Mel Robbins (2:25)
My husband's name is Chris as well, by the way. Oh, yes. So you know the long story Short is we failed. That's what happened. We failed. My husband went for his dream and wanted to open a restaurant. And the first one was successful. And then like complete morons, we ignored everybody's advice, everyone's advice. Because when things start to work, you gaslight yourself into thinking they're always going to work. And then you start to go, oh, you know, I don't want to dilute myself. And you know, we're going to get friends. And so we cashed out our life savings, 401 s, kids, college savings. We have three kids under the age of eight at this point. And we get a home equity line. That's free money. We find credit cards, cash. That's free money. And what happened is a very, very, very predictable thing that happens in the restaurant business, which is when you start to expand, you better be rigorous about the formula that's working. They had park and walk downtown, 40 seats. The second location, which seemed like a dream, was a different type of location. It was a strip, it had a big anchor tenant that was very high end. It had a lot of other high end stuff. But a park and walk is a different psychology in a suburban town than a big strip that people are driving past commuting wise. And it was a little bigger than the first one. And so you know this in hindsight, but so the second location, it was double the cost. It took twice as long to build. So by the time the second location was actually open, there was no money left for the third location, which they had signed a lease that had the percentage of profits, a cost plus lease on it, which that'll kill your retail business. And within six weeks they knew the second location was a dog. And then on top of it, you know, we live in the northeast, this was in the Boston area. There were five nor'. Easters. Five nor'. Easters. And if you're living in an area where you don't have snow, that means the abominable snowman turns into a blizzard, blows through your town and shuts things down for three days, which means nobody's getting paid, no cash registers are ringing. And by the way, this was 2008. So if you don't know what that means, recession in the US Housing market turns upside down. We have secured everything with our housing market and by God, we found ourselves in this situation where we were $800,000 in debt, credit card's maxed, the home is upside down in equity, liens hit the house. And if you're somebody that goes into business as a dream, you are A dreamer. You have a big vision for yourself. You've probably made a vision board and written the business plans and you have this idea of what you think it's going to be. Nobody makes a vision board and plasters an image of divorce and alcoholism and bankruptcy and a closed restaurant on it. But when it happens, and if you're in business, I'm going to tell you something. You will fail. You will lose money. It is going to test you. It is the price of entry. It is you against you. And in the hindsight, you will see that you made some dumb mistakes. You can learn from them. And in hindsight, it's very easy to tell this story when you're in the thick of it. Oh, my God, I lost my job. By this point, the kids are 10 and under. The liens hit the house, Cody. The bills were piled up on the counter. I didn't even open them. And if you've ever struggled financially, you know the certain kind of shame and pain that comes from seeing bills arrive that you can't pay. And so this moment of my life, it was really. It was the type of stress that you feel when you have no money is a crushing, grinding, unbelievable amount of stress. And here's the other thing, Cody. I knew Chris and his partner, they were doing everything they possibly could. Like, some of it was just kind of decisions that in hindsight we would have done differently. Other stuff is just life's unfair. Things happen. There's so much out of your control. And I also, in this period of my life, one of the things that I turned on Chris, like, I literally turned him into the enemy. Because when you face a breakdown like this in your life, especially when you can't make payroll, you've got vendors showing up and you're hiding in the bathroom, you are coming home and your spouse is angry at you. Like this poor guy. When I think about the fact that I was so scared and it's easier to be angry than it is to be afraid. And so my story begins at the age of 41. I had been a lawyer. I had done the startup thing. I had had mild success. My husband and I, the first business that we ever had, it was a paint your own pottery franchise. Like one of those places that you take your kids totally, completely lost money on that. We even one day walked in and the high school kid that we had, the amount of stuff that goes sideways in a small business, I'm sure you hear it when you're coaching your small business owners are at these events. I remember showing up and there was a birthday party going on. And I'm like, where the heck is someone that was supposed to be running the place that afternoon? I walk in, she's having sex in the bathroom with her boyfriend. Like, welcome to small business. Like, this is, like, what's happening.
