I have intentionally not blogged in a long
while, but it’s time to get back to it. Things have been interesting to say the
least. Basically our life since July 31st
has been consumed by Ryan’s career, or lack thereof. Ryan left Cellar Rat in July. The short
version of a VERY, VERY long story begins with Ryan trying to buy his business
partner out. He had been trying to do
that for almost 3 years, and they could never come to an agreement on
price. John (business partner) was
asking way too much. John also would
tell Ryan to put together a proposal, Ryan would, and then John would take 3
months to get back to him (John lives in Hawaii). Repeat this scenario for 3 years. So earlier this spring, Ryan took a really
hard look at the numbers and realized that the business would have to change a
lot in order to actually make money.
They were making money, but not very much. Overhead was pretty high. The space was very large and they needed
extra staff to run it. John had also
been pretty shady about several things, like many promises made to Ryan about
getting more of a stake in the business and some other things I won’t name here. When it was set up, Ryan didn't get an
attorney (major problem #1) and he didn’t ask a lot of questions. John forked over all the money and Ryan got a
5% stake in the business with promises of more when he built it up. Well, Ryan built the business from the ground
up, putting ridiculous hours of blood, sweat, and tears into it. He has made Cellar Rat into what it is today,
yet he never got more than 5%. Ryan was
fed up and he and John had some interesting discussions where Ryan told John he
was going to walk away. Then John came
up with someone to buy the business. I
have a ton more to say here….but I can’t.
Just in case someone Google’s this and reads what I say, we could get in
some sort of trouble. What I can say is
that Ryan totally got screwed. The deal
was supposed to close back in July…then August…then September…then October, etc…
you get my drift. Well, the sale supposedly
(finally) closed this week, although we still haven’t received confirmation! It only took them 5 months to get their crap
together. So frustrating because it has
limited what Ryan has been able to do since he is/was still a shareholder in
Cellar Rat. He couldn’t do anything that
‘competed’ with the business.
We are not sure what will happen now…
Ryan is exploring a bunch of options. Once again, I have a ton to say and I waited
to write everything out until now, but now I’m realizing that I can’t write
most of it out. Or I probably could, but
I can’t risk getting Ryan in some sort of trouble because we really can’t
afford to be sued! Ryan has been pretty
hush-hush about the whole thing. He is a
genuinely good person and hasn’t told many people how badly he was treated,
which angers me because I want to shout from the rooftops how terrible/heartless/gutless
his former business partner and this new guy who bought Cellar Rat are….so I
guess that is my mini shout-out.
;)
So what I thought was literally going
to be a 10 page novel has turned fairly short.
Once Ryan has something concrete going, I will update.
No comments:
Post a Comment