A quick eloan cannot save everyone

The day after Christmas I experienced something that, again seemed like a providential nudge. I woke up with the feeling that it was time to act, as opposed to study and think about acting - what I'd been doing virtually since leaving the bank. Intuition told me to take Dallas and not Mark but early as I dared, I called Bill B. the President of First Community Bank that held the note on Belmont Downs and asked him for an appointment to discuss what we had been planning. Tim, the developer had told me terrible stories about this man. Tim, in his defense would think of him as terrible in that his professional life was in the balance as he was in default on a huge loan on which this banker could foreclose anytime he wanted, ruining him. But, we suspected that the bank hadn't foreclosed because the size of the note was so large, relative to their capital base that recognizing such a loss would cripple them. This was something of a Mexican standoff. Bill B was polite on the phone but insisted that I tell him what this was about so, I launched into a summary of 4 months of work like a shaky graduate student at an oral exam. I passed and Dallas and I went to his office that afternoon at 1. Bill B struck an imposing figure. He was 6 feet 8 inches tall and must have weighed 325 lbs, built like a pro tackle. This man was huge, with a deep voice and a disarming directness. He was also preppy, mean and clearly very smart. I would learn later that he had developed a reputation around Atlanta as THE man a Bank Board would bring in to straighten out a poorly run bank. He'd started a half dozen banks himself and was running 3 simultaneously now. But he admitted that Belmont Downs was in the ditch and that, for the life of him he couldn't figure out how to fix it. Our conversation was cordial and he seemed unconvinced but remained open to the possibility that our plan could work. He directed us to go talk with Tim, as he was still the land owner not the bank and make a proposal. We left feeling like we'd gotten a fair hearing, like we'd been well prepared and most important like we had the prospects of an engagement. IF this worked out, it would mean that somebody would actually pay us to help solve their problem and what better test case than this one - the banker that everyone feared/respected. When I got back in my car my hands were shaking. I admit to having been afraid of big Bill but I had been even more afraid of not being bold enough to march into that guy's office and declare that I was smart enough, shrewd enough, skilled enough and tough enough to have stet up my own business to do this for a living. But I had been and it seemed to be working. Once I calmed down, I was elated.

The follow up meeting with Tim didn't go particularly well. He believed that he now knew what we were going to try to do and he had digested the information from an earlier meeting and clearly had been in the marketplace trying to figure out our strategy and implement it himself. He'd even approached Cherokee County about the possibility of creating an easement on his property and selling that easement to them - something they were considering according to Tim. He directed any further inquiries to his lawyer and told us that unless we wanted to give him a purchase contract in roughly the amount of $10 million dollars he was through talking with us. I felt sorry for him as I drove away from that meeting. I knew that he was desperate and days away from financial ruin. Foresters call it "dead on the stump," a tree still standing but already dead. But upon reflection it occurred to me that it was now or never to act and that if we dithered any longer trying to perfect our process we might loose the first real opportunity that we had. Then I got mad. This twerp who had ruined everything that he had touched in the last 5 years was standing in the way of me feeding my family. OK, maybe I wasn't that melodramatic but I knew that only one of us was going to survive this and that I finally felt ready to press for the engagement. But I had to be smart and act quickly. Intuitively, I called Rick, the accountant that my lawyer, Tony T. had introduced me to. I told him that we had the opening to grab this "consulting engagement" to couch it in accountant's vernacular and pressed him to join us in making the case to the Bank, its Board and their investors - an opportunity I bet he wouldn't pass up as it meant exposure to so many wealthy and influential people. He agreed and we decided to arrange another meeting with Bill B. and this time we would ask for the business.

Runnin' on Empty

The first of December brings a confluence of emotions, feelings and worst of all, apprehensions. We'd had a pleasant Thanksgiving having actually succeeded in not thinking too awfully much about my economic fortunes. But, as December came on, frigid and bleak my mood began to mirror the weather. I had been off the payroll for 4 months now. The Christmas season was in full boil and I was flirting with the blues in ways I hadn't in years. When you spend most of your professional life working, even conscientiously in a bank its easy - no, I'll go so far as to say normal to lose track of what it means to be truly, economically productive. In a big, mature organization transactional business happens largely because customers know to call when they need a financial problem solved. A responsible bank employee simply takes the call and fashions a response from the ample resources that employee has at his or her disposal and that's called "sales". By using just a little initiative that employee might even qualify for sales rewards - a trip or a campaign prize and if you're really well employed, incentive compensation. Well, during my banking career, I had come to fully understand how that process worked and was, not only paid enough to keep my comfortable life style in tact, I'd gotten completely used to making bonuses on top of the ordinary compensation that did everything from enable consistent philanthropy, to treating my family, including young adult children to extraordinary trips and of course living well. (By upper middle class standards, anyway) But there is a dark psychological aspect to becoming accustomed to receiving such compensation without ever truly processing what it means to earn it. Its called entitlement. I had come to believe that I was entitled to be so compensated and that the things I chose to buy, creature comforts, admiration from others for doing so "well," a tangible sense of accomplishment and above all a feeling of security all get rolled together. I had become a person disconnected with self reliance because my well respected employer assumed that position. Now, all of that was gone. Only now was I beginning to understand how a slave could get comfortable with his circumstances and not want to change them, even if he could. The hardest reality though was my professional identity, my professional self concept was dissipating before my very eyes and, on the darkest of days I was terrified that I didn't even begin to know how to get it back. I realized that the irrevocable loss of such self respect meant certain failure. On some days this reality motivated me but by early December I was nearly depressed, longing for the salad days of working at the Bank, planning the office Christmas party, looking forward to shopping for others, the Christmas feeling. The only person who seemed to understand as well or better than me was my wife, Jill. its a long story but her adolescence was rudely interrupted when her Dad, a well respected football coach lost his job and simply couldn't find another one. Her nuclear family nearly disintegrated as a result and each carries the scars from that trauma, even to this day. The prospects of a merry Christmas seemed just as remote to her as it did to me. Oddly though there was real comfort in knowing that my wife understood. And, comprehending that she too was suffering psychologically was completely motivational. I simply could not let the blues over take me as I had too many looking to me to solve this problem. Of all the things that I couldn't afford, feeling sorry for my self, the ages old indulgence of the entitlement generation could not be the option I chose. I had to find some way to force-ably reject that.

Running on empty
Everyone I know, everywhere I go
People need some reason to believe
I dont know about anyone but me
If it takes all night, thatll be all right
If I can get you to smile before I leave

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I dont know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
I look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through
Looking into their eyes I see them running too

Running on - running on empty
Running on - running blind
Running on - running into the sun
But Im running behind