This one matters.
In truth, I started this blog off with a post about my beloved L322 because it was easy. Easy to be superlative about a machine with a soul, to write pleasantries and whimsical metaphors…
But the reason I started writing here at all is to share some of my journey with you. To help you. And, because I think I need to write it.
Most insolvency articles have all the emotional depth of a teaspoon. They’re as cold and clinical as a side-effects leaflet in a packet of paracetamol. Lists of obligations written by the vultures in suits, circling the wounded animal limping towards the mirage in the desert…
In the midst of insolvency, I couldn’t find a single blog, website, forum, post or page telling me about what my life would be like once the business that had been my identity throughout my childhood and the first twelve years of my working life, was gone. So, here I am. Five years hence, writing for you – if you are sitting in your van at 6am outside your works doors, with a paper cup of cold coffee, searching for something – anything – that resembles a glimmer of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
I was absolutely convinced that my life was over. That was that. I remember the feeling of shame, hurt, literal grief viscerally. The sense that every future conversation, every introduction would begin with “and this is the boy who went bust…”. The embarrassment. The guilt. Wondering if every time I set foot in my favourite pub, the hum would turn to silence broken by whispers as eyes followed me around the room…
But it was more than that. I was grieving not just for me, for my identity that was tied so closely to a business I’d taken over from my own father, and worked in and around since the age of twelve. I’d grown it through deeply personal connections to staff, colleagues, suppliers and customers alike… The physical effects of stress on the body are profound – every muscle and sinew hurt, my throat had a permanent lump in it. The feeling of utter, utter uselessness was absolutely consuming. It was that feeling which nearly killed me. I recall vividly feeling like a phantom at my own meeting, in a room full of well meaning people discussing strategies for salvaging the business in some form or other when I knew in my heart, it was broken. I was broken. Truth is, I didn’t have the stones for it any more.
The smell of the empty office on a Monday morning. The empty sheds with ghosts of a life, once a busy workshop with beautiful cars and bustling with talented engineers and personalities, now giving way to silence.
I close my eyes and recall driving to some cliff tops in the twilight. Parking up and gazing out to sea. I looked down and wondered for a while whether the cliff was high enough to jump from, or whether I’d be better off wading out to sea and letting the strong currents take me. I must have been there for two, maybe three hours…
You’d think the children, my wife, my family would have saved me. How selfish of me, to take my own life from them. But what people who have never been there fail to understand is, in that moment, you don’t feel you are taking anything from them. I’m so useless, what good am I anyway?
But.
There. In the deepest, darkest hole I have ever been in the depths of despair, came a glimmer of light.
This one train of thought saved me, and it’s crucial to hang on to it in that moment.
You do matter. I mattered. What I needed, was evidence to support that fact – and I found it. It was subtle, but vital. The evidence is this:
People gave me time. Why would they do that if I wasn’t worth something, to someone, somewhere?
That voice came from somewhere in my psyche, and I clung on to the message like a life raft in the middle of an ocean. What did it mean?
It meant that my friends spoke to me. My mum was always pleased to hear from me. Smaller still, people in the street appreciated me when I held the door for them. There were people around me who took me to car shows, motorcycle shows, race meets. Spoke to me when they didn’t have to. However small the interaction, whoever they were, they inferred some value on my life through the smallest of interactions, without ever realising it.
So that, was my first building block. I turned the car around and drove home, and climbed back into bed next to my beautiful wife, in my house with my beautiful family. No-one knew I was gone.
It was hard. Horrendous, from there on in. I haven’t fully recovered from it yet, clearly. But, there was a palpable lightness about me that no-one could take, and the feeling of being free from the stress of running an ailing business and the crescendo of liquidation when it did come, was equally all consuming in a positive way. Life is good now, and has been for some time.
Here are some pieces of advice for you, such as I might be bold enough to subject you to it:
- Beware of anyone in a suit, metaphorically or otherwise. iPad, electronic pencil, spreadsheet – they’re not there for you, they make their living from you. The biggest support I had came from a family member, and two men in Hawaiian shirts, in offices plastered in CoolArt and model cars.
- Surround yourself with people who don’t care about your business. The business might be the biggest thing in your world for a while, but you are the biggest thing in someone else’s. Let them carry you for a while.
- Get out of your industry. Change the scene. You are not your profession. Cut yourself some slack and do something that just puts bread on the table. I drove coaches for a couple of years, dabbled in cars only on my own terms, and loved every second of it.
- The intensity dies away quite quickly, and is replaced by a feeling of peace you cannot imagine right now. But it does.
- Nothing is ever as bad as you imagine it will be. No meeting insurmountable, no piece of paper you cannot fill in.
- It happens to more people than you think. The number of people who came out of the woodwork and supported me with stories of their own was surprising, and most welcome. I never knew. Which leads me on to…
- … You do not in fact, walk around with ‘failure’ tattoo’d on your forehead. Nobody is judging you. Seriously.
- If anyone does judge you, it’s usually the ones who never tried.
- And, it’s up to you whether you react to it.
- You have learned so much more than you will ever be able to put on a CV. These lessons are gold. You won’t forget them.
- You’ll know the look in someone’s eyes when they are carrying the burden you have also shouldered. You will buy them a beer.
- There is life after everything.
Good luck.
You’re going to be alright.
