How long do tough times last?

Sorry to hear about your struggles! Hope you will be able to recover the business soon. you have built one successful product so you will be able to do it again without any doubt! Also, apparently issues with Facebook platform is not your fault and it is rather expected than not as in any business that depends heavily on the platform.

I think you should put more attention to yourself and take care of yourself at the first place. you are putting a lot of weight on now but if you have issues with your own health then all others (family and business) will suffer (even if they do not understand it now).

Gee , thats quite a story. And I feel very lucky that my own hard times never swung so low. I would just say that in my own lowest time, the company fell apart through to personal differences and I tried to go it alone. I hit rock bottom financially though I had a great product all ready to go. I lost money , respect, friends, and importantly self confidence.

But the thing I learnt was that you can not let yourself get to zero. Its like having a Ferrari and running out of gas in the desert.

It sounds to me like you may be running on empty. That is noble, but ultimately you can not help anyone from that situation. You need to look after your own income, health and relationships. Its not selfish to do so, and you need to have the courage to say no even if others don't approve. Thats part of being a leader, taking responsibility and allocating resources where they need to go.

I can empathise with much of your story. LIke yours, my Dad was a career soldier.

Since I was made redundant just over 10 years ago, life has been pretty rough one way or another. I was determined that I never wanted to work within the corporate environment again. I have been made redundant three times - and the third time was a step too far.

Over the last decade, I have taught myself to program from zero knowledge. I've taken many wrong turns and built a number of projects which went nowhere.

In the meantime, I lost my house. I spent 10 months living with my sister and her husband because I had nowhere else to live.

A friend of long-standing offered me a contract, to which I devoted two years of my life but he had engaged me without the support of his Board of Directors and they refused to back him. He was less than honest with me so I worked for many months in the expectation of payment and eventually, three years ago, had to threaten his company with Court action. As no legal aid is available for such cases, I had to represent myself and hold my nerve in the face of some very threatening and intimidating solicitor's letters.

In the end, I had to compromise and accept a lower figure than I was seeking but a higher figure than the client had wanted to pay. The law works in such a way that I could win 4 out of 5 points, lose the fifth and still end up out of pocket.

During that period, while I was still dealing with the stress of the Court case, my Mum, who had been ill with lung cancer for three years, died on 31st, August 2015. My parents lived in Northern Cyprus. I got the news that my mother had collapsed on the Sunday evening and spent the next few hours frantically searching for a flight to Cyprus that I could ill afford.

As the taxi drew up to my front door the next day, my eldest sister called to tell me that my Mum had died. I had to cut her short in order to get into the taxi and head for the airport. It was a long journey to Larnaca in the south and a longer drive from there to the north. I saw my Mum the next day in the morgue.

Also during those years, I met my other half. She was also trying to set up in business and I was helping her to do so. She worked part time in a charity shop where she was being abused at work by her manageress and coming home in tears. Despite having no money between us, I told her to leave - and sued the charity. They settled out of Court but the process was a stressful one - although it did help for when I had my own legal problems.

To survive, my other half and I have sold goods on eBay, sold personal goods at car boot sales and I even worked on an ad hoc basis as an on-call chauffeur for a local businessman - who told me the day before Christmas by means of a curt text that he no longer required my services. The money wasn't much but it paid some of the bills. Two months later, he sent another text asking me if I wanted more work. My pride would not allow him to treat me like a light switch so I sent him a text to say "No".

My partner has always wanted to write so we spent a lot of time writing and editing her books. Unfortunately, self-published authors cannot keep their mouths shut so, when they discover a niche in the market, they tell everyone else about it via podcasts and blogs and - lo! - are surprised when thousands of wannabe authors swamp that particular market and make it unprofitable. That, by the way, is why I have always politely declined to tell people what my projects are. I'll share when I'm ready and not before.

Now? We're still very short on money but we believe we have a unique product for a market about which we have learned a great deal. I'm working some stupidly long hours - which is why IH is a break. We had a windfall last summer which meant we were able to leave the very toxic area where we used to live. We lived in rented accommodation and our landlord - a large company - was a nightmare. They lived in the house more than we did and we had a very rough time of it for two years with constant repairs, maintenance that was not performed or was performed so badly the workmen had to come back again and again and a thousand and one other things which led to us having a fruitless meeting with their Board of Directors.

I was also diagnosed with diabetes, thanks to my partner. She knew something was wrong and insisted I see a doctor. My blood sugar levels were so high that I was kept in hospital for three days while the medical staff tried to bring them under control. My eyes have suffered as a result of the diabetes (so you must exercise and keep your weight under control). They have been lasered multiple times and I have lost count of the number of injections I have had into my eyeballs. I also suffered an acute allergic reaction to an anaesthetic drug during one of the theatre procedures - another night in hospital.

So life can get very rough. I would not want to relive the last ten years and my partner and I are still not out of the woods - but we will be within a few months, of that we are sure.

All I can say to you is, "Courage! This too will pass." I know it does not seem like it right now but nothing lasts forever and better times do lie ahead. I cannot promise you that things will not get even worse before they get better but they will eventually improve.

