Canterbury man ends the silence about what it's like to go bust

Friday, 27 March 2020

His experience of losing a business has made Lester Bryant sceptical of professional advisers, and leary of personal guarantees.

From employing nine people, living in a beautiful house, and having a happy family buzzing through life, Lester Bryant lived through the ordeal of his business going bust, and sleeping under his desk.

Ultimately Bryant avoided bankruptcy, and is now back on his feet working for himself, but he's shared his experiences in a book in the hope others experiencing a business failure won't feel as lost, lonely and hopeless as he felt in his worst moments.

It includes notes from the diary he kept as his Christchurch quantity surveying business spiralled towards insolvency, and his family life unravelled.

'Today's another tough day for me,' his diary entry from June 16, 2018 records. 'As a consequence of starting to go broke, we have already lost our home. I have cut all personal expenditure to the point that I now sleep under the desk in the office. My wife and son now survive with the support of the state.'

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Lester Bryant wrote Going Broke in a bid to help other people facing the lonely prospect of business failure.

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Author of Going Broke, Lester Bryant, is now self-employed. He says ageism is a big factor in many older people's decisions to be self-employed as they find ageist recruiters lock them out of the jobs market.

'We have to live separately, partly, because there is not enough money to go around. I have avoided claiming any benefits for myself as I do not plan on this being our condition of living for very long.'

It's a bleak memory that Bryant has shared in his book Going Broke, which he wrote as a handbook for those facing the financial collapse of their businesses.

It's the book Bryant would have wanted to read as his business was heading towards broke.

'I looked for a book or something on the internet that could help me understand what was going to happen. But that book wasn't there,' he says.

In a fog of uncertainty, Bryant knew only one thing for sure: that he was going to keep a diary and write a book on the practical and emotional journey of going bust. It was also an act of hope. It felt to Bryant as though he still had something to contribute.

Bryant suffered three big blows at the same time. His wife and son both suffered extreme ill-health just as his business was trying to cope with a difficult trading environment, and the shortcomings of two of his employees.

With his wife unable to work, the family could not cope financially, and ultimately, the family did fracture permanently, with Bryant now raising his son alone, having avoided bankruptcy, and re-established himself in business.

When his business was sinking, there seemed nowhere to turn for advice, either on business, or on handling the emotional ordeal of facing people you are going to cause pain and loss to.

'It just seems to be relentless, like torture,' Bryant says.

Lester Bryant with his son Jamie Bryant. Experiencing sudden loss of wealth and social standing is hard, but health and personal relationships can, and must be preserved.

'Every time you get a call, or a text arrives, or you hear Outlook ping you start to worry.'

He got threats.

'Don't feel any pity for me for this. They were good people who trusted me to deliver extra services for them. I completely understood their pain.'

When failure finally moves from being a secret to known, the business owner learns a lot about themselves and the people around them.

The true nature of the personal guarantees on things like bank debt, business contracts, property leases, car leases and even printer leases that have rendered the term limited liability company largely meaningless.

No figures are kept on the number of people like Lester Bryant who find themselves having to start again with next to nothing later in life.

'If I had sat back and said how the people I knew would react to what happened to us, I would have predicted wrong.

'The people who were kind, I would never have predicted, and the people who were horrible, I would have predicted would have been kind.'

And then there are the family relationships, which business failure will strain, sometimes to breaking point as financial security vanishes, and the foundations of family life, like the home and where the children are schooled are lost, or change.

'Your wife, spouse, partner is going to resent you for some period of time,' Bryant says.

This may not be permanent, he says, depending on how the former business owner behaves.

'You may even come to love and respect your partner even more for the way they carry themselves through this. But, there will be some periods of coldness and hostility. That's a fact.'

This is a time when the former business owner is likely to struggle with feelings of depression, suicidal thoughts, sleeplessness, physical ill-health, and even fantasise about revenge.

'It may surprise you to think that someone who is going broke would have thoughts of revenge,' he says.

'Owners will have some very clear ideas on other people who have contributed to their failure. These could be business partners. Or they are ex-wives or partners who showed no mercy. And there is the odd bad client who will appear in there as well.'

Business owners may also feel they are not entitled to feel some of the emotions they feel.

'The victims get sympathy and support. You are called the perpetrator, which means you are named as the author of your own loss and everyone else's.'

He recorded in his diary how much time he had to reflect on his failure.

'I no longer have a business, a job, a purpose. All of us look at ourselves in the mirror every now and then. I have a lot of time to reflect on myself now and I do this more than I should.'

He urges people facing financial collapse of a business to seek people to talk to, and to prioritise their health and their relationships. He believes women are far better at this than he.

Bryant prints his mobile number in his book, and urges readers: 'If you absolutely cannot find anyone else (to talk to) then contact me.'

* Anyone interested in getting a copy of Going Broke can do so from his website.