What the Heck Just Happened?
Suits happen for many reasons, but they all have a devastating toll on your business. Whether they result from faulty product, delayed payment, or merely a disagreement, they consume time, attention, resources and money, which if you had you wouldn’t be in this position. Of course they reflect on your company’s credit history and directly affect your ability to obtain new credit and therefore materials to produce your product or service and finally affecting your ability to produce income. Boy, isn’t that just a no win situation? Wait, there’s more. These suits and judgments also affect your ability to borrow since it is a sign of your inability to repay a loan. When you are trying to pay back old debt, the cash flow of a business most often becomes negative and can create substantial losses. It commonly can take five years of profits to offset one year of losses. The problem is exacerbated by trying to produce even one year of profits when the money is all going to pay old bills.

About Face Soldier
In going from reverse at 30 mph to forward at 60 mph, you first need to come to a complete stop. If you have no breaks, this can be harder then it seems. Inertia plays a big part here, even as it would in stopping a large object. The heavier it is and the faster it’s moving, the harder to get it stopped. Since your goal is in the opposite direction, the longer it takes you to stop, the further away from it you are getting and the greater the distance necessary to travel and the more time required to reach your goal. In other words, stopping the losses is hard enough. Just getting to breakeven is an accomplishment while you are in the midst of paying more for products, suffering from lower productivity and sales seem to be more elusive. Now to turn around and start making a profit can almost seem impossible when you have already cut costs everywhere possible just to get to breakeven. If you could just stop the suits, cut out the legal bills and shelve the debt, you could pay attention to making the company profitable. Once your trip back to breakeven is accomplished, you need a plan to repay all or a portion of the old bills in such a way as to meter out payment at a pace you can meet without falling behind. This means you’re not just at breakeven again but now have to pay old debt too. What an exercise in futility.

The Avalanche
The creditors have a distinctly different idea about waiting. First come, first serve is their mantra. When the first suit comes to your door (literally), other creditors become aware since they are published and are quick to get in line by filing their legal claims as well. They realize that the faster they move now, the further up in line they will be with a better chance to collect. This process becomes a self fulfilling nightmare where everybody runs to the front of the boat with the boat sinking as a result. OF course bankruptcy is designed to get people paid out equally, but with less than a 6% chance of survival including the big guys with their war chests of cash, this might not be the best alternative (See “Just Say No To Bankruptcy”).

The Solution
Fortunately there are many alternatives available to the entrepreneur who is in the know. Our goal at Investor Direct Funding is to provide you with those solutions, ferret out which ones are best for your circumstances and design a plan around them.

Since each situation has its own peculiarities, it would waste your time to try and list them here. What I would want is someone who is familiar with all of them and who knows how to combine them in a holistic solution to reach your end goal. This third party will also play another important roll and needs the skills of a professional negotiator. By now there is a huge credibility issue you have with your creditors who have heard it all and much of it from you. In most cases you have stalled, stalled some more, reached agreements and subsequently broken your promises for numerous reasons. This third party needs to be one who knows what to say and more importantly what not to say. They also need to speak the language of the creditor and be able to relate to their frustrations birthed from their inability to collect. Believe it or not, this party will have instant credibility with your worst enemies or friends who would just like to collect.