The Warning Signs
1. He makes promises that sound like a win-win situation for you, in our case the ESOP.
How you can tell if your boss is a "Tom Hamblen"
2. He then infers the business is losing money, while he is slowly draining it's assets
3. Raises and bonuses are a thing of the past, "our company needs your help"
4. Then comes the day when you are asked to make a big sacrifice "for the good of our company"
5. The BIG sacrifice is the final warning the end is near. It signals four things.
a.) Valuable company assets are long gone
b.) A serious buyer has been found
c.) The buyer has been shown lower labor costs
c.) No resistance by the employee/owners demonstrated
6. You notice it is getting hard to do your job, the company stops buying needed supplies.
7. The Payables Department is instructed to not pay any invoices without his permission.
(This is an attempt to make the new owner eat as much debt as possible)*
Your clue this has happened:
Your vendors will only ship C.O.D., or tell you they will not ship your item until
your company has paid it's past due invoices.
8. Then the announcement, "Sorry guys, it just didn't work out, I've decided to sell the company"
(of course the only people "it just didn't work out" for were the loyal employees,
who believed in Tom Hamblen)