Hi everyone, this is Sonali. Thank you all for coming out sometime for attending today's episode Financial Management to Help Unlock Business Growth. To all the attendees out there, please type in any questions you might have in the Q&A section and we'll try to answer as many as possible at the end of the session. I would now like to welcome our speaker, Mr. Gaurav Mariah, Chairman and Founder of the Franchise India Group. A very warm welcome to Thank you Sonali and thank you for hosting this webinar every week. Welcome friends and welcome to Business Sex Academy. This is the second series we've been doing. We finished one series of 30 episodes on how to value your business, how to scale, how to find an exit and how to invest into your opportunities. And this series was on a business course. We talk about one topic every time and today's topic is on financial management. And I would like to make it very interactive so you can use Q&A box. This is about a 30-minute session. We'll talk about how you can best achieve your financial management, how it is so important, especially for early stage and mid-sized companies. Business Sex is a platform of franchise India where we work with companies to help them to scale, help them to raise capital and also find an exit if they are looking at it. I do another webinar which is every Friday evening on exit planning. So that's also an interesting webinar if you want to be part of somebody who wants to look at planning to exit the business and getting the right evaluation that also can be very helpful. And there are many other webinars we've been done.  We've already finished the tenth one and so if you want to really revisit the nine previous episodes, they're all available on our Facebook group. So that's also going to be a helpful resource for you. So let's get started and let's understand financial management and financial management. I'll probably go and cover about seven different topics which are part of financial management. But starting with that, it's a certain model for what I call a combination of knowledge and disability. How you continue to build knowledge from a lot of data which comes from your enterprise and a company and how you continue to put a discipline on every single function of your business. It's also very important for you doing financial management for your organization, especially for smaller businesses. And it's very important in the early days you put some kind of a strong discipline in the structure and that would help you later when you start scaling the businesses. And we've seen a lot of times when you go from a relatively early background to go and scale. Issue is not about getting more customers, it's not about getting driving your top line. Always issue comes around how do you are financially designed as an organization and sometimes you run out of cash. So very important aspect and especially these days is how do you manage your cash flows? How are you managing your cash flows? How are you tracking your business performance on a regular basis? That's very, very important. What are your short-term and long-term plans which are very important? How you want to execute that and what it takes to really define those plans? We'll talk about that and also maximizing opportunities. Sometimes opportunities strike you and has a very short window to do that, which may mean that you will suddenly require a lot of capital for you to go out and maximize that opportunity. A lot of times you miss an opportunity because we don't have that kind of a bandwidth, both in terms of resources and our financial bandwidth that we will be able to do that. And in the current time, especially with the times which we are all living in, it's a very changing times. It's a very, every day you have a different circumstance to do that. Like for example, one of the businesses I'm advising, the last two months when the lockdown happened, they had absolutely crashed the sales, but we clearly knew that there was a very strong pent up demand, a very big pent up demand which will start from 1st of June and that company we really saw in the month going and building it up. But that would mean that they were absolutely planned that they won the lockdown, open up, their resources were there, their finances were there, their supply chain was in order. So they were able to maximize. I know there are competition, a lot of competition was there, which were not able to manage. They were just coming up and a lot of people really are doing that. In issues like these, what happens in our current environments, you might get short windows. These are windows of opportunities. And if you're not financially well-designed, you will miss these windows and you will not be able to do that. So you need to really keep up what I call a very, very strong and proactive approach. Financial management is also a combination of how do you really keep eye on your day-to-day management part? That's very important. And also on the broader strategic viewpoint, which means you have a long term viewpoint on that, but that has to match with day-to-day management. And you see even the larger companies, and you can take a classic example of Anil Ambani Group, you see they had a very strong strategic viewpoint on businesses, which means that they had a long term contract, especially if you look at the businesses like Reliance, Infra, Power and so on and so forth. They were very strong, long term view on that business. And that's why sometimes markets reacted very well for them, but they were losing on their day-to-day management and cash flows and so on and so forth. So the burn was increasing, the cost of capital was increasing and the businesses eventually were not able to sustain. So unless and until you create a combination of these two things, one is your day-to-day management and defining what is required and also a little bit on long term strategic planning. One question which I would really start with before I go on my seven points, which are part of the financial management, is a question which is very important. Do you think yourself, and this question is for everybody, you can answer it on Q&A box if you really feel that, how you are structured as an organization today and what kind of financial skills you have in your enterprise. And that's something which is very, very important. Sometimes business owners are running their own finances and they don't have strong financial skills in their enterprise, which means that they would have a little view on the business. They would not have a very realistic view and they would also not be able to create bigger possibilities and that's what actually small businesses sometimes struggle because they don't have those kind of skills. So be honest to yourself and really talk about that. Do you really have that required skills for a financial management and if not, then you need to engage somebody.  If you don't have a good CFO, then you probably would need to hire somebody as a consultant who can put some hours and there are a lot of good financial planners which are available in the market where you can work on a few hours with you every week to really talk about a lot of things which are required in your business. So that's our first point. That's very, very important to be very honest about seeing that do you have that kind of financial skills in the system before you even want out to put up a full financial management. You also have to maintain what I call the reasonable transparency because sometimes financial management looks like it is between the CEO and the CFO of the company and they just do their understanding and putting the viewpoint on that. But actually no, I have realized that financial management is taking every stakeholder in the part of the decision making. Unless and until every stakeholder is important and understands, then it will all pile up to a larger goal, otherwise it doesn't work. Like for example, you have a marketing department. If the marketing department doesn't know how to really go with the very firm idea of budgeting, what do you want to really budget for it, what do you want the outcome of that, what is your cost of acquisition of customers, all that is their discipline. So unless and until we clearly have all the departments and your employees are participating into the larger financial management, it would never work. It would never work. So even from a productivity, if you want to really be very open to your employees about what is the productivity expected from them, what is the cost of people which is we can afford in the organization, what kind of a throughput you want from every sales or business development person in your organization. So you have to have what I call the reasonable transparency. You cannot give everything out because sometimes there's a lot of confidential data, but there has to be a reasonable transparency which actually aligns people to for a larger goal. And that's something which is larger companies, public companies are very good at it. So everybody can read their financial statements, they're public in nature. So they know what their margins they're operating on, how they're going to improve their margins month on month. You need to also be putting some kind of a cultural input in that business, then only your financial management will work. The second part is about your business planning, how your business planning is stacking up, how you are really designed your business.  This is very important. Very, very clearly what is the short term goals from your cash flows viewpoint. Short terms are really driven from your cash flows. What kind of cash flows you would need to really get in your business and long term goals are much bigger on terms of the shareholder value or dividends you want to really achieve on the business and so on. And overall profitability or also building a larger financial just to make future opportunities and investment to do the opportunities and so on.  