If We Can, You Can

Author:

Alistair McLean

Business:

Activities Abroad

Published:

10/11/2008 11:14:00

We’d just managed to get a massive loan to expand the business but the day after the money went into our bank account, 9/11 happened. Nobody flew or travelled anywhere for two years after that.

I made sure that all the people who had booked with us got on their holiday; made sure I did everything the right way, but then I had to wind the whole thing up.

My wife was working at the time so we were kind of breaking even, without servicing the amount of personal debt I’d managed to accumulate. I thought for about a nanosecond whether to go out and find a job, but I thought, no, I’ve got to try again.

I started asking for more money from private equity companies and that sort of thing, but nobody would touch me. Travel businesses weren’t exactly something people wanted to put their money into at that time. I went to every bank in Newcastle, put together a business plan saying how I was going to do it differently this time, but everyone had a red flag.

Also, I think it’s this UK attitude to failure. In America, they barely touch you if you haven’t had a failure; if you haven’t had that feeling in the pit of your stomach, hated it and managed to come back again.

Back home though, it was a really bad time. I’d thrown a lot of my own money into the business to try and keep it afloat. I nearly lost my wife, I nearly lost my house, and my credit rating was shot.

It takes a lot to pick yourself up after being in such a financial mess. I remember a particular instance when we’d invited a few friends round for some drinks. Our old C Reg Astra had started leaking oil and stopped working so me and my wife wheeled thirty six cans of cheap lager in an Asda shopping trolley down our street. We looked at each other, and it was just this realisation: how did we get to this point? We had the drive and motivation to get ourselves out of this; we just needed to do it.

As it happened, my accountant managed to raise three investors who put money in again, despite what the banks were saying. It wasn’t a particularly large amount, but it got us going. He still retained faith in me and my idea, which I’m grateful for to this day.

I was concerned at the time about people at the stockbrokers getting wind of the failure and finding some sort of grim satisfaction in it. But I got over that pretty quickly. I can look back now and I’m probably more satisfied than any of them. I have a great family life and I absolutely love my business; I’m so proud of it and at the moment we’re getting into very exciting times with plans for the future.