In honor of small business week, we list five horribly embarrassing yet completely effective ways to survive when your back is up against the wall…or even worse, on the floor.

1.   Don’t File Taxes – Call it a loan from the IRS

We recommend not talking to your accountant(s) about this. They will probably say something like, “but we have to pay our taxes!” They tend to be buzzkills like that. Fortunately, if you are a really small business, you probably don’t owe that much so they won’t come after you immediately. Also, you end up getting an amazing APR given their fine schedule. 

2.   Hire family members – pretend to pay them as they pretend to work

Ah, nepotism. Derived from the Italian word “nipote” meaning nephew, it was the phrase used to describe Cardinals and Priests giving favor to their family members. Now-a-days, the practice is used everywhere from Variety Stores to small software companies; with the nephews usually being lost millennials who need to pass the time, and the Cardinals being frustrated baby-boomers who don’t understand why their DLLs from the nineties no longer work.

3.   Develop a program for interns – teach them the meaning of work with no pay

Interns are like candy; they are sweet and fun to consume, but if you have too much, your teeth will fall out. College and high school students tend to work the best – after that people expect to be “paid” for their work, and you can no longer use ”you’ll get a letter of recommendation!” as a bargaining chip.

4.   Take out a loan from the bank – offer up your first born as collateral

As you might expect, banks don’t normally deal in children. Bring the child anyways, then leave him or her on the banker’s desk whilst slipping them a twenty. At the very least, it will be one less mouth to feed…

However, if you are somehow “emotionally attached” to your child, we recommend simply coming prepared with a package of reports furnished by the sturdy wisdom of our SurvivalWare software package. Bankers love graphs and numbers, and can’t stand crying babies.

5.   Participate in pharmaceutical research – ignore the side effects 

Try not to do this with American companies…the FDA has way too many rules intended to protect people and therefore doesn’t pay as well. We recommend contacting China and getting research chemicals through the mail. Make sure that you document everything, and good luck with that weird pulsing sensation in the back of your head!

What does it take to get into the financial groove? Philip Campbell sure knows. After decades of experience as a CPA, he has committed himself to giving companies the cool rhythm of financial stability through his newest endeavor; financialrhythm.com.

We had announced an hour long webinar last month where Philip introduced us to his 3-part plan to "breath financial life back into your business". Now, he has a 30 minutes slot on January 5th, 2016 at 5pm Central time to quickly review the process, and then dive deeply into the 1st crucial step.

                                                                           Check it out here!

"Even Bill Gates and John Paul DeJoria have a view on this subject that I will share with you on the webinar.

Step 1 is the perfect place to begin your journey toward creating a business that is a lot more fun to own and operate. It is step 1 to building your financial health and wealth in business. It will be fun… and short (only 30 minutes)."

We hope to see you all there! The New Year awaits, and so does your Financial Rhythm ;)

We've been working with Philip Campbell for many years helping companies see the financial light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Now he is presenting an hour long webinar on Dec. 1st, 2015, giving you a 3-part plan that will provide you with the confidence you need to succeed in business.

"Do you sometimes wonder why your business struggles financially? Does the financial struggle drain your energy and take all the fun out of running your company?

It's frustrating because you know you have a really good business. You've got great customers that love your products and services. You're profitable.
But cash is still tight for some reason. You're struggling to hit your financial targets. The numbers seem to bounce around from month to month and you're unclear about what you need to do to fix the problem.
The good news is there is a solution that can reduce or eliminate your struggle. And it's simpler than you might imagine. (And you don't have to become an accountant to tap into the solution.)"

- See more at: http://campbellphilip.typepad.com/blog/2015/11/free-webinar-a-3-part-plan-to-breathe-financial-life-back-into-your-business.html

About five months ago, I had a difficult decision to make.  My main development PC had finally died earlier in the year - something about an "Unmountable Boot Volume."  My data files and source code were well backed up, but I had lost my unique collection of Visual Basic 6 controls and development environment, and I could no longer make changes to SurvivalWare the software.  I could not create a new install file if only a few files needed updating.  This was a six year old Windows XP, whose companion laptop had died a few years earlier.  Many of the companies I had licensed 3rd party software from - for things like charts, zipping, and ftp functionality - had gone out of business.

As a software developer and entrepreneur, I find it embarrassing to write these words.  How could I let myself be so exposed?

I had two choices:

Option #1 - I could spend time and money to recreate the old development PC, and continue developing under VB6, or

Option #2 - I could migrate SurvivalWare to the .NET development environment and start fresh.

Actually, there was a third choice.  I could throw in the towel.

The fact that I'm blogging about it tells you my decision was probably NOT option #3.  

My brother, Hank Luhring, thought I should take a serious look at option #1 - after all, how hard could it be to track down old disks and create a new XP computer?  That would buy time to pursue the migration at a more leisurely pace.  It would be the conservative choice.

But,  maybe this was a blessing in disguise.  The migration was already years overdue.  I had been telling people it would cost $500,000 or more - not really knowing how much work was involved.  I had made several attempts at at "Requirements Document" and getting design thoughts down on paper.  I even talked to a couple of development firms.  Things kind of stagnated when I could never find the time to get them a document detailing exactly what the software had to do.

I am a firm believer in what I'll call the "Nike Principle" for software project estimation: " Just do it!" (The software project).  Note how long it took to do.  That is the only reliable way to do a schedule estimate.

Hank and I engaged in a little contest.  I turned over to him all my old disks and everything I had to help him load up a Windows XP computer with a Visual Basic 6 Development environment capable of continuing SurvivalWare development.  

I would upgrade to the latest Visual Studio and write a "Hello World" program in VB.Net and maybe C#.   And try to figure out what needed to be done and how long it would take.  What were the key technology decisions?  Could parts of it be outsourced?  After 30 days, I'd decide which way to go.

SurvivalWare, the company,  has the feeling of a startup once again.  I am lucky enough to have my son, Nick Luhring, on board to help.  Nothing like youth to push things forward, and keep one humble.  He's been pushing me to start this blog for weeks.  Thank you Nick - for your role in the birth of this blog, and the rebirth of SurvivalWare.

Next week:  Brother vs. Brother