Unless and until you have put your strong financial discipline don't even venture out scaling. I see a lot of people go into scaling up without even defining and checking their financial health and that's a dangerous situation to be in because you are scaling up with some kind of estimates and sometimes it gets overestimating what you can achieve in the business and doesn't work. So you need to really see your short term goals very clearly aligned that achieve those short term goals try to bring in some kind of a predictability in the structure and then go out and you need to also define very sharp objectives, objectives of your 12 month story, 24 months and 36 months. I would say put this very clearly for 12 months, understand, see the gaps, what didn't work, how it changed, how your budgeting changed that's all is part of a strong business planning. So now I'm telling my clients and say you have three quarters and hopefully if the third wave is not coming then these three quarters are very important to the plan but these three quarters are not about extensive growth. This is about sustenance. This is about sustenance and a very incremental growth but the next one year you need to start preparing for an exponential growth. If your business is good and you can really do that this nine months can set the foundation for your very high growth which you can achieve in the in subsequently the next financial year. So that probably would be your scale cycle and then in the next 12 months don't go and continue to scale but maybe bring in some kind of a consistency, some kind of a sustenance or what you've already achieved. So always try to do a little bit of scale, sustenance, scale, sustenance that's the way business should be done. So define your objectives, define your 12 month objective, 24 month objective and 36 month objective. What is your larger strategy? What are the assumptions you're taking in your business? And these assumptions have to be factfully coming from what you have done from historic data. So what is your historic data telling you how efficient your your in past would be? So sometimes unrealistic answers really come from you know entrepreneurs I'm working with, our clients I'm working with. So they give me a very different data which I can read and they're drastically trying to change that, right? Say for a cost of acquisition for a customer was very high at particularly and in three months they want to drastically change that. These things don't change that drastically. You can have a marginal or incremental improvement in every small aspect but you need to be very very sure what you need to do that. Also whenever you're doing your financial management do this very strong analysis on your capabilities and expertise. Sometimes you are predicting something much higher but you lack your capabilities and expertise. If that is also not available in the system it will not work and that's why I say call the MWM, master what matters.  Third part after business planning would be to really define financing for your business because where is the fund going to come for how much you can do from internal accruals which means that you have predictability of next six months or 12 months on terms of what kind of monies would come within the business which means from internal accruals and what you would have to raise. This is very very important aspect of your entity and most of the times if you're not really designed to understand what kind of financing is required for your business you will never be able to achieve your business plan which you predict. So it's very important to really keep the eye on how you would really design financing and sometimes you're too late to define that. You're too late because if say your business needed something in the Q4 you should be working right now because you need at least two quarters to really bring that kind of financing. It can be through debt or in equity but you need at least two quarters to do that planning then only you're having or you would probably have to have a plan B if you are not able to get that kind of piece. So it's very important that you really define what kind of financing at least in the next 18 months to two years which is 24 months your business would need and where it is going to come from and don't overestimate sometimes your internal accruals. This is also another problem. A lot of time we get into a scale journey, we start growing the business and we overestimate that we will be able to do our internal accruals would support that and I've seen a lot of people especially in this COVID period a lot of good companies have collapsed because they were overestimating their own performances and because of the performances and everything was shut they were not into it. They were on a restaurant operator which I'm trying to advise and try to restructure their business model. They have about nine restaurants which are almost finished to start and but they have run out of cash. They don't have cash, they don't have abilities to finance that business so they have a risk of losing all that KPEX which has been designed put in that business going into drain and they have also built some liabilities because not pay your trenders and a lot of other issues. So it's a difficult situation to address that and so at a valuation we are taking a big haircut to do that. So how are you going to be financing your business is also very very important. It's also a combination of what I call a flexibility and control. How you bring financial flexibility, how you are able to really change few things which is required and how you can really accommodate maybe a strong investor or a financer in your business that would bring in some kind of a financial flexibility but you need to have a very strong business control. You cannot lose that control on that because especially when you're raising, when you're raising it becomes even more important that you put a very strong business controls on it. Because sometimes it's expensive, it's expensive to raise capital. Once you get that capital, if you don't keep the business control in right sense, it can be even more disastrous. Losing your own money is one thing, losing somebody else money can be even more stressful and painful when you do that. So you have to very clearly understand what is your financial strength telling you? What is your current books are telling you? How much leverage you can hold on your books? What has been the past track record for you on a performance to handle that I think this would bring another important question. If say you're going on debt and you're taking some kind of debt, then you need to really see that is financial cost your business can afford? Not on a short term but a long term basis, can your business afford that kind of cost? And this is also another problem especially for a lot of mid-sized manufacturing companies I've really seen them operating in such a thin margin and it's a very competitive world. They're competing with their competition on a very, very small margin and they take a lot of debt on that. If you really see these a lot of export-oriented organizations which were working on a very small margins, while export would technically mean that you can work on a larger arbitrage and bigger margin because there are so many players in the market and doing the same kind of job in different developing countries. So your margins have become very small and you're only doing the job work margins and then you pile up a lot of debt on the business and your cost of capital would never justify. And so it keep rising, keep rising, keep rising and you're trying to justify by your sales volumes and so on and so forth but eventually at a one-to-one time it'll give up. It'll give up and if any decline would happen, if any decline would happen. I've also seen companies sometimes keep jacking up even public listed companies, keep jacking up their shareholder value and leverage that value over debt component and as they would reduce their equity value out there, the bankers would come after you because they want more collateral to support your business and that's where it starts and down done. A lot of companies have actually gone down the drain just because of this mismatch, this mismatch of their cash flows. They were over predicting their capabilities to bring that and that didn't have. So also that brings another point, what is your financial risk? How much you're putting on the block as a risk? What is your personal finances requirement? And this is another big problem. Whenever you're doing your two things which are running in same time, one is your business, what patience is your business showing and what patience you as an individual are showing. That's also very important. What is your personal finances telling you what kind of requirements you have? And sometimes your requirements are immediate and then you start pulling up from your business and business is not ready to give that dividends to business owners. And I've also seen a lot of startups have failed because the personal finances of promoters or founders actually pushed them to sunk a lot of money out of their startups and the startups were not able to sustain. That's not part of a good financial health also. So very importantly put a very holistic business strategy for the business and then only you will be able to do that. That brings me to the fourth point, which is very important point is whenever you're doing a financial management, financial discipline is extremely, extremely important. Wherever you're raising money for, even from your internal pools it is coming from or an external sources it is coming from, wherever it is designed to go, it should go there. That's extremely important. Otherwise, if you change things, at least the external investors don't like it. And that's why I sometimes feel that keeping a very strong financial discipline is very, very important. There is a good saying, it says capital is part of your wealth, which should be directed well to so that it can create further wealth, which means that it's very important. Where are you putting the money? Where are you putting money would be very, very important and how you really design that. Sometimes you put monies into things which cannot create what I call the right kind of impact for your business. And I've run a business particularly, we were old school marketing company and we used to use a lot of print. There was a particular time in 2015, 16, I don't know how many of you have seen that, but franchising there was running this full page ads in Times of India and so on. We were on this ride of building the brand equity and so on. And later we realized that we were spending about 35% of our total turnover in actually in marketing, which means that 35% was just pure