dan and I out. At last count, there were at least 5 projects besides the wireless side of RBT being channeled through us.
Meanwhile, Dan and I have been working without pay for the life of the company. 9 months. We figured the first 4 or 5 months would be without pay. However, we did not expect this. Nor did we expect that we would be the only ones handling the day to day aspects of the business. Doing some business projections, Dan realized that we needed a loan or a grant fast otherwise we were in trouble. We emailed everyone and asked for a meeting on Friday evening. No luck. All we got back was a terse email from Karen.
So, Dan and I talked all night. I cried. Dan was unhappy. However, as we realized that there was nothing for us to do financially at this point, we had only one option. We resigned. Dan and I are no longer part of Raton Basin Technologies. It isn’t what we wanted to do, but it was our only recourse. Both of us are have hit the limits to what we can do to creatively control our bills.
Yesterday we spent packing up and moving the business end of things over to Karen’s. Erin helped which was a godsend. There was way too much stuff that could not be moved by me or just Dan alone. This morning we dealt with the IRS, Colorado business etc. Nothing is in my or his name now. We will take care of the bank account and that will be the end of it.
However, that will not be the end of computer work. I have no doubts that Dan and I will be back in the computer repair business very soon.
I’m so sorry to hear this. I’ve really enjoyed listening to your “RBT” stories over the past few months. After reading this, I’m amazed you guys lasted this long. Talk about persistence!
Please accept my sympathy that this didn’t work out. There’s probably something a lot better waiting out there for the two of you to get involved with.
{{{}}}
Charl
Thank you. I am amazed that we lasted this long as well. I figure that we will manage something soon. Dan and Erin have both gone to Trinidad to the Job shop. We will see. I’ll look in the local paper for a secretary job.
Some of the stuff that didn’t make it to this blog is being fictionalized over on my story, Digitally Challenged. Much easier to write “fiction” than the truth if you know what I mean. Thanks again.