Dan Muir risked his life savings and his well-paying job to pursue his dream of owning his own business.
But just 18 months later, his wife, a new mother, was so short of money that she found herself counting purchases at the checkout.
He sometimes had to awkwardly ask for things back and most basic necessities became instantly unaffordable even though Dan worked 80 hours a week.
The 40-year-old shop fitter’s mental health began to decline. Then he watched his first company go bankrupt and realized that the big companies that had promised to pay long-overdue bills were never going to pay a cent.
Speaking to FEMAIL, he admitted that losing his first business was “crippling” and “sent him down a dark path”.
“I had never suffered from mental health issues before that. We had made it through the first two years of business. Then we hit a rough patch for six months and about three months later we realised we weren’t going to get paid. We were left with $120,000 in debt and had to file for bankruptcy,” he said.
And he is not the only self-employed person who has to work alone and suffer, not because of the quality of his work or his staff, but because people do not pay bills on time or at all. And chasing them with lawyers is too expensive a task.
In fact, many merchants have such a hard time getting money from their customers that Shaun Jones, who runs a subcontractor hiring business, started an invoicing business backed by a legal team to help him.
Grunt Invoice Protection has only been in operation for a few weeks, but it has already engaged dozens of small businesses and helped them recover funds.
San Muir, 40, took a dark path when his first business failed
His wife Larissa, pictured here with their daughter Matilda and son Hamish, vividly remembers the difficult times when she had to count the food in the till. This happened when her daughter was a newborn.
Shaun, 42, who lives on the Gold Coast, was fed up with dealing with bad debts. He would organise workers to get jobs, receive promises of payment, get cheated and then find out that the people he had been dealing with had sold everything and left town without paying anyone.
“You’d go after them legally, spend thousands of dollars on lawyers, and then find out they don’t have any money,” he said.
‘They usually start off paying on time or catch up the first time they’re late, but once they build a relationship with you, they stop doing that.’
Now that you have your business up and running, Grunt Invoice Protection keeps track of overdue invoices and makes legal threats on your behalf.
Most of the companies he has dealt with have started paying on time since he started using Grunt Invoice Protection to collect their invoices.
“At the end of the day, I have a wife and three kids to support and we would be in a much better position if we were paid on time, or if we were paid directly,” he said.
“A lot of these guys never have any intention of paying. So I have to juggle paying school fees and personal bills because I pay everything else first.”
Shaun has known Dan for over a decade and knew his story, so when he launched Grunt, he was one of the first people to join us.
Dan was making $150,000 a year when he decided to take a chance on his own business and lost it all.
When Dan decided to quit his job and strike out on his own, he was making $150,000 a year and had money in the bank. Plus, he was about to become a father.
After his first business collapsed, he was $120,000 behind, depressed, and strained in his relationship.
He pHe invested $250,000 in his business in the first two years, purchasing machinery, and was excited to move toward a future with less stress and ultra-flexibility.
Instead, he was left with lifelong questions.
“It still affects me today. I think about what would happen if people didn’t pay and everything fell apart again.”
He now runs a successful business in Tasmania. The couple moved to the southern state so that his wife could count on the support of her family the next time they set up a business.
Shaun Jones, 42, started Grunt Invoice Protection because he was fed up with offsetting bad debts by cutting into his own income.
The cycle of “bad debt” continues.
He revealed that he recently spent $10,000 chasing a $40,000 account.
“It’s all downhill, when you’re at the bottom you don’t get paid,” he said.
It has taken a tougher approach to companies that don’t pay on time and has even signed up to Grunt Invoice Protection for some major clients.
Businesses pay Grunt for each invoice, but they don’t need to register every customer.
Dan is finally able to provide a good life for his family, which has grown by one member since his first disastrous attempt.
“I won’t say I’m living a fairy tale, business is as tough as ever, but I’m in a much more stable position than ever,” he said.
‘Most of my clients are repeat offenders. I think the fairy tale is just that, a pipe dream sold to young entrepreneurs.
“But the success of this business is definitely a bit of redemption.”
Shaun hopes that businesses like his and Dan’s will stop suffering with the help of his second company.
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