marketing. It's not even cost of acquisition of customer, it was pure marketing and then you had cost of sales and so forth. So if you really see, while we were creating a huge amount of brand equity, but that was not converting completely into sales because it was a consulting company, it's like a KPMG and ENY goes every day and puts full page ad, while you can tell people that you exist, but it did not make any sense to that. So sometimes you have to be very rational in your financial discipline that you're not going out. And this is one of the areas which I like, sometimes people who start with a business plan and they stick to business plan. They stick to business plan, sometimes it would be difficulty, but they would not change unless and until there are strong compelling reasons to change that. Then from the fifth point, which is what I call the financial control, how do you really bring a strong financial control? That's very, very important. And this is where the business owner can go wrong because business owner is very clearly linked on two things. He's always looking on the sales, how my sales is growing, numbers, which is my revenue and sales coming in the company and also his cost structures. So he was always trying to control the cost and he's doing that. These are very broad indicators. These are very easy indicators you don't have to really do that, but there is much more deeper into that and which I call budgeting. Again, there is a good saying is that budget is telling where your money is going or where money should go. Instead of wondering where it is going. So that's very important. If you don't write a good budget about your business, even every single month, you have to have an annual budget and then you have to have a very strong monthly budget. It should define very clearly your growth cycle, demand generation cycle, how your demand is generating and what is every single smallest thing which is happening in your business. And sometimes it looks very easy for an entrepreneur to be in control of his finances because he's almost looking at everything, but it's not true. You need to have a specialist. You need to have a specialist who can draw this whole thing in a very systematic way and this might change. This might change. For example, in last one year, we've been working with many companies and I felt and I've worked this strategy very well. I looked at their budgeting structure and in the conventional time, there was a cost of occupancy, which means that you are paying rentals, you have premises on lease and so on and there are other things were happening. So like I was advising one company which has both businesses, they have retail business and they have online business and when all things are going on, the retail business was not doing well and obviously retail was not predictable. So I actually told them to close a lot of stores and use that money in building their online business and shift that business model. So sometimes you need to shift your one head of appeal, which is taking a lot of load and restructure that. It might not be critical at this moment and you cannot drop your margins. So you might have to shift that in your budgeting and move it to some other head, which is more in demand at that stage. Say for example, sometimes your cost of talent has to go higher because you're now not getting talent at that level, which means that if your cost of talent is going high, where are you moving that extra percentage in the cost of talent from which part? What you can reduce? Can you reduce your marketing? Can you reduce something else? So you need to be creative in your design of structure that how you can move something from there and also when you are working on your budgeting, you need to really also accommodate a lot of deviations which can happen. Deviations can happen from delaying your payments. It can also, deviation can come that you need to maybe do a next level of innovation of your product because the competition has suddenly come up with something which you need to also do. So there's a new development cost which can certainly fit your business model. It can be also over reliance on something which you were thinking that it will always happen but didn't happen, which means that you're sometimes working only on few set of customer base and you are overly reliant on that and they certainly for other reasons are not available today. Like a lot of companies which were too dependent on four or five corporates and were advising an exit for a travel company out of Chennai which had actually about five big companies and these five companies were giving almost all the billing for their travel. Now, this company is absolutely stuck. Money's are stuck. They're not getting money. So there's a lot of outstanding which is available with them. They obviously have no business because people are not using any travel structure and they are still running their cost and the issues is even the marginal business which they have if they don't continue to service that there is a risk of losing those customers also. So they're very difficult situations one can really do. So understand all these exceptions which can come in your business, all the deviations which are coming in the business and how you really accommodate those in your budget.  That's both are very, very important. The sixth point is business improvement. Financial management, the biggest thing financial management does for you is help you to improve your business. Look at business from a different viewpoint. Look at from a distance and understand are you over estimating or over optimistic about your business and if that number what you're thinking is not happening what happens to your business. Second looking at overall what kind of a fit falls can come. Is a competition getting aggressive and can really put you into trouble like what happened in some of the companies. I saw the competition was very, very aggressive and they actually eroded all the margins available in that. We've seen almost in every industry. We've seen in telecom one partner one competition comes in like reliance was always very aggressive on their pricing and structure always eroded almost everybody's budgeting and balance sheet because they took the margins of A from business. So you need to really be very clear on that. You also need to really go deeper into your even you're doing a business improvement. You need to talk about business performance and efficiencies. What kind of efficiencies working on that? Another thing which is very, very important to keep eye on is inflation versus your margins. Inflation is a big problem and especially for next two years is going to be a huge, huge problem for businesses. So you need to really keep a strong eye that inflation should not be a big problem in your business. Everything is rising like in building construction material. Look at everything which is supplies coming to you. So even if you launched a project in 2020 and 2021 you've already sold the apartments at a certain price and now inflation has hit you the everything is gone to the roof. Now you have no choice to stop the project because you have to deliver on time otherwise you run penalties on that and you have to pay interest to your home buyers and places like that. But otherwise even if you finish the project on time you probably would have to end up doing on loss. So how do you really address this situation? This is a very unique situation to be in where you have now got a customer to deliver over four years and you have already committed a price and your inflation has hit. Do your contracts have that ability to revise that pricing? I mean not in some cases you cannot but in some cases people would keep that capability in the contract. They would clearly define that they can go out and not lose their margins just because their cost of input has gone up. That's very important aspect. So keep checking your PL, keep checking your PL, keep your margins intact rather continue to make an effort to improve your margins and prepare for a not so great time also if you have good margins in the running in the business even if you have a bad six months you will be able to sustain and this is where the large companies if you really see because they work on a large margins like RIL or even organizations like Tata and so on so forth they always are capitalized. They always are capitalized because they've always kept the margins in right and whenever the adversity happens they rather take an opportunity time to go out and use that cash reserves to pick up your assets and your business and now you'll see in this year as the business will go to normalcy you will see all these companies which are sitting on a lot of cash would use this as a great M&A opportunity to acquire a lot of business. So last point which is the seventh point keep looking at your key indicators. Your month should start looking at these five indicators. First growth what is happening on your growth month on month it's not just about your sales or profits but it is also about average consumer spend has it grown as a decline so a lot of smaller indicators smaller indicators within the growth path of your business that has to be looked at so first very honestly look at your growth. Second assess your profitability not with you what you are happy is your profitability comparative to all other companies which available in the same space or a comparative space so how you're doing versus the industry that's very important sometimes we look at a profitability we are happy of that profitability but you are not doing as good as the industry is doing others are doing much better than you are so you need to really assess your profitability on that perspective that's also very very important. Third is your what is your liquidity what is your liquidity telling you how can you last how much gas is with you for a short term and a long term and this is a time I would say this is a window to really put nine months not go back rush to growth but bring your liquidity back fill the tank back that's very important because in the last 14 months almost everybody has come down to the lowest level of the attack right if they were businesses were active and and not getting the same kind of cash flows they would obviously use some kind of liquidity in the structure or they have put liquidity in pressure so I would