Advice please

epsilondraconis

Yes Ziggy, please do provide an update. Hope all is okay.

ziggy_stardust_3

Sorry for not responding but can I just say THANKYOU to everyone for posting and replying. Your words have been a great comfort and help.
I'm going to take advice from you all and try and put it into action. When I got home on friday night I broke down in tears, dont know where the hell that came from. I normally only cry to Shawshank Redemption.
So action plan is health first , I had a fitness test a few months back and ran a 10k recently so phisically I'm ok I hope. So its stress and my mental state that is the problem and to be honest I dont trust my local gp when it comes to stress as a quick fix of whatever pills will only mask my problem and I would rather fix it without drugs or getting blasted on booze. If I have another episode like at the supermarket I will go straight away to GP.

I'm looking into selling business , the business I'm in is hard to sell as its very creative and techinical and its all tied into me. So even with a great bunch of staff suporting without me its not a functioning business.

The debtline I will ring them.

Thankyou again , it amazing to know people out there are so caring and helpfull.

silvercar

I don't often post on this board but wanted to send you a wave of sympathy.

From your post you are clearly trying to run the business side of the business as well as being its creative and technical mainstay. On top of that you feel pressurised to support your family and the families of the employees.

You have been taking on too much personal responsibility. When the business was smaller, and when times were good, you could take it all on and muddle through. Now you need to take a step back and decide what will be your areas of focus. Either you need to run the business or more likely you need to concentrate your focus on the creative/ technical side and let someone else manage the business side of things. Take a step back and decide where you want to be in two years time.

Best of luck!

fc123

ziggy_stardust wrote: »

Sorry for not responding but can I just say THANKYOU to everyone for posting and replying. Your words have been a great comfort and help.
I'm going to take advice from you all and try and put it into action. When I got home on friday night I broke down in tears, dont know where the hell that came from. I normally only cry to Shawshank Redemption.
So action plan is health first , I had a fitness test a few months back and ran a 10k recently so phisically I'm ok I hope. So its stress and my mental state that is the problem and to be honest I dont trust my local gp when it comes to stress as a quick fix of whatever pills will only mask my problem and I would rather fix it without drugs or getting blasted on booze. If I have another episode like at the supermarket I will go straight away to GP.

I'm looking into selling business , the business I'm in is hard to sell as its very creative and techinical and its all tied into me. So even with a great bunch of staff suporting without me its not a functioning business.

The debtline I will ring them.

Thankyou again , it amazing to know people out there are so caring and helpfull.

I have run my own business for 20 odd years and really understand what you are saying.

Mine is similar in that the value of the business comes out of my head.

Some years ago I too found all the pressure of supporting 9 staff plus ourselves plus running around after 2 kids plus an unwell husband plus some financial problems caused by losing a rent review and, in order to not go into meltdown, I downsized everything.

The downsizing was incredibly hard as I had responsibilities to staff etc and I did make errors by doing the whole downsize thing too slowly. That cost a lot.

However, had I not taken a step back and re-assessed evrything, I would have gone into meltdown and everything would have collapsed.

Is there any way you can scale it back a bit so that your work,load is more manageable and you earn an OK living from a smaller set up?

This is a good board to discuss it on as quite a few small business owners on here facing all sorts of issues at the moment.
Wishing you well.;)