Soft Patch

Operations of the business had been going along swimmingly. Or rather...runningly. You were hitting your 18% a year growth targets year after year...and then you hit a soft patch. That is, you grew only 3% for a year.

It wasn't the end of the world. The company didn't go bankrupt. It just grew...more slowly. Times were tougher. Life was softer.

Think: running on sand instead of concrete. A soft patch. Slower running. Lower margin. Lower stock prices.