say that nine months next nine months is to bring back your liquidity in the space before you start to run for a big scale up story. Next is how much leverage is available in your books what can you leverage on that I don't over leverage yourself never do that it's a mistake especially in India cost of cost of capital is so high that I don't advise at all and I've seen so much of great companies and so unfortunate when I read about them in news and media and so forth and I knew those companies very closely and because of my consulting business they were good entrepreneurs good businesses but because of their leverage they were not even to really do that and the entrepreneurs became over ambitious that they were thought that they will be able to pass and sail through this for cycles and created some super ambitious plans to really deliver that and that doesn't work and that doesn't work even not only for businesses but it doesn't work for nations you know some of the nations can go wrong in their in their approach on business and I think finally the fifth point which is the fifth indicator is your asset maximization which means are you sweating out all your assets and if you're not sweating out either reduce those asset burn right which means that if you say I have 10 offices you have and you're not running to full of capacity you don't need that and I think cut down offices cut your fixed cost down right so if you don't need that thing like cafe coffee they started doing it right but they were not able to fully do it before they started cutting down their stores now they're starting down large stores they're from 2000 plus stores they've all come down to about 800 stores I think they would go down further another 200 250 stores but this before that they had a strategy to really optimize their places so they were bringing other retailers inside their stores so they were able to maximize sometimes 2000 square feet but I don't need 2000 even if thousand I had I can still do that so how can I cut down I can negotiate with my landlords bring my space down so you need to really see how you're doing your asset maximization is very very important so five indicators see your growth monthly see your profitability not from your perspective but from a comparative viewpoint see your liquidity position how much leverage you're available in your books and finally how your assets are maximized so this was a short session this was a 30 minute session I've already done about six minutes over finally if you have quickly some questions for me I will be more than happy to take that absolutely thank you so much Gaurav sir for another wonderful and a very insightful session for all our attendees I'll just quickly jump on to the Q&A round the first question that we have is should financial management be the responsibility of the finance team or the CFO only or is it something to be owned by everyone in the company which approach culture do you suggest? Everybody in the company obviously some data would always be confidential it can never go down with everybody that's why I say restricted transparency so you need to have transparency but there has to be some restrictions which is important otherwise you lose a lot of data which becomes public but unless suddenly you have participation from everybody to really understand that they are they're responsible for the larger piece to it and try to bring that kind of wisdom with everybody then you see there would be a better financial management. Right the next question we have is is it a good practice to hire an outside firm to manage our finances or should the in-house finance team be preferred? Depends you know if you are able to afford a full talent in house then it's fine but if you don't need that full house full-time talent which is a senior CFO then maybe you need 8 hours or 10 hours of that financial piece then maybe outsourced and I would say for younger companies outsourced don't have somebody sitting in your on cost sometimes it is need because if you raised money then your investors would like to see a CFO within the organization to put some kind of financial discipline. Right the next question we have is do you help in creating financial projections as well in order to be prepared to reach out to investors? Yeah that we do that absolutely we are a specialist in business x to really build your information memorandum to define your projection and then represent you to raise a future capital. The next question we have is my turnover is very good but not able to achieve a satisfactory gross profit my business is only about one year old is that fine to have such a condition in the start? So you know this happens with almost every early stage businesses your business starts moving up but your margins are not intact because you don't have economy scale and your cost of acquisition is very high like a lot of these D2C companies direct to consumer companies they get very quickly on top sales which means that they would get into 15, 20, 30 crores of revenue because they're digital first they put in Amazon or other places they get caught of sales but they don't know manufacturers they're actually buying from somebody the cost of manufacturing and the margins the manufacturers would keep it takes away everything from them and then they are running discounts here and they are pushing the platforms up so there is no way you would make money right because you're not an integrated operator you're just a trader with some kind of a brand. It's not a bad situation to be in because I know a lot of clever direct to consumer businesses have done that they've actually gone to the same factory buying from the same factory tens of them and selling at the same platform but they have just different labels which everybody has. So that's a given but do a little bit of science understand once you start acquiring your customer base how do you really reduce your cost of acquisition which means ability bring that customer base and everything and then eventually also push backward when your volumes are growing that your manufacturing cost is also lower down and you're able to put yourself between three or four different suppliers so suppliers also start giving you better margin and better structure but that's why financial management is very important. If you are able to put incremental change monthly both in your input cost and your sales so if you say I've done a little bit more on my sales function my cost of acquisition is dropped and my input cost is altering so the arbitrage you're doing is in Delta up so you're doing both sides are Delta up and that's where and that's what investors like that's what they like that you are in the right track. Absolutely sir the last question I would like to take up is how to enforce effective and timely recovery of payments from clients we've had a company delay payments for six months severely affecting cash flows. Yeah everybody is doing that so you need to both do soft collection hard collection legal and I think we've also suffered at being a service provider we had about 3 million outstanding before this COVID hit and 1 million has already gone into bad debt which means the clients have shut businesses or they're not I think it was too small businesses in that sense so we have about 2 million I think so it's a tough call but we are doing all we're doing soft we're doing hard we're doing collection agencies we're doing everything but it is difficult I know it's difficult and it also puts pressure on sometimes your vendors because you're not receiving enough and so you don't pay that much so it's cycle break and that's something which is going on in economy now it's going on in economy the you know everybody is pushing each other so I think it all streamline in the next six months six months would be a painful journey and I'll be honest on that so thank you very much thanks for coming and really appreciate you taking time out and hope I was able to give you some insight while this is designed for a smaller and medium enterprises because we continue to give them knowledge this is our community which we need to continue to service and and give our experiences hope you liked it if you anything which I can really add on which you need more help and if you want to really get some notes from me please reach out to me I'll put my email id it's gm at gauramaria.com so thank you very much and and if you are looking to raise money or you're looking to invest or looking to exit please reach out to Sonali and we will be more than happy to do that we have great assets also if you want to look at running businesses to buy that also we have available and and if you are somebody who wants to have a strong growth story and you want to really take some advice we have all available to help you out thank you very much thanks Sonali for hosting this. Thank you so much Gaurav sir for a wonderful session as always and thank you to all our attendees we really hope you were able to add some value to your lives through this session we'll see you next Saturday at 11 a.m with another episode in this series of BX Academy business excellence mentoring and coaching until then if you have any questions any queries anything you would like to know more about our services or if you would like a recording of today's session or any of our previous sessions please reach out to me and I'll be very happy to help you thank you so much


