When your enterprise is struggling, it helps to know your options. Your hidden purpose on Day 3 (and during this whole procedure for that matter) is to get your senior executive team to re-produce your preliminary turnaround plan. You should in addition do this for the nonfamily workers. When vendors issue you loan, they're effectively giving you an interest free loan. Your employees might flee during the bankruptcy process. When you have made any mistakes in judgment, do not be afraid to admit it. Think about offering incentives to entice the buyer and to produce it more difficult for the buyer to refuse the deal. This is true for almost every sole proprietor or manager of a troubled company that I've dealt with.

You ask for something over the liquidation value because you desire to give an incentive to the money-lender better than his or her foreclosure alternative. You should give this reward to someone who has spent at lot of late nights and early mornings. To be effective, your company recovery plan should accurately reflect the current standing of your small business. When you live in the Fort Worth area, you may select a legal adviser that's closest to your business, and although that's convenient, I recommend broadening the search outside Fort Worth city limits. To produce it even worse for unsecured creditors, most financial resources that individuals own are nonexempt and the trustee can't market these available resources for the benefit of creditors. You will probably want to offer a 10 to 20 percent premium over liquidation value to have a direct sale without a competitive auction. When you can still develop payroll for the next few weeks, your enterprise has a fighting chance for existence.