Are You an “Overnight Success?”

I recently had an interesting conversation with a new Client who suggested that I was an overnight success. While I appreciated his kind comment, I had to admit that my “overnight success” only took 27 years of preparation.

This included many experiences, most positive & a few negative, to finally arrive at what may have looked like an overnight success… Believe me. There were plenty of rejections along the way. Yet, the best part of this entire process has been the wonderful Clients in this journey who had put their faith in my Team’s ability to navigate some “dangerous financial waters” and find a solution to their challenges.

Was it easy? No. If it had been, anybody would have been doing it… Here are a few examples for you, some of which may lead you to question my sanity in tackling these problem deals:

• How about the food processing company who owed their bank about $8,000,000 and only had $2,000,000 of Accounts Receivable and Inventory on hand. However, they did have big hopes for the future of their product line(s), and we were able to get the bank to finance new equipment for an additional product line. This allowed us to generate cash and pay the lines of credit down to a more workable level. It also taught me that the only certainty when you are in the process of developing budget projections is that this is not exactly how things will turn out. Yet, the cash flow results were strong enough that it got us “across the goal line.”
• Another Client was a struggling partnership that was burdened by owners not getting along & then getting hit with a cash crunch as their milk prices plummeted. In trying to identify the answer to their challenges, I was often reminded of the story told by President Ronald Reagan where a little boy was faced with a barn full of horse poop. When asked why he was so excited, he replied, “With this much horse poop, there has to be a pony in here somewhere!” The Client’s bank had just delivered a mandate through a letter, informing them that they should start liquidating assets. I responded with a three-page email, refuting their “short term thinking” and laying out a game plan for their successful continuation. I met with them every month, and, frankly, it was the fastest financial turnaround I’ve ever coached someone through. Within two years, they had sold the entire partnership operation and real estate, allowing two of the former partners to start new businesses that they are operating today.
• Three other examples revolve around Clients who I would describe as “land rich & cash poor…” As a result of a horrid loan structure, they became strapped for cash. By restructuring their overall debt and expanding their operations, we were able to boost their overall cash flow to the point that they were very profitable and in a position to market young animals from their dairy businesses. This, too, created an additional source of cash to help them operate. Overnight success? No, but ones that would not have happened at all without the plans we designed together.

All these examples met with success, following a lot of demanding work, planning, and solid execution of the plan. Sometimes, I even had to remind them “Success often is described as the willingness to bear pain; not to be a pain…” By working together in each of their cases, I am pleased to report another “overnight success.”

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from the old ones.”

John Maynard Keynes

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