Immediately following time for love, stay tuned at 6.30 for the Bing Crosby Show. Joining the old groaner, a special guest tomorrow will be Hollywood's newest singing discovery, Joann Gilbert. On hand too will be Bing's old sidekick, violinist Joe Venuti. Then at 7, Horace Highton is musical nights or your host for another sparkling session of The American Way. Coming to you this week from Knoxville, Tennessee. At 7.30, Cal Douglas takes over for 30 informal minutes of visiting time. Time for love, Bing Crosby, The American Way, and visiting time. Enjoy them all tomorrow night at the bright spot 1070. The right spot for the best in entertainment, KMX Radio. Kathy and Elliot Lewis on stage. Kathy Lewis, Elliot Lewis. Two of the most distinguished names in radio. Appearing each week in their own theater. Starring in a repertory of transcribed stories of their own and your choosing. Radio's foremost players in radio's foremost plays. Drama, comedy, adventure, mystery, melodrama. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Elliot Lewis. Good evening. May I present my wife, Kathy? Good evening. A poet long since forgotten, once commented, there is no place on earth, absolutely no place on earth, where a woman can be so much of a woman as at a party. And so E. Jack Newman, who loves women and parties, wrote tonight's play for us. It's called The Party. I'm the hostess, Irene. And I'm the current suitor, Aaron. And now let's go to the party. Gosh, you look swell. Did you get the ice? No. Stopped on the way. Man should be long any minute. Oh, that's wonderful. Hello, darling. I'm not dressed yet. Hello, Angel. Everything's gone wrong. Can't seem to get anything done. And our derbs aren't Bessie's dish of meat, I'm afraid. What can I do to help? Oh, look at the time already. That'll get upset. Yes, dear. Relax, Angel.  Darling, all of those things on the bar, can you sort of open them for me, please? Yeah, sure. What else? I have no idea who'll be here and who won't. Oh, dear. I do love you so terribly. That's fine. And I love you. What, dear? And I love you. All right. I think so. Hurry up with the things, huh, dear? Yeah, sure. How are you tonight? I'm fine. How are you, Bessie? I'm just fine. Haven't seen you in a couple of days. Oh, I've been busy.  Yeah, looks like it. I need a paring knife, Bessie. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. I guess I'd better get that. Darling? Yeah? Is that somebody coming on time? Play bartender and host for me, please? Yeah, you betcha. Oh, yeah. Who is it? The ice. The what? The man's here with the ice. Oh. Uh, in the kitchen, Bessie. It's in the kitchen now. Oh, good. Yeah. You want 75 cents. Yeah, okay. Here, he can keep the change. All right. How much is that? 50 pounds. You don't think you'll be able to use all that? You can't tell. Yeah, all right. We're getting it. Just a minute, please. Is that for me, Bessie? Uh-huh. Okay. I sure do. Oh. Um, the second turn to your left and to the end of the road. Oh, anytime. All right. Bye. I guess I'm all ready.    Hands are with. Oh, good idea. Here you are. I'm here. Thank you. I forgot the anchovies. Can you reach them? Up there. Yeah, sure. There. Dear. Hmm? I have something to tell you. You went and did it, didn't you? Here's the opener. Thanks. Well, I'm a single girl, and I'm having a party, and I can invite anyone I please, can't I? Sure. You angry? I wouldn't have come if I'd known he was going to be here. Oh, that's so silly. Why not? Because he knows about you and me. All three of us will be uncomfortable. I won't. Let me put him on the dish. Well, I will, and he will. Freddie's very interesting. You'll like him, really. You look so glowery, sort of. Yeah. You won't do anything with your dish? I ought to punch him in the nose. Oh, isn't that silly? My. What a scowl. I don't think I'll stay. Such a dark look. You shouldn't have asked him, Irene. Aaron's man. Don't pick on him. I'm not picking on him, Betsy. Why do you do these things? Darling, I'm just having a party, and I invited a man. Now, what's wrong with that? I thought you were finished with him. I am, I think. Besides, Kay had to have a man. I think Kay and Freddie ought to get along just fine. What's the matter with her husband? You know they don't get along. Yeah. Let Kay get her own man. Don't be so gloomy, dear. I'm leaving. Really? I mean it. You shouldn't feel that way. Well, how else do you expect me to feel dragging out Freddie? Oh, you're pouting. Are you really angry? Of course I'm angry. Goodbye. Night, dear. Snap on the porch slide, please, dear.  Well, what? You didn't leave. No, I came back. Are you over being mad? I guess so. You don't look it. Why? Dear, I'm just having a terrible time trying to mix drinks and introduce people. Will you mix for me? Well, sure, darling, but... Yes, dear. I need a drink. Yes, dear.  I'll get the door. Go on. Oh, oh, oh. Roy Peterson. Aaron Yardley. Yardley? That's right. What can I make for you, Roy? You the bartender? I am. Well, I'd like a little gin and tonic if you got it. Yeah, I got it. I mean, certainly has a lovely little house, doesn't she? Mm-hmm. You know, I think she's just as sweet. She sure is. Bless your heart. Why not? Oh, here you go. Well, bless your heart. And bless yours. Cheers, Roy. Cheers, Aaron. Well, bless your heart. Yeah. Aaron, have you met Mr. and Mrs. Granger? No, I don't believe I have. Dave and Betty, this is Aaron Yardley, and you know Roy. Bless your heart. Oh, how do you do? Hello. Oh, nice to meet you. What are you drinking? We're a Scotch and Water people. Scotch and Water by two. Two of these, and I'll be flying the male planes. Excuse me, will you please? Sure. Here you go. Thanks. Oh, thank you. Isn't he fast? Oh, fine. Aaron, you're all right.  Bless your heart. Bless yours. Huh? Bless your heart. Oh. I want y'all to meet Freddie Pombroy. Freddie, this is Mr. and Mrs. Granger, Dave and Betty. How do you do? Hello. And Roy Peterson. How are you? Fine. And Aaron Yardley. Hello. You want something to drink? I've been drinking bourbon. With what? Water nice. Is there any other way to drink bourbon? No. You've been at the races all day long, haven't you? Yeah. Traffic was terrible coming back. I'm a little bushed. Oh, excuse me, please. You sure? Yeah, I never can win at the races. I never go. We never go either. I go and I get a chance. I always figure I'm ahead if my horse breaks. Here's your drink. Thanks. How'd you do with the track? A lot of six out of six. Couldn't pick a one. I'm glad to hear that. Hmm? Well, bless your heart, Aaron. I think I'm ready for a refill. Didn't done it. Yeah. Anybody else? Okay. Excuse me. Sure. Yeah, sure. Seems like a nice fellow. Yeah. What's his name? Freddie. Freddie. What do you do? Me? Mm-hmm. Aaron, isn't it? Yeah. So what do you do? I tend bar. Where? Right here. I work on a 24-hour basis. Whenever Irene throws a party, I'm bartender. Here. Thanks. And he's very good, too. Bless his heart, yes. What do you do? I'm married. Don't you do anything? We have enough trouble just being married. Hold on the bar, Roy. Well, glad to. Are you giving up? I thought you were on Judy 24 hours a day. Rest period. Bless your heart. You betcha. Excuse me, huh? Mm-hmm. I'm through with those big cars. I'll take a small one every time. Seven cents a mile is a lot better than 11 cents a mile. First of the year, I'm standing in line. Where's Irene, Bessie? In the bedroom, using the phone. Thanks. Doesn't make a bit of difference how you dress. Just a few friends. Look forward to seeing you. Bye. Oh. What's up, darling? I gotta get back to my party. No, wait. Irene. What? Oh. You win. Besides, Freddie isn't anybody to worry about now that I've seen him.  He's very nice, and Kay likes him. She can have him. Let's get back to the party. I'm a hostess, remember? Not just a minute. Who's this bless your heart boy? Roy? Isn't he cute? Very snazzy. Where'd you find him? He was at lunch the other day. I sort of asked him to drop in tonight. He sells bathtubs or something. I like him. He likes you. Isn't that nice?  As a matter of fact, I love you. And I love you, dear. Irene. Well, Paige, how nice. Hello, Paige. Hello, Aaron. I just walked in. Well, let's go in the front room of the others. My goodness, there's a party going on. What are we doing in here? Well, I'd better go get myself a drink. And standing bar. You get it for you. What are you drinking, Paige? Whatever you are. Anything. Just yell bless your heart when you get near the bar. You'll be taken care of. Okay, I'll try it. What are you drinking, Irene? And grapefruit juice. I'll go with you, Paige. No, wait. Oh, I'll be right there, Paige. Okay, Aaron. What is this? What is what, for heaven's sake? Him? What's he doing here? He called me tonight and I told him I was having a party and I asked him to drop in. You never quit, do you? Quit? This does it, sugar. This really does it.  Half of those yoyos out there are old exes, currents, and people who got the old eye treatment when you didn't have anything else to do. What am I supposed to do?  I'm a hostess, Aaron. I've had all of this I can take. I'm going. Well, suit yourself. You know how I feel about you. Listen. Listen, we're not married. We're not engaged. I can do anything I want to. And that means I can invite anybody to my party that I feel like inviting. I'm having a party and I'm going to have a good time. You can be angry if you want. I don't care. I'm leaving. That's up to you. Yeah, it sure is. So long, it could have been swell. Yes, it could have. Good night. Good night. You are listening to Kathy and Elliott Lewis on stage tonight's play, The Party. Many young people are undecided about what sort of career to follow. Unfortunately, we can't solve this problem for everyone. But here's a suggestion to young women who are high school graduates and in good health. There are plenty of openings in the nursing profession. And the three-year course leading to a nursing certificate is a fascinating one. Inquire today at your nearest hospital or from your school advisor about your chances of entering the nursing field. Well, sir, now you take your ordinary harsh type of brace. Well, bless your heart, Aaron. I thought you left. Come back. Give me one. Sure, sure. Isn't this a swell party? Seems to be. Have you ever met that fellow standing over there with Irene? Yeah, his name's Paige Taylor. Paige Taylor. Hopefully nice chap, isn't it? Great. He's certainly a charming hostess. Bless her heart. Mm-hmm. Here you go. Thank you. Excuse me? Oh, sure, Aaron. Wow, hi there. Oh, hi. Do you dance or do you just stand around? Well, I've been known to dance. Well, come on. Dance with me. No one else is dancing. Well, we'll start it. Have to put your drink down. Yeah, OK. You look pretty grim about the whole thing. Do I? What's the matter? Somebody steal your car. No. This is a party. Happy. Remember? I remember. You're really grim. Irene. What? Are you going with her or something? Or something. Don't take it too hard, Aaron. She's just having herself a time. Yeah. Yeah. Easy now. I won't bite. What's your name? Betty. Oh, yeah. Oh, my. Oh, my. What's the matter? You don't look grim anymore. Don't I? No, you don't. You certainly don't. I don't feel grim anymore. I gave up being grim a couple of seconds ago. Never be grim, I said to myself. Never be grim. What do you think of that? Could I dance with my wife? Yeah, sure, why not? This is my wife. Hello, dear. Well, and you can have her. Thank you and good luck. What's got an Indian here? That's going to matter. Perfectly lovely. I really think we should explore this together sometime after all, if you played a clarinet and I played a clarinet one. Hi, come here. Erin, Paige plays a clarinet, too. Imagine. I want to dance with you. I can't, darling. I'm hosted. Come on. I'm being taken away against my will. I'll see you later, Irene. Now, come here. What, darling? I'm back. Yes. Don't you want to dance with me? Yes. Well, it wasn't much fun going away. Besides, I want to be with you. I'm glad, darling. I want to be with you. But you could never tell it the way you were sitting in the corner with him. We were having a very interesting discussion. He's a very intriguing man.  