Have you ever seen an old movie where the villan is defeated, but they still take a few steps or fire off a witty one liner?  Of course you have.  If you haven’t, go rent one before continuing.

………For everyone else, feel free to read on.

When your business is under attack and any turnaround effort has failed, there is only one solution.  For readers of Don’s blog you know it well.  Workout is a tool to be used when there is no other choice, unfortunately, workouts are the only solution all too often in todays harsh economic climate.

Before the doom and gloom sets in, I am going to hand you your silver lining.  You signed on with Second Wind and most likely have already won the battle.  ”How?”  Most likely you are still feeling the overwhelming mountain of obligation hovering over you, held at bay by gossamer thin strands of hope instilled in your initial conversation and possibly, if you are a week or two in, reinforced by your initial calls with your strategy team.  The day you decide to enter into workout you win.  When you are waiting, you have won.  When you go a day without a collection call, you have won.

Gone are the days of a five day turnaround and/or workout.  Simply knowing the rules and letting the banker know you are here as an expert is no longer the only key to the golden gates of financial freedom.  Bankers are savvy, they are locked into a mentality of attacking through the legal system and attempt to cling to the guarantors like a terrier stuck to a bone.  It takes effort and planning and most of all paperwork to guide you through the fog.

I see plenty of new clients who work tirelessly to get us documentation so we can construct the proper emails, letters, and phone calls to the banker.  We get communication and the plan seems to be going well.  Bankers are responsive and asking for documentation and attempting to move the process along proactively.  Clients at this time feel good.  They are happy to be with us and are already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  Then the “unspeakable” happens.  Bankers stop calling back immediately, they do not ask for anything, they simply go dark.  Clients get scared, they are having a harder time seeing victory in the distance and begin to think, “Did I make the right choice?”

OF COURSE YOU DID!  Let me explain what is really happening here.  The banker is not coming to get you, he is not suing you, he is not even calling you back!  This is not defeat, it is victory, success pre-emptive to our final conclusion.

First we take a look at the banker.  Why did they drop off the grid?  Are they scheming nefarious acts?  Are they bugging your house looking for incriminating evidence to lead to your demise.  Are they going to steal your loved ones and ransom them back for a loan paid in full?  The answer is no.  The real truth is much sweeter and also in some ways, more sad.  The banker is not calling you back because whatever he or she needed to do to keep management happy occurred.  They are off suing someone who chose to run and hide and do not care enough to follow up with you immediately.  Why proactively work on your file?  You are there waiting whenever they need.  John Smith in St. Petersburg, Florida just tried to protect his stock portfolio and ended up performing creditor fraud instead.  Erma Jones in Mississippi just chose conversion instead of listening to council.  Your banker is busy handling those matter to safeguard the guarantees on those loans.  The truth of the matter is this.  Once the stress and risk of an issue is removed your banker forgets about you, and your can is kicked down the road.  They will reach out and finish our process when your file has been around long enough to feel heavy from the dust accumulating on the cover.

Most bankers, particularly in SBA workout departments, have many many files.  A CIT banker once told me he had 200 current files on his desk at any one time.  These are just SBA defaulted files and just for him!  These bankers are overworked, underpaid and mostly hate their jobs.  They have an outrageous turnover rate and burn out almost as fast as social workers.  So when they are not working on your file SO WHAT!  You don’t care!

What is the damage you are suffering in this lag period?  Are you being legally pursued?  Is the banker making calls to friends and family?  Are they harassing you early in the morning and late at night?  Are you in any jeopardy whatsoever from this lack of proactive communication?  NO!  The banker has essentially forgotten you exist and as much as that may bruise your ego, it looks like victory from where I am sitting.

Your business is either before being saved or already saved, but either way it is not in jeopardy currently, that is victory.  You are able to live almost as if you were debt free and for any relevant purposes completely as if you have made it to the finish line, and that is victory.  Every aspect of your life is currently how it would be after we succeed except you know that we have work left ahead of us, and that again is victory.

When the banker has ceased, or in some cases refused to communicate with you and your appointed representatives (Second Wind), you have won.  They have given up.  Any pursuit and possible danger requires effort.  It requires communication directly or hiring an attorney who then must communicate.  Legal documents are “served” to you.  You have to be notified.  There is nothing that truly happens behind the scenes on the banks side of a workout and we disclose fully to the bank through our process.  Between those two factors there is no place for subversion.

Make no mistake that a workout is a battle, but do not let the old movies I referenced previously confuse you.  A banker is not a war party sneaking through a hidden path to ambush you from the rear.  They are simply overworked, sometimes lazy, mostly depressed employees who need way more vacation time and more cases of files like yours with people willing to step forward and work towards a plan of success so they can spend less time focused on chasing the guarantors too scared to come to the table in the first place.