Aside from that, I really enjoyed the post (although a little late). I’ve thought alot about you and Amai during all of this and only hoped that y’all were weathering the storm. I know everything has not gone exactly as planned but continue to believe in your work and business model, and the pieces will fall into place. This year will only make for a stronger and much more successful Amai (and owners)!

As a home baker dreaming of future buisness, i agree with you kelli that small buiseness is risky and many of us could not get suffered from the financial crises if they sat on there old desks and made there job.

But if all talented gifts lost the faith in themself, we definatly will not be sitting today in thier beautifull bake shops eating delicious patisseries made from scratch.

” who the hell will sacrifice his/shes job, mony and time for the sake of a crazy lovley hoppy! “

Since you are an entrepreneur, there are some interesting theoretical books out there, if you are interested. Off the top of my head I can think of “The Innovators Solution”. It’s a bit tech heavy but still the concepts are worthwhile, even for your business.

And if I can bore you with some lecture notes “…winner (entrepreneurs) are guided by a shared strategic vision and are driven to be responsive to market requirements. There are no standard formulas on how to cope in chaotic environments, but there are distinctive features of successful responses to the chaotic market environment. One of them is external orientation, an adaptive planning process, a continuous creation and renewal of new sources of competitive advantage. The managerial challenge is that marketing problems are characterized by various degree of uncertainty due to uncontrollable factors present in
the human judgement. Strategic marketing emphasizes that strategy development needs to be externally oriented – towards customers, competitors, the market and the market’s environment stressing the need for a system that provides assistance in an inherently complex decision making, sensitive enough to be applied in a variety of situations.”

Whew. Anyhow. Sorry for being a jerk. Thanks for be cool about it.

PS: I am not a regular reader, just found your blog linked from another food blog. But I will be now!

Yes, it completely sucks that you cannot get more financing and that you have had a slow summer. However, with more pre-planning, you could have (should have), for example, analyzed what kind of walk-by traffic your location has year-round BEFORE going into business. Maybe you did this. If yes, then why did you open at that location? If not, why the hell not? If you didn’t have enough of a financial cushion to survive a slow summer, why did you even open? When gambling like that with your future, sometimes you win big, sometimes you lose.

Yes, it is a freak thing that happened with the credit slow down, but with proper planning, your pain really could have been minimized. I don’t see *one* sentence in your post where YOU take partial (or any) responsibility for what has happened. I don’t mean this to be harsh, but it is common sense to not *assume* everything will just keep going well forever.

I feel it is the same kind of thing as homeowners who complain that they cannot afford their mortgage anymore. But, they should have thought about IF they could really afford the loan the bank was giving them if they lost their jobs. In most cases, this would have saved the pain of foreclosure. Just because someone wants to give you a lot of money, doesn’t mean you should take it if you are not ready for the consequences. As Dr. Phil says, “You choose the action, you choose the consequences.” I mean, banks don’t loan you money because you are a good person with a great idea, they are making money off you! They could care less if you end up out on the street or jobless.

But again, as the story in America usually goes, people want (and are allowed) instant access to money and instant credit even if they have nothing to back it up. I am sorry for your current troubles but maybe this has taught you (and all small business owners) an important lesson about planning and common sense. I wish you all the best and really hope your business picks up, as I think it is a great idea.

I expect this post will either be deleted or will have tons of your supporters berating me for kicking you while you are down. That is not my intention. I just think it is more useful for 1) someone to be brutally honest rather than just a shoulder to cry on and 2) to get you to stop thinking of yourself as a victim of the governments (admittedly) lousy policies. Being a victim won’t help your current troubles and will not help with any future troubles.

Good luck and best wishes for the future.