We seem to have generated some momentum and now the challenge is to keep it going and growing. Our holiday slump lasted about two weeks and the order activity began to pick up again. Besides keeping the cash stream going, it also precluded having to cut back on hours for our staff. Our team really put in a great effort to make pre-holiday schedules and we did not want to tell them their hours were cut.

My brother and business partner is now going through the agonies of new product development. We will be introducing 3 new models within the next several months. Our sales reps will be very happy. It is vitally important that the new products sell well. Bootstrapping means that you can not afford to spend hard-earned dollars designing an Edsel. But Jon has a great eye for design and our customers should like the new models.

With each new model comes additional business complexity. The challenge is to stay on top of the business systems so that the growth can be handled smoothly. All departments are affected. Purchasing and inventory control requires more time. New manufacturing processes must be developed, learned and smoothed out. Order processing, shipping and receiving, billing, etc., all will expand as the new models go from concept to production.

To keep up with the changes and growth, our simple business systems need to grow also. Our data base software is more than adequate for another year or two but I have to sit down and do the programming. We will be adding purchasing and inventory control systems to decrease our potential for parts shortages during crucial build cycles. Nothing worse than sitting on unshippable large orders for want of some minor part.

Basically the business of being in business gets a little easier because of the things you learn by doing. I'm convinced that no book on starting a business can convey what the experience will teach you. The work, however, gets harder and longer as the business grows. It's the momentum thing -- when the snowball reaches critical mass and velocity, the snowball makers really have to keep running to keep up and keep control.