HAPPY NEW YEAR!
This year has FLOWN by! Holy crap! My little store has grown from a fledgling newbie to closing the year with a little over $93k in GROSS income! Now, mind you, almost all of that was cost of goods sold and expenses, and if you count the debt, then it was definitely NOT a profitable year, but I did survive the first year so that’s a huge milestone. This next year will either mean big growth and change or it will mean crashing and burning. Most of that will depend on the “poker war” that I am in the middle of. Most of you don’t know much about what I’m deep into, but let’s just say that I’m participating in a little civil disobedience in order to get back some rights. There’s a major misconception out there that poker is gambling, rather than a skill game, and I’m part of the fight to get poker recognized for the intellectual sport that it is. The recent actions of the Department of Gaming are showing me how well we’re doing.
My goals for this month are to get two days off per week (I know, shock and horror!), and to start making some headway into the debt of the business. I have to replace two of my dealer chairs (Basically I bought two of two types of chairs so I need to get to 4 of the ones that they like the best), and I need to get an upgraded door locking, remote unlocking system to improve our nighttime security and those are my only expenses forecasted this month. Alex and I have worked out a deal where he works Fridays and Saturdays every week and those are the only days we’re open for retail sales except that on Tuesdays when we have a daytime game people can come in and buy stuff if they want but it’s not an advertised day.
Also, my laptop broke a few nights ago. The hard drive went completely bonkers and I nearly lost a lot of important documents and forms I had created for the business. Charles was able to salvage a lot of the most important files, but I lost other ones. He worked really hard getting a new (bigger) hard drive in there, as well as working around a problem with my CD/DVD drive (which apparently may also need replacing) to get the operating system installed again. I’ve set back up a few of my frequently-used programs, but not all of them just yet. I’m so so thankful to Charles for all his work, because I don’t really have the time or patience to deal with hardware issues anymore.
Anyway, Mom and the kids are going to be in town soon and I need a shower, so I’m going to end this post rather abruptly and go take care of that. There’s a whole lot more I could blog about but I’ll have to save it for another time.

