Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate the praise but you are where you are today because YOU have the right attitude. I'm sure we helped you a great deal but only because you were teachable and willing and eager to learn.
When I wrote about the employees I thought about putting an explanation. It actually is quite a story and I'm sure many could learn from it. So here it is!
Readers digest version:
We had hired a manager to manage the billing business for us because we wanted to concentrate more on our books, newsletter, forum, etc. We continued to grow and take on more accounts and hire more employees, leaving them in her hands to manage. We lost a very large account so the numbers changed drastically causing us to take a closer look at things and we didn't like what we saw. But we didn't want to believe it either so unfortunately we let things continue for too long, trying to make them better. But the problem was the office manager and as long as we had her here, we wouldn't be able to make things better. So we got rid of her, and unfortunately she had 'poisoned' most of the employees so they had to go too. We dropped down to a skeletal staff and Alice and I both got back into the billing side. We straightened it around, got it running smoothly again, and began hiring (very carefully). It was the best thing we could have done for our billing business and it is now being run exactly the way we want it to be. Which is why we are always telling everyone to make sure the employees do things the way you want them to do it. The manager we had thought she knew better than us, refused to do things our way and almost ran us into the ground.
That's the brief version. Hope others can learn from it!