After opening my desk drawer, though, one Monday to get a pen and finding it filled with hundreds of thousands in weekend cash, I began to understand their concern and located a banker willing to open on Sundays and accept deposits on our behalf.

On the financial front, Steve Brown, our CFO, now largely freed of having to answer to Wall Street, was able to look for more traditional sources of capital. Steve had been my CPA almost from the beginning of the publishing business. His guidance had enabled us to grow. Like me, he was from the street—if anything, probably more so. His accounting background made him hyperaware of things like bad debt and negative cash flow. At our weekly management meetings, even when the stock was high and we were the darlings of Wall Street, it was Steve who would most carry on like an Old Testament prophet, warning against the evil path we were going down and railing for repentance. Like a prophet, powerless to stop his people’s erring ways during our free spending, Steve seemed a lonely, tortured figure.

Now, with the business being run according to the fundamentals, his spirit lifted and he went to spread the word of our turnaround to the banks and leasing institutions. It was positive cash flow, not growth that mattered to these guys. And with our new business plan, Steve and Abe Farber, our in-house leasing expert, were able to persuade them that we met the criteria. By the end of the quarter, we were able to report that we had secured over $25 million in credit lines, relieving our financial worries and allowing us to grow unimpeded.

I’d always been an opponent of borrowing of any sort, paying cash even in large real estate transactions. Now, however, I began to see things differently. From a certain point of view, borrowing was actually the fiscally conservative thing to do. It encouraged living within your means. Take buying a large million-dollar piece of telecommunication equipment, for example. If you have millions of dollars of equity in the bank, you might decide, hey, that’s a really cool new switch. Look at all the things it can do. My competitors are all buying switches like that. I don’t want them to think I’m a wimp. I don’t want everyone getting ahead of me. I’m gonna buy me a switch just like that. It’s gotta be worth it.

This is the way aging yuppies think when they’re about to get an expensive little sports car. It’s not a way to decide on business purchases. But believe it or not, in my industry this is how it’s usually done.

Borrowing for the switch puts a whole different spin on things. That million-dollar switch you now know is going to cost you twenty-five grand a month for five years. Is leasing this switch going to generate more than $25,000 a month in new profits? If yes, then it’s a good move to get the switch. If no, then it’s stupid. Forget about your ego and pass on it. It’s that simple.

With our new credit lines we were able to lease some equipment we’d previously paid cash for, bringing much-needed liquidity into the business. Within a few months, this cash was being supplemented by the excess funds being generated by operations. Soon we were not only solvent, but we had extra capital.

One happy consequence for me was that the loan of my personal funds was repaid. I didn’t run right out and buy a sports car, though. That could wait. I’d suddenly become a much more conservative person.