Really? Besides, I'm the most intriguing thing. You'll ever get your hands on. We ought to be married. Yes, dear. I don't see the racetrack kid around. Hmm? Ready Freddy. What happened to him? I don't know. I really don't. I think he just sort of disappeared with Kay. They were getting along fine. I'm glad he's gone. When's Paige leaving? He does look lonesome. He doesn't know anybody here hardly. He's cute. Looks pretty dumb to me. He's getting late. I hope it lasts all night. I'm having a wonderful time, aren't you? I feel lousy. Oh, I'm sorry, dear. But I can last longer than any of them. Yes, dear. I guess I love you. Dear. What? Go get me a drink, please. Please? Can't we finish this? Okay. I'll get you a drink. That's fine, darling. Thanks. Thanks for burning all over again. Well, you'll have to admit I do it with a lot of drama. I would like a drink. So would I. Come on. Hmm. What's your poison? Scotch. Coming up. What happened to bless your heart? Oh, I don't know. You look nice.  Let's dance. I thought you wanted to drink. Now I want to dance. Okay.  Oh, no. Hey, baby, get the little jealous sometimes. Isn't that nice? I'm going to the powder room. Excuse me? Excuse. I'd like to dance with my wife a couple of times tonight if you don't mind. I don't mind one darn bed. Have a drink. I... Scotch. Okay, already fixed. Here you are. Thanks. Mm-hmm. You noticed I smiled when I told you to get your hands over. Smart girl, Betty. On the ball, sharp, you know. You got on her. Good sense of values. Well, yes, sir. Well, bless your heart. We missed you. Oh, I've been moving around. Want me to build your one? No, no, no. Thanks. Still have this one. Everyone happy here? As happy as Turtle does. This is Arthur and Edith Esther. Oh, I'm sorry. Arthur and Esther met. You know Dave, Arthur. Oh, sure. How you been? Well, hi, Esther. Hi, Dave. And Roy Peterson? You first came kind of late, didn't you? Well, we left one early to get here. Oh, yes. Aaron... Yardly. Aaron Yardly, dear, remember? Ah, yes, dear. Aaron Yardly. Hello, Arthur. Esther, can I get you something? I don't believe so. Nothing for me. Well, you missed a lot of the party, Arthur. Yes, bless his heart. He has. Everyone have a drink? I don't want one. Not for me. Thanks, honey. Madden. Betty. Irene. You didn't tell me Arthur would count me. I didn't know if he'd make it or not. Always make one of your parties, Irene. Where have you been? Oh, putting on a new face. Arthur, you're looking very good. Thank you. Are you losing weight? A little. Bless your heart. Huh? But never mind. Did you make me a drink, Aaron? I did not, but I will. Thank you. It's good to see you again, Irene. Like old times, huh? Been almost two years. Yes, yes. How long have you been married? I must know. Gosh. Yep. Anybody else? Not me. No, thanks. I think we should all get drunk and be somebody. Come on, Arthur. I want to talk to you. Okay. Seems like a nice, nice fella. Bless his heart. Dave, why don't you ever dance with me? He's always dancing with you. That's why. I give up. She's all yours. Well, that's not very good. Thanks, friend. I'm always giving women away. I don't know whether I like you or not. Well, have a dance with your wife and talk about me. She thinks I'm swell. No, you listen. Oh, come on, Dave.  Well, party. Peachy. Have you seen Irene, Aaron? She just took a plane to Kansas City to visit a friend, Paige. Why? Well, I can't seem to find her. I want to say goodnight. Well, I'll say it for you, Paige. Well, it doesn't seem right to just walk out. Well, try it. You'll love it. Good night, Aaron. So long, Paige. Nice to have met you. Good night. Oh, gosh. It's almost 3.30. Shank of the evening. Have another belt. No, no. I don't think I'd better. Hey, you. Me? Yeah. You made a crack a while back there. I didn't like it. What crack did I make that you didn't like there? You said... Oh, come on, Dave. You're being silly. Yeah. We'd better get out of here. Get your coat.  Good night, Roy. Good night, Aaron. Toodle-oo. Yeah, good night, folks. Good night. Good night. Hello. Yeah, good night, folks. Well, it wouldn't be a party if somebody didn't get mad and make a pass at somebody's wife, would it? Always. Always seems to happen. Say la vie. Oh, yeah, yeah. And now we settle down to some serious business. Hmm? It's called Riding Out the Storm. Have a belt, buddy. Oh, that's wonderful. Arthur, play my romance, please. For me, huh? It's getting late, I mean. Only 6.30, Arthur. You're doing swell. I said that was your last song and we're the last ones here. But you came last. And we're going last. Oh, no, no, no, no. Let's scramble some eggs, huh? I don't want any eggs. I want to go home and I want to go to bed. I'll tell you what. Tell you what. Why don't we all go over to my place and have breakfast? Why not? We can eat here. That's a good thing. Party's over. We'll take it up again sometime. One more piece, Arthur, please. Oh, come on, Arthur. You've had it for tonight. Oh, it is pretty late. Oh, dear. I'll make some coffee. Don't bother. Anybody got a cigarette?  Yes, dear. Well, this is good night, Irene. Mm-hmm. Nice to have met you, uh, Erin. It's been jolly. It has. Come on. Dawn. Yeah. And we have to get up at 8. Oh, no. Good night, dear. Good night. Good night. Night. Night. I told you I could outlast all of them. You sure can. Oh, I'm dead, Erin. I'm just dead. I know. Irene. Yes, love? Why'd you do it? What? Wave all of those men under my nose tonight. I just had a party, that's all. Oh. Freddie, Paige, this guy used to go with New York, Arthur. Why? Oh, dear heart, let's not discuss it. I was pretty mad all night long, you know. I know, dear. You looked horribly intense and serious. You kept avoiding me. I was the hostess. Oh, look at this house. Irene, don't you want me? Of course I want you. Then why this kind of thing? I might have walked out and never come back. I know. I don't want to go away from you. I want to come to you. That's good. I love you. All right. What? It's my birthday. Your birthday? Why didn't you tell me? How old are you? That's why I didn't tell anybody. People always want to know how old you are. Besides, I didn't want you or anybody to make a fuss about it. Oh, Irene. I wanted to be a lady bachelor tonight, just to see what it was like. I liked it. Oh. For one night. Oh? I'm awfully tired, dear. It was a terribly long party. I wish they'd all left at midnight. So I could have been with you. Hm? Nothing more disturbing than a warmed-over boyfriend. What about Paige? He's new. Don't worry about him, love. I am so tired.  Too much party. Yeah, I'm afraid so. I just happen to think. Hm? I don't really like this kind of thing. Games? Mm-hmm. It's also silly. I played along pretty well, don't you think? Magnificently, dear. So jealous and so unhappy all night long. You walked out three times. Twice. Twice. Why didn't you walk out when Arthur came in?  Too tired. Did it make you happy walking out? Terribly, dear. Isn't that awful? Yeah, kind of. I don't understand it. Yeah, neither do I. I guess women have been doing this to man since the beginning of time. What? You're making sure everybody knows they're female. Like you were tonight. Is that what I was doing? That's what you were doing. Perils of love, Aaron. Yeah. I'm convinced, dear. Are you?  Well... And bless your heart. Come here. Hey, see what I mean? Oh, Aaron. Wasn't it a wonderful party?


2018 shop tour a three-minute version for the small workshop guy. Hola woodworkers Paul Carlson here small workshop guy. Three-minute workshop tour here we go so I find the best place to have the table saw is about four foot inside of the garage door. To the right of the table saw I have vertical wood storage underneath I have a big red barrel for off cuts. I also have all of the things I need on the table saw such as the grippers and the featherboard. We have basically an island here of two table saws one I leave a dado blade on it and it serves as the out feed table for the big table saw and the big table saw serves as the out feed table for the contractor saw with the dado blade on it. We keep the various cross-cut sleds just sitting on their ends down there they're really out of the way. We have the four-inch dust collection system shop fox some of the big 31 gallon garbage barrel with the cyclone top on it from Rockler. Have our bench clamps in addition to the clamps that also holds the tripods and the LED lights for shooting videos. We utilized all the space up above to the extent we can. You can see we're hanging bicycles and other things and then a major component is our tool wall with all of our bench planes and all of our chisels and above that tool wall we have a one inch by five inch by six foot long board with bicycle clips in it and those hold power hand power tools very conveniently as you can see. In the back right hand corner we have all of our electronics with Alexa. We also have a Wi-Fi and we have security cameras as well as better battery charging stations. Then we have a second island which is made up of our temporary workbench. We're working on a samurai five-foot workbench to replace this one. We keep jigs and things underneath. I have the port-a-mate compound miter saw stand that folds up and even the compound miter saw will fold under to make a seven foot work table and then we have the drill press inexpensive one for right now. We have an eight inch jointer, have a router table, all of those are on casters and move easily and then we have our bandsaw and our thickness planer. Small workshop guy, hope you enjoyed the tour signing off.


