That is the extent of my intelligent contribution to this discussion. Just, yes.

Anthony – Thanks for the link! Always appreciated. I went and nosed around your site a bit – I’ll do some more when I haven’t a deadline looming. Thanks for coming around!

If at all possible, you do not want to ruin your credit – that can affect you for many years. Unfortunately, if you are young, you may not have yet been able to build up the cash reserves that are necessary to carry you through the rough spots that almost all businesses experience.

Beg, borrow, sell of assets that you don’t need before defaulting or being late with payments. Take a part time job if you have to.. do whatever it takes.

Most of my life I’ve been able to borrow incredible amounts of money pretty much on my word; more than I really would have been able to realistically pay back. That was because I’ve kept my credit score very high all the time.

You want to be able to do that because you never know when you might need to. I had to borrow over $400,000 two years ago to cover the purchase of a new home before I sold my old. If my credit had been bad I would not have been able to get that loan, and we would have had to give up on the new property and have hoped to find something as good after selling the old.

So – work very hard to keep your credit pristine. I know that can be hard, maybe impossible sometimes, but do the best you can.

I’ve been in the quicksand for so long I think I could sell shares in it. The one thing I’ve found that helps with that is a good set of stilts to hold you up. Family & friends.

Being in the quicksand is almost a given when triplets arrive and you already have one. But I’d rather have them than be on solid ground.

Tony is right. If you already feel you’re at the bottom, that is probably the best place to start. And if you fail, get up again. Your stilts will be there to help you.

I can’t say whether this business or the next one will be it – if I could, I’d buy a lottery ticket and give you half of the winnings, as payment for such a clever piece of writing today – but you’ve got more drive than I’ve seen in most people. So you will make something stick.

I’ll be here, cheering you on.

‘If someone tells you that “make lemonade from lemons” story right now, you’d want to scream, because nobody is buying the lemonade. You don’t want to hear about rainbows, either, right? You are flat out of ideas, there is no place to turn, no wriggle room, nothing but bad news and more bad news.’

The second is “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, honey, rich is better.” (Google attributes that to several different people so I’m not going to guess).

I was able to start my business (25 years ago now) at a very fortunate time: I was already at rock bottom. Seriously, I was making so little money that I HAD to do better on my own.. and I did.

I can’t tell you how to make your clock tick. I wish I could. I can tell you that a struggling new business needs to be alert for opportunity and flexible in its offerings. I can tell you that you might actually fail: I failed at two other business before this one.

I’ve seen a lot of people go in and out of business over the years – customers, friends, other folks. I helped some of them find business, I felt sad when some of them failed. From my point of view, the strongest indicator for success was simply the strong desire to be independent. I mean that if they went into business because they needed to make money, they were much more likely to fail than if they went in because they needed to be free.

I wish you luck – more than that, I wish you happiness, because that’s what really matters.

Glad to hear you gave it up. If you’re not going to make a living using it, I say leave it alone.

Margot: You are most definitely not alone.