Internationaler Standort Deutschland

Anne Koark<= /span>

Speaker Comments

Global Summit of Women 2007

Learning from Business Downturns=

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· = Insolvent and nevertheless successful

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My name is Anne Koark. I am British= and have been living in Germany for 20 years.

Until June 30, 2003 I had a successful own company Now when I am asked what I do, I say I am a V.I.P. Very Intensively Penniless!!! (in German: Very Intensively Pleite)

Today I want to tell you about my company, how I went bankrupt = and what it feels like to be insolvent.

In June 1999 I founded my own company ̶= 0; Trust in Business “ in a farmhouse in Freising near Munich airport.

Having the star sign Taurus I am very security minded. I theref= ore founded the company part-time see whether my idea really met market needs.

My company Trust in Business offered relocation, bookkeeping, payroll, marketing, pr, and start-up help. Within 48 hours of starting= up, we had the first two Silicon Valley customers.

We had one recommendation after another. Articles came out abou= t us everywhere. One article had Jimmy Carter on the front page and a double-sided feature about my company in the middle.

I was delighted. With 1200% revenue growth and the costs minima= l, I was convinced that this was a success.

In January 2000 we had one employee, in February five.

With 5 employees the rooms at home were too small we had to look for office space. We decided to rent office space at Munich airport. =

There were only 2 spaces free. I checked our liquidity plan and decided to rent out one of the spaces at the airport.

Shortly before moving in, I received a call from a customer who= we did bookkeeping and marketing for. He asked whether we would be prepar= ed to open an office service, so that he could move into the space too. <= o:p>

The whole rent covered by the customer and so we went ahead. The customer was pleased and recommended us to others. <= /li>

In March 2001 we won a prize for entrepreneurs for the German speaking countries.

When the Canadian Prime Minister came to Germany we looked after accompanying delegations and helped them with economic contacts. =

The press discovered us. The Sueddeutsche<= /span> Zeitung made me “Germany’s Erin Brockovich of Small and Middle-Sized companies&#= 8221;.

Please don’t look at me too closely, as I am really broke= and cannot afford plastic surgery to look like Julia Roberts! <= /span>

And then September 11 came and with September 11 the foreign investment in G= ermany sank in 2002 to 1/8 of the year before.

This meant for us, that while we still had lots of services nob= ody physically came for the office service which we had situated in 800 square meters= of office space.

As 53,000 square meters of office space had been built around me and was being offered at €4 less per square meter and with 6 mon= ths rent free, it was impossible to sub-rent office space.

I had made a cardinal mistake by signing a long-term inflexible contract.

My liquidity plan did not look good at all. I decided to do wit= hout my own salary.

I had a professional in to reduce costs, look at turnaround strategies and change management I was not eligible for any support programs and the bank was not willing to invest in us.

I prepared a licensing concept whereby the name of my company w= as licensed out to 4 companies.

The tax chamber took 4 ½ months to approve this and it m= oved my revenue to a later point.

And then the first customer went bankrupt. I was furious!!! I thought – How could he= ? We have worked for our money! And why does he not have the respect to con= tact us?

I spoke to the employees. I was told that you do not tell emplo= yees that things are bad with a company. However, they produced 20 pages of suggestions for cutting costs and ideas where we could build up new business.

The second customer went broke and the third and I thought if I work just a little harder things would be great.

At the end it was 19 hours a day. The words insolvency, debtor = and creditor crept through my mind. I hoped that if solvent meant you dissolve, insolvent would mean that you don’t.

An investor came in and we were in due diligence for weeks. He = was still examining the books when the Iraq war started. He the= refore decided not to invest and I had to register insolvency.

I looked for advice on what to do. Everywhere there was advice = for private people in debt, but not for companies.

It was then that I discovered that you had to go to an attorney= .

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The journey to the insolvency attorney was not nice at all. I f= elt like it was a journey to bury my third child – my company. =

The entrepreneur par excellence who had negotiated with the Canadian Prime Minister was frightened. I looked for someone to go wit= h me.

On the way I hoped that I would not cry when I heard the word &= #8220;insolvency attorney”.

When I got there, the door opened and I thought I would scream = for laughter. I did not dare as I thought the attorney might think that I = was not only insolvent but not OK in my head.

In Engla= nd we say if you have no money “I have not got a bean”. There= he stood, my attorney – the spitting image of “Mr. Bean”= ;.

