Better Lucky than Good

Today’s event proves it is better to be lucky than good.

From time to time, we end up with a client who is very honorable, but for one reason or another, fails to produce the required information we need to have to work on their behalf.  Recently I have had a client in that situation.  The man is a nice guy, a hard worker, but simply did not produce his financials for a mind boggling amount of time.  There were many reasons, his accountant and other issues, but the end result is he was paying for a result we could not produce as we did not have the tools to work with.

In this situation as we do not want to accept funds for a client unless we can deliver our trademark success on their behalf, we sever the relationship so the client can preserve funds until such time as they can get together what we need and reengage our services.

In this client’s case it had been so long and we had been in communication with the banker outside our normal protocols as it was needed to stave off disaster.  The banker saw no results for an extended period of time and grew agitated and eventually would not even return calls or communicate and was willing to simply liquidate the client.  I was completely prepared to have to fight tooth and nail to reestablish communication and credibility now that the client had provided the tools we needed and spend months to complete an asset sale that should really take approximately two weeks under normal circumstances.

Luck had prevailed and the banker in charge of the case was changed during the time I was out of communication and by the time I reestablished communication I had a blank slate to work from.  The banker was receptive as always and that process flowed smoothly.  This point illustrates that it is better to be lucky than it is to be skilled, but in most cases success could not have been guaranteed after such a long lapse in effectiveness with a banker.

Be proactive, be in communication, and get what we need to get the job done.  Above all, be lucky!

As I always say, “Luck is simply uncontrollable skill.”