After a year of saving up, months of planning and several weeks of getting my business affairs in order, Nikki and I were finally off on our first vacation since we got married four years ago. I breathed a big sigh of relief as I backed the van out of the driveway and headed down the street.
“We’re off…finally. I thought we’d never make it the way things have been these last couple of weeks,” I said to my wife.
“I’m glad for you, honey,” Nikki replied. “You really need to get away. You’ve been working far too hard. Besides it’ll be nice to get off by ourselves for a while too.”
It’s hard to take vacations when you’re starting a small business. Two years ago, after selling and installing computer systems for someone else for five years, I took the big step and started my own computer repair business. I had been doing this sort of work on the side for two of my employer’s large corporate accounts to earn some extra cash and because my employer’s own service department couldn’t handle the complex systems these accounts were using.
The repair work load finally expanded to a point where I was having a hard time handling it by myself and our basement was full of machines being repaired, machines I’d scrounged for parts and equipment to do the repairs. I was faced with a big decision when a friend who controlled another large account called to say he was very displeased with the service he’d been getting from his current repair service. He would give me the account if I’d hire an additional repairman to back me up.
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