[Stone Art, Inc.]

Control is a hard thing to give when you've poured your heart, your soul and most importantly your cash into a business. I've yet to give up the bookkeeping portion of the biz simply because if I'm not the one entering and maintaining I fear I will lose touch with the financial end. We can look at job profs all day long, and make a significant amount of profit on each project individually and still lose in the big picture. As an owner, we wear every hat possible to get the job done. Finally, I've been able to give up just the tiniest bit of control and hired someone to audit my books on a monthly basis ensuring that at 3:00 a.m. I've not entered a material cost into an office expense account, reconciling the bank accounts, and reporting/paying my payroll liabilities. That alone (and I've hired my 13 year old sister to file for me) has reduced my stress greatly. Although I forward my office calls to the cell (last months minutes used: 4,897, direct connect minutes used: 563 and no way to track the land line calls) I've forced myself to turn off my cell on Fridays and stay in the office in order to accomplish the necessary evils such as, preparing my insurance renewal audits, performing payroll (still can't let that one go....yet) and to catch up on designs and proposals. This time of year an 85 hour work week is typical and torture. We endure, we continue and must always remember that nothing worth having is ever easy and my business is definately worth having.