Brian Smith

It just needed the guarantee that the manufacturers would get paid.

So that meant a letter of credit so that when they shipped their product, they were automatically paid.

If I just had a standby letter of credit for $200,000, $300,000 each of those years, because

When we shipped product, we had cash pretty much immediately.

We were able to pay our bills and we get more product.

And it only took a couple of hundred thousand to get that cycle running.

But because I pushed it so late every year, I needed a half a million on three quarters of a million dollars.

And that was the hard money.

Right.

Yeah.

And so I had an associate, Alan Greenway, who was another Australian who'd done very well in the hotel industry.

And I'd been in business with him in a different deal.

And so we trusted each other.

And he would have been a great investor initially.

However, he thought I was a bit of a wild cannon and he said, Brian, look, I love you, but if I gave you money, I wouldn't hear from you until you needed more.

And he was pretty right.

And so eventually I finally said, look, Alan, I'm throwing away thousands of thousands of dollars worth of orders every week because I don't have product.

Can you please just give me a letter of credit?

Yes, so much more demand.

Yeah.