Book one of the trilogy · In progress
Everyone shows you the win.
Nobody shows you the bill.
December 2018, the week before Christmas. Seven days to find $53,000. About $1,000 in the account. I am writing the book that starts there — and goes back six years to explain how I got there.
The book
Not what it takes to build a company. What it costs to keep one.
Most business books are written by people describing the summit. This one is written from the week the whole thing nearly ended — and then walks back through the six years that led there.
days to find $53,000, a week before Christmas
market stalls, and staff on the payroll, at seventeen
months my people worked without being paid — and stayed
How it opens
Chapter zero
December 2018. A week before Christmas Eve, I was told I had seven days to return $53,000.
Not next month. Not after New Year. Not when the payments come in, when someone signs, when accounting moves something around and it somehow works out.
Seven days. Before Christmas.
There was about $1,000 in the accounts. That was what I could show and what I could transfer immediately. The rest had gone earlier on wages and on keeping the company running.
It was a trap, and what had to be returned was money that no longer existed.
The Weight of Winning · Chapter zeroThe trilogy
Three books, one argument
-
I
The Weight of Winning
What building it cost — told from the week it nearly ended.
Being written -
II
No Soft Game
Investors, partners, and the people who turn up when money does.
Planned -
III
Never Give Up
Starting again, with everything the first two cost still on the books.
Planned
Who is writing this
I sold watermelons at fourteen. The rest took longer.
By seventeen I was running eleven market stalls with people working for me. Later came real companies, real investors, and the year I found out what happens when the money you are holding turns out not to be yours.
I am not writing this from the summit. I am writing it with the invoice in hand.
Chapter zero, free
Read the worst week before you read anything else.
The opening chapter as a typeset PDF, and a note when book one is finished. That is the whole list — nothing else gets sent.
Greg Ciupek uses your address to send chapter zero and news about the books — nothing else, and never passed to anyone. One click in any email removes you, and the address goes with you.