The key is to have the courage to soldier on; to have the determination to work for your future, come what may and to learn to take happiness in the small things. When life kicks you in the teeth, you learn to differentiate between the false glamour that too many people chase and those things which bring true happiness. For me, that is my partner and my determination to make my own future.

As for your team, you're right: they are interested only in their own futures. No employee will ever believe in your dream. Don't be surprised or disappointed. They are employees, not soul mates.

I wish you good luck and courage while you endure the present and hope your fortunes change for the better very soon.

Hi Ervin,

I followed your product from the 1st day you wrote about it here. It's awesome & I wished I thought of it :-).

I'm very sorry to hear about your struggles. I lost my father to cancer as well so I know how it feels. We can't tell you what to do on that front, but all I can say is I regretted not spending a little more time with him. Cancer can catch you by surprise. One day, everything is going fine, the next day it's going downhill. In a matter of weeks, my father went from being "okay" to passing away.

I'm not trying to upset you, just sharing my personal experience. Money & business is nice, but close family is priceless.

On the business side of things:

You mentioned your profits were cut in half. Has it stagnated since then, or are more customers leaving every day? If that is the case, you may have to prepare for the worst. The question is: does a 4-man team fit in that scenario? Do you need 3 developers to grow a product where customers are dropping faster than you are gaining new ones?

Firing people is not fun, but it's part of being a founder & CEO. Like you said, they aren't invested in the business as much as you are: they are building your dream. If you fire them, they'll land another job. If you don't fire them, on the other hand, your company might go belly-up and they (and you) lose anyway.

It's hard to give specific feedback on this, since I don't know your company structure, current logistics, or your roadmap.

First off, I wish better days for you ahead. You've definitely gone through a rough patch. FWIW, I cared for my wife's father in our 1BR apartment for 8 mos as he deteriorated from the brain cancer that eventually caused his passing. We also had to run our business, so I feel you. Your questions: "Should I focus on my family and stop putting my work first?" You sound like you have a strong family who needs you. If you don't take care of yourself, you won't be able to help them at all, both in terms of your health and your revenue. (Glad you went running--keep it up!) "Am I asking my team too much or am I being to nice to them?" How you conduct yourself every day is only one part of your leadership profile. Another part of your job as a leader is keeping people excited and motivated beyond the money. "At the end of the day, they're building my dream and not necessarily theirs, regardless of how good you treat them." Are they bought into the vision? It's tough to inspire others when your own emotional reserves are low. Do the best you can, and don't sell your efforts short--in some way, you're helping them build their dreams, too. Any business is a team effort, and loyalty should not flow one way--it's a two-way street. Two more notes: 1) I don't know the situation with banks in Albania, but would if a bank robbery took place, would your money be insured? This was not your fault or your father's fault. Going forward, would "rainy day" funds be better placed in a bank? 2) I agree with your comment that loans are evil. Losing cash reserves is like an accounting error--just hurts for a moment. The real pain will come if you take on too much debt and can't pay down interest or principal. Taking on loans to cover payroll could hurt for a long time--be careful. Would shifting people to part-time save money and maintain morale? Good luck!

Damn... you are going through some tough times. Not sure I can help you at all, you'll probably have to hang in there until things get better.

The way I see it, I'm always looking for the win first. If I can get some breathing space financially, I can devote more time on family. Even if I try to spend more time with that, I'm never relaxed because I'm always concerned and anxious about money problems. That's just me, maybe you're not like that, but I think having the finances in order significantly helps every other area of life.

You know your business better than me, but when you're paying somebody to do a job, I think they should do the job. You sound like you've been fair to your team, if you don't think they're returning the favour you can probably interview other developers.

Glad to see Balkan people on IH, Macedonian here :).

Good luck.

Ervin,

I'm sorry to hear about your hard times: thank you for confiding and sharing this with us.

The question you're asking is why do bad things happen? This is a question at the root of many philosophical traditions and belief systems.

This is a question we all ask, yet it reflects what psychologists might refer to as recency bias. A person diagnosed with an illness, suddenly forgets the decades of care-free health they enjoyed. Likewise, a sudden downturn in fortune, makes people forget all the privileges they have enjoyed. How many people in Albania can claim to have had a US education, amassed $60k in savings, and to run their own company earning in dollars?

You're gonna get through this, and come out stronger, yet its a great opportunity for reflection.

Do you know what you want from life?

4k a month, is enough to meet any mans need, especially in Albania. Yet you were driven by more == better? Did this assumption prove true.

Also you put your eggs in one basket:

1.) You could have given 40k to your father and looked after the rest.

2.) Why hire 3 developers in one go, do it more slowly.

3.) Never rely on a single point of failure, yet this was bound to happen when you rely on a single provider to produce value for your project.

4.) Instead of saving some money initially, you bet big. Like a gambler who refuses to bank any winnings.

Also why commit to people who arn't committed to you. It's not fair you forgo your salary, while workers steadily collect a check.

I would say, think deeply about what you want in life? Why are you committed to building a very large company, when you could have a nice lifestyle with income earned in dollars working for yourself or a smaller team. What is the value of money, at the expense of family and health?

More quantitatively (i.e 500k annual revenue) !== better qualitatively (60k annual income, time and location freedom, and no difficult people to manage)