A funny thing happened today. I am looking at doing a deal and I have been working on this for a little while now. Its a beautiful little deal thats clean, straight forward and a real win-win for both parties if I can push it across the line.

The vendor has never done anything like this and is quite scared so its a little delicate at the moment, and I have to be gentle to make sure that the vendor really understands what is going on and doesnt get scared. And thats just part of the process and completely understandable.

I was going to meet the vendor today, but there seemed to be a problem with meeting up. I got there and the vendor was not there. I called and was told by someone else that the person was not available to speak or come to the deal at the moment, after waiting an hour and calling many times I started making up my mind about why the person didn’t show up. I figured the person had got cold feet and couldnt tell me so was avoiding me. I thought this was quite rude.

I was about to send an email explaining that this was not cool, I dont have the time to be stuffed around and to just be honest in the meantime. Just as I was sending the email I got a call from the vendor asking where I was.

The vendor explained that they thought the meet time was much later and they had been in other meetings in the meantime. The vendor was now onsite and waiting for ME!

I organized another time to meet, hung up the phone, shook my head and just laughed.

I was literally just about to kill the deal because I jumped to conclusions that had nothing to do with anything. Taught me a lesson that I know I need to learn well and reminded me of something that I usually very good at but seemed to forget for the afternoon.

Be patient (I need to learn) and dont jump to conclusions (i am usually quite good at this). This little slip up at this crucial time almost cost me $7.5m in potential profit.

I wont be doing that again any time soon, and hopefully you can learn from my almost mistake and not do it yourself!

Cheers, Carly