Proudly, we hail. From New York City, where the American stage begins, here is another program with a cast of outstanding players. Public service time is made available by this station to bring you this story, as proudly we hail the United States Army. Today's poignant story, Nights in Armor, is about a soldier's search for his family, a search that takes him into a strange situation where belief and disbelief become confused, but where truth is victorious. Our first act curtain will rise in just a moment. But first, today you young men of America have an excellent opportunity to learn a trade that will assure your future. The many fine technical schools of the United States Army are training men in such interesting fields as radio, radar, meteorology, mechanics, electronics, and many others. You can become a qualified technician trained to do an important job and do it right. For full details about an exciting career, visit your nearest United States Army recruiting station. There's no obligation, so plan ahead. Face your tomorrow today. And now your army presents the proudly we hail production, Nights in Armor. Shortly after dawn on the 29th of September in 1955, the first battalion of the 350th Infantry Regiment of the United States Army, known as the Red Knights, entered the Long Peninsula of Italy from Austria. These American soldiers were part and parcel of the Southern European Task Force and were being evacuated from Austria after the signing of the Austrian State Treaty. They were on their way to Vincenza, a quiet little city on the northern edge of the Venetian plain near Verona and Padua. The Red Knights had been there before, or at least a few of them had. For many replacements had been made in the fighting unit that thrashed its way up the boot of Italy to become the first American unit to reach the city in 1945 after breaching Hitler's Gothic line. Climbing the long hills through the Brenner Pass was hard work for the heavy trucks. The men inside dosed fitfully as the engines managed the hard pull. All the men, that is, except one. Hey, Smatter, can't you sleep, Cabby? Nah, gee, this is almost like going home for you, isn't it? Hey, look, if you don't feel like talking... I'm sorry, Milk. My mind was a million miles away. What were you saying? Not sure myself now. What were you thinking about? It's not hard to guess. Vincenza, in this town we're coming to, I was born here. Yet I'm coming back to something I can't remember ever having seen. How old were you when you left? Not quite four. Mussolini had just moved into Abyssinia, and Pop figured it was time for us to move out, so we left Vincenza. I've wondered about it all my life. How come you still have sisters here? I never heard of anything like that. A father splitting up his own family. Well, Mom was dead. Immigration visas were hard to come by. The girls could stay with my aunt. Pop felt it was wiser to get the boys out first. My brother, Giorgio, was already being conscripted for the fascist youth groups. But Pop wanted to get us as far away from military service as he could. Oh, boy, he should see you now. He couldn't be prouder of he was serving himself. What's more, Giorgio spent four years in the army doing World War II. But Pop says it's different in a democracy. Anyway, my aunt died during the war, and that was the last we ever heard of Marisa and Rosanna. But how about Giorgio? Couldn't he find your sisters? He spent the whole war in Bougainville in the South Pacific. So now it's a kind up to you, huh? No wonder you thought for a million miles away. Yeah, it was a real lucky break, my being sent to Vincenza. Maybe I can pick up the trail. All right, you guys, you better count that channel for a while. I'm trying to get some rest. We've got a long, tough day ahead of us. Buongiorno. Sonno on Americano. They speak in English, my young friend. I've worked with your army. I understand your language. Oh, that's a relief. I suppose I ought to speak Italian a lot better than I do, but Pop insisted that we always speak English at home. Your father, I take it then, was of Italian birth and extraction. He came from here in Vincenza. In fact, I was born here, too. His name was Paolo Cabrini. I'm Ezio Cabrini. Ah, this is a fine name here in Vincenza. The Cabrini's were men of honour in the olden days. They were knights. My father used to tell me that, too. Can I be of any help to you, Senor Cabrini? What has happened? Well, I'm looking for my family. If I'm not mistaken, I think I still have two sisters living in Vincenza. I'd like to find them. Then you were completely the right place. Endless books with infinitesimal detail. Birth, death, marriages, baptisms. One thing, though. There have been many Cabrini's of Vincenza. I will need more information to take me to the right book. Ah, I have the perfect solution. You were born here. We will start with you, eh? Let us find your place in the book. Then it should be relatively simple to find your family. Grazie. That should be fine. Well, only take a minute. The registry should be over here somewhere among the thieves. Ah, here it is. Get heavier as the beers pass. Or perhaps the fact that they matter is that I am not getting any younger.  It should be about here. Cabello. I'm sorry, Senor. There must be some mistake. Oh, what's wrong? It is strange. There is no page, Mark Cabrini. No, none at all. I cannot understand this. The Commendatore will be greatly disturbed. I'm sorry that I cannot be of any help. Are you sure? Positive. The page is not here. I do not know what to say. Oh, well, well, thanks. Thanks anyway. If you get any information out of your other books, would you... Well, let me know. We're staying at the barracks now. I know, Senor, and I most certainly shall. The moment I find anything. I cannot understand this. The Commendatore will be most disturbed. Now, give me a chance to get in, will you? Any luck, Cabby? Not a bit. I don't understand it.  Look, why don't you give up? Don't you wait till spring? Then you can really do a job in all these small towns and the mountains around here. Hope to see them before Christmas. Here it is, February already. Sure, boy. You can bet it's February. Gee, I had no idea it gets so cold in Italy. This is more snow than we get in Sioux Falls. Yeah. And milk, thanks. You've been a real pal. I know I've been driving you crazy with all this stuff about my sisters. Oh, look, you do the same for me if the cards return. I'm beginning to think you're right. There's no use batting my head up against the wall. What do you say we do something this weekend? We've got until Monday morning. Come on, come on. Well, you haven't been further than the town clerk's office and those old addresses your dad gave you. You know, this is a great country. You were born here. You should learn to appreciate it. Okay, you sold me. What do we do? Uh, now you got me. I haven't been further than the movies and the post-exchange myself. I'll try anything once. Let's go. I can't get up with these on. Are you kidding? Who's going to be helping me while I'm helping you? Oh, man, these torture devices we're wearing aren't made for people to use from a sitting position. Hey, milk. Huh? I'm up. Let's see if I can ski over to you. I'll give you a hand. Oh, boy. Whose idea was it to go up to the top of this toe? The instructor said we shouldn't attempt it for weeks yet. Well, if I'm not mistaken, it was your idea. Now, come on. Upside down. Oh, my aching back. Now, how do we get back to town? I'm lost. Hey, signal this guy coming downhill. Oh, I'm getting cold. How'd you like to be able to ski the way he does, huh? I'll never make it. Hey! Hey, over here! Hey! Hey, you're slowing down. It's a girl. Yeah. We sure would like to get back there, too. You are novices, no doubt. We're out and out beginners, ma'am. How far do we have to go? To Vincenza? Oh, quite a way. I wouldn't recommend it if you are new with skis.  It might be wiser if you were to remove your skis and hike for about a quarter of a mile to Alonsoro. Straight that way. You cannot miss. High King, eh? Lights are special. And there you will find a bostet that will take you to Vincenza. Well, thanks very much. We certainly appreciate your help. Uh, incidentally, uh, what's your name? I'm Milt Walker. My buddy's name is Ezio Cabrini. We call him Caby, short. You say your name is Cabrini, and you were born in Vincenza by chance? Well, yes. How'd I... She's gone. Never catch her in a million years. She knows something, no. She knows something about me and my family. Well, maybe. It's going to have to wait for now. Let's concentrate on getting back to town. We're going to wind up AWOL if we don't hurry. Yes, they told me at the ski lift that she lived here. It's a rather thin, dark-haired girl. Gina, I do not expect her back today. Well, wait.  When do you expect her? Excuse me, senor. I must go. I have things to do. Well, please, can't you tell me it's very important? Let me mean. As you wish, Gina. We can talk. Now, please, won't you be seated? I must apologize for being so rude. You see, we knew one day you or one of your brothers would come. Father, this is Ezio Cabrini. The son of Paolo? Yes. I am not mistaken, am I? There was only one family of Cabrini's in Vincenza. That's correct. You want to know what has happened to your sister? Please, senorina. Are they still alive? I honestly do not know. It was the day of shame, the day they left. And no one knows where they have gone or what has become of them. A day of shame? It will not be pleasant for you this story. It was the reason I ran away from you on the ski slopes. I did not want to be the one to tell you. But you must be told someday. As you know, senorina, this whole area was occupied by the Nazis during the war. And there were soldiers on our streets then, just as there are now. But things were different. The Nazis were our enemies. Just as you are our friends. But with certain people, things were different. As God is my judge, senorina, those were the facts. Collaborating with the enemy? I can not believe that. I refuse to believe it. I am only stating the facts as I know them. Their shame, Ezio, was the shame of in chains. The Cabrines were people of honor in olden days. Yes, I know. They were knights. I am sorry. You say they were driven out of town and no one has ever heard from them since? Yes. Look, I have to find them. Now more than ever, I have to find them. This is not true, senorina. What you have told me is not true. It cannot