He told me that I would lose everything: company, apartment, car, mobile phone, life insurance, pension insuran= ce, all of my savings etc.
And I waited for the hangman to come who was to execute the punishment for being a failure as an entrepreneur.<= o:p>
The court appointed administrator close= d all of my bank accounts and asked= me to work for three months to help him extract the remaining money out of t= he company for the creditors.
While employ= ees were paid by the unemployment office, there was not enough money in the mass to give me any money at all.
I went to the unemployment office, asked where insolvent people should go and was to= ld at the information desk “I don’t want to have anything to = do with someone like you!”
The unemploy= ment office was not responsible for me and told me to go to social security= .
The social security office told me that as I was the owner of an apartment, they = were not responsible for me – even though this could only be sold by = the insolvency administrator.
I was four months without health insurance and in fact without any money at all. =
As I have ve= ry strange children – they eat and drink – I was lucky that g= ood friends helped me through this period.
All attempts= to find a job for after this three month period failed. The reasons were:= You are freelance – are you sure that you can fit into a company? You are over 40 – that is a little old. You are a single mother; you will be missing all the time. You’re wages will be taken away – except for an existence minimum. Where will your motivation to= do a good job come from?
To work free= lance I would need to earn as much as an employee and that from day one onwa= rds which seen as an entrepreneur is simply not possible.
Back to my insolvency I asked my insolvency administrator if I could contact my creditors myself and he agreed. I was relieved as all that I had left = was my honour, respect and my reliability.
I decided th= at I needed to inform the press that I had gone broke. This was the only wa= y of determining when the press would tear me to pieces. =
I wrote an article and Wallstreet Online published it= . The article had 8.000 readers. I received 1200 thank you letters that I “out” myself.
Many of the people were suicidal due to the stigmatization of failure. All of the people had the same problem that I had.
They did not want to go to social security institutions – they wanted to work= .
The only pro= blem being that a financing of a new business when you have lost everything near to impossible is.
Although I w= as only 4 weeks in insolvency, these people looked to me to try and break= the taboo of failure on their behalf.
This was the reason that I founded a non-profit organization with the name BIG=3D <= span class=3DSpellE>Bleib im Geschäft e.V. (BIG =3D Stay in Business).
Over 3.500 people have taken up contact to BIG. We have over 60% danger of suicid= e on the phone.
People’= ;s problems range from “Why am I losing my title of “attorney= at law” from the professional chamber for attorneys?” via “I did my best and am not a criminal” and “How am I going to fill the hole in my pension?” to “Why will they n= ot let me work?”
Over 80% of = the people calling want to get back on their feet.

If you bear = in mind that Walt Disney was broke when he created Mickey Mouse and that = this turned into a world-wide corporation that made millions of dollars, you know that it is possible to get back on your feet after failure. =
Failure is a great learning step on the way to success. The way to deal with it is = all mind-set.
You have to = find your own value and look forward.
An entrepreneur is someone who moves forward with a good idea and if the company is dead, the entrepreneur certainly is not!
Now I am known amongst insolvent people= in Germany as “The Insolvency Lady”.
They hope that by giving insolvency a f= ace and placing the facts on the table, I will be able to move people not = to look at us as the morgue of dead companies but to see the potential th= at we have to offer as experienced entrepreneurs.
A Bankier h= as a lot of money, a Privatier a lot of time an= d a Pleitier a lot of experience, which could either= be passed on to people founding new businesses so that they do not make t= he same mistakes which we have.
Or we could set up business again and l= earn from our mistakes and thereby keep the purchasing power alive, so that other companies can also make profits.
In England there is a sayin= g with which each child grows up. The saying is “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again“.=
This is the spirit we need to keep the economies going! And if you look at the way children learn to walk you= can learn a lot about what you need for business downturns – one ste= p, two steps and then they fall.
They do not sit there asking what the neighbours might think or doubting that they will ever learn to walk. = They build the experience into their next steps until it works.<= /span>

· = I have written a book in German = called “Insolvent and nevertheless successful“. This book is very simi= lar to soap operas – not from the content but from the way people deal wi= th it.

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· = As you know soap operas have a l= arge number of viewers but if you ask anyone if they watch them, they say “no”.

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· = My book was 7 months on the bestseller list and nobody buys it. They have it wrapped up in the bookstor= e as a present, so that nobody assumes that they may be insolvent – so str= ong is the taboo connected with failure! It is this taboo that I intend to brea= k.

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So – in my opinion – if you= are able to get back on your feet after having fallen as an entrepreneur, = then you are successful.
My name is Anne Ko= ark, “Insolvent and nevertheless successful”!=

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