be. As you wish. But the facts are there. Look, I know what's inside of me. I know what my reactions will be to a particular set of circumstances. I know when I'll be afraid, I know that I'll cry at sad movies and yell my head off at sporting events. Just as I know myself, I know my brothers and sisters that I grew up with. I can't lie, senorina. I can't cheat. I can't deceive anybody. I couldn't if I tried. I'd light up like a neon sign. It's the same with my whole family. My sisters never did such a thing. They couldn't have. I won't argue with you. Your tragedy is great. Cermet, I think you're at best to go now. He's getting late. It's all right. I'll go, but I'll be back. I'll prove you were wrong. Goodbye, Ezio. I hope so. With all my heart, I hope so. We'll return in just a moment for the second act of nights in armor. But first, young man, be honest with yourself. Have you reached a standstill in your life? Are you worried about your future? And most important of all, are you feeling dissatisfied with yourself and your own personal development? If this description, or any part of it, fits you, it's about time you investigated the opportunities waiting for you when you enlist in your United States Army. Every man in the Army has a skill, and more often than not, the Army taught in that skill in one of its fine schools. The Army offers an interesting present and a secure future, with plenty of promotions along the way. If you think you measure up, stop in at your local recruiting office and qualify to wear the mark of a man, the uniform of your United States Army. You're listening to Proudly We Hail, and now we present the second act of Nights in Armor. Buongiorno. Why didn't you tell me the truth? I'm sorry, senor. I do not understand. You told me there was no page marked Cabrini in your town register. I was not lying, my son. The page no longer exists. It was destroyed on the day of your sister's infamy. I could not tell you that the day you walked in, you were not ready to accept such a fact. I am not ready to accept it now. Molto bene, so it shall be. What can I do for you? You can tell me where my sisters are now. I can tell you that? My father once told me that in every Italian town there is a registrar of births, deaths, marriages, and that this man knows more about the people of a town than they know about themselves.  Isn't it just as well that they have done this? What good can come of unearthing old ruins? Pompeii was found in such a way. Are all the members of your army so persuasive? Well, I'm not sure. There were rumors of all sorts after they were driven from out down. I am not sure. What did you hear? About 20 miles south of Incienza are the sisters of San Marco. They are poor. They are terribly poor. They have taken the vows of poverty. Well, it was a rumor that... No, senor, please do not ask anymore. It is impossible for me to discuss these things with you. One more question. Please, senor, enough. Arrivederla. It's in the mountains with the snow and all. I'll never be able to make it alone. I couldn't go with you. Would you ski like a man? I'll need your help. I understand you can take the bus to Adriani, and then it's clear skiing all the way to San Marco. We've got to go now. In another month or so, the roads are completely impassable. By spring only the army knows where I'll be. Please, senor, it's now or never. All right, I will go. They do not hear us. They're coming. My children, what are you doing out on a night like this? We're looking for the convent of the sisters of San Marco. You have come to the right place. Oh, but come in out of the cold. Our visitors are few and far between.  Yes, I am. And you, my child, you live in Vincenza. You have a good memory, Mother Superior. You were a little girl when you were here before.  God has provided well for you, my daughter. You've been here before? I couldn't tell you. We came here to hide from the Nazis. And my sisters? They stayed in Vincenza. You too must be cold. Let me get you something, some wine perhaps. Better still, I have tea. Oh, please, no, Mother Superior. I know what you are thinking. That we have taken vows of poverty. Well, believe me, we are never too poor that we cannot give a cup of tea. Go in there, wait by the fire. I will be with you in a moment. Please, Ezio. I know you are disappointed, but it's something that you had to find out for yourself. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I won't believe it. Where did the rest of the sisters live? There is a huge wing that adjoins these rooms. They are quite bad. There's a chapel where they pray, a dining hall, and a kitchen. That's it. My sisters would live in that wing, through there. Yes. I couldn't face them if it were true. We can still go. The Mother Superior knows nothing of why we're here. We'll stay. This is for you. I'll be careful. It is hot. And now, my children, why are you here? There are few visitors with their sisters of San Marco. Ezio. This is very difficult for me, sister, to be so near to someone I have loved and yet be so afraid to face them. I do not understand. There is someone here? Yes. I have been led to believe that my sisters are here. And you are looking for them? For what reason, senor? Perhaps I can explain. There were rumors in Vincenza that two women had collaborated with the Nazis. After the war, they were driven from town. It was told that they had come here and took vows. These were his sisters. It was our shame that such things happened. But why bring pain to all wounds? There is nothing to be gained in such a quest. Mother, in ancient Vincenza, my family, the Cabrinis, were knights. Men who sought to free their medieval world from tyranny to make right what was wrong. In our country, America, we are taught the same things that these men live by. Honor and justice. I feel certain a wrong has been done here that it is up to me to make right. You are Ezio Cabrini. Then they are here. Well, tell me, please, was I wrong in coming? Please, Gina. Why don't you do as the mother superior asked? Wait until morning. I think it's best. You've had enough sorrow for one day. Oh, no, I have to go on now. With Rosanna gone, there's only Marisa left to help me. I've got to know, Gina. I couldn't rest if I didn't know. You're right. For the first time now, I begin to understand why you must know. Somebody's coming. Oh, the mother superior and another nun. I think you two should know each other. Sister Marisa. You remember your brother, Ezio. Ezio. Marisa. Cry me up, Pretella. There is good reason to cry. Come, my child. Let us go talk. Yes, mother. If you feel like talking, I feel like listening. My sister Rosanna died of pneumonia in that very first winter in the convent. There was nothing anyone could do. They had suffered so much that life had no meaning for Rosanna. When she was taken ill, there were no medicines and with no resistance. Well, you know, Marisa had to survive. There was no vindictiveness, but a wrong had been done and she knew with faith in God that one of us would return to right that wrong. But couldn't she have written? In simple piety, there is no answering her reason.  Not that there was open collaboration, but people went about their everyday tasks of living. With Marisa and Rosanna, it was different.  A fantastic, as it might sound, they had been approached earlier that year by a man who was a stranger in Vincenzo. Carlo, Italy. Please, I cannot talk to you. Marisa, for a moment. I'll do you know my name. I know much more about you than that. You are Marisa Cabrini. You have a sister Rosanna, your father and two younger brothers live in America. Until recently, you lived with a maiden aunt who died. Now you and your sister live along. You must be a gypsy to know all this, or something else. A gypsy? No. But something else, yes. Can I speak to you and your sister? You'll only take a moment. It was very simple. Carlo Vitale was a neighbor of ours in America. He had joined the OSS and had been parachuted behind the Nazi lines in Italy. It was his job to find the strength of the enemy in that area and then organize guerrilla forces to undermine and disrupt that force. My sisters agreed to help. It was impossible to tell anyone in town of their mission. And things went very well for Carlo Vitale until early in 1945, when our division, the Red Knights, started pounding away at the gates of Vincenzo. Now the Nazis were scared. That encouraged Carlo and his guerrillas to perhaps be a bit more forthright. What are you able to find out? They've stuck pigs. The Oberleutnant told Rosana everything. They are pulling out at sunset, cutting through the back road. Good, good. Now we've still got time to mine the road. One of us must go tell the Americans. One of us must stay. Marissa, I think it will be safer for you to go. All right. But be careful, Carlo. Well, this is over, little one.  Arriveder. Arriveder, lovers. And then? I think you can pretty well tell the rest of it. Carlo's band of guerrillas were ambushed by the Nazis and killed. Marissa went into town trying to reach the Americans. Since their mission had been kept secret, no one had Vincenzo knew of their brave work. They only knew that Marissa and Rosana had been seen on occasion being friendly with the enemy. So with the death of Carlo and his men, there was no one left to tell them otherwise. The rest of the story, you know. It's a tragic tale. We must tell everyone. There is a way of writing such a terrible wrong. No way, Gina. Now, what's done has been done. Over ten years have passed since those terrible days. People have forgotten. Marissa has found happiness where she is. What good could come of unearthing old ruins? Now, I think this night's quest is over. If you... Or at least part of the quest is over. I still have the fair lady to win. Your army recruiter is a good man to know. For instance, he'll show you how high school graduates can pick their own technical training from more than 150 different courses.  Or your recruiter can get you into the army branch of your choice. Armor, artillery, infantry, engineers. Name your spot and it's yours. You'll get choice, not chance, from your army recruiter. This has been another program on Proudly We Hail, presented transcribed in cooperation with this station. Proudly We Hail is produced by the Recruiting the Blissily Center for the United States Army. This is Ralph Roland inviting you to tune in this same station next week for another interesting story on Proudly We Hail.